I played around for a bit and noticed a few bugs

what i didn't like:

when mousing over the interface area of the screen (not the map area) such as the task force screen or the solar system overview at the bottom i notice that if i still had a fleet selected the dotted line to plot a course for the fleet would extend to the cursor outside the map area.

earth seemed to have more than one moon (sure whats it matter but i am just a bit of an obsessive compulsive perfectionist with those little things)

i think the stars on the map should have more life to them they look too much like BotF stars and i never liked them to begin with.

What i liked:

I think the variety of ships are great. Will it be possible to name each ship in later releases? I love naming each ship as its built.

Awesome concept of the three areas to allocate personnel i especially love the idea of officers needed to man ships. Perhaps the addition of manpower as a resource would add another resource element to the game.

Very smooth looking interface great job! The classical feel of the original game was there but yet it was clearly a different game.

Amazing job my only question is will this game ever be sold or will it be free throughout its lifetime?

Thank you

Dog

If I may be so bold to answer that last question (I see it a lot on other boards).

ALL IP based games by independents (ie: FANS) must be free or the Devs risk serious legal action.

Now on the flipside: BridgeCommander2 CAN be sold (and will be), because Raven Night BOUGHT the right to do so from Paramount. It cost him a pretty penny I can imagine.

Likewise any IP based effort can be shut down (if the rights holder fell like pursuing it) but in over 20+ years of game mods the actual number of these events are damn few. (to mind a DBZ effort and a SG1 project are the only ones I know of)

Only when a project directly impacts one in development by the IP holder does it get their attention.

When challenged, if a judge determines there is 30% or more similarity then he will rule that copyright infringement has occurred. Less than that, than the IP holder loses (in theory).

-----------------------------

Instead of starting a new topic I had 2 quick noobish questions.

1.) Is there any estimate on when a rough version of the combat part will be released?

2.) Could the combat part of BOTF1 be salvageable and able to be expanded to fit your neeeds?


My comment: I am very pleased on the new image releases and the ability to try more than the Feds. It was quite a surprise!

I still had the random freeze bug mentioned by others on turn processing but it was after turn 250 something. No biggie...

Keep on with the awesome work!!!

There's a bridge commander 2 in the works by raven night? I thought only ST:Excalibur was somewhat pursuing a bc2 goal..

Hi Dog and Star Dragon, thanks for your comments.

The course plot bug is the first time i've heard of this bug. I can't actually test whether the same thing is happening with me because my PC is being fixed, (I'm writing this on my Wii) but if someone else can confirm this bug or if I get my computer back soon and I get the same result, i'll let Mike know about it.

Earth has more than one Moon for programming reasons; the Moons are completely random, and CANNOT be set. I've already asked Mike if he could change this, and he says it would involve major programming changes for something that would actually give very little improvement to the game; he is therefore unwilling to make the change - at least not until the game is more, much closer to completion.

The Stars in Supremacy are actually just very simple animations; five images (Per star) repeated over and over. They can easily be improved just by replacing the images. The files are located in Supremacy/Resources/Images/Stars. Let us now if you find some.

Yes, we *hope* to implement ship naming, but we've had bugs with previous attempts to implement it, so I believe that feature is on hold until the bugs can be worked out.

We hope the division of manpower will add another element to gameplay as well. That's why Mike implemented it in the first place. Fingers crossed it will work the way we hope it does.

The interface is one of the areas of the game we really wanted to improve; BOTF had a good interface but times have moved on and now it looks dated. We copied the interface and freshened it up, but it's by no means finalised yet; there are lots of new features in the pipeline that will require additions or the changes to the interface to implement. If you have any comments or requests to change any parts of the interface though, we'd like to know.

No, as Star-Dragon pointed out, Supremacy can never be sold because it is a fan game; we don't have the Trek licence so it would be illegal to profit from it. We're all just fans of BOTF that just really, really want a sequel. As nice as it would be to make money from it, profit has never been our goal anyways. There is still the possibility that Paramount (Or whoever has the licence) may one day decide they want to sell the game though, so you never know. But it's highly unlikely that will ever happen. Since our game won't have an impact on an existing project - there's no official BOTF sequels being worked on afterall - it's unlikely that the project will be squashed in legalities either. The only other Trek game in development is STO, and Supremacy obviously won't be able to compete with that. Obviously it's still possible, but we're toeing the line as best we can.

...

As for estimates of game completion...it really depends on what you define as complete. If you mean every single last feature, image, ship model, and piece of text, then we're looking at a year or four down the line. Remember we're a fan project that are making the game in our free time with extremely limited resources - we're not a multinational corporation with a legion of highly paid artists and programmers. We're doing our best though. People will likely also come up with their own mods and improvements for a long time to come as well. Just look at BOTF - it's 10 years old and the community is still actively developing mods and improvements. Who knows how long Supremacy will be around?

If you're looking at just the game being playable though, the implementation of the AI is our biggest priority - but also the single most difficult to create part of the game. We're hoping that that will be complete by this time next year. Once the AI is complete, we'll be able to implement combat (Which CdrWolfe is working on and already has a demo available of), a proper diplomacy and intel system, system governors to take over system micromanagement to make life easier, and a host of other things. Mike has barely started work on it though, so it will be a wait before even the most basic game AI will be available for testing.

No, the combat isn't salvageable. We would need to hack the game - which would have all sorts of legal implications - and modify it actually work with Supremacy, and I don't even know if that is possible. And besides, like I said, CdrWolfe is already working on the combat system and even has a demo available already. It might have a ways to go, but it's already packing some serious eye candy. If you visit the site portal much, you'll have already seen this screenie I made over christmas, but if not, then it really does look this good already. ;



I'm glad you like the new images, but we've got more on the way - there's still tons of structures that lack images or need improved/replacement images for quality or legal reasons. Zeleni and Kenneth are in charge of creating the images, i'm simply compiling them, so direct your thanks their way. As i've said in another recent thread though, the Cardassian interface is going to be scrapped because it has a bug that banks out the fleet movement orders. Don't worry though, Mike's going to replace it with a fully working version as soon as he can.

The random freeze bug I can only apologise about, but there's nothing we can currently do about it. We still have no idea to the cause. Mike is currently working on recompiling the game though, which promises to improve game performance, so you'll be able to get back to where you were more quickly. And who knows? It may even help to solve the problem. We can hope.

Nice screen...


I have to ask, is one of those (The green one) a TRACTOR BEAM???



Yeah I know we have to wait awhile for combat, I'm just to psyched up. I play BOTF quite a bit on and off till I get sick and go away for a time only to come right back again!!!

I was thinking of a name of an "Anime Faction" but had trouble.
Then it hit me, "Anime nation" = "Animation"!!! I kill me sometimes...

"Animation proposes a Warpact against the Cardassians"... ")


Just for fun


Yes, that is the FF8 Ragnarok.

No, it's not a tractor beam; it's the Borg beam weapon. You do realise that you can download the combat system already though, don't you?

To download it, go to Our Site Portal and log into it. (You might need to sign up first as the portal has a different user database to these forums)

Once you've logged in, click on the downloads button on the left of the screen (Under resources), then click on downloads again, then click on the BOTF2 combat system link. The download might be blocked if you have a popup blocker turned on (I know the google toolbar popup blocker stops it downloading for instance) so make sure you turn that off if the download doesn't start.

Once you've downloaded the file, unzip it into a folder called "Demo" (Case-sensitive) on your C drive. (So it should be C:/Demo) Do NOT unzip it into C:/Program Files/Demo or anywhere else, not even on another drive or it won't work. Once you've done that, open the demo folder and click on the file called "Click me to run demo" - to run the demo.