Interview with the creator of Birth of Empires on 17 November 2006. (thanks to mstrobel for his kindness to retranslate the complete interview into readable english )

The ST-GALAXY NETWORK recently had the opportunity to speak with Sir Pustekuchen, the project lead for Birth of the Empires. Birth of the Empires is a community-driven project aimed at continuing the legacy of Star Trek: Birth of the Federation creating and using a new self-written game content and intellectual property.

ST-Galaxy Network: Hello, Sir Pustekuchen! Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. When did you first start developing the Birth of the Empires project?

Sir Pustekuchen: Hello, and thank you for having me on this interview. I first began developing Birth of the Empires in January 2004. The project website (http://www.birth-of-the-empires.de) was launched later in January 2006.

STG: You've said that Birth of the Empires was originally intended to be a successor to the game Star Trek: Birth of the Federation. What features are planned, and what has been developed so far?

Sir Pustekuchen: Listing all of the innovations and changes would take us beyond the scope of this interview. However, I can say that there will be a significant number of new innovations, though the gameplay model established by BotF is not changed that much. Some of the more significant innovations include harvesting and consumption of resources; special research projects; in-game ship design; an improved diplomacy system; a galactic senate similar to the one in Master of Orion 3; a larger galaxy map; new planet types; many new minor races; a galactic news service; a completely new commerce system; and much more. The core features of BotF will be recognisable in this game too, though most features will be extended to include new functionality. At this time, many new features have been added to make gameplay more exciting and unpredictable. Lastly, the game is designed to be very mod-friendly. Unlike the original BotF, the BotE project allows modders to easily add new ships, buildings, and minor races to the game.

STG: Are any new races planned? Will any existing races be replaced?

Sir Pustekuchen: Yes, the Omega Alliance will be added as a sixth playable race. Many new buildings and ships will emerge as well. The number of minor races is almost limitless, with over 120 minor races already included in the Alpha version.

STG: What kind of support do you receive from the community on your website? Are there still positions on your team that need to be filled?

Sir Pustekuchen: First, I would like thank all of the visitors who contributed ideas on our forums. Additional thanks goes out to everyone who assisted me with the game content. We have received significant public support in many areas. Unfortunately, however, we are still in need of graphic artists. Our greatest setback so far has been a lack of original artwork.

STG: You have already released one public Alpha. What kind of feedback have you received from the community regarding this release?

Sir Pustekuchen: I am pleased to say that the Alpha release has succeeded beyond my highest expectations. The Alpha has been downloaded over 1,000 times, and I would like to thank all of the testers who took the time to file bug reports.

STG: How will you proceed from here, and when will the fans be able to play the final version of BotE?

Sir Pustekuchen: I cannot reveal any more information about the Final release at this time. It is still a long ways away, and because we have a small team, it is difficult to estimate the amount of work left. However, the next step will be the release of a second Alpha version. In the second Alpha, the Rotharians will be added as a playable race. Multiplayer support will also be included, allowing for LAN and Internet matches.

STG: How does the future look for BotE? Windows Vista will soon be released to the public. Will BotE be compatible with Vista?

Sir Pustekuchen: BotE is fully compatible with Windows Vista. BotE will also be playable under Linux using WINE. At the moment, there is still one incompatibility issue with WINE, though I hope to have that resolved soon.

STG: Thank you very much for your time.

Very cool, I'm looking forward to seeing how you implement the MoO3-style Senate. Keep up the good work!

I agree, better translated than mine on the main BOTF site

I've been wanting to do this ever since I saw this reply...

James, is that you!? Can I borrow your Beamer?

BITE ME!!!!!

Ouch, someone needs a hug

I thought it was funny :/

No harm intended, though.

actually I'm missing here somethin..could you light me up with that joke? I didn't get the wordplay if it was one

His username is Bond, so I alluded to James Bond (Mr. 007 himself) and asked if I could borrow his car (which is usually a BWM in the movies with all sorts of nifty gadgets).

I thought it was harmless, especially considering that the Bond movies are usually quite excellent. :/

BMW=Beamer? lol there we go

didn't know our bavarian engine factory (that's what BMW stands for if you translate it) had that nickname out there.

'course, the James (Bond) thing did I get.

remains the bite me part, but I'll leave it with that I guess

Yep, BMW's are often referred to as "Beamers" in the States. No idea why.

yup, the game's second alpha is out now, downloads are provided here, go get it (three links actually, one for the game data and one for the .exe, a third is needed for the english translated files (data.zip))
descriptions, credits, info & stuff is also there. Take a look at the readme, you need to copy the game into the fixed folder c:\botf2\. (extract the archive botf2.zip to plain c:\ cause the botf2 subfolder is already contained in the zip and c:\botf2\botf2\ won't work cause we'll fix the location with an installer when all the other major work's done)

big thanks to mstrobel&jigalypuff for hosting it!

what operating systems will bote run on?

thx to Joker, the win2k problem with the w2_32.dll is as good as fixed (still needs the final testing, but odds are like 99.9% on the bet )

so it will run on win2k, xp, vista and linux using WINE (that one not yet but soon). the wine issue as i said is the next to fix for us. btw. this saturday the patch will come out for this and it will also contain all microsoft vc2005 redistributable dlls needed for bote to run so you don't have to download and install it anymore.

win98 won't be able to run bote (we set the WinVER variable to 0x0500 to fix the win2k issue with the nt5.0 bug, so it definitely won't run on anything earlier than win2k anymore. the alpha1 did run on an inofficial-service-pack-modded win98, but it was so unstable due to dll mishandling of the OS that we decided to scrap support for it like Microsoft already has )

thanks Malvoisin

though I'm spoiling the fun a bit for Sir P. but I go in advance and tell ya all the 0.45c is out for download on our forum. Files are available under downloads.

Important changes/bugfixes:

- The sound-bug's fixed meaning RAM won't be filling up again and slowing down the game.
- An improved mp-mode. Hosting an internet-server should now be possible for everyone (was router-dependant before).
- There's a new stbof.ini-like file in the main folder of BotE. You change some settings there.
- Trade routes now improve the relationships to minor races as long as they are kept up alive.
- If no planet's chosen during colonization, the population auto-distributes now uniformly on each planet terraformed.
- The VC++ 2005 Redistributable from microsoft is no longer needed.
- BotE should run now with Windows 2000.
- BotE should run now with Windows Vista.
- BotE should run now with Linux using WINE. Still there aren't any graphics shown and loaded, however with the Romulans one can play it a little better because the button background text color is dark green there and not black = invisible.

well the 0.01% chance did strike in here unfortunately, i.e. though the game now starts under win2k, there's still an unknown prob which makes it impossible to successfully select an empire, i.e. the game cannot be started. Currently we are trying to solve this as well. Wish us good luck

bad luck on the 0.01% and Good Luck for fixing it!

cool i heard a new version will be released arround the 10 october,any idea whats gonna be in that there wasnt in the last version could you give us a few hint?

A lot of new features and many improvements. The main things are:

- Heyoun as playable race
- complete intelligence system
- better AI
- playable with Wine in Linux
- many new sounds
- ...

Wait till october the 10th and wait for the suprise But first we only release a german version. One ore two weeks later we will release the english version, because we want to fix new bugs first and we have to translate all the new parts.

thanks for the info just wish i would speak german

I hope, if it is anything I supplied, it sound OK. If not we can use it to encourage more contributions.

You will hear your own voice, too

Hi ALL

What is this talk of bote being (well the star trek part's any way) being side lined
if any one can leave a post in this topic so there is a place in the main BOTE forum
for as minor's that have not been about long

Like
(1)what has happen to change what was being done (in plain english plz )
(2)why have it been stoped for now and will the star trek part get going again
(3)what are sir.P and co (great team) plan's
(4)and any info on this that i miss out that we should know

Thank's

well first, a content change is happening right now. we're replacing graphics and text with (hopefully) equally nice pictures and storylines in order to be finally free from the Star Trek copyright problem. We simply have to obey the fact that there's a company out there that produces st-contented commercial games and pays money for it to Paramount/CBS and we don't (of course we don't, cause we take no money from the players in the first place). However releasing such a game like ours with st-content is a direct copyright infringement and a pretty bad one considering the difference between US copyright and European droit d'auteur. If we were a US citizen like Mike is, we wouldn't have that many problems since infringing copyrights are automatically transferred to the copyright holder so nothing bad can happen to them hence they allow US fan films and series like Star Trek New Voyages or Phase II.

So in the meantime, as long as certain companies like Bethesda are making money with 4X TBS trek games and we got no written permission to offer star trek content, we continue solely with our new content. Should it then become someday a 100% legal to offer the ST-mod for bote again, we'll just do that and offer it "side-by-side" with our new content which won't vanish then of course.

I hope I did explain it in easy english .

2) The star trek part is already quite far developed due to everyone here workin hard for it on Supremacy. there where still some things are missing (3d models, buildings graphics), the corresponding artists here on-board will work as usual on it. No change there AFAIK.
3) see 1)
4) if anyone wants to take over the full responsibility for serving the st-mod after having asked for permission at the copyright holders, then there wouldn't be any problem with us.

hope it's not too much paranoia for you but in the end, it makes our programming and working life for the devs much more relaxing and easier so in the end, the game even benefits from the change..

Hopefully?

I'd say so now (look at the new pics in the other thread ).

I didn't know it back then when I wrote that reply above that we really would find such nice pics in the end. It's not easy to get equally as good to a well-crafted universe like the ST-one in terms of race, ship and building pictures..

True. But I was joking about the text portion as in the story.



Say. Just what did you mean about that anyhow?

You wouldn't be implying that you don't like my story... Wou... Would... Would you?

I should say yes just for the fun of it

no, it's perfectly fine. I like the major descriptions so far and I'm sure, you can develop a good story around the baseline you draw recently .

baseline?