AQ2World.com

I want to bring up a subject about Aq2 surviveness what we can and what we want to achieve. That brings some questions up, with for instance Aq2 maps...
- Is it possible to make improvments to maps (map editors) and take the limit for new maps to a other stage??
- Is it okay(with the releasers premission) to release updated Aq2 maps if we makes the limits with them bigger?
- Is it a absolutely nono, to get some dudes release offical* retextures(32 bit) of old maps, and for instance put them in the server files, so new persons and aq2s without them could download them and probably get excited.
Is this thing accepted by the aq2 community??
With Offical* I also ment goodlooking textures tried and accepted by aq2 VIPs and nabbs(all).



A other thing I want to mention is Aq2 graphic, it isnt very bad and either very good but I just has to fall on my knees for: Maniac and AprQ2. Honestly I hadnt played Aq2 if it hadnt been from him. He(other helpers) has improved Q2 engine and client and has made important changes and things that makes q2 better and better; Quake3 model support, triggers, celshading, shadows, drawt changes, scale, fixes, all cind of picture support and ect. ect. ect. Thank u Maniac

With this changes I think and hope Aq2 is getting hotter! and gets even more players than it has now, im not saying that we shall change the game completely, we could play a other game then, but make changes to farming players and have more fun our self. BTW: "Aq2 the next generation" is a example of a great change no other games has had. Plz be serious and have reflective answers

EDIT: Post your ideas, projects, and how you can make Aq2 live longer here

You can't re-standarize AQ2, you just can't. You can promote new stuff and advertise with it, but you will never make us all to change and accept a new standard about the game. Most of us are already too old to change, and also too used to the game like to care of refreshing it. Most of us don't care about longfall.bsp and it's ugly textures and last-decade's geometry, we have fun on it and that was it.

Besides, and now speaking for myself, new flesh is always an issue and grinding it usually is the only solution to make it swallowable.

Happy anniversary, by the way.

Updated in-game menu (such that actually lets You bind AQ2 speciffic commands through mouse clicking), and big 'Download AQ2 installer here' and 'Download AQ2 maps here' buttons on the main page would do more good that all recompiling and retexturing.

gegoj wrote:Updated in-game menu (such that actually lets You bind AQ2 speciffic commands through mouse clicking), and big 'Download AQ2 installer here' and 'Download AQ2 maps here' buttons on the main page would do more good that all recompiling and retexturing.

This needes!
ppl don't want to search maps, setting up there contraols for 30 min before they can play.

I`am busy with an aq2, wich had some new 32 bit textures like topic "aq2 next generation" i`m including lots of maps.. the next problem is..
it will be kind of 1,5 gb, iam just finalizing the shit.. so there are no problems. i will tell you when its finished. maybe some guys can look at it..

2nd point are the controls of the game, this menu must be renewd. so u can configure ur bandage button in game. this will be some handy.

also saw that there are more 32 bit items are comming like silencer, vest etc. i will search for this.. think this is a good topic..

als i think the strafe jump, people quit the game cuz they cant get the hang of it.. :<

Sulfate wrote:als i think the strafe jump, people quit the game cuz they cant get the hang of it.. :<

If you cant hold strafe, forward and jump when needed then you shouldnt be playing the game, you should be executed.

Caracol wrote:You can't re-standarize AQ2, you just can't. You can promote new stuff and advertise with it, but you will never make us all to change and accept a new standard about the game. Most of us are already too old to change, and also too used to the game like to care of refreshing it. Most of us don't care about longfall.bsp and it's ugly textures and last-decade's geometry, we have fun on it and that was it.

Besides, and now speaking for myself, new flesh is always an issue and grinding it usually is the only solution to make it swallowable.

Happy anniversary, by the way.

Im not talking about re-standarize Aq2, I am thinking about small and big improvments, making Aq2 a even better game than it allready is ... Like you said "You can't re-standarize AQ2, you just can't." we cant change the hole aspect of the game, and I said from the start I dont want to talk about changing it completely, just make improvments. And btw you never get to old for changes

Sulfate wrote:2nd point are the controls of the game, this menu must be renewd. so u can configure ur bandage button in game. this will be some handy.

It things like this im talking about, small and handy changes as autosave to autoexec. Or making new and good looking textures. And let it be sure that noone need to use them. Yust if you also think its cool .

Maps: creating mapname.bsp.override would be nice to allow diferent spawns for the existing maps, as for modifying them i'm against;

Improvements: There is just so much that can be done to improve gaming on AQ2, including playing the other options that the TNG module allows (darkmatch, CTF, deathmatch) and the many ways you can play it. I started a project of my own to do flag locations for every map that hasn't.. i've been doing this on my free time but it's just around 180 maps so i'm taking my time

AQ2 MOD: I think Maniac is still up to the TNG code in M0.xx releases, so we'll just have to wait a bit and see what comes (if anything)! Igor as it looks since the last news, hasn't done much on the code as well... Id be up for a coding fusion instead of every coder to be doing separated jobs, like ETE, TNG, TNG M-

Q2 Engine: APR, R1Q2, EGL (and Q2PRO?) are clients that have many unexplored functions that most players really don't care about.. although there are so many requests for implementations or just porting them from one another, this usually results in nothing to happen. Lets just opt for the one we like the most..

AQ2 distribution: Yes I agree with you that there's this need. But who would make this stand alone? What engine(s) should it include? Carefull not to include copyrighted material! Willing to update it constantly? Universal cfg is easy to do, to change this cfg is not for every one to do it properlly and at the first attempt, so the 30min before are always needed... AQ2 just seems to be a game that will never get to be "plug&play".

Single point of download: I've tried to get this from several places, have all the files and compiled the (what i think) best packages for client distribution. Compressed size would be 240MB including maps or 25MB without maps. The idea would be to have instructions of what to update if necessary and the maps would download automatically from an unique HTTP server when joining the server to play. If anyone knows where to find this host, feel free to pop in a reply!

AQ2 is to live if people do help each other. No matter how you make things easy for anyone, if there's no information or help, there's noone that will just install it and get it to run at the first attempt.

Lots of good words there emperphis

im sorry to say this but i think these kind of threads are kinda useless because there are no people that can or want to add new "good" features.

Den wrote:im sorry to say this but i think these kind of threads are kinda useless because there are no people that can or want to add new "good" features.

My words exactly

Den wrote:im sorry to say this but i think these kind of threads are kinda useless because there are no people that can or want to add new "good" features.

emperphis wrote:Improvements: (...) I started a project of my own to do flag locations for every map that hasn't.. i've been doing this on my free time but it's just around 180 maps so i'm taking my time .

We thank you aq2world. This has always been very helpfull to the aq2 community. If you want some ideas to make it easier and better, do a thread regarding this and you might get something out of it. Useless is not to do something.

I don't want to destroy every building, but what he thinks ain't what aq2w will or will not do for the game. I doubt he will say "nah, I won't", if you come for something to be posted in the site. The thing is, adding flags and making a self-taste retexturing is nothing. It's not as if CTF will be more played because now you can play it in actdam and desperado and retexturing is, as already said, usually a targeted stuff, you will never achieve a full acceptance.

The things that could be done are related to the code of the mod and the game itself. Make it user friendly and all that stuff you all seem to need or think will bring people in. Sorry to say, but adding flags is the most useless thing to do in general means, maybe it's a lot of fun to bring up new stuff to your usual AQ2 LAN Mates, but for the community it won't help shit.

Looks pointless to me, that random people start promoting stuff like this, if suddenly one of the 'architects' that are still around decides to do something I might give an optimistic answer and support and all that.
But all of this is pointless, in my hopefully not conclusive opinion.

What i do is what i know. Better do something than nothing. Even if it's 0.000000001% contributing for the community, it still is. I won't be dependant on others neither others of me! Even if it's not appreciated, i don't care. If the TNG group started it probably had a meaning..
Anyway I agree there are other priorities, but i can't/not interested to achieve the knowledge to address them.

If there is in fact that 'architect' you most certainly are the 'philosopher'.

Well, so I'm semi-known in the AQ2 community at large, maybe not so much in Scandanavia in the last 5 years, though. I suppose one could call me one of the ol' movers and shakers from times of yore.

So some thoughts.

<b><u>Single Point of Distribution</u></b>

I think this is essential to help keep the AQ2 community together. At the very least, to expose the different AQ2 communities (Australia, South America, North America, Europe--heck, even divisions within Europe) to different AQ2 variants and possible cheat prevention and exploit fixes.

However, you will NEVER be able to get http://action.telefragged.com/ updated. Suislide owns it and is bound and determined to leave it as a "shrine" instead of allowing it to be updated with links to community projects and that kind of thing. I'd already had a rather public spat with him about it years ago. I did try to get access to the site redirected to the remaining ATeam members, but I could only get them the AHL and AUT sites back; Suislide retook control of the AQ2 site.

Such is life.

AQ2 World is a pretty good URL. It's got a decent set of forums. It needs more updated news and probably updated content. If you guys are willing to host AQ2 projects, that can be a great strength for concentrating AQ2 knowledge and variants. The main problem would be to publicize the site to various other AQ2 messageboards and forums.

It may be possible to work with the remaining ATeam to get a site blessed as an endorsed AQ2 community, like, the stuff at such and such a site aren't OFFICIAL AQ2 releases, per se, but we officially endorse them as a place for AQ2 players to go for the latest AQ2 information. A thought, at least.

Some other sites are floating around. AQ2Zone, mainly US AQ2 and general AHL forums. Planetaction.net, not sure exactly if they are back up again or if they are still down. Used to be a consolidated AQ2/AHL/AUT/RQ3 news site. Are there really any other AQ2 sites that anyone knows of that would be suitable? There were some OLD Australian forums but I'm not sure if they are still around. And I can't read any of the South American forums and websites; I think it's mainly in Brasilian/Portuguese. Honestly, AQ2 World seems to be the most logical place, if the people who host it will keep it around a while and if they are able to get more content and more updates.

My opinion, at least.

<b><u>New AQ2 Content</u></b>

<u>Maps.</u>

Someone needs to resurrect http://aqmd.telefragged.com/ and keep it up to date. That's it. It's really that simple. And the mappers who submit to it need to 1) help each other out with problems, 2) follow the AQMD guidelines, and 3) not throw a fit if their map gets rejected because it doesn't meat the AQMD's standards. Also, the AQMD should ALSO host "unofficial" maps which don't meet their regular standards. So the mapper won't work on it anymore and has no pride and will release it anyway. Well, hell, don't endorse the map, per se, but at least provide a centralized point of distribution.

Don't throw random maps on servers and hope people download them. Don't throw random forum links around and hope people read them. Decide on one central point of distribution and MAINTAIN it. It takes time and effort to do well. Well, once you get a system in place, it won't take too much time and effort. Something to consider.

Also, every map that references a baseq2 texture would need to be provided a new replacement texture. There are some Q2 texture replacement projects and even mentioned in these forums:

http://forums.aq2world.com/viewtopic.php?t=2938

Again, a huge initial undertaking but once it's done, everything else is just easy maintenance.

<u>Random Stuff.</u>

"I started a project of my own to do flag locations for every map that hasn't.. i've been doing this on my free time but it's just around 180 maps so i'm taking my time"

That is awesome. Totally awesome. I assume that's .flg files for AQ:TNG CTF matches? I suckered someone into writing a .flg-to-.scn converter program that can make those simple .flg files into AQ:ETE CTB files. So your hard work potentially is helping out two AQ2 variants at the same time.

It's kind of a grey area about where those would be best distributed. Probably with each variant as an add-on PAK or something.

<u>New Playermodels and Weapons.</u>

AQ2 Guild is dead, but you should resurrect that as well. I may or may not be able to procure a copy of the site and content it used to host. Again, maybe http://guild.telefragged.com/ no longer exists, but you need something similar.

Plus, officially-approved models can be checked so they aren't huge spiked models. And you can generate some of that APR or anti-cheat stuff for each officially-approved model/replacement. That, in turn, makes it easier for anyone wanting to try new content AND lets you check the content to make sure it doesn't suck or isn't cheat-ridden.

<b><u>Single Download.</u></b>

<u>Installing/Updating</u>

Similar to the issues with points of distribution, what to do with all the AQ2 variants? All the old cranky players do NOT want to change their favorite AQ2 variant. I like ETE. You punks like TNG or Maniac's work. What to do?

And for downloading? Sure, you have the AQMD and the Guild and a new semi-endorsed site for downloading stuff, do you have to get 5000 different files to install? Or one 5 GB file? 'tis a quandry. Might I suggest something similar to this installer:

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php

Go ahead and download the installer. Then run it. See what it does. It's pretty slick and relatively idiot-proof. It gets what you need and only what you want. Plus, hey, Star Control 2 is a great classic game and if you haven't tried it, you really should.

Anyway, so a solution similar to that would help with the content. Just update the installer every so often to take into account new content so new players can always have access to the latest stuff. Adapt something similar as an "update" program which can check for new AQ2 content, say, once a week or whenever you want to manually launch it and check.

<u>Consolidated Content</u>

Going back to the cranky AQ2 players, which distribution do we use? Well, why not ALL of them? And for that matter, why not make a server that is able to dynamically load them in server rotation. Simple:

http://forums.aq2world.com/viewtopic.php?p=45747

I'm glad someone else got ahold of the source and made a linux port. I got it ages (years, literally) ago but never got off my ass to do anything about it. Here's some info on it as well:

http://web.archive.org/web/200204070052 ... on/q2v.htm

If the link is bad, just try reloading. Archive.org is kinda iffy on retrieving content.

Now, it'd probably be nice to make this integrated into whatever Q2 executable that would be used. I honestly don't care which. It would come down to whoever would be willing to do it. Beggers can't be choosers, you know?

A long long time ago I was working on a consolidated AQ2 package. It was leaked by one of the testers. Bummer. Disheartened me enough that I pretty much stopped working on it. Luckily, it didn't get a wide distribution. +5 points to anyone who could remember the name of the package. Anyway, the upshot is that I was probably around 90% done with it. It had AQ2 binaries for Win32, Linux, MacOS, BeOS, SGI-Irix, Solaris-x86, and Solarix-SPARC. Maybe something else, I forget. And no Mac OS X as this project predated that OS. Scary, eh? I had documentation/info on a ton of AQ2 variants. I'd guess 25 or so in that package, off the top of my head? And I had the SOURCE for a bunch of AQ2 variants as well.

So, the ideal plan now would be to catch up on the last few years of AQ2 variants (Maniac's work and... LTKTBM and... Patman's jump mod and... that seems to be it?) and update the docs. The package had AQ2 1.0c client, the updates, and some fixed vwep/skins. It even included popuPAK which at the time were the 12 most popular maps so that players could jump right in and play. Get one of the Quake 2 project coders to do our bidding to make an action.exe. Integrate Q2V into the game itself, update the menus to allow easier AQ2-specific key binding, maybe do some bugfixing on Q2V (it still had some random issues), and throw it all into an installer.

It's plausible, certainly. There are a few more pieces of the AQ2 puzzle I'd like to get into place, myself. Sure, people have the old 0.92 version and some of the 1.0c versions floating around, but I'm trying to see if I can get some of the old OLD .8x versions and maybe some pre-release stuff. Hell, I even have some code from the never-released 1.53 version. Wouldn't that be kind of interesting, to see how AQ2 was 'back in the day'?

Also, is concern for the viability of new content. Probably, someone should integrate or write a HL model (SMD, is it?) loader so that this AQ2 project could gain access to the huge amount of content available in the HL mod world. Sure, MD3 is nice, I guess, but most modelers/animators HATE working with the format. And dislike MD2 even more. You should cater to the people who you'd like to have contribute. In this case, find out what the artists like and use and try to support that to encourge them to contribute.


<b><u>What would be needed to make this a reality</u></b>

Time. And people who don't give up if things don't instantly get finished.

Single point of distribution: Someone to talk with the remaining ATeam people to see if they would agree to endorse something like this. Someone to offer hosting and a decent URL. And a stable site, not one that will be dead in 5 months because the guy who owns AQ2World (or whatever) is bored or no longer around.

New content - maps: Some mappers who are still active who are willing to spend the time to go through the AQMD maps. Maybe a web guy who can fix the site up. Someone willing to figure out what textures that need to be replaced and look into doing that.

New content - playermodels and weapons: A web guy to revamp the site. Hosting. Someone to test the content and submissions. And update the site with new content as it comes in.

New content - random: Going back to single point of distribution, perhaps someone on-staff who would be in charge of submissions like new .flg files and pass that along to the projects involved like anything based off of AQ:TNG. And pass along the content to whoever maintains the installer/updater.

Single download - installer: Coder who is willing to either make something like this or adapt an existing project. The installer from Ur-Quan Masters might be free to use and the sourcecode available in their SourceForge code repository. Would require some research. Someone to maintain the installer/updater to make sure it points to new content when available.

Single download - consolidated content: Coder who is willing to adapt their project to an AQ2-specific product. Coder willing to integrate and debug Q2V. A project manager who is willing to set specifications and work to ensure those specifications can be met, i.e. get information required for the coder so he can implement certain features like a HL model loader. Don't laugh; many a project/mod has died due to lack of coherent leadership and vision.

--------------

So, really, what people are wanting is in fact doable. It just takes time and commitment. I tried to do it alone a long time ago and came close. Now, I just don't have the time.

If there is interest in something like this, and I've tried to actually outline what needs to be DONE, not just what we'd like to see happen, then please post and post what you'd be willing to help with. Yeah, I know, if something like this ever took off, you'd all love to beta test. For, like, 15 minutes and then we'd never hear from ya again.

But honestly, if this is something enough people with enough usable skills (coding, graphics work, web design, etc.) and connections (able to talk/schmooze to the ATeam, has access to a ton of AQ2 content, able to get hosting) pipe up, this can certainly happen.

I'd be willing to commit what I can to help if this gets serious. And that includes the connections and content bit. Maybe even coordination. I'm tapped out for coding help, though, so someone else would have to step up for that side of things.

If you have any questions about the crap I just rambled on about, or suggestions, or want clarification, feel free to post 'em in here. Or, if you're a scared little girl, you can contact me at monk@rq3.com instead.

Anyway, something to muse over, at least.