Hey Guys I was just wondering since t2 is free couldn't you put it on xbox one under free games. and fix the control scheme? I believe xbox supports mouse and keyboard now actually. would bring t2 acess to millions of players.
While an interesting idea, it's unfortunately not that simple: we can't release the game on a commercial platform without obtaining the publishing rights from Hi-Rez, and even then we need the full source code and/or (nominally paid) months to reverse engineer it to a state where attempting to port it to a console would make even a lick of sense. At that point even best case we're talking gutting the renderer, the audio system, the input manager, making the UI system scale for readability at high pixel densities, replacing things like the software blending used in compositing terrain textures/lighting, fixing countless errors that could cause crashes... the rabbit hole can get deep of you let it, even without considering platform factors like whether to integrate authentication systems, to allow cross-play (anyone without KB+M would get wrecked in combat modes), what to do about client mods, map downloads, etc, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to take on updating the game on general, and adding support for new platforms sounds like a fun project. Just... A project that wouldn't exactly be viable without remuneration for the work -- nor even the legal right to publish it on new distribution platforms.
Years would be a more accurate unit of measure for the amount of work it would be given the resources we have. The source code (if it exists anymore) is circa-2000 era C++ that was compiled with MS Visual C++ 6.0, and it's likely that it would require a pretty rigorous review and revamp just to be able to build with modern compiler toolchains.
HiRez has tacitly approved our continued operation of this patched multiplayer system (by linking here from their re-re-release site; not that we strictly need such approval legally), but has not communicated with us in any capacity (official or otherwise).
If we had the opportunity to do it at all, I would target WebAssembly/WebGL for a no-plugin pure browser-based build of the game that wouldn't require any local native installation first, before something like the Xbox One.
Well that sums it up lol. Honestly better of just writing a whole new game with that much crazy work. Oh well it was just an idea that crossed my mind. I miss old t2 nothing out there now comes close tot he good old days.
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Don't get me wrong, I'd love to take on updating the game on general, and adding support for new platforms sounds like a fun project. Just... A project that wouldn't exactly be viable without remuneration for the work -- nor even the legal right to publish it on new distribution platforms.
HiRez has tacitly approved our continued operation of this patched multiplayer system (by linking here from their re-re-release site; not that we strictly need such approval legally), but has not communicated with us in any capacity (official or otherwise).
If we had the opportunity to do it at all, I would target WebAssembly/WebGL for a no-plugin pure browser-based build of the game that wouldn't require any local native installation first, before something like the Xbox One.