Well, okay, not bored, but I figured it would be interesting to write up a set of stages of the SCP (At least, how I viewed them
)
0. The pre-SCP stageThe pre-SCP era was categorized by a general emphasis on modding and FREDding. Topics of the day included table editing (which was scary and magical), low-poly modeling (Which was indeed low poly), and clever FREDding (and maybe a little mission file editing). People weren't quite over FRED tips and tricks of the day, and the campaigns tended to emphasize hacking over features usage (Because, of course, there were no SCP features to use).
1. The Early Release stage - April 24, 2002Immediately following the release of the source code, things were fragmented. Something like a half-dozen different builds popped up. People would advertise things like "Bumped ship limits" and "feature XXX". SEXPs were the most likely candidates for source code additions, and of course daveb wrote a whole guide on that. The only guide, to my knowledge, that anyone who was a member of the original FS2 dev team has written on the source code.
As an interesting side note, just prior to the release of the source code, Kazan was trying to rustle some people up for a "Freespace Forever" team. This was basically a project to
make a new Freespace engine. Of course there are some interesting comments with regards to this, like 'It should run with 8MB of video card RAM, because Freespace 2 was only released a few years ago and most people don't want to upgrade".
It should be noted that Bri Dog has the dubious honor of being the first person in recorded HLP history to mention "Geomod" with regard to the source.
The thread is appropriately miscapitalized.
Some fun threads on:
Nobody wanted to work on the SCPSoure Code managementCode postingCode standards(Please
don't bump these threads. They're all a few years old.)
2. The SCP formation stageThe turnaround: the first
developer meeting. At least, that's how I remember it. At this point, the SCP as you know it was born. Well, it actually had a pretty good page at VW, and taylor was a lot less active at this point, but it was mostly the same, anyway.
The style of additions was markedly different. RT upgraded everything to DX8, Bobb implemented glow and shine mapping and all sorts of bizarre random things. Basically, this era was notably marked by a bunch of feature upgrades with little to no concern or discussion over the long term impacts. Surprisingly, they also worked out really, really, well.
The MediaVPs were formed during this period, and were initially just a zip full of glowmaps that you extracted to your data directory.
Originally it was just the "mediapack".
Things like backwards compatibility had their roots set in this time period. Mantis came in during this time period, IIRC, but only got serious usage in...
3. The Middle AgesAt this point we started seeing the emergence of fs2_open for Linux, and features began being less of a flak-style and more of a beam-style barrage. Perhaps this would better be called "The Industrial Age", because bugs were starting to really catch up. However the focus on bugs only came during the later period.
During the majority of the middle ages, things like mod support, the Launcher, modular tables, finalized spec/env mapping, and OpenGL came to light. By this time, most limits had already been bumped, but towards the latter end of the middle ages, quite a few of these had been bumped a lot.
A number of the famous SEXPs were made during this time, though admittedly they may be the most famous because they've been around the longest. A lot of command lines started to show up.
Fs2NetD was pioneered by Kazan during this time. UnknownPlayer and DTP largely dropped out of active development. DaveB appeared, and then disappeared, prompting the short-lived implementation of shadows.
Tom released his oft-used Tom's Build, which continued to haunt many SCP developers well into the later part of the later stages.
4. The Later StagesBy this point, most everything major had been implemented in some way or another. So what followed was primarily improvements and tweaks upon existing code, and a great deal of bugfixes. By this point, the MediaVPs had been split up into multiple VP files because they had gotten quite fat. Campaigns were starting to become 'SCP only'. OS X support was added, and the player files were upgraded to allow for transparent mod switching (more or less). Multiple docking was interested.
Towards the later end of this period, bugfixing became an obsession and CVS was split into two branches; the stable and unstable branches. This eventually succeeded in fixing the problem with bugs that had been around since the early stages of the SCP. Fs2NetD was revised by taylor, and MatthewPapa began hosting the server, becoming a major player in the FS2 community. Rampant feature implementation went out of style, thanks to disillusionment from so many features going unused by mission makers and modders.
Additional short-term open source developers also started popping up, and eventually some decided to stick around and work on crossplatform alternatives of their own.
The Babylon Project, the most distinctive released Total Conversion, moved firmly in the direction of the SCP, firmly cementing FS2_Open over retail FS2.
5. The Rebirth, aka the presentWith the release of 3.6.9 came another significant event; the release of the BtRL demo, the first total conversion designed from the start with the SCP in mind, and also quite possibly representing the largest chunk of released creative media in the history of Freespace 2. (BtRL updated virtually all of the 2D interface, while most mods had shied away from this feat; BtRL also shipped with complete voice acting and new music. I don't think that even TBP has done this yet)
In the months leading up to its release, BtRL began to have more and more of an impact on SCP development. With its basically unprecedented level of popularity (for a FS2-based campaign), BtRL has attracted a number of coders. As a result of both this, and the several years between now and the original release of Freespace 2, the trend for the SCP seems to be to focus on Total Conversion-focused features and development.
