When will by ready Europa Barbarorum II?

[Majd il-Romani]

lets hope the CA hires the EB team to help them make R2TW

[Krusader]

lets hope the CA hires the EB team to help them make R2TW

I'm fairly certain CA would not go for EB's level of historical accuracy and realism, as they and SEGA would think it would sell less than a more general and easier to grasp game. CA & SEGA ain't artists, they are businessmen. They make/publish games for profits. And with increasing costs in making games, any SEGA suits would probably throw a hissy fit if they would pay for people doing research as we do (going through JSTOR, looking through coins, archeological excavations etc.) when CA's own people can just "buy a few Ospreys or other books" for general info.

[Atilius]

Could you or one of the EB team members be courteous enough to provide at least a rough estimate of current members and an estimate of the number of members between 2005 through the first public release?

Honestly, no.

I've been a member for close to three years and I've never really known how many active, contributing members we've had at any one time. Some members work like hell for a few months, drop off the face of the earth for a while, and later return and make productive contributions again. Some work in areas in which I can tell how much they're contributing, others work in areas I'm not familiar with. Some members join with the understanding that they will do one very specific task. Every member is unproductive for periods of time, whether because of life, school, work, or (ahem!) Carnival.

So I can't answer your question, and I'd be a bit surprised if anyone could.

[Alsatia]

lets hope the CA hires the EB team to help them make R2TW

That would be brilliant. It just seems that the developers, as said before, will not go that far and head for quick, easy and lame sterotypes....

[a completely inoffensive name]

Honestly, no.

I've been a member for close to three years and I've never really known how many active, contributing members we've had at any one time. Some members work like hell for a few months, drop off the face of the earth for a while, and later return and make productive contributions again. Some work in areas in which I can tell how much they're contributing, others work in areas I'm not familiar with. Some members join with the understanding that they will do one very specific task. Every member is unproductive for periods of time, whether because of life, school, work, or (ahem!) Carnival.

So I can't answer your question, and I'd be a bit surprised if anyone could.

Well with that information, it is impossible to estimate any release date as the group size needs to be relatively constant in order for a reasonable estimate to be made. You might as well point to a random square on a calendar and say it will come out then because any number of people could come back with a load of finished work at any given time if it really is as dynamic as you say.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, as what was basically the whip for EBI, I can tell you that no matter how much cajoleing and pleading and admonishing and guilting you do, that on a volunteer-based project like EB that it doesn't really help a lot, and that you run the risk of alienating folks who are trickling good work in. The project *very heavily* depended on a small number of artists who would flood us with incredible units and then would usually fade away. Spartan Warrior was probably the biggest workhorse but then totally disappeared. There's no way you can change the timeline except to chance upon more folks who will get really into helping the mod and then milking them for whatever they've got.

[Vasiliyi]

Well, as what was basically the whip for EBI, I can tell you that no matter how much cajoleing and pleading and admonishing and guilting you do, that on a volunteer-based project like EB that it doesn't really help a lot, and that you run the risk of alienating folks who are trickling good work in. The project *very heavily* depended on a small number of artists who would flood us with incredible units and then would usually fade away. Spartan Warrior was probably the biggest workhorse but then totally disappeared. There's no way you can change the timeline except to chance upon more folks who will get really into helping the mod and then milking them for whatever they've got.

MILK THEM MORE!

[Krusader]

I think too many keep forgetting that we are a volunteer project and Teleklos sums it up very well.

Professional game developers have a "9 to 5" job or well, "9 to 9" job more like it. They have set timelines and managers and most important of all...salaries.

We don't work 8-12 hours 5 days a week on a project. Our workload can be utterly random and many of our members have other more important RL commitments. That is why we always use the "Its done when its done" line...because we don't know when its done, but we keep on working anyhow.

You want EB faster out? Then we need modelers and skinners, so if you know these things you are welcome.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Plus another important thing about being a volunteer project is that you don't just get to do the fun bits like actually developing things. Nope: you get to do the far more tedious job of testing (I once saw it called "eating your own dogfood") too.

EDIT: Before anyone unintentionally starts commenting about how much he/she would like to help test things: for a real-life (EB 1) example of bug testing/fixing:

1. Heavily edit the garrisons of the various cities that are used in the UnitSize triggers of the Campaign Script
2. Comment out the little line of code that hides the UnitSize traits from your view in the campaign.
3. Re-calculate and re-adjust the values for comparison in the UnitSize triggers
4. Test and confirm that they work correctly for all 21 factions.

The time it takes you to do that mostly depends on how fast you can load EB campaigns from a cold start. And how quickly you realise that the world according to the Koinon is most definitely different from the world according to the Saka when it comes to starting armies (and/or populations): which means that some easy shortcuts are out of the question.

For a bonus: it is possible to introduce an exciting (new to most of you, I guess) bug if you get the values wrong whereby you can no longer save a new campaign started under these new conditions... Have fun!

[Vasiliyi]

Seems like a ton of work. I respect you all for doing what you do. I never meant to push anyone away from RL. Its done when its done.


On a side not, tellos are we allowed to guess what you have hidden behind all the black paint on your occultus sig?

[Krusader]

Seems like a ton of work. I respect you all for doing what you do. I never meant to push anyone away from RL. Its done when its done.


On a side not, tellos are we allowed to guess what you have hidden behind all the black paint on your occultus sig?

Ofc you are...but we won't say if its right or wrong =)

[Vasiliyi]

Well then, I've taken a long and hard look at tellos's sig and even copy and pasted it to my destop to zoom in.

I've come to the conclusions that you are hiding the new nomadic/horsearcher faction. There is what appears to be a horses snout, covered in what looks like scales. I may be totally wrong, and I won't know until its previewed, but that's what I think it is.

[cmacq]

Well then, I've taken a long and hard look at tellos's sig and even copy and pasted it to my destop to zoom in.

I've come to the conclusions that you are hiding the new nomadic/horsearcher faction. There is what appears to be a horses snout, covered in what looks like scales. I may be totally wrong, and I won't know until its previewed, but that's what I think it is.

Hell, and all I ever saw in tellos's sig, was my mom and dad fighting?


CmacQ

[Satyros]

As someone who has enjoyed , still enjoys , yet never being able to contribute anything to this great mod ( words have not been discovered to describe its "awesomeness" ) , I can only wish you good health , happy , smooth and well paid lives .

Oh.. and godspeed .

I bought a new pc just to be able to play MTW2 ( which I also bought ) high , unfortunately got bored after 12 hours or so , so I have a brand new pc , don't wanna play ETW , and wait patiently for EB2 to be unleashed upon humanity .

My thanks yet again for the absolutely thrilling gaming experience that is EB1 , and be well . That's all I can do for you , I can't help , but I can and will be a fanboi , hell , not many games deserve that nowadays . Heh .

Cheers .

Satyros

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Seen as this question will be asked again(and again) perphaps it should be stickied!

EB is the best Mod/Game I have played, although I ended up with 1 in 3 battles crashing in EB in the last version and gave up, now I am not that keen on ETW, so I will have to wait all so patiently for EBII.
My only worry is parts of the battlefield troop movements and fighting animations, pikes fighting, etc are poor in MTWII compared to RTW, I am hoping the EB's can work their magic in this area.
Best of luck to all the peeps working on this, and can't wait to get my grubs on the end results.

[Darius]

The best thing anybody can do to help would probably be to either learn to make unit models, and try to make as perfect a replica you can of the old units from RTW:EB engine to the M2TW engine. Most of the really hard work (research and such) is done for you this time around so you don't have to make new units, I'd leave that up to the EB team, that and making the armor variants. Of course if you can't or don't have the time to do this, you could always introduce a friend of yours who does know how to do 3d modeling to EB and get them to help out. Hell, you could do it yourself AND get a friend to do it if you really wanted to speed things up.

[Krusader]

The best thing anybody can do to help would probably be to either learn to make unit models, and try to make as perfect a replica you can of the old units from RTW:EB engine to the M2TW engine. Most of the really hard work (research and such) is done for you this time around so you don't have to make new units, I'd leave that up to the EB team, that and making the armor variants. Of course if you can't or don't have the time to do this, you could always introduce a friend of yours who does know how to do 3d modeling to EB and get them to help out. Hell, you could do it yourself AND get a friend to do it if you really wanted to speed things up.

Unfortunately, not really. Each unit is given a re-research, as some were erroneous in EB1 (in regards to pieces of equipment) or we felt were not right. Then there is the fact the new model allocation system is different, which gives us more unit slots than in EB1. Which means more units to research. Add in guild buildings and more building slots too and we have more to research again.

[Owen Glyndwr]

lol, that sounds like the lot of Sisyphus, now doesn't it?

[Darius]

So in what way could someone help EB II progress the most at this juncture?

[Blxz]

I think the main thing that will end up delaying the release is that the last few releases of EB have been packed with stuff and improvements. They have a kind of mentality that unfinished work is not good enough to be released. if you compare EB 0.80 to EB 1.2 there are some major differences even though 0.80 was considered good enough to release.

What i am trying to say is that I think the team is much more likely to try and release something as good as or better than EB 1.2, rather than to just get the framework in place and give out somehting based more along the lines of 0.80. While this is not a bad way of looking at things (especially now that they have established themselves in the community) it will definately make the release date further down the track. We just need to wait, give support where and when we can and more importantly, to stop making them take breaks away from their coding to answer our threads about "when is eb2 coming out, please tell me, i lovzors it too much omg omg omg !!!1!".

So chill out some of you. It will go no faster by asking for release dates, even though a generalized schedule of where they are and what needs to be done would at least satisfy some people, this will just take time away from real EB2 work

[bovi]

I can safely say that EB2's first release (The Gaza campaign) will be nowhere near the completeness of EB1.2. Still, Blxz is right that we won't release anything that would be considered just a framework to build on.

Even while we added a lot since 0.8 to 1.2, I disagree that 0.8 was all that incomplete though. The first beta was 0.72 AFAIK, and I think the differences between 0.72 and 0.8 are about as great as the differences between 0.8 and 1.2. 0.8 was more stable than most other mods too.

[Andy1984]

Unfortunately, not really. Each unit is given a re-research, as some were erroneous in EB1 (in regards to pieces of equipment) or we felt were not right. Then there is the fact the new model allocation system is different, which gives us more unit slots than in EB1. Which means more units to research. Add in guild buildings and more building slots too and we have more to research again.

Good to hear that. While I'm no modder myself, I have studied history. Therefore, from october 2009 onwards, I might just as well look up information the team might find useful.

Good luck and many thanks,

Andy

[I Am Herenow]

^ Oh? Where are you going?

I Am Herenow

[Moros]

What? Are we telling them that again? Why do you always have to release every EB version at least a couple of years after it got finished? I'm already so fed up playing EBII, and as EBIII is almost finished, why are we tormenting the fans even longer?

[Owen Glyndwr]

You really mustn't kid around with such serious matters as these Moros. Why, even now I can hear the disturbing clamour of a thousand computer screens literally being torn apart as eager fans are desperately trying to claw their way through our computers and into your living room to play the game.