I stumbled across a project called Majesty of Omega, which is an open source project aimed at creating the original vision of Master of Orion III (MoO3). Note that the game as it was originally planned differs significantly from the sorry game that was eventually released. The game mechanics are a lot more complex than those of BotF2, but for people interested in this sort of game, it might be worth checking out.

I've already signed on as a contributing developer. I think it's a pretty cool project, and even though I'll be dividing my time between Majesty of Omega and Supremacy, I think it'll end up helping the BotF2 effort in the end. The good news is that the project uses the same technologies that I use in Supremacy, and the lead developer has shown some interest in my game as well, so he might contribute some code. We may also collaborate on a 3D tactical combat engine that can be used in both games (and others, since it's open source).

Anyway, if you liked the MoO series and you thought MoO3 had great potential before half the features were cut, you should check out the project.

Cool enough.

yep. Since botf is/was MoO 2.5 it naturally longs for a combined programming effort with someone from the MoO 3 side. I was a bit disappointed though from some of the FreeOrion guys who lately posted at their boards (I think on July 07, use google) concerning our botf2 games here that they (we) would probably use copyrighted stuff (which is quite right in terms of graphics and content..) or code and that nothing could be thought of worth sharing (am I the only one who thinks this approach seems a little ... how should i say ... neglecting maybe? ).

Is this the same or differant to the freeOrion project?

different and as it seems less far developed (version nr. 0.0.0.2) with three different screens already developed and implemented. Download the 18,6 MB source code to have a closer look what's already done.

Yeah, it's a very new project--it's only been in development for a couple months, and they always start out slow. I'm looking forward to working on it though--in some ways it will be almost like developing a simulation, as it adds much more detail to concepts like population, planet regions, etc.

as far as the 3D tactical combat development is concerned, on this year's Games Convention in Leipzig, Intel had introduced a plan for a game raytracing engine which will reduce the complexity to a logarithmic scale instead of the usual linear correlation concerning polygon numbers. Release date is 2009.

might be worth having an eye on it since it's gonna greatly reduce the amount of coding and produce extremely realistic lighting if and when released..

Yes...I completely understand that sentence...

*Polygraph explodes Homer Simpson style*

...

If you're working on a collaborative project that produces a powerful game engine that can be used by anyone, then i'm totally for you doing it, Mike. It may slow down development of Supremacy, but I totally agree with your reasoning and understand the long-term benefits this would bring - and the larger pool of programmers and programming knowledge would be a great boon to the project.

I wish you all the luck in the world with the project...just make sure Supremacy benefits the most from the project!