Battlezone Forums

Nielk1 wrote:It's not about retconning other ppl's work, it's about including other ppl's work in a super-work, at least in part. Sometimes the way the works are constructed this isn't possible without saying "in this universe that happened differently" even though that is a sub-optimal action. (Actually that sounds a lot like retconning doesn't it? Well that sucks. )

Yes it is. and yes, it sucks.
That's why I was hesitant and slow to redo 3rd-party models and units from the "community-official" BZII p1.3 into BZII Remodeled, though I have relented since those items were included in 1.3 (which I would think, is far more that a mere mod, even if not officially support by Acti or I guess Rebellion now).
Goodness, just imagine the s##t storm that would come down on a modder, if they announced that they were going to make a mod that would require "large adjustments," around or directly to, FE. I shudder at the thought.
That, said, I do hope that my more recent posts on the subject have left you, and others who might want to, the ability to extend the Ularians or Uler without having to outright break what's already there.

Ded10c wrote:An overarching timeline is something I've been working on for over a decade.

I did that too way way back in the day, and just happened to do a new more concise one some months back. There's certainly a lot of room for variability of the time of events - at least during the BZI and BZII game parts. I haven't had the stomach to try include a bunch of mods, so my hat would be off to you if you could manage to do that in some sensible fashion.

Ded10c wrote:We're by no means pretending FE to be an official continuation, but we also can't ignore its significance. Almost every large mod to date follows on from it - though not all of them. In fact, not counting Uler, the only large mod that springs to mind that doesn't follow on from FE is one of Nielk1's projects.

yeah, me too, and that's been my problem with BZ/BZII and FE.
FE came out and IMO, smothered (the nice way of saying it) BZII storytelling that could've been a direct continuations of the original game.
Now granted FE has become the most popular mod (or un-official sequel) for BZII, but I feel that it did too much, too soon, in terms of defining a BZII narrative just as the community at large had received the tools to make their own group or individual continuations. Its also why I don't want the Uler mod directly messed (warts and all, and even if it dies in obscurity) - there was at least one, new race and story-based mod that predated and stood apart from FE.
Battlezone stopped being BZII's story, and became FE's story IMO. I took my multi-year, semi-hiatus from BZII, came back, and that still seems to be the case.
Lots of other genres reboot/remake themselves or have parallel-running alternate timelines/universes (comics/graphic novels, movies, tv, and even video games).

Imagine the possibilities of an FE-less BZ/BZII continuation ...
(I don't know if it'll ever get built, but I have, and hope others have too).

My original attempts to create a BZ timeline had several forks. There was even a fork between Huscar's and Avatar's pre-histories. Eventually one timeline became very prominent and that timeline became what we called the HB Timeline because it's the timeline all HB works target. By sticking with this one timeline we've been able to build lots of connections between Cthonian offshoots, the Ularians, additional BZ1 era factions discovering and utilizing things that explain BZ2 mod events, and so on. A lot of HB projects are basically unique stories full of glue that sticks everything else together.

In the end it's sort of like this:


Ded10c has been wanting me to gather all the old documents for my post ISDF ending storyline. It was very dark, way darker than it should have been, with Braddock destroying the Earth's military and basically taking over and a few years of global Khmer Rouge style atrocities. The whole playable story revolved around a member of the Earth Militarized Police in the alternate timeline Hadean invasion (which included Cerberi that had a different origin story as the Core computer was never moved to facilitate their creation). It has a loose origin story for Core, which was absorbed into other projects.

coxxon wrote:I did that too way way back in the day, and just happened to do a new more concise one some months back. There's certainly a lot of room for variability of the time of events - at least during the BZI and BZII game parts. I haven't had the stomach to try include a bunch of mods, so my hat would be off to you if you could manage to do that in some sensible fashion.

You'd be surprised how much is in there - this is the HB timeline Nielk1 mentions. There's not a lot of pre-BZ1 content around but we've successfully incorporated most-if-not-all of the prehistory material written by Avatar and yourself, which manifests in the short story series I linked above. In the immediate run-up to BZ1 itself is The History of Biometal Warfare, which was always a mess but mostly works in our timeline due to the afformentioned "glue" Nielk1 mentioned above. The BZ1-era material incorporates not just Battlezone and The Red Odyssey, but also Rise of the Black Dogs and a great deal of Battle Grounds, as well as some of the larger mission packs like Red Wolf, Shrieking Eagles, Omega Squadron and Burns' Rebellion. With the release of the Redux, most of the focus is here with another project called Return of the Old Gods tying everything together. The BZ2 era is less developed but includes FE, the Fleshstorm trilogy, QF, Uler to some extent and a bunch of other smaller projects, but that area hasn't had a whole lot of attention yet because we've been busy with BZ1.

People tend to think too linerally. It's a big universe out there with a lot going on either at the same time or happened in the past may have happened in the present or future or whenever, especially with wormholes springing up here and there leading every which way and when.

Red Devil wrote:People tend to think too linerally. It's a big universe out there with a lot going on either at the same time or happened in the past may have happened in the present or future or whenever, especially with wormholes springing up here and there leading every which way and when.

Fixed-point teleportation technology isn't used as much as you might think. BZ2 and FE use it to explain the near-instantaneous FTL between the Sol and Core systems, but so far as wormholes go that's it. FE uses a different method for the Hadean portal network, which is much more similar to the Pegasus Device and Stargate - but again, once those three examples are considered that's it.

The key is more that the Biometal War is a lot larger than BZ1 lets on; Bates and his men serve on one carrier of three, and the Fourth Platoon is one of at least nine but almost certainly more. BZ2 doesn't have that kind of leeway because the whole thing is 2nd Fleet Secret Ops; the rest of the ISDF would have been completely unaware of the ISDF/Scion conflict until it was already almost over.

...and this is just one solar system/galaxy, universe.

No telling what else is and has been going on out there...

Once FE was released there were at least seven solar systems established, possibly as many as ten. Fleshstorm alone probably doubles that.

There could of course be any amount of goings-on out there, but thus far the events told by the Battlezone story have been limited by the human perspective - there's a map Nielk1 mocked up that indicates just how small an area of the galaxy that is likely to be.

...not to mention the goings-on now with Commander Shepard and crew in Andromeda.

...ima slap you.

Well, is there any chance that FE SP campaign will work under 1.3.7?

I am shocked that I wasn't made privy to this discussion given how much the significance of the Ularians in the current Battlezone Redux projects is my doing, tsk tsk.

To put it bluntly, Coxxon, the primary mod project takes place during the Battlezone 1 timeline, in late-1970 to early-1971 and the significance the Ularians have in it is almost purely in setting up the new technology at play and fleshing out elements of the Cthonian Biometal War. You can probably guess by the name, Return of the Old Gods, that some interesting things do happen that do involve the Ularians, and while I'm hesitant to share much I will share that there's nothing that conflicts with the events of the Uler mod, or heck, even really entwines with it heavily. We're really just expanding the position the Ularians hold in the extended universe and giving them some backstory, most of which coming from Hadley and I's extrapolations from Avatar's old musings. We have left most of their technology and aesthetic design open to speculation, most of our brainstorming has been with characters and specific events during the Cthonian Biometal War.

That said, I do consider the Ularians to be your invention, and you have as much a right as anyone to contribute to fleshing them out somewhat. It was my impression that you didn't care all too much about the Ularians themselves, your main concern being the fanatical Uler that worshiped them. If you would like a part in fleshing out the history of the Ularians though, I will extend the invitation to you now to join the HB discussion group on Discord. While AH and I have certainly enjoyed our creative freedom with them up until now, it's only right that their creator has some say if that is your desire.

Red Devil wrote:People tend to think too linerally. It's a big universe out there with a lot going on either at the same time or happened in the past may have happened in the present or future or whenever, especially with wormholes springing up here and there leading every which way and when.

Yup, I agree whole-heartedly, (especially in the realm of modding from the main game(s)).

DeusExCeteri wrote:I am shocked that I wasn't made privy to this discussion given how much the significance of the Ularians in the current ... you didn't care all too much about the Ularians themselves, your main concern being the fanatical Uler that worshiped them.

What you wrote also fits with my overall impression of what was going on with the Ularians in the others’ posts, so I’m cool there.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record at this point, I’m fine with people independently adding stuff to Ularians/Uler, or any other of my public mod work for prequels or sequels. I just didn’t want it to directly contradict stuff that was in the existing mod.

coxxon wrote:

Red Devil wrote:People tend to think too linerally. It's a big universe out there with a lot going on either at the same time or happened in the past may have happened in the present or future or whenever, especially with wormholes springing up here and there leading every which way and when.

Yup, I agree whole-heartedly, (especially in the realm of modding from the main game(s)).

Hey, I was literally managing a multi-forked timeline page for years!