Supreme Cmdr

quote: Originally posted by mudpuppy: Wow! Not only do I have to deal with those rotten Gammulans, freakin' Al Qaeda is loose out here, too? (It's seriously cool to find out that this is a feature and not a bug, though. I love games with unpredictable bits like that.) Yeah, stuff like that happens. e.g. intruders who steal ships can sometimes self-destruct them to evade capture; tractored hostile ships do the same thing, a combo of certain minerals on board your CC can go boom, badly damage ships (hostile or otherwise) can self-destruct etc etc. And there are many more new nasties like that in UC. I put them in back when it was BCG and didn't remove them.

quote: Originally posted by mudpuppy: I liked what you said before: that you put in trading so we'd be able to buy gas (cue image of Starcarrier sitting dead in space with commander outside kicking the hull...) heh yeah, but that was not the reason I put trading in. If gas was an issue, I'd just have the stations give out free gas, supplies etc, the same way you get free repairs. My minimalist approach to trading in BC games, is just that, minimalist. It has a somewhat strategic aspect to it (ever find out what happens when you're clean, across the galaxy with barely enough gas for a jump? or a badly damaged shield with no spare parts?) Yeah, base construction was one of the items in my original BCG design. But alas, with the advent of UC, that and several others, got tossed. Even with that sacrifice, the publisher still saw it fit to release the game (RC2) with known bugs. quote: Anyway, I hope you're not saying that BCO is dead? Did I miss that announcement?Not by a bloody long shot, mate. Right now, I have three projects in the works. BCO, the MMOG version of a true BC title, but with the hardcore elements of BCG and the lighter, action side of UC. Lets put it this way, if Eve's (and incidentally Jumpgate) days weren't already numbered. Just wait. As for SWG, by the time they figure out that Star Wars = space flight, we'd have come and long gone since I had the technology to do seamless space/planet worlds long before SWG was even an idea. UC : Edge To Edge (working title) which goes into dev in Feb '04 KnightBlade (the XBox title we started about six months ago using the RenderWare graphics engine and which is still in the content creation stage).

quote: Originally posted by Banquet: not least that it's designed as a more combat oriented game. Correct. Trading was just something I threw in because it was always the staple of space sims (except for the WC series of course). Space sims are dead. Pure and simple. If I ever do another one, it won't be for another 4-8 years at the most. Even the sequel (or add-on) to UC, will probably see no new addition to the space sim aspects - except probably the ability to construct bases on planets and in space.

Get BCMG. Its cheaper. And it will run. Or you can get BCM for less from BMT Micro.

quote: Originally posted by Grayfox: one thing im hoping that they put in the extended edition of ROTK is sauruman and the taking over of the shire, and what happened when the 4 hobbits returned. I think I read somewhere that this wasn't shot. If it wasn't shot, then it won't appear in the DVD.

The Last Samurai was starting too late because the showing I wanted to see was sold out. So I went to see this one, without any expectations. I was a bit surprised. Ben is still a tad stiff in his acting, but I thought this was quite good. Think the Bourne Identity, with a twist. Warning. You HAVE to pay attention while watching this movie or you're going to miss most of it. 8/10 ps: got to see the trailer for King Arthur. Oh man, that looked so kickass.

quote: Originally posted by mudpuppy: As for BCMG's graphics: I actually prefer its look to that of the fancier games. There comes a point where so many atmospheric effects and gee-whiz graphical tricks simply become too much, and games like X2 have reached that point, imo. They leave no room for the imagination to breathe. BCMG strikes a good balance in that regard, I think (although round planets would be nice ). Funny you should mention that, because thats what I was thinking a few months back when I was wrapping up the specialfx for UC. For e.g. I moved things like bump mapping (though this is used on water via pixel shaders within the PTE-III terrain engine), shadows, volumetric fog (though used on the PTE-III terrain engine), hyperjump, cloaking fx to the bottom of my TODO list because it was more important to focus on the gameplay, AI and a bunch of other things which were part of the gameplay, not the glitz. Sure, the graphics, object models are vastly superior to those in previous BC games - including *any* 3D model you see in X2, but you can run the game at very high resolutions with very few things (particle contrails being the most expensive) turned off. As we've seen with X2, most people (I know I can't) won't dare run it higher than 800x600 with all fx enabled on anything short of a P4 3.Ghz 512MB rig with a third-gen graphics card (e.g. GeForce FX or ATI 9600 or higher). You have to turn it all off. And what do you have left? Not even the gameplay because underneath, the storyline sucks, the AI is quite bad. What you have left is X+XT in a new shell. Which is not a bad thing because X was always about trading and empire building; just as the BC games were all about combat, with trading thrown in for good measure. Thats not saying that X2 is a bad game, its not. Its just a lot closer to Elite (if you ignore the piss poor combat AI, control scheme etc etc) than anything before it. With UC, it had to be playable, the gameplay had to be maintained and with the focus shift, had to be accessible. For the true BC gamers, the roam scenario is the closest thing to the original BC mythos because the single ACM scenario and the 15 IA scenarios are pure action based run 'n gun affairs. Gone (in the ACM scenario) are the in-depth thought/research provoking quests I had designed in the past. Oh well.

BCMG and UC are completely different games in various aspects. There is currently no release date for UC in Europe. Thats up to the publisher.

Saw this yesterday. Oh man, oh man. I've seen all three. My life is now complete. I didn't mind that they deviated from the book by a bit because the artistic changes didn't detract from the enjoyment and epic scale of the movie. I can't wait to see what PJ does to King Kong. 10/10 Next up: The Last Samurai

I am biased, so take this for what its worth. For immersion, freeform, world size, combat, AI and pretty much everything else (except for graphics, trading and empire building), X2 pales compared to BCM Gold. The two games are as different as dawn and noon, in that they both take place in space, but thats where the similarity ends. BCM Gold does not have the high end graphics as X2 (neither does UC, since we don't do bump mapping on objects, only on water, no shadows etc), which is why it runs faster and smoother.

quote: Originally posted by mudpuppy: Sure enough, it does fly to the waypoint, but it won't engage the Hyperdrive, no matter how far away the waypoint is. Waypoints were primarily designed for planetary ops (where HJ engines aren't used); so that's probably why. Will check the code and see, but apart from bug fixes, I'm not planning any further tweaks or features to neither BCM nor BCM Gold. This is not a bug because it has probably been this way since the first BC3K. Anyway, once I check and confirm, I'll probably revise it in UC. Maybe.

quote: Originally posted by conker424: I was sitting at home, minding my own businesses,, eating my dinner when my cell phone beeped. Looking at it i say i had a text message. it read "LOOSE 23LBS IN 2 WEEKS!!brand new diet pill call (877)651-8207". Spam is now officially out of hand. i urge all of you to spam the email account i received the text message from, [email protected] . Thats nuthin'. I keep getting one from some chic asking me to go check out her assets. Then there's that guy who seems to think I've run out of Viagra for some odd reason. Oh wait!! There's more. Once I got one from a guy who was clearly determined to sell me an extension of sorts. You get this if you subscribe to your cell phone provider's text messaging system. Since I canceled my, spam's gone. Instead I use Sprint's 1XRITT network via my iPaq and I don't get ANY spam whatsovever.

quote: Originally posted by mudpuppy: Awesome. But could you also make it so we can HJ to waypoints within our current system? I don't seem to be able to do that right now. Without being able to target and HJ to such WPs, it's kind of pointless to be able to set them, since it takes far too long to fly to them manually. You can already do that. Thats what the Resume Waypoints order is for. If the waypoint is far enough, it will use HJ. I think.

quote: Originally posted by TrXtR: I missed the other thread , got taken off before I could read. So is RC2 been sent off ? Are they going to start distributing ? What's hapening ? (Sorry for asking ...) That topic is over with. Check the archives. And guys, please refrain from taking this thread further off topic, thanks.

I have never even been to the Breed board, so what the heck was he doing there related to me? And do you have a link?

quote: Originally posted by Wolferz: 106 fever is too close to life threatening for anyone, especially a child. Yeah, but she's getting better thanks.

Well to be honest its not DC's fault. My daughter is still sick and even if this fiaco hadn't erupted, I won't have put my family vacation plans above her health. As for the demo, I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for my many fans. I'm not under contract to do a demo for DC. I'm under contract to develop and deliver two games (they used to have an option on a third. I've yanked that). I have complied with all aspects of my licensing contract; and my dealings with DC - apart from them reporting royalties, paying me etc, are over and done with. I have a ton of things to do with my down time, so I'm going to be working on the demo in my spare time only. Which is why I'm not going to do a multiplayer demo.

Effective today, I have resumed work on the single player (no, I'm not going to do a multiplayer demo because its too much work) demo for the game. Now that my vacation is ruined, I'd rather do light work than go out of my mind with boredom; since I'm not doing any official work on UC (patches), the add-on, the XBox title or such, until mid-January. As for the remaining issues in the game, I have uploaded some of the updated (updated since RC2) documents for the game. I am not planning on starting work on patches and such until the game is in the retail channel and I get more feedback on other things we may have missed.

I have been meaning to see this (one day soon, I'm actually going to end up in a theatre and see everything I've missed, in a single sitting), whats the gore factor (scale of 1-5, with 5 being gratuitous gore)?

RTM

quote: Originally posted by DeepFreeze: Is there a particular reason why Bill hates SC? He is nothing but a stalking racist SOB. The guy is an absolute tit. He has been banned from several site where him and Gordon show up and disrupt. It goes back to 1996 but gets really weird after that starting from 1998. A group of people once reported him to his employers (NCR of San Diego) and he assumed that one of them was me. That almost got him fired. My attorney and I only contacted his employers when his stalking and libelous activities started. To date, no less than three or four of his websites dedicated to libeling and harrassing me, have been closed. He just pops up elsewhere. The latest one is sitting on some gay nitwit's server and we just haven't bothered to shut it down because he's just going to pop up elsewhere. The plan was to just sue him, get an injunction etc so that he never puts up another libelous page. But since I'm in FL and he is in CA, it would cost quite a bit of money and it would give him the much needed attention. So, the decision was to just ignore him and he will just shoot himself in the foot by proving that he is nothing by an abject pychotic stalker. He has - to date - done quite a good job of it actually and I didn't have to raise a finger to help him. To give you an idea just how sick this guy is, he once asked one of his followers, a minor at the time, (LouisJM) to find out where I lived. He got caught doing it and the police were called. Twice. A restraining order petition was filed etc etc. The third time he almost went to jail (because he was no longer a minor), so he stopped. His handle no longer appears online, but most believe that he either really stopped or picked another handle. I believe that the former is the case. And several forums and sites, know about him and his antics. For e.g POE, QT3, GG etc etc. He tries very hard to hide, e.g. changing his handle from the known "Bill Huffman" to "HaveFun" (until I exposed that one sometime ago). Thats who Bill Huffman is.

Long story short. We ALL win, like this: An unauthorized version of my game never enters the channel. Unsuspecting gamers (especially my very, very long time fanbase) don't get - yet another potential dud-in-a-box Dreamcatcher gets to avert a nasty lawsuit they stood ZERO chances of winning. EVER. According to my attorney, the legal arrangements are final and a fax signed agreement will be dispatched hopefully by morning. RC2 will be delivered to them upon receipt of the signed document. No, I'm not doing ANY cross shipping. RC1 - all 30K (their numbers, not mine) copies they replicated - will be destroyed (at their expense) and never ship into retail. If even ONE of those copies enters the retail, well, lets not go there. Besides, any patches following the official 1.00.00 game version (RC2) will never patch any other version. WARNING: If you receive a copy of the game and the version as displayed on the main menu reads 1.00.06.25, that is RC1. Contact me asap for a reward!! We're done. I know that a lot of people are going to turn this into a Derek Smart thing. Frankly, I don't give a toss. My main goal was to put enough pressure (public or otherwise) on DC in order to prevent this UNAUTHORIZED version of MY game from ILLEGALLY being stuffed into the retail channel. Someone had to stand up to this rubbish and prevent it from happening again. I'm but one guy - the industry rebel and bad boy - but the industry can thank me later. Unfortunately, most devs don't own their own IPs, so some publishers are still going to be doing this crap. This thread will self-destruct by tomorrow and be archived away from the public.

Quick update. I'm actually sitting at a Pediatrian right this minute sending this on my iPaq. Thank God for Sprint 1xRITT network. Anyway... This morning DC confirmed to my attorneys that they did in fact replicate the RC1 build. They've had several talks today and we've asked them for some legal paperwork to be done in exchange for me sending them an RC2 GM for replication. Part of the agreement is that - at their cost - they will destroy any/all replicated copies of RC1 and never release them into the retail channel. There are several other conditions we asked for, but once its all ironed out and signed, I will send out the RC2 build via Fedex. For contractual reasons, I can't be more specific, but rest assured, I'm doing EXACTLY what I set out to do - with or without their cooperation - and that is to 100% ensure that the RC1 build NEVER enters the retail channel and onto your HDD. I hate this thumb keyboard, so I can't type any more. Will provide more update when I get back to my office later this afternoon. Stay tuned!

LOL!!! Be sure to watch the movie at the end of the news bit.

btw I just checked. The RC1 to RC2 patch is 3.5 MB because it only contains two executables, a new mission archive (missing from the RC1 build) and some revised docs. And btw, because of the incorrect multiplayer executable in the RC1 build, multiplayer won't work out of the box without the RC2 patch. Which makes me wonder HOW they could possibly send me the all clear to go Gold on the RC1 burn. Apart from that, since the RC1 burn won't have the SafeDisc signature, if I encode the RC2 patch executables with the SafeDisc license, they won't work. EDIT. And just to keep track of everything, here is a post I made about the RC1 build which was sent to DC and the Gold status of the game. That post was carried by most of the online media on that day.