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(This message has been edited by Robert Marlin (edited 07-08-2004).)
Well, I know this has come up, but maybe Ambrosia would be willing to let us (or people who can program) see the source code and work with it. Do you think you could invite Andrew to talk with us here? (Maybe he is watching and laughing at us, you never know)
------------------ -C#
I doubt many people could even understand the programming for Avara besides Juri. Besides, he has already said that making the game compatible with any type of graphics accelleration, hardware or software, would require an enitire rewrite of the code. As much of a masterpiece as the Avara engine is, I can't see how having the SC could help. Maybe in a few areas, such as multiplayer handling, but not much graphics wise. A new OSX, OpenGL/graphics card compatible Avara would either need to be rewritten from the ground up, or based on an existing engine. The latter is what we're aiming for.
Still, it wouldn't hurt to ask again. ------------------ I'm allergic to anime. God bless, Robert Marlin
Guys, let me put it to you this way: You are beating a dead horse. If you want to put out a tripped-up Avara undernieth ASW, it won't happen. Anything that would be in league with, say, the latest Mechwarrior would need to be a commercial game, not a shareware. Seeing as how Ambrosia SW hasn't had much luck with the one game they released that was not shareware, I doubt they would do it again... at least not for a while.
Even when a game has been made, I know this from personal experiance, and is practically in a finished state, they may still not make any effort other than a lip service towards your game.
As far as understanding the avara code/physics and such, a few friends of mine and I have actually made a quick version of avara. However, there isn't enough interest in it to pursue, espacially not underneith the Ambrosia SW name (with previously stated reasons).
Overall: Your best bet is to go to college, gain the skills needed to produce a professional looking game, make a portfolio, and try to get onto a big-name gaming company. There is NO futer in trying to make games for a shareware company.
I'm not trying to bash Ambrosia SW in any way, I'm dispalying simple facts. ASW cannot put out anything comperable to the larger titles on the market today... Why? Because everybody else is doing what I suggested Put it to you this way. EV:N done under AmbrosiaSW, is amazing. EV:N done under bungie is a dissapointment. See what I mean?
ASW is an shareware arcade game company. Don't dream of it becoming something it's not. Anything that has come out that doesn't entirly fit that mold has been a flop, including Avara. Don't get me wrong, I love Avara. Had it been done under another company, it may have been updated before 5 years had passed... maybe even with say a newer version than a 1.0.1....
Again, I'm not trying to bash ASW, I just think you are all waisting your time, and would do Avara better justice to wait until it can be made underneithe another company.
I dunno.... just my 2 sence....cents... whatevuh...
------------------ -Kyle "Vader" Blessing -(url="http://"http://www.homestarrunner.com")Homestar Runner(/url) -Don't love, or hate... Just join the (Players Club)
Were not trying to make Avara comperable to Mechwarrior, were just trying to make it so that more people will play. The best way to do this is to make a new version, so that people will see it and say "Wow, maybe I should check that out." Unforunately, it will be very difficult to do this, but we want to anyway. We arn't trying to make money. Were trying to have a good game, which means loosing money (in registration fees). Yeah, your right, we are all people who should be worrying about going to college, but, we want to play Avara in the mean time.
Also, could ASW please, please, please, please give FriendOfFreedom (I can't remember your real name, sorry) a chance to be unbanned and to redeem himself. He may be bieng a jerk in your mind, but maybe that will change if you are nice to him. Be the more "mature" person, and be first to be nice.
Avara was never anything big like Mechwarrior. We're not trying to make it into something big. For me, and many others, Avara was just an inexpensive, easy way to have a good time fragging each other. It didn't need a story or anything, the gameplay spoke for itself. I understand that Avara is nearing the end of it's usefulness. I'm not someone who won't let a dead thing die. Right now, all I would like to know, from Andrew, is if Ambrosia would distribute a new Avara. If not, I was just going to drop the idea completely.
C#, an integral part of any shareware game is making money. One of the reasons that Avara didn't do well for Ambrosia was because they didn't properly cripple the unregisterd version and few people bothered to pay for it. If a new Avara didn't do well financially for AS, chances are they would completely drop the game. An eighteen level game, only five or six of the levels should have been availible unregistered, and multiplayer should have been disabled. That alone would have made the game fare much better.
And I think Edgar does maybe deserve a second chance.
------------------ I'm allergic to anime. God bless, Robert Marlin
I hate to burst the bubble here, but in its current state Avara is pretty damn dead, it's had a good run of it(8 years), but there is not going to be much more interest in the current Avara. There is an OS X port already, done by Juri. Vader's game(Carbon Soul) reached a playable state but as he said it was discontinued.
Sorry to crush any hopes here.. but coding a 3d multiplayer game like Avara in python is going to be an exercise in futility.
If I was Bungie I would now include a cryptic message about greek gods in spaceships, but for now.. I suggest you hang tight
------------------
Here's my problem with everyone trying to create an Avara 2, or whatever it is they're after:
They claim this game is really good and all: it's got great gameplay and doesn't need a story. I completely agree. I think Avara's a fine game, it's the only game I really play to be honest.
So if everyone says they like the game, why is so much effort being spent to create a new game and so little effort being spent towards at least sustaining this one?
I look at the Lemmings as a role model gone wrong. Krow starts this group on the game as it's dying. What he does is pick up newbs, welcomes them to Avara, makes sure they have the people to play with, and allows them to improve against people not completely out of their league. It brought some life to the game (As annoying as they were) and provided a steady roster for non-Lemmings to play against. Yet then Krow and some of his buds decided they wanted to work on an Avara 2. And now they're gone!
They seemed to have spent so much time worrying about a new game that they forgot about the one they already had. Avara doesn't have great graphics, Avara has bugs (Although I think they're hilarious), and Avara is overall not a perfect game. But so what? If I want a better game I'll buy a better game. I don't know why a sequel is necessary. Aftershock is the closest thing we've had to a "sequel" but it fell apart. Graphics were better, there were more hull and weapons options, but it just wasn't the same.
I look at guys like Robert Marlin, C Sharp, and Rickton and I see three guys who could make a stable three regular players of this game. I don't have tracker access so I don't know how much you three play, although I do remember seeing Robbie around the last time I managed to sneak my way into a server.
If you want to add to the community, learn to make levels. Get your friends to pick up the game. Try to get old players to come back and revive the good old days.
Avara 2 is going to appeal most to Avara 1 fans. But by the time an Avara 2 comes out, there's no guarantee there will be any Avara 1 fans left.
So many people who have wanted to work on an Avara 2 have wanted to expand the multiplayer system by letting more than 6 players play at once. Yet I find it funny that one would be hard pressed to find even 6 people to play a game at once at this point.
If someone makes an Avara 2 I'll be the first to ask to play it. But someone already made an Avara 1 and I'm askie same thing. Who's willing to say yes?
I used to play Avara religiously, I was fortunate enough to have started playing when there was still a community(around '99), and I played untill 2003 when Avara had yet another death, there was perhaps one server started on the tracker every 2 days and there was simply no one to play with. Avara IS a great game, but as I have said earlier there will be very little aditional interest in Avara aside from the occasional oldshcool players showing up for a match now and again or perhaps a new player stumbling onto the Avara webpage.
Edgar is right, if you all love Avara so much you need to actualy PLAY it, instead of planning out a sequal that nobody on this forum has the skill to code. If somone downloads Avara and boots up the tracker right now they will see a server with 3 people on it, who(unforunately) are the type of people who will scare any newbs away. The alternative is that somone will see no servers at all, and asume that Avara is a dead game played by no one anymore, which is almost true.
So here is an simple plan to get people to play Avara: 1. Go to your local college, library, or school and if they have Macintoshes install a copy of Avara on every one, when all those school kids get back from summer vacation and discover a netgame on their harddrive there will be a flood of new users!
2. Contact any persons running for goverment office in your area and encourage them to support Avara, use physical threats if nessecary.
3. Invite your friends over and tell them to bring their macs, then you can all go online and play Avara, soon others will join you.
4. Go to every forum, hotline server, and chat room you know of and advertise Avara, offer cash rewards for the first person to download and play the game.
I've had some time to think about it, and you're probably right. Avara has reached it's climax, there's little more that can be done for it now (besides playing it). I had some cool ideas for it, but I guess I should just focus my efforts on my own thing. I even had a decent story line for it, which I've hijacked for a new game. I do play Avara as often as I can (though I usually miss servers by a good hour) and I suppose it does it's job. 1.0.2 runs fine for me in Panther, and Tycho's Aftershock update runs like a dream. I even got Robin Hood and some others to play it.
Oh well, that's all I have to say about that. Thank you.
And by the way, zip, I don't think those ideas you listed were very smart. None of my friends even own Macs, much less care for them (except for one).
I loved Avara, and actually still have a copy on my hard drive right now. Always wanted to play it again, but don't care for Classic mode. I've been wanting a Mac OS X native version, but held no hope of it happening.
I'm really busy with a number of big projects at the moment, but, co-ordinate what you'd most like to see, tell me what you want, and I'll code it. My suggestion, keep it as it is, tweak it (graphics etc), fix the bugs and build it natively under OS X.
Any takers?
what else are you working on AJ?
Nothing game related. Just a huge billing system for a video to mobile company and an equally large Management and Automation system for a wildlife organisation. All Mac based.
An Avara OSX port?
That's so crazy it just might fail miserably.
Or work...
Your graphics changing comment tempts me...
It might lure more into the fold...
I can see the future is rife with the harvested souls of those we will undoubtedly convert to our glorious REVOLU-
<_<
_>
Okay, I'm done now.
But seriously, it sounds like an excellent idea. If any help is needed, feel free to contact me at ami@mac.com
------------------ Me Bar Pics Page-> (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/ami/Menu1.html")http://homepage.mac.com/ami/Menu1.html(/url) "'Saruman!' cried Gimli, springing toward him with axe in hand. 'Speak! Tell us where you have hidden our pants! Speak, or I will make a dint in your pants even a wizard will find hard to deal with!'...He lifted up his pants, and Gimli's pants leaped from his grasp and fell ringing on the ground. The pants of Aragorn, stiff in his motionless hand, blazed with a sudden fire." Dragons use Slivers as toothpicks.
Quote
Originally posted by C Sharp: **Ok, sounds good. In any case, couldd we use the Blender engine (Ok, that sounds wierd) without requiring the whole project to be open-source? **
Why would you not want the whole thing to be open-source? Come on, the abandonment of Avara, Coldstone, etc are a testimony to one of the primary merits of open-source software, the fact that so long as one person cares enough, it cannot die - and it's released often, not `when it's done'.
Don't try to slink around the open-source aspect of an engine. It's really not needed. If a registation scheme is needed, make it scenario/data-files based; when the player registers (s)he gets the whole scenario.
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.magnatune.com")www.magnatune.com(/url) - Just Say No Corporate Pop: Use Magnatune! "It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the emnity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones." -- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513
Ok, you are right. We need more people to play, not a new version. Maybe we should plan an "AvaraCon" for a few years from now, and work on making it good for a few years, and then have evryone who likes Avara come to see that it is still alive.
Originally posted by C Sharp: **Ok, you are right. We need more people to play, not a new version. Maybe we should plan an "AvaraCon" for a few years from now, and work on making it good for a few years, and then have evryone who likes Avara come to see that it is still alive.
**
That's a cool idea, but, what machine is going to run Mac OS 9 then? Avara is not very nice under Classic, and I for one wouldn't dream of playing it seriously that way. I'd rather we plan and "AvaraCon", and spend the next couple of years developing a hot Mac OS X version. What you think?
Well, I was thinking of people bringing in their old PowerMacs or Quadras or something. Wec ould plan for a few years, make sure that we could have at least 40 people there, (plus a few internet ones) and have it to make Avara spring back to life (yay!)
What is an AvaraCon?
Originally posted by Robert Marlin: **What is an AvaraCon?
I believe these people believe they can convince an already flagging population of Avara players several years down the road to all gather in the same physical location and play Avara. That's what I think. It's a little far-fetched and hard to believe, but it seems to be their jist... personally, I've never played Avara in real life with more than ten people in the room, and all but myself and one or two other people had never even heard of the game before.
"Jelly Belly should be sued for contributing to the delinquency and intellectual torpitude of the nation." (insert a link for the billboard) What do you think? I need to either find a picture or take one yet... Haha. You could be the Ralph Nader of the Intellectual World...