Hey all. I had an idea today. Not sure if anyone will jump on board, but I'll throw it out there anyway.

While playing a BOTF Multi last night with my old friend Alfas, and having it crash quite a few times before we actually got anywhere, I was thinking that it would be cool to just remake BOTF. Not anything like BOTF II, either (though I thoroughly support that project!), but just remake the game engine of BOTF I and not really change anything. We know most of the bugs that make BOTF annoying to play, offline or online, but we can't fix them cause we can't get into the source code. So I was wondering how hard it would be to get a couple of programmers together to build a replica of the original game, and not change anything gameplay-wise or stat-wise (except for Tactical combat, possibly), so that the game can run more stable and so the source can be accessible for bug-fixes and stuff. We all know that BOTF is a damn fun game to play, that's why we're here anyway. So why not rebuild BOTF and keep the gameplay we know and love, just fix the glitches along the way? Anyone feel the same way?

this would be better posted here: http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php?name=Forums
and i believe this idea was already brought up once.

i'm sure when botf 2 is finished we could make a botf 1 mod for it, just for nostaligic reasons. but i think botf 2 will be better anyway

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any developers that would be willing to follow through on such a project. I doubt many would be inclined to put the necessary time and effort into copying something that's already been done. It's one thing when you're developing a sequel like BOTF2, as you have creative liberties to make changes and add new features. But replicating the original game would just be too limiting... after all, things have changed quite a bit since, what, 1999? Now, if you were to modernize the game, that'd be different--you could keep the same basic features but improve the UI and 3D graphics, use XML datafiles instead of proprietary binaries, etc. At that point, though, you've put so much work into it that it seems silly not to add more features and improve the game. So, I think you'd ultimately end up doing the same thing as BOTF2...