Topic: End of Development for First Strike

Due to the recent confirmation of a major stability issue with BF2142, the work on a stand alone version has stopped.  The issue is that ever since EA dropped support and the master account server, the game crashes in singleplayer or coop shortly after a map restart.  We just recently verified that it is a game engine bug.  There have been reports in the past of strange crashes in First Strike singleplayer, but only when playing without an internet connection.  Without the master account server, the crashes happen consistently.  The means that the only way to play First Strike singleplayer or coop crash free is to restart the game before switching maps.

The bug is kit related.   The kits are fine the first time the game is started but after a map change,  that is when the kit will start to have issues.   the map will load up, but as soon as the bots see each other and start to fight is when the crash happens.  What we noticed is that most of the time the kits will appear fine, but every once in a while a weapon will be missing from a kit or a bot will be running around with no weapon.  It appears that every time the map is switched at least one kit for one player or bot is bugged, which results in a crash.   

I believe this is a an offline account bug.   This was never a problem online.   Multiplayer would probably still work, but considering that BF2142 is not available from EA and all support is dropped, there is no point in pursuing development.

I will clean up the work in progress of the First Strike BF2142 Mod beta version and release it as is.  It's sad to see this come to and end, but now I can refocus on work on Star Wars Battlecry for the UE4 engine.

Re: End of Development for First Strike

That sucks man. But what can you do. Thanks for trying to get it working!

Re: End of Development for First Strike

Indeed that does suck. Sorry I've been a bit incommunicado lately, just working through the first round of marking for this semester so spare time at a premium. Sad news, but yes, thanks for all your efforts with this.

Should probably get an official news post out to announce this to everyone though, as a lot of people are still watching the mod.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/TALON_TAW/TALONSIGNEWB-1.jpg
http://stats.fsmod.com/fssig.php?player=Talon-UK
http://stats.fsmod.com/sig/pilot.Talon-UK.png

4 (edited by Dnamro 2015-11-29 21:53:24)

Re: End of Development for First Strike

Yes, after chasing this bug down for the past year, I was really hoping that we could get stable singleplayer release.

I was contacted by a DEV from BF2 Project Reality this summer and gave them permission to do a infantry focused port to BF2.   If they do go forward with the project, I will offer to fix up the navmeshes.  At least then all my work on doing the AImeshes for all the objects would not go to waste.

Talon,

I update my announcement as a news post and send it to you.  Maybe you can get a chance to update it this weekend.

I am going to zip up the mod files and upload it as the next release of First Strike WIP.   Just in case anyone wants to try it out or a solution to the BF2142 comes around.   It's possible that EA might one day sell BF2142 to steam or another secondary market company and start another master account server.

Re: End of Development for First Strike

So BF2 works fine it is only BF2142 that has this issue?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/TALON_TAW/TALONSIGNEWB-1.jpg
http://stats.fsmod.com/fssig.php?player=Talon-UK
http://stats.fsmod.com/sig/pilot.Talon-UK.png

6 (edited by Dnamro 2015-11-29 22:26:31)

Re: End of Development for First Strike

Oh yeah.  BF2 has no stability issues with an offline account.   BF2 handles offline accounts differently than BF2142.   Unlike BF2142, BF2 creates an offline profile by default.   BF2142 allowed you to play singleplayer and coop with your multiplayer account - but you could only gain experience from multiplayer.   So, Bf2142 was designed to allways use the multiplayer account.   It's only when playing the game with no internet connection did it use an offline account.   This bug must have been there all along, but it would only be in the rare case of playing without an internet connection that it would ever occur.   We have had singleplayer bug reports in the past but not able to replicate it because the only way to play with an offline account in BF2142 is to only play the game without an internet connection.   Thanks to EA dropping the Master account server, now that is the only way to play.   What makes it even hard to track down was that it only happens after a map change.   All this happened at the time when I was working on changing up the kits, so I was looking at a kit or weapon bug, not a BF2142 game engine problem.  I confirmed it by trying out other BF2142 mods and asking other people to try the same thing.   Bingo! 

It may or may not show up in Multiplayer now, but if a player is missing a weapon in kit he will just not use it and since it doesn't happen to every player, he will probably be fine the next time he dies and respawns in.  Unless it's the primary weapon, the player may not even notice it.   But a bot will get confused and crash the game because he doesn't know what to do with a kit that is missing a weapon that the loadout tells is supposed to be in there.

I also tested it with Deathlok Clan server fix, but apparently that server is not a true master account server.    Gameranger won't work because it uses offline account as well and it doesn't support mods.

Re: End of Development for First Strike

That is so annoying. We truly are paying the price for developing a mod for BF2142. That sounds like the last nail in the coffin then. Though like you say, multiplayer might still be viable. Would be good to make sure that is all cleaned up and free of errors with up to date Singleplayer. So at least that is available should anyone fancy playing it again.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/TALON_TAW/TALONSIGNEWB-1.jpg
http://stats.fsmod.com/fssig.php?player=Talon-UK
http://stats.fsmod.com/sig/pilot.Talon-UK.png