Hey there guys,

I stumbled across this amazing project a long time ago, played the (pre)alpha and thought to myself... Damn that's gonna be good!
So nearly 2 years later I stop by to check on progress... oh dear, disappointed was my first thought, has it been abandonded was my second thought.

But reading through the forum, it seems like an ongoing project, so my first question to the community is: What's going on?

If i may be so prudent, my next questions would have to be: Is it time to raise the profile of this project, get more members working on the game and possibly even set up a paypal donations fund?

I, just like many others, would make a donation to the cause if it would speed things up a touch

Anyways, please please keep up the good work on this title, would be a real shame for it to sit around in pre-alpha...

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few ;P
Live long and prosper

Great name smugmushroom. A lot of drawing has gone on. The images are scattered all over the forums. Mike the programmer was making a big push to finish a playable multiplayer game this summer. What I mean is it would be a game without artificial intelligence for the major races and they would have to be manned by a human player. I am not clear how much intelligence he was going to program into the minor races if any. There is a new guy HappyTrek that is just now pouring out a lot of music for different parts of the game. We tested a program called Teamspeak so that game players could talk to one another while playing multiplayer. 3 new research areas have been added, Sociology, Planetary Science and Economy. I wrote a first draft manual (that is no doubt out of date given the new work that Mike has done) that can be viewed on the sharepoint site
http://www.botf2.com/default.aspx under "Shared Documents/Manual." There is also a French Version done by Starfleet Command. You can see the new research tech images (done by yours truly) under "Shared Documents/In game PNG images/techologies. The music is there too if you look for it.

Kenneth_of_Borg has led the charge in doing images for espionage and you can find those in the forums (jobs and positions/Diplomatic and espionage Windows). He has done some amazing images himself, but there are awesome contributions by a bunch of great people. There has lately been some talk about making any of the minor races potentially major race playable. That actually may already be implemented. Zeleni has finished a lot of new images for the major races. New ship models are done thanks to Zeleni and Vjeko1701 (who has also done a lot of work with minor races, planet textures and tons of other things). There's a lot whew! It's better to stick around, stay caught up, post and help out, so Welcome aboard! Oh and also check out the new "skill specific" rank pips. You advance in rank based on number of posts (primarily) and sometimes on merit.

Bashir

Oh and I almost forgot, Matress has a new computer!!!

Hmmmm. Smugmushroom? That is indeed a very interesting name. Abandoned? Oh good heavens no. So much work goes on constantly... you just have to read the forums. Constant activity. Anywho, welcome the forums, and thank you for all of the questions. 8 of 9, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 001.

Hey smugmushroom, welcome to the forums!

...Or at least, welcome to posting on the forums!

The guys above have already given an overview of what's been happening, so I won't repeat what was said above. I can however say the reasons behind the apparent slow progress of the game.

First things first: we're not a company. We don't have an infinite level of resources, we don't have employees, and we only have one programmer. We're a fan-based project, and we exist based purely on the contributions of fans that donate their time to lovingly create this game.

Second, we can't make money or even accept donations even if we wanted to, so please don't try. It would in fact be illegal for us to do so; we do not hold the licence to create Star Trek games, and we have never professed to have held it. Profiting from the game would be a breach of copyright and Paramount, CBS, Cryptic and everyone else that actually holds a licence would try to shut us down in a nanosecond if we tried to. The only reason we exist is because traditionally, fan-based games have been given some legal slack, but that could easily change in the future so we're doing what we can to minimise any potential risk by avoiding anything legally dubious where possible. So the only way we can reward contributors is by ensuring they are credited with their contributions. And this in itself can deter some people from contributing, afterall, you rarely get something for nothing.

Thirdly, just like all game development, we've had out share of setbacks. We've been honest about these setbacks on the forums, such as having to redevelop the combat system from scratch because CdrWolfe's combat system was based on the Irrlicht engine - which is only compatible with Windows XP.

And finally, I don't actually think we are taking a long time to produce the game. Even when a game is created by a company as large and powerful as Electronic Arts or Activision-Blizzard, it still takes months and years for games to be developed, tested, and released. And even then the games almost always get patches and updates after release. So even with all the resources and manpower they have, developing games is a time-consuming process. I actually think Supremacy is under development at a breakneck pace, although I do also have access to a lot of unreleased material, so I know what is going on behind the scenes.

As Bashir said, there really is a lot of work going on for the game, and I can only ask you for patience. We're doing the best we can, but we also want to make sure the game is at a level that it deserves to be before we release anything. We all know the problems that BOTF had, and these problems exist purely because it was rushed. You don't want to play a crap game, and we don't want to make a crap game. Just have some patience, give us the time we need, and you'll be able to put your hands on a far superior product. The next update will be out as soon as possible, we promise.

I have it on good authority that Matress wrote that in 8 seconds on his new fast computer. Bashir

Ya sorry about that

Still looks like the game is progressing really well, lots of cool features.

Regards Wolfe

It's not your fault mate. Considering it part of the learning curve.

Now start planning Wolfe's Combat System 2.0!

Yes Wolfe, your efforts are missed. We honor what you have done. Bashir

why, did something significant happen behind the scenes

Wolfe was making the combat system for the game. There are demo videos on Youtube Here. There are more if you click on the right.

The engine that the combat system was based on was called Irrlicht. Unfortunately, Irrlicht was only compatible with Windows XP, meaning it was useless for players that use Windows Vista and now, Windows 7. Plus it will probably only be a year or three until Windows 8 is out. The Irrlicht developers had no plans to upgrade it for the new operating systems either.

This means we have had to scrap the combat system and start from scratch. No work has actually been done on a new combat system to my knowledge though, so currently do not have a combat system of any kind.

This setback does not have any effect on the ship, station, and alien models that we have though. The models can be used in any engine that supports their current filetype, and the models can always be converted to other filetypes if necessary.

Typical, I don't come here in months and I come back and matress is still being evil dropping hints at what he's got which we don't have

Unreleased material doesn't just mean development builds Denzil. It refers to features or programs that get started but are never finished (Such as Iwulff's database, which a few people may still remember was once discussed on the forums in Gavin's time), or it refers to pending updates to Dafedz's database (Which actually has receved a large number of publically-viewable updates in the last week or so), as well as concept artwork that will later be developed into full artwork for the game (But we may release the concepts at a later stage as many "real" games have done, such as Star Trek Armada).

But yes, it does also refer to some development builds too. Without going in to too much detail, the builds include some new game screens, a boatload of new structure images, and a couple of new features. But they also have some new problems, which is why they haven't been released. The current niggle we have is the development builds are struggling with compatibility issues for Windows XP and Vista, but we're working on resolving the problem.

...Oh...I err...did it again, didn't I?

You most certainly did. Tsk tsk taunting others like that. BTW, I need a copy of the random events file. It totally got totally erased when I totally reformatted my hard drive. Sorry I just went on a "totally" binge. It won't happen again. Must've been a.... minor glitch.... in the collective. Anyways, back to doing whatever it was I was doing.

I just posted about that in the Development for for you, Andrew. The randoms have been up on Sharepoint for months. I haven't updated them since March either.

Just right-click on my link above and 'save as' to save yourself a copy. The link is a direct link to the file.

Fair enough - I knew about that database, although I'd forgotten about it as I hadn't been on it since I was last active. I look forward to things being made public as and when they happen.

Between the BotE translation stuff I've been doing bits and pieces on, CoD, and being unemployed I've got plenty to keep me busy and so I can get excited when I see new things to play with!

Hello guys,

my friends and I were glad to read, that Supremacy is still getting forward. We tested it and we love this game since the first moment for its great atmosphere, fantastic music, fantastic ideas ...
So guys just keep on firing

It would be nice, if some could give a short summary every few months. For all, who are not so active in forum

The problem with short summaries is they're usually written by me. And then they become not-so-short epic summaries.

But more to the point, we also want to keep the updates somewhat of a surprise. We don't want people to know what's coming before they've even had it, or some of the excitement will be lost.

So to keep the air of mystery...

• The game has some new screens.
  - Try to guess what they are...

• The game has some new features.
  - Try to guess what they are......

• We're working on implementing even more new screens and features.
  - Try to guess what they are......

• The game has new minor races, structures, and bonuses.
  - Try to guess who/what these are...

• The game has FANTASTIC new images for 90% of the existing structures, as well as many new images for structures that previously didn't have any. A few structures still have BOTF images, or have no image at all, but we're working on these.
  - Try to imagine what the game looks like now...

• The game has several new, unique textures for important minor race homeworlds. We've also got new textures to make randomly-generated planets more variable.
  - More variability means more realism...

• Several bugs have been squashed. The game also has improved error reports to make it easier to trace problems.
  - Hopefully you won't actually need to notice these features...

I hope that will be enough to whet your appetite for the time being.

Hi Matress,

I have also followed this for a while now, about a year I think. I dont need my appetite whetting any further. I understand the game is a work of passion for all involved and will take as long as it takes and would like to say what a fantastic job all of you have done so far.

Even though it doesnt offer a challenge i still play the game every now and then with the hope that an update has been released but as yet no further improvements I know it will be worth the wait though.

Hey Ensign Egan, welcome to posting on the forums!

I really can assure you that we are working on the game. I know our past form hasn't been very reliable (The August release never materialised), and it's been a long time since the last update (17 months and counting), but we've now decided on a new date for the next release. I'm however not going to publicly announce this date because things may still slip, and that would make us sound even less reliable. I simply can't make any promises that things won't slip due to the informal fan-based nature of what we're doing. That said though, *if* we meet the deadline we're setting ourselves, the next update will be very soon.

Due to the size of the update, and the nature of it, we will probably release the update as a full, stand-alone download, rather than via the auto-updater that already exists in the game. This will also help to avoid some potential problems. As with many other things, this isn't definite, but it will likely be the route we will encourage players to follow in future.

At the moment, we're discussing a major expansion of a new game feature which we think players will love, but this feature will be unlikely to make it into the upcoming update.

We've also formalised the way we do some of the work, and .Iceman has now taken over work on maintaining the database files for eventual distribution to the public.

A lot of stuff is going on behind the scenes and I really wish I could talk more freely about what is happening, but we're keeping it all under wraps for a reason. The update will be released when it is ready. We're determined to release something that has quality, rather than something that is rushed and untested like BOTF unfortunately was. The wait will be worth it.

Welcome Ensign Egan

Thank you for the welocomes,

I know that as a fan based project you are driven by different objectives than a commercial project and this is why it takes time as you want to release a playable game. I am looking forward to any update and will be stopping by a little more often now. Keep up the good work and I will try to stay patient

Wow, can't wait

I am really glad this is still being worked on. Haven't checked on it in a year, my friend and I just started playing BotF again and I just had to check on this place. I wish I knew how to help out, but my skillz are lacking in the programming department. Keep up the good work.

Hey kirkitude, we have all sorts of jobs for people, so lack of programming skills doesn't matter. Check out our Jobs Forum to find out if there's anything else you could help with.

Hi kirkitude, even if you don't find anything you can help with, you can always just lurk in the forum discussing all things Trek, sci-fi, geek related etc like I have been doing for the last ~2 years

PS The forum seems to have tons of registered users but most of them are never around

I like lurking

I lurk as well, cause the bugs extra seem to be covered Im just waiting patiently for a new update after I received the full and frank update on how the game is progressing and fully understand the reasons behind not setting a date for the said new data