Botf Looks Good in a 2D plane,
Thats what BOTF was about it made it pretty an simple and the 3D was supposed to make it glorious, an in a way our love for it made it seem that way none the less.

I think the first thing to work on would be a 3D battle engine, 3D state or some other pre-made engine would be a great idea but its got to be the right one. Its not going to be ground breaking but it doesnt need to be, Its all about your textures and your art. 3D State would be adequate.

The battles in BOTF werent overly complex, an its pretty co-ordinate path based, a little bit of mesh rotation and some nice special effects would make the battles more than adequate.

Most especially some decent AI on the battles and more controls, not computer AI code that says...

IF you get told to do this BLOODY DO THIS spin_round and dont shoot NOT FrIGGiN THis.
Bloody programmed by mad people. Man that **** made me angry. love botf... uhum...

Imagine botf but with more of a starfleet command visual to it. Mass scale battles, you know that ****. THink maybe bigger maps would be to, 5 player everyones smashing each other for land in lan's i'd like to get to tech II before everyons dead. BOTF 4x the size, Is that possible guys, i'd be so feckin happy if it was.
Before i forget TEXT FILE OUTPUT INPUT - Definetly the way to go, turn based battles so plenty of time for text file writing.

Dont got getting overly carried away with wanting to program in C++ when you could get away with VB and Direct X and I reckon if this interestes you then make sure you help in any way you can.

Sorry i'm a bit behind on posting guys, but as some of you may know/have noticed, i'm been having computer problems lately.

I definitely think that working on a unified system for multiple games is the way to go. Developing independant systems will only slow things down and make life more complicated. We're all fans contributing what little time, effort, and money that we have into a project that none of us could even hope to imagine completing on our own.

That's the whole point of these forums though - we can use them to tell people what we are doing, what we need to do, and most importantly, ASK FOR HELP.

We have an entire forum for that for heavens sake, so why dont we use it? Get people involved, show them that progress is being made, then ask people to help if they want more progress. That's the way to go.

We've gotten this far, we can't give up now. We have almost 2200 members, (Even if 90% of them don't post ) which shows that this isn't something that no one cares about. People DO care, otherwise this project and these forums wouldn't exist in the first place.

@MoE: could you light me up on what textures and 3D stuff besides jig's 3D Studio stuff (which seems quite useless for us(!) as mstrobel already pointed out) are already done here? I didn't have the time to check all the things that were made here before my time (I think I remember a so-called trashman's model emporium and things like that). Maybe you can give me a guideline of what of these (and the manpower behind em ) can be used for a common 3D engine for supremacy and bote.

@thorn: I wouldn't care much about the AI for starters cause the (full 6 player) multiplayer-mode is by far more important. So let's say we only have human against human battle (scrap the minors and gomtuus for the moment ).

as for the ship movement AI inside 3D combat, that's totally up to you how you handle/program it. You get the specs and stats of a ship from the txt file (even xml if you like but I can't promise you I learn that language in the meantime ). Keep it as simple as possible. Improvements can be done to it soon enough. A movement with orders and carrying out of those orders depending on crew experience like in botf is totally sufficient if not supersufficient.

mstrobel's supremacy will have extra large maps (unlike ours, we don't plan them right now, maybe that changes later on but I won't bet on it), so you get your needs satisfied there

we support you in any way, just point out here exactly what you need in a list maybe and then we'll get it for you asap. Most important thing is that someone just starts this as his own project and we'll see how far it develops.

I'm lookin forward to the whole thing, really.

OFF: Not to be annoying or anything Thorn, but you should notice that there are many under age people here, so you should keep a clean language (I.E. no cursing, swearing, etc).

ON: I agree that 3d Combat is a great asset to the game, but without diplomacy, economics, intelligence and research systems, there would be no point at all to have a 3d tactical combat system, because you would never even be interested enough to get to that point.
So, I'd say let them focus on the truly important parts first.

yep, eon. Though I'd think I heard "worse" language when I was 6 I agree it drops out of the frame here like we germans say. Please stick to the common "mean" language here.

besides I've also seen worse from your team eon during the world cup..
you most probably cost us the cup..frings, where were you!? grosso, noooo!

but then, the frenchmen weren't that better, so whatever, was fun though anyway.

Is there any info available yet relating to the next update for BotE
Am I correct in assuming the next update should be due in a month or so?

could be two or even three. Main programmer Sir Pustekuchen had to reduce the amount of time spent on the project drastically since last update and it does not seem "better" for the future. That's why the game's code gets partially open-source (uploaded on a private Tortoise SVN server in a few days) so everyone with reasonable programming background is invited to join the project and help speeding development up a little. Otherwise periods between updates will be longer than they were in the past unfortunately.

New things will be updated GUI (use of GDI+ and DirectX for rotating planets, also bitmap fonts instead of the old ones) and minor race ships as well as maintenance costs.

That's bad.

Hello again. is there an update coming ANYTIME soon. would love to see wat has been happening. If no update pending ..................................... lol

Paddy

I hope none of you dev guys are letting childish comments of this sort get to you. Instead of asking for more of the game, ask how you can help, man. Like Kennedy once said: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"...here translated just replace the country with "game" and there you go.

All praise to the Supremacy team - keep on rockin'! Quality over quantity!

*Raises Romulan eyebrow*

This is the BotE forum, Stromgarde...but thanks.

...When is the next BotE update coming though, Mal? We haven't heard much about BotE in months now. Care to give us enough info - or a download link - for me to post a news item on our portal?

I think the lol part in Paddy's message signals that he meant it ironically, Stromgarde . No need to call it childish lol.

Well, if you just knew...

We are right now implementing firearcs in our combat system and maneuvres as well as bow, stern and side-mountable tubes and beam turrets. Pretty fun actually. You can see that in the increased posting activity on our german forum.

I do actually have some background pics of what we already implemented (the pics aren't useful for putting up on front page, better we wait until the new alpha is released before doing that). One's a slightly distorted widescreen pic but that's the price to pay when not having the resources (no .NET for example) to make everything vector-based. Good monitors and graphic cards can display black canvas at the side of the screen when switching to 1280x1024 resolution so the 5:4 resolution is met undistorted. A window mode is also considered to be programmed.

The ones in the attachment are pics of a failed invasion and a normal colonization of a system which will be displayed just like in botf. I cannot say when the rotating planets are complete, but when they are, we will release a new alpha version, probably around christmas . As I mentioned several times, dev speed ain't what it used to be but it's moving, you can look forward to .

Cool, nice work guys.
Can't wait for the next update.
Will it be a minor update or a major update?
Is there a list anywhere of the new implementations?

thx. The artists behind those pics know their stuff. Some are even "after-tweaked" by SirP himself . But as with most stuff we have for our new content, the artists behind those don't really participate in our project, they just made those pics for fun and are giving permission to us to use them for our game so unfortunately they are not available for creating more of those or even trek ones for supremacy or the trek mod if it comes.

the internal lists says things like maintenance costs, minor race ships, rotating planets, graphical enhancements in galaxy map handling (scan strengths colored on map), AI fleets are now stacked up for better view, use of GDI+ and DirectX instead of GDI and nothing , new global resource distribution buildings that will minimize micromanagement in late game when tech requirements are met, new graphics for all buildings, new skin graphics (more streamlined), game data balance tweaks, new combat algorithms which have multiple synergy effects along with differently-mounted gun turrets rendering combat a lot more complex than right now.

In terms of gameplay this will be a massive update. It is designed to make the game playable in terms of micromanagement reduction in late turns which is slightly a pain right now still . Also, no copyright will be violated with this version so that will open up interesting possibilities to make the game more public than it is right now. To sum it up, I'd say it's a major one.

Recently in one of the other threads it was mentioned that there would be an update soon (possibly in december) for BotE.
I try to follow the german forum but even translated it is sometimes difficult to understand what is being discussed.
Any chance of a quick info update on the progress of Alpha 5 and an expected release date for it.

Thanks, keep up all the good work.

I'm certainly not an exprt on BOTE, but from what Mal has said recently, the next BOTE update is still several months away. I have no idea when exactly SirP plans to release it though nor what this update will actually contain. Mal will have to post about that. Sorry I couldn't give any more news.

That's right. We hoped for an alpha5 release in december but the 3D planets viewports are not functioning properly in fullscreen mode. The guy programming it doesn't have time for it atm. so we have to wait. SirP is also taking a break and working on uni stuff so can't really tell you a day or month when the update comes out.

Mal,

That's ok - you get to it when you get to it. I would make a tiny request though - if you could have whoever updates the BOTE changelog (http://star-trek-games.com/index.php?op ... &Itemid=63) annotate the release dates on the versions, even if it's just month/year, so we can recognize when there's a need to update and see what's different. I don't know when V_0.62 V0.62b happened; I'll try to find where I can see what version I'm running of BOTE.

I don't play it much because I don't see a difficulty slider and I've barely got two colonies when a war fleet comes and decimates me. I'm clearly missing something...

Good idea with the changelog. It's in the wiki though along with a manual preview (still containing a lot of translation errors):



The 0.62b was released sometime in April 2008 so the change from 0.62 to 0.62b was a matter of weeks back then. Since then there was no public update.

You might want to change difficulty level (a slider isn't implemented yet) by editing bote.ini with notepad and exchange DIFFICULTY=NORMAL with DIFFICULTY=BABY or DIFFICULTY=EASY (capital letters required). Aggressiveness will be editable too since the DIFFICULTY level only adjusts AI cheats. On BABY, the AI gets next-to-no cheats.

Hello Malvoisin & SirPustekuchen. Any updates on this awesome game. Progress report perhaps. Any info would be great. I'm sure there are MANY people waiting to hear how its going over on your end. Thanks.

Paddy

I don't know what's happening with BotE. Neither Mal nor SirP have been on the forums in the last month. I sent Mal am PM the other day to see whether everything is ok, but he hasn't even read it yet.

We'll keep trying to find out what is happening with BotE though. Please don't assume that anything is wrong just because they've disappeared from the forums. There could be any number of reasons for their absence.

Hi,

I,m fine ;-) Malvoisin is a little bit busy in reallife. I think he would need some time (weeks or months) to do all his important work in RL. But I'm working on the Alpha5 very hard for the last two months. I want to release the german version of the Alpha5 propably in October. And I can promise, the Alpha5 of BotE would be a really cool an exciting game! Almost all codeparts and graphics are reworked. This or next week I want to release the second internal development version. After that and after fixing all found bugs, I release the RC of the Alpha5 and after that the final Alpha5 is coming!!!

The english version is almost ready, too! Only some strings from the string-table need a translation, so I think that the english version would be released in Novembre.

Here is a screenshot from the researchmenu of Cartare Union and one of a research breakthrough (german version) You can see some of new graphics! (In our german board you can find also other screenies)

Ooh nice!

If you need further help with translations, we'e got a thread dedicated to translating Supremacy that you might be interested in reading Here. We've got a couple of people who have said they are willing to do German translations, and they may be willing to help you too.

If you could let me know as soon as the Alpha5 update is available and give me the download link as well, SirP, i'll be able to post a news item on the site portal for you. That should help to generate some extra interest and more downloads for you.

I think almost all data is translated into english already. But probably some other people can improve our english ;-)

I released the second internal development version yesterday. I hope the german final release would be in two or three weeks. After that I will create the english version, so it would be very nice, if you can announce the BotE Alpha5 on the site portal then.

Will do. Just send me the details and i'll post up the news items for you. It'll be nice to have a new version of BotE to play with.

Those nice new tech pics from Captain Bashir would be a nice replacement for the tech screen above I think..

Can't wait to download the english version. Any chance the change log will be updated soon?

done .

Mal, do you have an ETA for the english version yet? Downloaded the german version and I'm very impressed with what I see.

thanks.

I've completed converting two data files already, the rest is in sir p.'s hands (the manual probably won't get finished so we decided to have the community do the job whenever someone wants to do it). If you want you could check them out (just overwrite them in the respective folders and in-game text is changed into english for these parts) for errors or improvable phrasing, grammar or wrong upper or lower cases and report back .

An exact ETA I can't give. Sir P. said something about a few weeks after the german release that he wants to have the english one up so it shouldn't be that long anymore.

Edit: I forgot, you can already have the building names in english too when opening the buildings editor in \data\buildings\ , click on primary language, change to secondary language, save & exit. It's the only bilingual file in bote so far . I added the latest patched english-as-primary-language-set building file to the attachments.