In light of recent events, such as the potential of the game being completed for the Dream On TV show. I think it would be a good idea for us to discuss in a private setting, ie. group pms, a closed forum, ect., what impact recent developments will have on the project on its completion.

I recomend that the game developers, prominant members of the forum that have had an influence on the game such as Winterhawk, Matress_of_Evil, KenethGF, and others, and myslef are the only onces that can enter the discusion unless someone is invited by the group as a whole.

Any such discussion is academic at best--since each game only has one developer, and free time to spend working on the games isn't really constant, I don't know what you would expect to get out of such a discussion. If you read the most viewed and most recent threads in the individual game forums, you'll know pretty much everything there is to know at the moment. Then again, maybe I'm missing the point. Regardless, if enough people show interest, I could make myself available.

The reason for the private forum would be for discussing various issues that may not be wise to talk about in the open such as legal issues about the game and various game elements that could be classified as spoilers in open topics.

hmm, fair enough. If the other big names around here want to go ahead with this, then you could start putting together an imformal agenda. That would give the developers a change to put together some notes on the various topics before the discussion.

I am trying to figure out the specifics of what we could discuss but first I need to finish catching up to the more intricate details of the games that are known at this point such as game interface elements, plot twists, any preprogramed personalities for the races that would give them biased views of other races, and just about every detail available. I normaly pick apart every game I get my hands on whether computer, console, or otherwise and pick them apart to determine what elements can make them better. The challenge I am facing in this instance is that I am attempting to do this with a game(s) that have not yet been completed I am struggling to learn all the needed information to begin the process.

im in.

If you all want to privately share details of the game such that it's a surprise feature or twist to the rest of us upon release, that's one thing.

Things like legal discussions, though, neither require nor gain from privacy. Sensitive things like that gain from a vast community of knowledge.

Not saying a private dev-only chat is bad, just carefully consider what goes in it and what stays public is all. Privacy for the sake of a good ol boys private club wouldn't be productive, and sense 'community' is all we've really got here, community is key.

.02c

Edit: correction, my 2 latinum bars.

Sometimes legal issues could prove to be sensitive and it wouldn't be good to let people that could misuse the information get their hands on them. There are other issues regarding the game that even now might not be a good to discuss in open forums.

On the gaming issues, I agree at least.

But on legal issues, I don't see it. Nothing we could talk about would be illegal until actions are actually committed. Keeping things in the open helps keep a critical eye on things, and the corporate world painfully understands that in the form of Sarbanes Oxley and other regs covering public disclosure. Keeping it behind closed doors would look suspicious and simultaneously keep a potential forum member that might know something more about it from being able to see anything about it due to its private nature. That said, the best place for such talk wouldn't be here in the General section, but in the more targeted audience of the respective game boards themselves probably.

I just think for appearance and for availability of information's sake, as far as the legalese goes, the "open source" model is best I guess.

Just saying, though. I'm patient waiting for releases myself, I'm just here for the X-Wars and F@H team (a team which you should join, you non-folder). If StarGamer ever gets around to adding me to staff (and they desperately need some staff), I'll be doing an occasional spotlight on strobel's project but I wouldn't need/want any kind of private forum access for that.

I'm interested. count me in.

Welcome aboard Winterhawk... Could this be another attempt at Romulan infiltration.... No I won't go there.



Its not that we would discus anything illegal, its just that the discussion of various legal issues concerning the project would be best kept private. It's not that uncommon for this to happen in business. It's just that there are some things that while are completely legal are best kept behind closed doors, especially when things like copyright laws and trademarks are taken into concern.

I'd prefer to spend as little time as possible on legal issues and focus more on a general state-of-affairs agenda. I've had a series of emergency plans established for some time now in case things get ugly from a legal perspective. I've just never formally written them up for public disclosure. Nevertheless, there's not really a lot do "discuss" there. That may be different for the other projects, but it would be wise for us to come to some kind of consensus, as what happens to one project will likely affect all of us. That, however, is best kept between the developers. Sir Pustekuchen has already PMed me to discuss legal issues, and he knows my stance. Basically, so long as nobody does anything stupid like go to Paramount and say "hey, check out this project of ours, is this cool with you?" then we should be fine. On a side note, if anyone does do something stupid like that, rest assured I'll be releasing my pet velociraptor on your ass.

I would rather not deal with legal issues myself but if things go down hill and we don't have a contingency plan than things could get ugly. I have some ideas of my own to deal with problems but the actions we would have to take while legal, could complicate things if it gets out into the open before it is needed.

For the moment I think we should just focus on the generic aspects of the game that could be addressed in the closed topic without revealing any spoilers. Since I still am catching up to what has been going on I regretfully have to step aside for the moment and let someone else get the ball rolling.

I have just one word for this - MASS PARANOIA! I am against all sorts of change...

BOTF2 project exists for couple of years, still today no sign of " Birds of Pray" (Paramoun and others)! 4 years I come here for my daily or weekly dose of game news and now this is going to be shut down! Why?

Because few people want to hide behind locked doors like bunch of Orion smugglers to discuss some legal stuff?!

I had dicussion on this topic with some members and my conclusion is this: any action toward Paramount will bring nothing but negative effects!

For sake of democracy in this community forums on any topic must be open!

MSrobel on trial? I see it like this:

Botf2 Forum: The trial never ended. We never reached a verdict. But now we have. You're guilty. MStrobel: Guilty of what? Botf2 Forum : For having only 46 000 lines of code!

Zeleni keep cool , that's exactly what will happen. We stay open here. btw. that paramount hasn't shut us down in the past 3 years means nothing since we haven't had a playable alpha out here for download so they probably never hit one of the various games that were/are offered and promoted here.

to stay out of contact forever to paramount is something that I would not say we should do for sure. When time comes, a quick call to good ol Harry Lang talking about gavin and old times may be interesting (but again, only my personal opinion).

if they don't want us, they'll probably come up on their own. It was just the game companies that made me feel unease because there was (with botf1) some sort of projected could-be money loss involved if they actually wanted to make a commercial botf2.

still, we are grey as jig said it, but just leave it with that. the devels and admins will surely find a solution for this and in the meantime we are pretty safe in here IMHO.

can't this be discussed in the staff room?

It might be me, but isn't the "staff forum" there to do just that? To discuss things about the game with the devs apart from the public. I fail to see the point of creating another private forum just because FoxURA isn't one of them.

I realy can't think of anything that has to be discussed in private, realy. None of the issues mentioned above require any private conversation whatsoever. Disregarding the fact that most of the issues are things no one is worrying about at this point in the development.

Conclusion: should there be some things that for some reason realy need private conversation, the staff is more than able to do so in the staff forum. 99% of the subjects can be perfectly discussed in the public forums.

k, you were faster centurion

really, we should close this topic now, there's nothing more to debate here. If anyone got any additional news or is a lawyer or whatever then pm the corresponding guys/admins here, period.

I would be glad to talk.

FYI: Dream On, America by ABC and Star Trek Paramount has heard nothing about BOTF II from me. I do not plan to talk to them about it in the future. If anyone hears from them it will not be from anything I said outside of this forum. Images models were used intentionally without reference to the game. There is nothing more I can think to say unless you want me to say it again.

I concur with Centurio Vardin, place of this topic is within Staff Room!

what else do you wanna talk about?

3 ways:

1. we stay in private here and have too low impact for anyone from the commercial world to care about us.

2. we have certain impact and the game is good/completed then they may call in here.

3. either they have plans for their own botf2 and give the explicit game producing license to another company while kicking our ass legally or

3.1. they find our game interesting enough to either let it be free to download (serves the overall star trek label popularity!), but then officially or even get us into some sort of business ourselves because they wanna see money come out of it (I mean they don't care who makes the game, if only it has some quality and gets maintained properly. real game companies often fail at this too especially when we talk about st games...).
If the latter case really comes true someday there'll be a lot more to talk about in here. Right now, we all think this is nuts and I personally want our games to be free for all, but legal safety is something priceless (hopefully ) and if being put before a choice whether to stop and remove content or do a business deal I don't know what I'd do, but again I will never get to answer this question since I am no developer here lol

My contact so far has been with a company that does casting work for ABC. Here is the page

http://www.kasstinginc.com/

Contestants were to take 'now casting' and 'Dream On, America.' Back when they were still taking applications for the Star Trek episode you would need to put "Star Trek (k)" in the note section of the application.

I have not spoken with ABC or Paramount directly.

My other contact was with a charitable foundation with no affiliation to Paramount.

If you wish to contact Paramount about license issue and BOTF II I would be willing to help but have not been involved with them up to this point. My only potential involvement with Paramount would be if I am accepted to the cast of the Star Trek episode of ABC's show and then I win the competition. Even then my proposal to ABC that involves Paramount would not mention this game project to protect the project. That is unless you deem it appropriate to have contacted in that setting and at that time

thx for the offer but (I'm repeating myself in here ) I don't think they'd be interested right now in botf2. I mean game looks nice but no 3D combat and still so much to program / design. Still, if there'd be a chance to anonymously get some internal information from some guys workin there, well that'd be fine but I don't think we need/get this atm. Wait&see, this is all not that time-critical in here IMO

I'm much more interested in seeing how your application worked out

You guys pretty much already explained it.

There's nothing wrong in discussing legal issues publically. If Paramount stumbles across this forum (if they haven't already, I'd be willing to bet that they have some employees searching the net for things like this), then talking about the legality of the project does not make it any more or less legal.

The fact that we have 1 thread or 1,000,000 threads discussing the legalities of our project will not even remotely weigh into the minds of Paramount officials. They really don't care if we've discussed it or not. They only care about their copyrights and trademarks and ensuring that they are protected. This means the programs themselves.

Since the developers are atm not really intrested in this, i will close this topic. If developers want to continue talks here, then please pm me and i will unlock it.

in response to what has bee nsaid here.
harry lang no longer works for paramount
gavin was never in contact with him
foxura as you are not devolping any of the games i am curios as to why you feel you should be involved in such a discussion? there will be no forum set up for such a discussion, staff members may if they wish talk about this in the staff room, however only moderators would be able to see it. any and all legal talk may be discussed in the general chat forum, there`s nothing wrong with that at all.