This has been coming for awhile just havent had the time to do it. I have officially decided to discontinue the modification. The rest of the team and I do not have the required time to finish the project.
Next up are some final words about the mod from various team members.
Sign off -Grant White(BGT)- Team Leader/Founder/Webmaster/Programmer/Modeler
Home front has been around for nearly 3 years. Throught that time we have faced many hardships and lots of good times. Id like to personally thank all the members, fans, and the community for helping make such a great mod.Ive lead this mod since day one, and helped bring it to its highs and lows. Though I could not of done a single thing with out the tremendous support of our dedicated team members who helped so much. This mod was by no means all my idea. One of the great things that made the mod so everlasting was that we took the communities ideas and thoughts and implemented them into the mod. We incorporated this into the teams grand plan and created many very successfull releases. If theres one thing that helps create a good mod its a capable leader. Ive found that a leader with the knowledge of all aspects of modding will help speed up production. People tend to respect you more if you know what your talking about and know how long it will take. You can make reasonable demands. There was almost no part of the mod I didnt have something to do with. As the mod leader I learned nearly every aspect to Battlefield modding and became very good at it. Though again it would of been difficult without support from the community and our team members.
Sign off -Scott McMurry(Spectro)- CoFounder/Modeler
The original plan first came after Grant and I were removed from the first halo based mod for battlefield for having to many good ideas and doing more than what our mod leader wanted. His leadership skills and ideas were flawed. We decided to make our own mod. Though I for the most part stayed behind the scenes. I contributed greatly to the mod(Including the Name itself). I helped shape many ideas that were put into the mod, and modeled many important vehicles and weapons.
Sign off- SpartanIV Mapper/GFX artist/Programmer/Webdesign
Well this is probably a little late to be informative, but I think our fans need a formal goodbye, I think they deserve it for just downloading the mod and giving us support. The last few years have been great. We have done a lot of stuff that when I originally joined I thought would never happen. Back then, when our models weren’t so great, our skins were lacking detail, and the rest of the mod was just in the planning stages, I never though we would get as far as we did, or that Home Front would ever get as popular, and as many downloads as it did. It’s a prime example of what hard work can do for you. So to all the small mod teams out there that think they don’t have a chance against the bigger mods, just keep working at it and improving. The Battlefield community has more than enough near-future modern-combat mods with X super power against Y super power. What I want to see is some great sci-fi mods made. As for the question of why has Home Front stopped production, it comes down to one main point. We ran out of time. I myself have just started college, and I’ve only been able to squeeze in one hour of gaming this week. Other members of the team also have things in their life that takes up time besides school. I want to make one thing clear however, and that is that we did not stop production because of lack of support. Every other mod that shuts down says it’s the communities’ fault that they failed. That certainly is not the case. It’s the mod that lets the community down. If mod teams work hard and believe in the mod they are working on, then it will be successful to them even if no one plays it, and that’s certainly how we all felt at Home Front. We made all the important mod content decisions on what we though would benefit the mod, and not what we thought the community wanted, because what is right for the mod, and what is right for the community are 2 completely different things. I would always tell myself and others that if DC always did what their fans thought then there would be 1 map with 32 nukes on each side.
I think I should say that throughout my time modding on the Home Front team, some things were done which I did not agree with. Certain people were kicked from the team and certain actions done in ways I did not always approve of and often I could not do much to change. I will not mention any names but those people know who they are and I would like to apologize to them publicly. The only person I carry a grudge against would be Tusk, which I’m sure will make a few other modders teeth cringe as they read his name. Tusk, who most likely changed his alias by now, was a lazy kid, who did absolutely nothing. He skinned a tank turret and a minigun, and that was it. Then for whatever reason he leaked our mod when we were close to a release. Not only did he leak our mod though, he systematically leaked several other small mods like ours at the time. So if you’ve made it this far into my modding memoirs, then I might as well actually say what I did for the mod. Actually it would probably be easier for me to say what I didn’t do. As I stated earlier I started out mapping, but since our mod team was small, and it was near impossible to get dedicated hard working members, I decided to branch out and try other areas of modding. I think it’s amazing how much I actually did for our first release. I not only did about half the maps myself, I also skinned a few minor objects, coded a few other objects, but also found time to recode some of the menu and make custom icons, something a lot of small mods don’t do, which I think makes a huge difference in the mod. I always believe it was the small things that mattered more. This might not make sense at first, so let me explain it. When you are in a small mod team, and your mod has not so good models and skins, you are in a group of about 1000 other small mods that are in the exact same situation as you. So what is supposed to make some prospective fan want to play your mod? The small things are what do. Simply by adding custom minimap icons, and a custom HUD, you can make the game look completely different, and that attracts many more people to your mod than the other mods which look the same as the game, minus having some custom vehicles. However now that I’ve said that, let me get back to my little story, After the first release, I cut back on mapping, although I still was still probably the best mapper on the team. One of my most original maps was Alpha Centauri, which even though it didn’t turn out to be such a great map, thanks to it I will never again misspell Alpha Centauri. I would like to remind everyone that when we were developing this map, space maps had not been done yet, so we were pioneers in that field, even though Galactic Conquest beat us to releasing by along shot. We spend more time on that map alone that some teams spend on their first release I bet. Every night at around 7 it would be stop whatever we’re doing and the key members of Home Front would all start working on Alpha Centauri. I of course would handle the actual map, the beautiful skybox was done completely by me, and I also placed all the objects you see on the map. The model and skin were done by other members of our team. Grant (BGT) would spend countless hours exporting, and rexporting the ships trying to optimize them as much as possible, and Trasko would code them in like the expert coder he is. We would work for hours and hours each night on that map. It really is a pity it turned out so mediocre. If you want to see something ground breaking though, check out the Home Front version 2 HUD. That’s the closest thing I have to offspring. I spent forever working on that, usually to have my previous work blown away by the next BFV patch. Everything in the HUD was recoded basically. Each side had its own unique HUD; even the spectators had their own HUD. Also the custom crosshairs were something I was really proud of because it took some inventive coding to get those in. That’s about the last thing I worked on, after I finished that up we released version 2 for BFV. We released what I would call prematurely because Halo 2 was coming out soon and we figured if we waited after Halo 2 no one would play Home Front. So we released, then we stopped to play Halo 2 for awhile, then our lives got complicated and we ran out of time. Perhaps too long, but I think it all needed to be said. I look forward to everyone’s mods,SpartanIV
Finally Here at Home Front we achiveved many things. - One of the longest running mods - Over 100,000 Downloads Combined - Multinational Team (America, Germany,Canada, New Zeland, United Kingdom) - One of the Best mods of 2004 (PC Gamer 2004 March Issue) - Weekly updates for almost 2 years - And so much more Its sad to see the mod come to an end but all things must. The team and I will by no means completely disapeer. We will monitor the website and make sure it stays up as long as possible. If you have any questions about using our content please feel free to email spartan or I. If I have the required time I will rework the site to be more oriented to a finished mod(BFV). Untill then the discontinued BF2 mod related items will remain. Please feel free to contact me. GrantMiWhite@hotmail.com
Read More about it in the Forums
Join the IRC!
Send to a Friend
Posted by BGT on 01-07-2006 15:25 |
Post a Comment 7669
|
