I see that mstrobel is back which is awesome So I was wondering where the game stands as of now?I looked around and cant find much except on botf2 under supremacy then tasks it says programming 20%.That looks like it hasnt been updated since 2007 so I was wondering if we could get a rough estimate of how far along this awesome game is?

Mike has been here all the time. Those numbers on sharepoint or Supremacy web page are outdated. Lots of things are going on at this moment but you can't see them cause large parts of forum are locked for public view. Mike is now occupied with coding new bonus and diplomacy system and rest of supremacy crew are preparing graphic art for march or april update ( waiting for new .net platform).

Locked part is for the crew making the game?

Yes, It can be viewable only by crew and forum admins.

evil admins but at least there i read a date for a new update but this is even before my birthday ... hmm okay then it´s a birthday present only a little bit earlier.

Well that's good. Happy Advance Birthday!

Hmm your birthday is a week after mine, admiral. And you're a year older than me. There's no set date for a release though. I know May puts it at one year after the last update, but Mike works to his own schedule. He doesn't release the game until *he* thinks it is ready. And with the time constraints of his job, he lost about three months worth of development time earlier this year. Plus he's in the middle of adding some new features and a whole ton of programming updates, and the fact that the next update will require .Net 4.0 - which hasn't been released yet - means it may potentially be longer away than our birthdays.

don´t say that moe even the evil must sometimes see the good things!!!! Keep fingers crossed that mike gets 4 months of payed vacation.

I AM thinking positive. Longer development time means it's had more work put into it - and therefore more new features and updates.

I still wish we could lock down the features that go into BOTF II version 1.0 so that we can get a playable program done and then go on to other ideas and enhancements.

CB

I agree, the current announced and unannounced features should be sufficient for full version, but if not for full version then for beta vesion at least.

I forget who posted it, but someone with experience with the German BOE game left a post advising us to watch for "feature creep" that prevents the project from ever getting done. If Mike and other programmers have to repeatedly go back and redo things they have already done a finished program may never exist. This would displease the Captain mightily.

I was just thinkin they should make the game playable with a reasonable amount of features and release it.Then continue to update it with all the "extras".I mean they sorta are but it seems he is trying to put everything in at once which might make more sense.Mstrobel said he doesnt want to have to rewrite stuff over and over to add things and I dont blame him there.I dont know much about code but its to bad you cant make the game extremely easy to mad and update with new content.Maybe he could get the modders to do some of the work then.

It of course would be unfair for me or anyone else to dictate what features are put into the game. I am so glad for some of the improvements already in it. I love the fact that ships / task forces can plot a nonlinear course. I love the bigger size of the universe and the scaling to the monitor that is done. I love the fact that it is higher definition / better graphics. I believe Mike has now programmed a better user interface for redeploying ships (not in the download yet). It was unbelievably confusing before (had to re-familiarize myself every time I played). He has done a better interface for building ships and structures (they are separate - yeah baby) (more structures can be put in cue - this has plusses and minuses but is at least an option). These little things removed MAJOR annoyances to the old game.

There has to be some point at which we alter it so much that it does not seem like Birth of the Federation anymore. One of the things I liked to do with BOTF was a timed multiplayer game. As the game progressed it got harder and harder to get everything done before the timer ran out and a turn was played. This kept you on your toes and made you prioritize your efforts. The timing was necessary because some people (and believe me I could be one of them) could take so long arranging things for the next turn that it got boring. I can imaging a scenario where there are so many new features to the game that one cannot complete getting ready for a turn in a reasonable time limit. Everyone may also recall the wait while someone else was in a battle. This of course occurred in timed and non-timed games. It wasn't fun waiting for the battle's completion. Now imagine the battle being filled with so many controllable features they end up going for 10 minutes while everyone else waits. And of course you can't leave, because what if it comes back on again and you're in the kitchen making a sandwich (need an option for a loud sound cue on this one).

Captain Bashir

In such combat situations, I think players should be shown the battle as it takes place. I don't know how complicated it would be to do that, but if it can be done, at least the other players get a bit of eye candy whilst they wait.

Hmmm.... the ability for a player to become a spectator to a match concerning only the fleets of the players involved in the fight? Unless you've developed long-range scanning abilities, this might make for an unfair system. Yes, it is annoying to wait and stare at some random screen while other players fight it out, but it would make sense to keep the information of the battle strictly between the participants. After all, I don't think the Federation ever went to the Romulans and said "Hey? Are you fighting someone today? Can we watch?" I do understand the need to NOT stare at a screen, really bored. But, consider it time for planning strategy. That's about all I can think of for now.

Observing battles is out of the question since it leaks intelligence information about the size and disposition of certain forces. I was thinking about adding a Tetris game or something to play while waiting for combat .

Maybe we could have a little "Supremacy TV" screen running Star Trek comedy sketches (animations similar to Adobe Flash).

Whether you were serious or kidding, that was a great answer Mike.

Actually there is an intermediate possibility here. Watching a battle IS an option if you have a ship or planetary system within scanning range of the sector. If not, bring on Trektris (spelling wrong on purpose) or Trek TV. Seriously, I can do motion / sound cartooning.

CB

Oh I most definitely agree. Trektris could be interesting. How many Romulan ships can you pile up before they hit the quantum singularity at the top of the screen and explode? Yes, having that would most definitely be worth the wait for the battles. Hmmmm.... could be interesting, can't wait to see what happens.

Hmm...interesting idea. Here's a concept that I whipped up in paint. Schematics are from shipschematics.net.

Very cool Matress

Yeah, I was serious about both.

This still presents you with information about other human players' battle tactics before you ever go up against them in battle. Doing battle observation without side effects would result in pretty inconsistent behavior, and I prefer to avoid that sort of thing.

Cool. If we came up with a lot of them, we could run them during combat without getting too repetitive.

But in a "real" (listen to me talking about scanning as if it was real) universe, that's what would happen. No matter though, I was the one who wrote about not changing the game too much and am happy to leave things the way they are.

I apparently need coaching on how to do the quote thing. It took me three tries and I still don't have it right.

CB

Along with the other voice clips on SharePoint we did record and save some "while you wait" funny clips. You would only want to use them once though. It would get old fast.

Yeah, I was thinking perhaps we could use those as voiceovers for cartoon sketches. And then do a lot more of them.

This could be fun. Captain

*sits and twiddles thumbs while working on random event descriptions, waiting for some kind of update news while reminiscing about the days with Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, and many other older Trek games, not caring that he has just spent 5 minutes posting an irrelevant post*