Hey guys

Just want to say hey to you all.

Came across the website earlier today, and am impressed with what iv seen and read so far, and am eager to be a part of this development.

Daoc

we're taking a break right now, but feel free to test out the current alpha and report back any issues (I guess some typos are still in the game ).

I don't get it. I'm very new here.
THey say the Alpha 6 version is released.
Should that not mean the game is past beta?
I went in to play Alpha6 and half the game seems to be missing.

There is no sound or music what so ever.
THere are no options that actually work (preferences)
There are no in game options as well, eg; game difficulty, map size etc.
One of the races is greyed out.

I'm confused.


Does Alpha5 have music and some preferences at least?


Playing Alpha6 is boring, I hate super small maps and no sounds or music.

I did however look around in game, tried a few things. Most of the programming seems good and this game "almost" looks like it could have the potential to be marketed!

I'm an old 7 year BotF player, love that game. Loved that game. I'm a big trek fan too.
So seeing this game so closely resembling BotF almost felt like a drug hit again. Good god how I'd like to feel that fix again.

I like where this game is going, wow, it just seems half complete atm.

Hello. My name is Daryn Flannery.

I'm interested to invest into Bote in any way accepted.

I'm 29 years old.
I'm educated with Diplomas in Accounting, Business Management, Web Design and computer softwear.
I'm lightly experienced in XML and html, as well PHPBB.
I've done some very light programming in RPG like games before.
I've advertized games before online and marketed them.
I'm an artist with a grand portfolio in 2D and 3D design, character, ships, scenery etc.
I'm prety good with most modeling programs, or can learn then fast if anything.
I'm willing to invest 10,000 CAD into Bote at this time.
I've managed, operated and account managed an online game before with subscribers (Chess).
I can maintain, organize, update and model web sites, as well manage, set up and operate forums.
I've BETA tested many many games of all sorts. I've also task lead beta tester objectives.
I've also server and communications knowledge.

Years ago I used to play BotF, for 7 years online. I've a new found passion for this game and I think it might be marketable with more effort and some advanced systems joined.

I'd like to know if the "Idea Makers", the main founders of the making of this game might be intersted in a private publisher or manager.
If there is any staff desire to get this game out at a very marketable rate... I'd like to be your initiative guy, capible and ready.
I'm not in need of pay or compensation while on a working (non-profit) project. Such as now.

I'm not sure who to contact here about my resolve, so I'll post here and look for direction.
Thank you kindly, and I like what I'm starting to see in Bote and this superb comminuty.

well, it's a Alpha-Version, almost a beta-version in my opinion. And the game is this phase is quite good for playing - enjoy it or leave it

there is sound - don't know, why you don't have sound.

the sixth race isn't finished - a copyright-free skin is missing.

galaxy size is fixed 30 x 20

difficulty level can be chosen in 5 levels by "Game Settings"

Perhaps you'll find help in the German Wiki, especially here http://bote-forum.square7.ch/wiki/index ... e=Bote.ini

for sound try running the game as adminstrator

thanks for clearing up some.
still though, no sound and cant change the difficulty settings.
for alpha version it is good yes.

i thought alpha was part of the title originally lol

yes, and reminder it's a hobby fan project.

No sound, no music (even playing with administrator-rights) - anybody else the same problem and perhaps a solution?

what happens, if you double-click to a ogg-file in program folder\sounds - perhaps your system can't play ogg-files.

For sound issues, have a go at installing a sound codec pack just so your computer is setup to play as many different sound codec/file types it can.

It might restore sound for you.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_l ... c_pack.htm

hm, first question, what's a CAD (computer aided design)?

well, since we are non-profit I don't see quite the meaning of having a publisher or something like that. If the game's good (and there are still a lot more features planned) then it'll spread out someday or the other and there are lots of freeware/freegames site on the net to cope with potential high traffic (not to mention the server here which is really really fast, at least for me ). So well, if you want to participate then just do it by looking close at where things can be improved and post your new pics/text files/music/3d ship models, anything you feel like doing in your spare time for this project. Spare time is the "terminus technicus" here that counts the most, we are all just spare time workers and as far as I know, this should stay so that way.

yes that's what I'm trying to figure out here now.
Who is working on this hobby project and more importnatly who owns the server, and who or what team is primarily working on this project, even if it's only on free time.

It's non for profit at this time, and this project seeks help from the public. So far it looks to me that there is no dedicated team, hence why no one has jumped to my offer in the last month.

(laughs)

This project looks marketable to me, but it's far and wide from completion to any sort. No one is working on it fast enough to change it up to the times or the tech. Things need to be synched with the tech of today as well. The model of this Alpha are old old old, but the ideas are good good good, as well as some of the things I've seen intigrated by the community.
Your server is really fast, but also no one is really on it.

Let me take a few step[s back here.... and ask another question:

Is there a primary group here in charge, that wishes to see this game bolster into something marketable? Or is this a hobby game wanting to stay a hobby game without any real ambition from its "group"?

I make games. Marketable games. That's why I'm posting here.

It's been too long since a game like BotF came out on the market. Something complete and polished.

btw you write good English for a German, lol.

I have to try BOTE out as soon as I get the time(school is killing me atm). Also, if you want I can send you all images I have ever made for Supremacy. You can then take which ever ones you want. If some have star trek signatures I can remove them and add those of you races.

Our two projects have to cooperate in order to succeed.

The team behind it can be looked up at several places, first of all the readme.txt that comes with the installer and is located at bote main folder at your harddrive. Second there is our source code hosting site bote.codeplex.com where the core coding team (amongst some guys who didn't contribute that much but are still listed there) is listed. As you can see there, most work on the code is/was done by Sir Pustekuchen, he is the main leader and the one in charge of everything except for this site here which is courtesy of jigalypuff, an englishman kindly enough to host a forum dedicated for our english-speaking fans.

The rest is more like come-and-go, people contribute as they wish. Pretty much like every open-source project works, some work better, i.e. have a larger, more dedicated contribution base, others less good. I think we are not doing that bad in that respect, but of course, could be improved.

Well about making it marketable, again, Sir Pustekuchen as the project leader has the final word on it but everything he said until now means a clear "no" to that question. Especially when you look at readme.txt and the credits for our in-game content (images, music, everything not concerning the programming part) listed there, we have some hundreds of contributors from all over the world, what would you think they'd like as a share of profit if we would go commercial? It would probably reduce any possible margin to downright zero if everyone would get paid as he likes to be paid in that case. Someone even once told us a price on his race pictures (we didn't ask, he just mentioned it by himself), he said 100-1000$ each (depending on which one we would choose to have), and now count all race pics we have in-game and those are just the race pics . The only way - hypothetically speaking - would be to remove all this stuff and redo all content by yourself but I doubt this is going to be possible while maintaining the same quality like the current pictures have. I mean some of them were made by industry leaders in that respect, i.e. Tim Appleby from Mass Effect or Aaron Sims who worked on Terminator 3 cinema film for example..

Sure, some things are too old and not kept up-to-date, but there are help offerings, in fact we just got a very interesting one that could possibly lead to modern 3D graphics and UI for the game. Still, we do not want to pose "stress", i.e. timetables and ETAs, on anyone, which would be necessary for a commercial project since it needs to come out someday or you just find yourself constantly lagging behind modern software standards .

So to cut it short, thanks for the offer but until we don't have a 3D battle engine (which - fingers crossed - comes maybe with Alpha 8 or even Alpha 7), I doubt anyone would buy the game anyway. Unless you have 10 mio. $ on your bank account to spend on bote in which case I would gladly ask you to hand me over that money since I know better things to do with it than that... And thanks for the compliment, I was rather good at school in english for that matter. That no one jumped to your offer does not mean we're chiefless , remember this is primarily a german game so most of the time, you'll find us at our german forums (link is in readme.txt) and especially SirP not so often here. This is just an english "outpost" for us, main stuff is discussed and done at the german boards.

Recently I re-read our license at bote.codeplex.com and as far as my english goes, it is never explicitly forbidden there to just take the code, compile it, take the .exe then and fill all folders and subfolders with self-made stuff or stuff you've got a license for that works for you and afterwards even sell the game, of course with source code attached somewhere, so the buyer gets the source code delivered with your "product". I don't know if that's the case but if anyone could lighten that up I'd be glad. Only thing preventing from doing so then would be the like 10000 pics and stuff to replace plus the fact that it would piss off SirP big time and that probably no further updates to the code would be released. But once the final version 1.0 would be out, this could potentially be an option for someone capable of making bote marketable. He wouldn't even need to ask us for permission. Again, that is just me speculating here, I don't know if I understood (our own) source code license text right there . Content license is of course different.

@vjeko, sure, take your time . Just remember sending a copy of the pm to SirP as well, so he gets it too.

Well since one day you could be planning to sell BOTE I will include only those images that were made exclusively with non commercial material (vacation pictures...) For many images I used material that was free only If you don't sell it, so those could bring you some trouble.

alright but I doubt it's necessary to subdivide into sellable and non-sellable objects. Cannot hurt though.

There was once an idea that SirP wasn't that negative about it and it was the idea of people being able to donate money on a free and completely voluntary basis. But this was not thought through really, it was just appealing because it forces no one to pay money but if someone wants, he could do that. But there are surely legal pitfalls in doing so too so before there's a bank account for bote donations I guess a lot of time will pass until that day if that comes so far at all. Besides, I think all the other contributors and artists having lent stuff to bote would want a share from that too so in fact it's probably not practical either. Also, accepting donations would put some kind of "invisible stress" on the BotE-team since the donator could always come in later and say "hey I gave you money and this is just what you got developed in the meantime? I want my money back!" . Don't really wanna read this in the future I guess.

I was going to report missing text in alpha 5.1 but found alpha 6 released and decided to download and check it out. and found the missing text issue resolved.

Keep up the Great Work!

thanks skmcconnell