I have been playing BOTF1 for a long time now off and on. I have a question or two tho.

1. The game seems to have a massive memory leak somewhere that no patch or mod ever addressed. Up around turn 125+ the game starts to take forever to process a turn and the mouse starts chopping on the map. Is there any way to correct this?

2. The game is one of my favorites. As a strat game goes its simply a blast. But I'm greedy and want more from it. I've looked at some mods and none really do stuff that I think i want. Can anyone point me in the direction of some tutorials or something on how to mod the game myself? I have some programming knowledge and can probably pull it off if I get some of the basics laid out for me.

3. What is the extent that mods can accomplish? Like is it only changing some existing stuff or can new things be added... like a 6th playable race instead of 5 etc? can the size of the map be played with or game menus redone?

4. The patch that was released was supposed to also upgrade the ship models etc. I'm running XP and when I install the patch I don't actaulyl see any difference. I've tried various forms of the patch and still no luck. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance..

hi there!
go here http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php
if u r looking for mods and how to create your own mod

Unfortunately, there's not very much that mods can accomplish. The most you can hope for is different minor races, new ships, and new buildings. The good news is someone recently discovered how to add new ships with phasers, whereas in the past new ships could only have torpedoes.

As for the memory leak, you are quite right. Sadly, there is no way to fix it.

Awsome! Thanks, I'll take a peek!
My wife just had our first baby 3 days ago, so I am off of work for a month on paternity. heh heh I might have some time between feedings to play around =)



That sucks. The memory leak thing is my biggest complaint. It just gets so bogged down in the later parts of the game its almost unplayable.

I wonder who actually owns the rights to BOTF1 now that the producing company has gone the way of the dodo. I wonder if whoever that is could be persuaded to somehow release the actual game code. I mean, ID released doom and quake code and BOTF1 was way before them... i i think.
I might have to make some inquiries

PS- I see yuor name is mstrobel... your first name wouldn't be Mark would it? I used to know someone by that name a while back. Originally from Philly area? Longshot but hey stranger things have happened heh heh

Microprose was bought by Hasbro Interactive, which later became the property of Infogrames, which was eventually bought by Atari. So the rights are owned by Atari, though whether or not any of the original code and resources still exists is the subject of debate. id Software is one of only a few companies to release the source code to their games, with Volition Inc. being the only other one that comes to mind (creators of the FreeSpace games). I wish more companies would release the code to their games once they are out of production, but it continues to be a rare occurance. I had e-mailed the creators of Galactic Civilizations and asked if they would release the code to GalCiv now that GalCiv 2 is out, but I never got a response. I think it is highly unlikely that the BOTF source code would be released, even if it still exists. To be honest, I'm not sure that it would even be worth using. If someone handed me a CD containing the source to BOTF1, I would probably poke around out of curiousity, but I would continue to develop my BOTF2 game from scratch.

My name is Mike Strobel, and I do not believe I am directly related to anyone named Mark. I did have some relatives in Philadelphia, but they were on my mother's side of the family.