VTV isn`t working

[Acecombat 0]

Who cares if VTV comes up or not , seriously do you guys expect them to give away info on a website right before E3 starts and kill the anticipation building up to that?

Either news is gonna be at E3 or not , simple enough.

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Heh, theres nothing hidden in the Flash things

The "Channels" are just blue backgrounds with small numbers.. There is no worth in watching the site for hours ;)

PHP can have stuff like if date is > than 15th, then display this, so I guess refreshing the page is a good idea every so often.. NOTE THE WORDING AND READ THAT NEWS THING

This is what bordem does to people

- Ben

[Heatseeker 0]

Who cares if VTV comes up or not , seriously do you guys expect them to give away info on a website right before E3 starts and kill the anticipation building up to that?

Either news is gonna be at E3 or not , simple enough.

Ghost Recon 3 information, pics and even a small movie are already out there, right before E3 where it was expected to be anounced and that game is supposed to show what xbox360 can do, i dont see why BIS couldnt throw a bone to the cult.. i mean comunity, i think after all these years we certainly deserve it, not to mention the time we will still have to wait for the beloved sequel to finaly arrive .

[gandalf the white 0]

imho it really sucks we dont get the news before the Battlefield fanboys do even one day in advance! just one!

[Jarf 0]

I hope it's good news.

*glee*

[Acecombat 0]

Interesting deduction @ ofp.info , does this mean BIS will publish the game itself too? Not a bad idea they got the money right? Why not do it yourself and improve on where codemaster slacked , the publicity and all .

Quote[/b] ]As the Codemasters logo has been removed from the site design and since Bohemia Interactive will show the OFP sequel on E3 without a publisher, We can guess they had to change the OFP Sequel name since "operation flashpoint" belongs to Codemasters...

That's only suppositions and logical deduction from the OFP.info crew however...

[Jarf 0]

I like having VBS1 in a Bohemia Interactive folder, just seems more appropriate.

Go OFP2, or whatever your name will be.

[Heatseeker 0]

They already said the game would be published by codies, how would BIS be able to publish this game anyway, advertising, manufacturing, development, this is not the same has VBS you know . Plus the game is obviously far from being done i hope .

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Erm, they've had.. 4 years to develop it

Anyway, guessing and stuff is all well and good, but it's waay more accurate to wait.. what a day now?

The Codemaster site still has OFP2,

"http://www.bistudio.com/ is up - Last Modified : May 16 2005 00:00:00.GMT"

Maybe their removing the Codemasters stuff before everyone hears (Or buys? .. ) OFP2?

Meh, what's the use in guessing

- Ben

[Placebo 29]

*Sits back with the popcorn*

This is gonna be amusing.  

Diet coke from Cal Mart - $1.60

Internet access from FedEx Kinko on Figueroa street $0.25 per minute.

Watching the eager Flashpoint community squirming in anticipation - PRICELESS!

[Colossus 2]

Hey look at that

Nervous before E3 or just another day at the office?

[FW200 0]

Placebo is cruel

[Scrub 0]

It's evil, i say..  EEEEVVVIIILLLLLLLLL....  

HAY!  You're in L.A. already...  (Psst! West Coast units!  He's near Figueroa street, close on target and interrogate)  

[shinRaiden 0]

Interesting observation... in any case it wasn't Codemasters that did the world-wide distribution for OFP anyway. They only had select English-speaking markets.

Now, for a little digging on the side-streets off the Information Superhighway.

1 - It's a well proven techinque among internet trolls and information diggers that when digging up the background of a company, you always dig at their native language site, not yours. Just basic psychology. So let's take a look at www.bistudio.cz. Note that I don't comprehend a word of Czech, I'm just following links. Transliterated stuff generally is not too complicated though.

2 - One spot to note is to compare the differences between Czech sales and English sales. We've all heard of Infogrames, generally more than we care to in many cases. Same with Codemasters. But who's this Cenega that covers the publishing in Czech and Polish? At least in english, "publish" carries some weight to it as opposed to "distribute". You don't think of EB Games or Gamestop etc as publishers, they're distributors. Is there something more? Maybe...

3 - Just for chuckles, if you can't remember that BIS's company site is www.bistudio.com or www.bistudio.cz, you can always try www.bohemiainteractive.com which will forward you to www.bistudio.com. But what happens if you try it in Czech? www.bohemiainteractive.cz gives you a totally different page, click one way to go to www.bistudio.cz, or the other way to get redirected to...

4 - www.cenega.cz, which is who we just saw listed as the Czech and Polish publisher of OFP. But is that all they publish? Maybe, maybe not... First we get bounced to www.cenega-shop.cz, then end up at www.xzone.cz/cenegashop instead. Various old and new games are listed there, but the real interesting tidbits are hidden away down at the bottom for more information about Cenega in particular. Anyway this site appears to be just a distributor, but there's a link to something else, which is...

5 - www.cenega.com, ie Cenega Publishing. Let's see what we have here... hmm, "Shade: Wrath of Angels"... hmm, I seem to recall old threads having been dug up about this recently, let's see what they have to say...

www.shade-game.com

Quote[/b] ]

CENEGA N.V. is a holding company created as a result of the investment agreement signed on 31st of October 2000 in Prague. On that day two companies representing computer games industry - Bohemia Interactive s.r.o. (Czech Republic) and IM Group Sp. z o.o. (Poland) decided to join their forces. Third - and biggest - partner in this venture is DBG Osteuropa - Holding GmbH, private venture capital fund, who’s partners are: Deutsche Bank, Mitsubishi Corporation, EBOiR i DEG. New company already in CY 2000 achieved the revenue of 10 million EUR. Plans for the next years include the further development of the distribution activity in East European countries and extending current activity of the parent companies in the area of entertainment and games in internet. According to the partners assumptions CENEGA N.V. will remain a pure holding company while the main operations will be hold by IM Group and Bohemia Interactive. Our group aims to operate in three areas:

Computer software distribution - at this moment we operate in three countries: Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, however it is possible that we’ll extend our area of activity.

Publishing activity - we would like to support the development in our related companies and by local independent studios becoming a world wide publisher of the games created with our participation.

Internet - related activity - apart from the normal information function connected with the distribution activity we will reinforce, support i create games and applications connected with on-line gaming and entertainment in internet.

Well now, this is interesting... BIS holds a minority financial, but primary operational stake in the parent holding company of Cenega, a software publisher. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not, but it's not a fairy tale either. There's got to be more to the story though, let's see what this Mirage Interactive link from the Cenega shop gets us...

Quote[/b] ]

...

In 1993 Mirage started to distribute in Poland products of Codemasters, Titus, Eidos Interactive, Infogames, Core Design, Novalogic, Krisalis, Millennium, Silmarils, Ocean, 3DO and other publishers.

...

The company's position on the publishing market strenghtened every year and it assured the permanent leading position among the top Polish distributors. The year 2000 fetched significant changes in the company's structure as the publishing and distribution part of Mirage Media merged with International Publishing Services C.G. and Bohemia founding CENEGA N.V. The Mirage development departament formed Mirage Interactive Sp. z o.o. (LLC), a joint venture of private capital and the investment fund DBG Eastern Europe (Deutsche Bank AG, Mitsubishi Corp., EBOIR).

...

Hmm... the same DBG Osteuropa company... will have to look into that further at another time. But I digress, as there is more information to look at, such as....

6 - www.motioncapture.cz, or for us english speakers at www.motioncapture.cz/index_us.html. What do they have to say? Old history, but I'll briefly quote it here...

Quote[/b] ]

Welcome at the homepages of the first East European Motion Capture Centre formed in Prague by Bohemia Interactive Studio, Oxford Metrics and Visual Connection. Animation for the military combat simulation game Operation Flashpoint is a pilot project of the studio.

According to the Inside BIS : Technology page the motion capture equipment used was Vicon gear, who owns and operates Oxford Metrics. Visual Connection for all intents and purposes appears to be an equipment and solutions vendor, at least from their website. And of course the motion capture site links appropiately back to BIS.

7 - This next item is for the moment baselessly speculative, but I don't think it's unreasonable to presume that some of the 'former' BIS people are not so 'former' as we'd presume, that they were instead shifted into Cenega, Black Element, or MotionCapture operations, which at the very least all share the same mailing location...

8 - So what other background is out there? This, for one. Admittedly, Babelfish tends to make things worse, not better, but it appears to be coverage from 2001 from a press conference announcing either the formation or partnering or something with Cenega, with BIS commanding a strong presence at the meeting.

9 - But that's not all, there's still another interesting morsel out there, and it's hidden away in the BIS "Fun" site, and that's Suma's old page from 1997 discussing design capabilities of the early OFP engine. Where do all the links go? Not to BIS, they go to another company, called www.jrc.cz. The implication there is that JRC was also operating as a producer for various game development projects at the time, although I have not yet been able to confirm that they still do so now. As far as I can tell its operations are atm limited to software distribution and gaming centers throughout Eastern Europe. The address again though is more than just a coincidence, when it matches exactly with the previously listed companies. There's a picture of the relevant site as well if you know where dig it up.

10 - So where does that leave us? Back at E3. Let's look at that exhibitor list again...

Quote[/b] ]

...

Bohemia Interactive a.s. Kentia 6941

...

Cenega Publishing West 2152

...

Codemasters Kentia 7037

Codemasters Kentia 7041

Codemasters Kentia 7043

Codemasters Kentia 7045

...

Codemasters has a bigger suite of booths, but they might as well be stuffed in a bathroom offsite they're so far in the back. BIS isn't much better, an aisle or two over in the center of the back. Then again, there's plenty of attraction in the back, because the whole back left corner is taken up by Ageia, who rocked the Game Developers Conference just a couple months ago with their new Physics coProcesser Unit, that they plan to be shipping in time for the Christmas season. Unreal 3 is already commited to Ageia's Novodex physics SDK, which can run in software, or switch over to hardware mode if the card is detected. Ubi has also sold their souls to Aegia for the SDK as well, and Ageia's annouced that the SDK will be available for the Xbox360 platform too.

----------

Anyhoo, that's just some random tidbits floating out on the vast reaches of the Internet, some of which has most likely been posted before, but this should help coordinate all the speculation and rumor-mongering. There's plenty more too, we could always use more pictures (but higher quality please) of Marek with giant gorillas like from the 2000 E3 convention.

-edit-

(nm this part... :P )

Google map to Fedex Kinkos

Cal Mart just down the street from Kinkos

Staples Center to the north is the E3 site. You got 3 hours before they close from the time of this edit.

[Homefry 0]

That's some serious research... though all I got out of the entire thing is that there is another publisher other than Codemasters and they too are going to be at E3.

[shinRaiden 0]

Now there's nothing substantive that says Codemasters would be getting cut out of the loop, although Ofp.info's speculation about rebranding is interesting. This just details how BIS has not just been making (or playing) games over the past several years, but that they've been extremely busy in various "trying-to-take-over-the-world" enterprises in those same years, and how they've been building the infrastructure to do it.

Obviously they're going to have trouble even with their own publisher trying to meet channel demand for boxes on the shelves at places like Bestbuy, Compusa, Walmart, EB Games, Gamestop, Frys, etc, and that's just the US market. Distributors will remain a key component, unless we see something out of Valve or somebody doing serious online distribution.

The market that online distribution won't hit though is the impulse buys or purchases by n00b grandparents etc. That's ironically how I discovered OFP. I was looking at BF1948, and some mom thought I was a clerk and asked for a recommendation. I grabbed BF1 and OFP off the shelf and invented a sales pitch on the spot based on the covers and 'sold' her the Gold Edition and Resistance on the spot. I then looked at it closer and sold myself. She was definately not the type that regularly pays attention to games "Hi, my son plays games, and I thought about getting him a new one for Christmas. What do you recommend?" She's not going to know about Steam, you'll still need channel distributors, like what Activision does for id and 20th Century Fox does for George Lucas with Star Wars.

[hellfish6 7]

This is so damn funny.

You know, I heard rumors that OFP2 will be using the Battlefield 2 engine and that you can import cities from SimCity 2000.

Truth or fiction? Discuss.

[Billabong81 0]

Well Hellfish, in my professional opinion, I believe this would be a bad move for BIS because....VBS1 = OFP2. You know it people. Stop trying to fake yourselves out. OFP2 is simply going to be VBS1 core + a couple addons. Then the expansion packs will be $25/pop and be things such as the SF pack for VBS1 and so forth. OFP3 will be right around the corner....as will VBS2....interesting! Stir the pot !

I'm sure we'll find out the answer to this big mystery by Wednesday or whenever BIS opens up @ E3 .

EDIT: Typo...

[shinRaiden 0]

Would be interesting, except with EA announcing that BF2 will only go up to 4km maps, that would severely limit OFP2's elbow room. Second, as Saab has licensed the BF2 engine for a military trainer, that would throw a big wrench into the VBS platform. That's a huge step back on many fronts.

As for SimCity 2K, it would be nice to be able to plop down modular prefabs to simplify designing (sub)urban areas. That's the big drawback with the GTA series, you can't play COPS and go tearing through Suburbia blasting it out with the hoods. With a OFP2 engine, you could... Arcologies would be a bit overkill though, but it also means we'd get dynamic deformable terrain, variable elevation water, utilities infrastrucure, trains, ports, and ambient civilians.

[hellfish6 7]

Dude, you're such a killjoy.

[SpecOp9 0]

*Sits back with the popcorn*

This is gonna be amusing.  

Diet coke from Cal Mart - $1.60

Internet access from FedEx Kinko on Figueroa street $0.25 per minute.

Watching the eager Flashpoint community squirming in anticipation - PRICELESS!

Lol, wow Placebo just made it seem like something all the fans have been going nutty for will finally get something great at E3 :P

[hellfish6 7]

I bet everyone $10 that you don't learn anything new.

[450R 1]

Somebody likes to play detective in their seemingly-endless spare time...

Try fishing or something, man.

[shinRaiden 0]

Didn't take long at all, I got three times as much data elsewhere that cements it all in place, but doesn't need to be out on the table. Like I said, some of the stuff is admittedly old, but conspiracies don't really start to show up until you put all the cards out on the table and start looking to see how all the dots connect, ie who's names and url's keep showing up on other people's websites etc. Two matches raises an eybrow, three sets off alarms, 4~5 you start looking for little green men, with all the cookie jar's BIS has their hands in we're way past even the tin-foil hat stage.

[Harnu 0]

Sometimes you have to codebreak. Anagram Operation Flashpoint, what do you get? a antiproton fishpole 2

Blasphemous you say? Remember, it's a non english speaking country (As far as primary languages go.) so clearly, they are trying to tell us that this new "game" is actually a testing grounds for An Antiproton Fishpole, version 2.0. You say, Then Operation Flashpoint 1 wasn't about a damn fishpole? But that's where you're wrong. It was such a fishpole you didn't notice it, mostly because it was a failure. Yeah, fishing in OFP, who would have thought of that, it's a perfect coverup since the water never really worked.

We're onto you BIS, your antiproton fishpoles are out of the dark now!