For some time theres been alot of topics opened up by alot of members most new and some old. This is now going to be the only topic which is allowed to post in regarding the following.

Release of demo info.
Release of full game info.
Questions and Answers wil be allowed if asked in a nice manner.

So the following rules must be followed.

1. Read everything here before posting or search the forums if you cant find it here, yes theres more than 1 page to these forums and I suggest you look through at least 5 for information.

2. Asking what has allready been asked will be deleted promptly.

3. Please ask nicely and no demanding of info. If its available it will be in this topic if not then really no point asking as we give info when its release to us.

4. No going off topic.

5. No spamming in any shape or form, this includes repeated requests of info from 1 member to just posting crap.

6. This will be moderated and breaking these rules will result in a warning and suspension then ban system. Such as, If you break the rules u get 2 warnings if repeat offender then you get a suspension if you continue to break the rules then a ban will be enforced.

Also please note any new topics than are posted in this forum that ask about demo or the full game in asking about release dates or updates will be deleted as this will be the only thread which will be needed and will be stickied.

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01st Feb 2007 Update.

1. Gavins game has gone vaporware until otherwise notified and it comes back with a regular presence of Gavin on the forums.

2. JigalyPuff is working on a Star Trek starship combat game similar to armada/bridgecommander combo. Jig has moved recently so progress was slowed for a time, but i think he has got himself sorted and back to work on his game. I have seen screenshots and im very pleased with the progress. It will be fab game when its done.

3. Nemitor is working on a Web based online game, it will be free to play and will require no downloading what so ever. It is just like going to a website but its a game. It will be persistant so weather your online or not, events will unfold and continue without you.

4. The main botf2 game has been taken over more or less by mike. He is making Supremacy and is one of the most completed botf 2 or trek fan made games on these forums. All of what gavin had in mind and more will be seen in Supremacy and already there are demos available to try and progress is updated on a regular basis. See sub forum for more info. Dafedz database tho reworked in some areas will be applied and all models that were to be used in Gavins botf2 will be moved to Supremacy if they can be sourced and new models will be made as and when completed.

5. Germany based devlopers have been given a forum here to let us know their progress of their botf2 game. I'ts called Birth of the Empires. It has a demo and i believe a new demo has just come out. It is primarily writen in german though but there is a translation team working on converting the german language to english and possibly others.

In the demo version will you be able to play a full game as the federation? Then the full version of the game the other races willl be added?

Thanks

Tacyfreak

that is correct. the initial realease will be only playable as the federation, and then the other major races will be added as 'official mods' later on. minor races will also be playable if the appropriate mods a created.

that is how i understand it.

Here is some info we know about the game, taken from the interview with Gavin on a Hailing Frequencies podcast that was on a while back:

The initial release, most likely a demo, will be around 350meg.

Patches will be realeased to bring the game up to the full version.

The playable races, will be Federation, Dominion, Klingon, Ferengi, Romulan and Cardassian.

Some minor races will be playable after a patch release some time after the initial release.

In the initial release on the Federation will be playable, the others will be made available throught update patches.

There will be around 220-230 races in the game.

The major races will have around 40 ships each.

The game will be MOD friendly, it was designed to be.

The game will be multiplayer, allowing for more than a 5 player game through playing as the minor races.

You will be able to save in multiplayer, as in BOTF.

There will be a lobby system for multiplayer similar to Star Trek Armada.

The AI is very smart, it takes into account all of your empires status, not just a few things. Gavin said that he has been kicked by the AI many a time, and he wrote it .

Diplomacy will be similar to BOTF, but you will also be able to 'talk' to the AI and interact with it to a certain extent.

Initially there will be a 2D combat system. Later the 3D combat system will be released via an update patch.

The map will consist of the Milky Way Galaxy, spilt into the 4 quadrants, with about 400 star systems per quadrant. The game can support up to 20,000 systems.

You will be able to enter fluidic space.

Races will be located in there native quadrant, and will appear where they should.

The Borg will not be playable, but will be able to expand and grow like a major. This also holds true for some minor races. This means that when you encounter a minor race they could be just as powerful as you are.

Over 150 random events have been thought up, and these will take place radomly, obviously. Things like supernovas, blackhole, various anomolies... etc.

There will be all new music and sound effects.

The ingame music had been written and recorded from scratch.

In the 2D battle version there will be automatic planet attacks, in the 3D version however you will take control in a Command and Conquer style battle.

The minimum requirments for the game are:



Windows98 or higher.

The .NET Framework.

A PIII 800 with 128meg RAM and a 4meg vid card should run the game fine.

That is mostly it from the podcast. I thought that this would be useful in this thread.

Do you know if it will be Multiplayer and Single player like in BOTF so you can build up your stuff in game then take on the people on the net?

and can you have bots or AI playing in MP with humans as major races and minnor?

I don't know about the multiplayer stuff, but I can post links for people who want more detailed info on the game.

Dafedz was kind enough to create these, and whilst they may not be 100% up-to-date due to inevitable changes during the game's programming, these lists are the best (And only) detailed lists that are currently available to my knowledge.

Empire Structures
http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/empire_structures.htm

Federation Structure Database
http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/object_database_feds.htm

Minor Races and Planet Types
http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/minor_race_breakdown.htm

Game Resources
http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/minor_race_breakdown2.htm

Treknologies
http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/tech_tree.htm

Starship Comparitive Stat Balancing
http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/comparative_stat_balancing_new.htm

So basically the demo is just the full game but with limited functions (i.e. only one playable race). I know this is what all demos are like but its just like the proper game just without the appropiate mods.

So does that mean say after the demo comes out you can add your own mods in straight away and play like the full game?

yer, BUT you will prob not have any of the data files to run it properly.

Some of the code would have to be released for you to make your own mod?

I don't think so TrekBoy.

From what I can tell, making a mod would be pretty much the same as with BOTF1 - you just change the files that are available to the game, ie. the models, the interfaces, the sounds effects, the ship stats, the minor races that are oin the game, the text, whatever. The game then does the whatever it is already pre-programmed to do with the new files.

If you want to make a truly massive mod that changes entire sections of the game, then you would need to have the code to be able to do that.

Gavin has said that he will NOT be releasing the code though, so the chance of mods like this ever appearing is minimal to say the least.

I never new there would come 4 cruiser type's....did you improve the list?

No discussion about the source code till a release is out first.

About mods. Im sure in time Gav will release the required info so mod teams can start preperations of mods for when the game comes out. Such as model file types i.e .obj and same for textures i.e .jpg or .tga. Same for other main areas that is important for modding but untill gav releases this info please do not ask as we dont know much about that, only gavin. Allthough I believe modding ships into botf2 will be like modding armada 1 with .sod i think but thats just me remembering somit gav miight have said once to me.

hey will the game be able to have 1 major race to play against or just minnor races cause i love building my stuff up and just love it so can someone tell me?

This is sorta like a XboX thing. Can you upload your own music into the game? So you can listen to your own music if you get board of the music you hear ingame. So you don't have to run a second progam that runs music (Windows Media Player).

From the screen shots I've seen so far it looks like you need a very high processor card. What would the estimated processor card be? Most people have slow processor cards (One of my dads three computers). Would there be a quality changer? So a slow processor computer can go through the game without slow performance (lag).

By what I understand this is still a turned based game. So I'm thinking the estimated turn length could be from 5minutes - 1-2 hours in multiplayer. Depends on how good the player is. Or is there a time limit per turn so it automatically goes to the next turn?

Well this is all I have for tonight. I could've typed more but my dad's looming over my back, and telling me goto bed. Dads. . . : P Good night all!

ram ill be flushed regularly to prevent slowdown and minimize cpu usage. you will be able to play your own music. it`ll run on a fairly standered cpu, i would`nt worry about that.

Hey there! Welcome to the site Grandman!

Whilst i'm not one of the developers of the game, I do know some info that you might find useful, based on what they have said here on the forums.

According to Jigalypuff, the game has a sort of built-in media player, so you WILL be able to play your own music in-game, without the need for an outside program.

The game will also come with it's own original Star Trek-themed music, thanks to Jon and anyone else who has made compositions but has so far remained nameless. An example of the Cardassian music can be found in the downloads section of the site. (Its the second download in the link below)

http://www.botfii.armadafleetcommand.com/index.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=1

As for the necessary processor speed/graphics power, the game will apparently need the same stats as the original game - if you can play BOTF1, you can play BOTF2!

I hope that helps. Let us know if you have any more questions.

Thanks mate!



Thanks a lot mate!

Ok. . . I thought of a new question. When random events happen will you be able to see them happen. Cuz that would be sweet to see a comet hit the planet, or watch a super nova explode, even seeing that ship decaying virus eating at the hull of the ship!

Also, will the chat room ingame be simular to the one of BotF? But it doesn't crash every time you talk on it. Cuz that got retarded when I was talking to my uncle ingame then the game froze on us. . . ;(

That's all I got for now!
-M1GrandMan

There are apparently gonna be movies in the game, but these will be for "major events".

I don't know what these events are, other than for when you colonise a system.

It's entirely possible that a movie will play of an Asteroid impacting a Planet, but I doubt it.

As for the chat room...I haven't got a clue what you're talking about. I've never played BOTF over the internet - i've never even clicked on the multiplayer button!

Read the rules of this topic next time before posting (on page 1).

Im going to clean the posts from this topic over the next week, in the meantime keep to the rules otherwise you will receive a warning.

To those that i have removed posts, consider this a warning to you for violating the rules. You know who you are, i expect this topic clean and just for info, meaning no chit chat.

I hope I'm posting in the right place for this question. I've heard the word multi-platform release a couple of times is going to happen to the demo and I'm having trouble finding more information about it on the forums. What exactly does it mean?

A multi-platform release is a release of the program onto one of more computer-running setups i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux etc.

As far as i've heard, the platforms that Gavin is currently making the game for are Windows and MAC.

I might be wrong, but those are the only systems i've heard about so far.

On the Windows side, it's primarily being developed to run on XP, although is *should* be backwards-compatible with older versions.

if the game will be compatible to mac and windows, then it will 99% be likely it will also be compatible to linux. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be.

how is the demo coming along?

I dont think it is coming along at all. The first release will be almost the full game now i think, why they said there was going to be a demo when infact theres not i dont know. Also the Intro movie or a teaser was going to be released but was held back.

I would prefer to just wait for the full lot anyway.

i guess it would just make sense to release the full lot.

Guys, what happened was that Gavin was gonna release the demo, but then his friends' mum or someone died, so he held back the release.

He then got swamped with work and moving house, and when he finally had enough free time to work on the game, he made several big changes to his plan of BOTF2, namely making it a multi-platform release.

Obviously having a multi-platform release is going to delay the game by quite a while, but it will make everyone's lives easier in the long run - AND it'll mean even more people will be able play it.

As far as I know, the demo is still coming out, but this will be patched up to the full release, rather than having one giant install file to download.

This will make life easier for those who have slow internet connections. It also means the game can be released slightly earlier, because the various game components (Main program, user interfaces, playable races, sound effects, 3D combat system, etc. etc.) can be released as soon as they are completed.

The part of the game that is taking the longest to program is the tactical combat system, which will most likely be the last part of the game to be released. Until then, the game will come with a simpler 2D system.

This is what I know about the current status of the game. I may be completely wrong about it beause I am not in the dev team, but if there were any major setbacks etc. i'm sure they would have announced it.

I haven't heard of anything though, so chances are the game is still on track.

thanks moe.