Hey guys. I was a pretty big Star Trek fan back in the day, and I still like the games, although I wish they'd be a tad better. Birth of the Federation is no exception.

I've played this game quite a bit. Every time I play it, I sit here and think to myself "gee, I wish I could change this part of the game." For whatever reason, I've been playing BoTF a lot for the last couple weeks, so I started hunting around google for BoTF links.

Keep in mind, I came across this site strictly by accident. The BoTF2 idea definitely piqued my curiosity. Also add the fact that for the last week, I have been envisioning how BoTF was put together based on the gameplay and thinking about starting from scratch with pretty much a re-hashed BoTF1 with the changes that I had envisioned the game should have gotten.

With that said, I think it would be neat to help out with this project. I am a recent college graduate in Computer Science. My strongest language is C/C++. I am a SQL database converter at my job, and so I am quite familiar with SQL, databases, data retrivial, and whathaveyou. In a nutshell, my best contributions would come from almost any back-end game programming you would need done.

I do have some exposure to OpenGL; it's just enough to understand what's going on but not quite enough to actually replicate it. With that said, it would just take time and a book or two to become more familiar with it (assuming you're even using OpenGL.)

I haven't been able to locate what development environments you are employing to create the game (language/graphics library/etc), so I am interested to see if my primary skills would be a match for the tasks you need completed. I am familiar with other minor languages such as VB, Java, HTML, Lisp (I hate this language passionately), and some others that I'm probably forgetting.

Anyways, let me know whatcha need.

giving your skills you should contact mstrobel via pm and speak to him with regards to his project.

Hey there, Azhdeen, welcome to the site.

I don't know how many of the posts you've read, (I know mine can be a bit daunting coz of their size ) but as Jigalypuff said, it would be best to contact MStrobel if you'd like to help.

There are actually two games being made - one by Jigalypuff, the other by MStrobel. (Which is why there are two separate games forums)

The games are being written in different languages, which makes them incompatible and is why Jig hasn't asked you for help.

Anyways, i'm not a programmer, so it's all Greek to me...

Meh, post size means nothing to me - I can make them as long (and usually do) as the rest of them.

I am curious, though, as I haven't gotten a chance to read everything yet... but why are there 2 seperate games being created? I could understand the game being divided into 2 sections such as back-end code and front-end graphics, but 2 games? Wouldn't it be more effecient to just work on one project?

Yes it would, but one game is far nearer completion than the other.

The two games came about independantly - Jig's game is the "official" version of the game, but MStrobel's game started out as a college project.

He got the basics to work fine, (In fact, you can download a copy of it in his Supremacy thread in the general chat forum) but it was never intended as a Star Trek game - he made it as a simple stand alone.

MStrobel is now in the process of rewriting the code and updating it into a full-fledged Star Trek game.

Jigalypuff has only been working on his game since January, so he hasn't had as much time to work on it, whch is why the release date is 2007.

Me and the rest of the dev team are working on the screens etc. for both of the games - they will share many of the same graphics. In this respect, this actually speeds things up.

We aren't the only fans that are making a BOTF2 either. I know of at least FIVE BOTF2's in total. (Including our two)

Two of these projects failed due to different reasons, we are making two more of them, and the fifth one is being made by some Germans. There's a link to their site <somewhere> amongst all the posts.

Ok. What's the development plan for Jigalypuff's version (New Beginnings is it?) There has to be some back-end programming for it somewhere. :p

I got the details of Mstrobel's version from him via PM, so we're cool there and he's explained to me his general development timeframe for the coding.

It doesn't really matter to me what I do, as long as it involves programming (I haven't much knowledge or experience of making/rendering graphics - I can't draw a stick-figure to save my life, but I have coded them into coded graphical constructs before). And if I don't know, there's a half-dozen book stores within 10 minutes of my house... plus the Internet in it's entirety at my fingertips. Once you understand the concepts of programming, learning a new language is simply picking up how the syntax works. In a few words... that's not a problem. I'm really intrigued by this project and I'm really hoping to see some awesome results from it, and I'm willing to contribute to it as much as possible.

Send Jig a PM if you want to help him then.

The help we can get the better, but I honestly don't know what Jig could give you to do.