UE4 development progress?

[Endonesia]

I understand that it's one person on this and I'm thankful for their dedication. But that is the problem, there is only one person working on this. Every couple years I'll check in on this project and give it another try. But then I'm disappointed to see an empty server that is barely interactive, and the patch notes are 2 to 4 years in between updates.

When logged in recently I was reminded how nothing lasts forever and how the UI in this game has become very lack luster compared to modern games. Time kills everything. I worry even if it were completed today if anyone would play it? At the current pace, if development ever gets completed the game will feel like playing 'Pong' today where the fun and replayabilty of it doesn't last long.

On these forums, I feen multiple times people offering help and assistance but the EMO DEV doesn’t seem to take up that help. There must be some parts of this could be crowd sourced and it must be more than 1 person working on it.

I'm sure I'll get flamed because this all sounds negative, but I think it's justified. There's one person trying to continue work on a game we all love, but it's being so slow-rolled that when there actually is anything of interest to play, no one’s going to want to play it because we’ll all be in retirement. Serious. I was 25 when this game came out and I’m 45 now. This emulator has been being worked on over at least 13+ years and in 13 years we have server logon, hyper-jump, and teams/crews. Will it take another 13 years for combat and missions? Instead of an empty server will be two 60 year-old guys IRL hanging out at Mara Central?

I know this project really isn’t being ‘marketed’ per say, but when someone comes across the website or forums it gets them excited to see the idea of MxO being alive again, but that’s the problem, it’s not nor will it probably ever be a thing if there’s only one guy working on it. IMO if this project were to be saved, rajkosto needs to split up some tasks focusing on combat & missions and advertise the “volunteers needed” to places outside this forum for people to see. Then maybe if crowdsourced we could get the framework of some new features working, even if clunky. Show people some progress, then maybe there’d be more interest in volunteers which is what is drastically needed.

I appreciate that this project is shared as it’s worked on, but in a way that is just painful. It’s like dangling a false hope. And even if it does come to fruition, I fear it will be too late.

SOURCE: I logged in during 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2023. Not much has changed except for being able to hyper-jump and join a team (which doesn’t help much since there’s no players)

[rajkosto]

They might offer (HAY GUYS I'D LOVE TO HELP GET THIS THING OFF THE GROUND), but they never substantiated. So spending time onboarding them and managing/assigning work that will just never be touched is a waste (did it a few times).
There was a guy who wrote some non-insignificant amounts of code back in like... 2013 ? But even that was just for a month or two and it was only because he was just starting to get in practice of software development before he got an actual job. I had to rewrite all that code anyway. I'm still in contact with him but I don't even think he would want to be associated/mentioned here anymore.
Not a lot of people played this game that there is a large enough fanbase with enough nostalgia and skills to invest time into such a project for free.
Those who do, realize they won't get as much return out of it as just working on something else that more people know about/will notice or just getting paid to do it as their job.
Hell, I've even asked "MxO community" people to do me up a new front page website design rather than the one I slapped together back in 2010 and the answer I got was "lol pay someone to do it".
Apparently I'm the only crazy one to dedicate some time to this occasionally whenever I feel like it (I have a job doing the same thing as well so I usually don't want to repeat it as a hobby)
If the problem was that others want SO BAD to WORK to make this thing FUNCTIONAL and I'm just NOT LETTING THEM then you would see it in rival MxO emulation projects... but the only other one is basically in the same situation as this, except even less functional atm.

[Bookwyrm Pageturner]

Just a (rather irrelevant) side comment from me here, but:

(05-12-2023, 08:12 PM)Endonesia Wrote: but when someone comes across the website or forums it gets them excited to see the idea of MxO being alive again, but that’s the problem, it’s not nor will it probably ever be a thing

[...]

I appreciate that this project is shared as it’s worked on, but in a way that is just painful. It’s like dangling a false hope.

this is of course the whole Tantalus effect, when getting say 50% of something while being teased with the 100% is perceived as worse than having 0% of it and no implied prospects of getting the 100% or anything for that matter;

however while a natural instinct, in a way it makes no sense at all, since the 50% is clearly much more and better than the 0%?
And it's kinda more or less widely known how close it once came to being 0% (not counting all the screenshots and videos made before shutdown of course), given how the "code was cracked" like a day or two before the game shut down.

So idk whenever I catch myself getting these, uhh, "tantalus reactions" with various media, I just kinda brush them aside cause they're really fundamentally absurd.

Like, you know, I'm seething over someone somewhere having done a 50% of something instead of the 100%, but the whole reason I'm seething is cause they did those 50% in the first place? And if they'd done nothing I wouldn't be seething (or anywhere as much)?
E.g. take all those Asoiaf fans who're angry books 6-7 aren't getting finished - but if 1-5 didn't exist they wouldn't be upset about this right? Despite that then they'd have even less.
So yeah lol



2)
So that's just my limited view on this based on my own sort of priorities, but imo the most valuable aspects of this game are already preserved in the current version of the emu, i.e. all the environment along with the sound&soundtrack, hyperjump (both of them) next to all the regular running&jumping animations and camera control and whatnot.

Combat would be really great too, since a lot of those animations, bullet-time etc. were really cool despite the sort of fomulaic structure of it all.

Missions ehhh not sure, the most valuable thing about them was the texts, and those can be preserved in archives and screenshots (although don't think all of them are?) - the actual gameplay was mostly kinda wooden and not very cinematic was it? Could be exciting if you were hyped about the plot, and would have an obvious nostalgic value as well, but not quite sure how much beyond that.
(The soundtrack pieces already play in the Org Areas, except for the MisNiobe and Mission1 ones which don't show up in the current emu as far as I'm aware.)

(Also wasn't there some emu project where missions were working outside of buildings, or on rooftops? Is that project down now as well? Swear I've seen some kinda YT video of it years ago.)

However obviously many others miss the PvP/PvE and could potentially organize some sorts of staged events esp. with all the admin powers unlocked, if these features were reintroduced into the emu, so not saying all that stuff doesn't matter lol - but yeah that's just my pov I suppose.


3)
Regarding the "we'll all be 60" and UE2/4, idk I wonder how long it'll take before AI can simply take care of all of this and transfer a game onto the newest graphics/sound engine without problems?
Along with, idk, just recreating all the combat animations if shown some videos?

Or maybe it already can? Not keeping up with all of this thoroughly rn, but computers can now reconstruct full 3D environemnts just based on some photos, so it'd seem likely that something like this will be possible in the near future, if it isn't already.

And if tools like this become available, pros that would otherwise need years to complete such projects, would be able to pull it off in astronomically shorter time spans - and then in 10-20 years probably anyone with just a few prompts or clicks, or who knows what at that point lol

So wouldn't be worrying about the whole being 70 thing atm.

[Bookwyrm Pageturner]

Btw something I've wondered about, how difficult would it be with this emu to add some OST change triggers to the former mission areas (or rather some of them)?

Would it be about as unfeasible/challenging as just reimplementing the entire mission system altogether, since it would involve making the game react to the player entering and exiting the mission areas - or is it more around the level of locking/unlocking the areas (something which was also being done by admins during events, outside of missions - I think? don't think Rarebit etc. had to start missions and then invite people for that?) and messing around with their map display?
In the original game they went from absent (or extremely faint? don't think so?) when locked to red when unlocked, and here in the emu they're all unlocked and faint green. Is that a new feature, or did they always appear like this when an admin unlocked an area (to certain players), or on some other type of other occasions?


In either case, the idea would be somewhat of an equivalent to the "&angry"/"stand" command - just like that one recreates a few aspects of the combat system (combat stance + ability to draw weapon, and switch to combat OST), something like this could be a pretty cool partial substitute for the mission system: i.e. if walking in and out of certain "mission areas" triggered a soundtrack switch, made the map red, and, idk, pretty much anything else I can think of would just be the missions themselves, so probably no lol.
(If this were made to work by locking the areas (not necessarily all of them perhaps, but select ones) again while giving the player the ability to unlock a given area, this would probably also reintroduce the brickwall doorway textures thing.)

"Extraction rooms" would be Zion of course, MisMachines for some of those big office levels from the Agent Gray/Pace meetings, and Merv would get the semi-Chateau-esque looking levels with the marble statues and who knows what else; Le Vrai is not in the game after all, right?
Mission1 would be a great match for those dilapidated maze apartments in Westview with the broken walls and spider webs everywhere (the track only ever made sense when the area/plot/both were at least somewhat spooky), and NiobeL i.e. the hotel ambush remix could just randomly (and rarely) appear in some mundane office/etc. levels, creating an unexpected&unexplained sense of unease (sort like it did originally).

And if there's a way to do that with the unused M tracks as well (might be an additional challenge for all I know), MisMerovingianM could be a decent match for Club Hel I think.
Others might think of more/better options as well - I dunno?


But yeah just throwing some ideas around lol - guessing that something like this probably wouldn't just be doable with a click or 2 and might be as inaccessible and theoretical as the whole rest of it (missions/combat/NPCs), but don't really know for sure either way.

[SupremeGuide]

I'm glad you're still working on this raj, even if that must be painful as having a cactus in the *ss.
Wishing you good luck for upcoming work, and looking forward to try your updated MxO version.
Cheers!

[godnathan]

No missions yet ?

[NeonT]

Just putting in my message of support, and wishing ya'll well. o/