Is Jagged Alliance 3 dead?

[Zhuangzi]

Been following this for several years since I first played and loved JA 2 in about 2002. A few months ago there was a gameplay video which seemed okayish, but now the release date seems to have been pushed back to 2010! WTF is wrong with these people? :evil:

I read somewhere that the publisher was unhappy with the quality of the graphics and told the dev to go back and redo them. I am now severely wondering whether we will ever see JA 3 at all. Anyone got anything news wise in relation to this game?

Failing that, any recommendations for similar games? I've heard that Brigade E5: New Jagged Union is fairly shite, and the new sequel 7.62 is possibly a bit better but not much. And there was something called Jazz: Hired Guns I think.

I need a squad based game (preferably turned based but that real time pause business is acceptable) as good as JA2! Help. :!:

 

[deuxhero]

IIRC Last month Atari was revealed to be publishing it (and the DS port of JA2), I'll see if I can find the artical.


edit:err, only confirms JADS is still on.

here http://www.gamespot.com/ds/strategy/jag ... id=6196817

 

[LCJr.]

No. Strategy First outsourced it to Akella who outsourced it to F3. Current projected release date is Q1 2010.
http://en.akella.com/Game.aspx?id=23

The DS port is the original Jagged Alliance as in Metavira.

There's a demo for Jagged Edge: Hired Guns. This is the game that was to be one of the JA2 sequals. Strategy First first cancelled it mid-development and GFI finished it and released it as Jagged Edge. After playing the demo I'm of the opinion SF made the right call.

 

[Texas Red]

Do they think that they will make up for 2 years of development time with better graphics? Do they lack common sense? They could have released 2 games with that added time FFS.

 

[Zhuangzi]

The really annoying thing for me is that the graphics on the gameplay trailer looked perfectly acceptable.

All I want is a JA2 type game with somewhat updated graphics and a brand new campaign. I will happily pay full price for this. I did play a couple of the big JA2 mods (Urban Chaos I think was the name of one of them) but it wasn't the same as the original campaign.

I have found nothing, NOTHING, that compares with the tactical gameplay of JA2. There are probably thousands of people worldwide who feel the same. It just shits me to tears to see the game delayed until 2010. I mean, WTF is that? They might as well write 2099 for all the likelihood of it ever being released.

/rant.

 

[Trash]

There is a JA2 expanded version out there that was made by some russian modder. It supposedly adds quite a few area's and a huge amount of AI tweaks. Other than that I can only recommend the ancient yet awesome UFO: Enemy Unknown or the okayish Silent Storm.

 

[The_scorpion]

sometimes, sequels just don't do justice to the peak version of one series.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

okayish Silent Storm.

Wat.

And sport had me believe you were a hero!

 

[headache]

There is a JA2 expanded version out there that was made by some russian modder. It supposedly adds quite a few area's and a huge amount of AI tweaks.

Maybe there is some russian modder but there's something much wider in scope. Let's get this straight for those not in the know. You want JA2 v1.13, still being worked on (it's in a finished state, just always having more work done): http://ja2v113.pbwiki.com

You can also follow the development of even more features and maps, and sometimes get them as patches, at the 1.13 section of these boards: http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com , and you can look around the whole forum there for info on JA3 and all things JA.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I think they should have just gotten Nival to do it, if they even make games anymore. They could bang it out fast and good, plus they got experiences in one of the best turn based engines around.

It's probably cheaper for SI to go with some small time developer though, since I think SI was in quite the shit hole a few years ago I don't know if they climbed out of it yet.

 

[LCJr.]

Let's get this straight for those not in the know. 1.13 isn't that good. There is no focus or goal. It's just a group of coders adding whatever feature seems cool at the time.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

But for a game that has such a following and has had no new game for awhile, it can be said that it is the coming of jesus.

 

[headache]

1.13 is a bit sloppy in it's development-- it's an ad hoc community-- but not in any way that's negatively affected the gameplay for me. Obvious plusses: you can play in higher resolutions, tons of new items, tons of settings now externalized that you can change. There's sniping with scopes, which is still controversial, but it works and has potential. There's a new pack that lets you play Wildfire in 1.13 (all new maps). If one doesn't like 1.13 for some reason, there are other full-conversion campaigns from before it also available at JA galaxy-- I tried Urban Chaos a long time ago and was very impressed with so much new content. I naively didn't know there were haters, but if one likes JA2 as much as one should, it should be checked out and judged for oneself.

 

[LCJr.]

Out of curiosity how many 1.13 games have you finished?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think they should have just gotten Nival to do it, if they even make games anymore. They could bang it out fast and good, plus they got experiences in one of the best turn based engines around.

Well, Nival's games outside of Silent Storm have ranged from thundering mehs to unbelievable shit.

 

[Trash]

okayish Silent Storm.

Wat.

And sport had me believe you were a hero!

I caved in under all the pressure. It's hard to be a star. Anyway, Silent Storm was awesome untill the Panzerkleins started arriving. They really ruined it for me.

 

[spacemoose]

when the publisher is unsatisfied with the graphics, this usually means the game is not <s> next gen </s> first person shooter enough

 

[headache]

Out of curiosity how many 1.13 games have you finished?

I've finished, or come close (I can get bored with a game that I take a solid month, at least, to finish) 3 or 4 times over 3 or 4 years. If you are wondering if bugs rendered it unplayable or un-finishable I did have a problem with save games getting corrupted on my very first playthrough, a release version or two ago. It was indeed painful-- I had finished half the map and all my saves broke. But since then, I've had no significant issues at all.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

okayish Silent Storm.

Wat.

And sport had me believe you were a hero!

I caved in under all the pressure. It's hard to be a star. Anyway, Silent Storm was awesome untill the Panzerkleins started arriving. They really ruined it for me.

OK, it's cool then. A lot of people didn't like PKs. To me, they were quite fun to fight against without PKs, and they were a blast in the big ass battle in Sentinels.

But just keep fighting the rising odds! The Codex needs a hero!

 

[LCJr.]

Out of curiosity how many 1.13 games have you finished?

I've finished, or come close (I can get bored with a game that I take a solid month, at least, to finish) 3 or 4 times over 3 or 4 years. If you are wondering if bugs rendered it unplayable or un-finishable I did have a problem with save games getting corrupted on my very first playthrough, a release version or two ago. It was indeed painful-- I had finished half the map and all my saves broke. But since then, I've had no significant issues at all.

I was mainly curious if anyone ever finished it. No problems with the tanks then?

As for SS, I don't care for the Panzerkleins at all. Had they made rocket launchers actually be anti-tank weapons instead of useless grenade launchers I wouldn't have minded so much. The canned missions limit replay value for me. The skill system(improvement) was pretty bad, especially for engineers. That's linked to the inventory system too. Only thing you can do to boost engineering skill without picks is to horde grenades and boobytrap every window and door in random encounters. Some perks were overpowered. Grenades were handled badly. Without grenadier perks you could barely throw them. With the grenadier perks you could throw them half way across the map.

 

[headache]

I was mainly curious if anyone ever finished it. No problems with the tanks then?

Tanks... nope, I know of no issues. I've blown up tanks and they've blown me up plenty of times just like in vanilla JA2. I could have missed it if they were, but I don't even think the tanks have been modified. The only problem I can think of around them is that very occasionally explosives going off in certain circumstances (from a tank shell or not) can cause a CTD but I remember that happening in vanilla too.

 

[LCJr.]

Interesting.

 

[The_scorpion]

tanks have been fixed. Not very recently, but not very long ago either.

in my opinion, development has taken a bad turn. Sure there are many fanboys, but the initial ideas of moddability and externalisations seem to have been dead and buried, an incredible potential wasted for some GFX and cosmetic crap.

there are some ideas popping out every once a while but the only real moving force has been community hype. Hype creates shallow, meaningless features and most modders i know have grown tired of it.

But still better than most of what's there otherwise :-/

however, i have only touched it to create my Pplaybale characters mod and do some research. For gameplay i use RR2005.

 

[LCJr.]

What is the goal of JA2-Stracciatella?
The goal is to make Jagged Alliance 2 available to a wide range of platforms, improve its stability, fix bugs and provide a stable platform for mod development.

Seems I've heard that somewhere before. Anyway I'll keep my hopes up until I see otherwise.

 

[Serious_Business]

2010? Will they put in an area map then, with money and so on? Guess not?