[Raven2001]

Thanks for pointing me to that thread.
Like I said, I had no intention whatsoever of selling my models, only 3d prints.

Which was really sad to me because the Minerva the coolest fighter concept I've ever seen (and I have no idea about the rest you haven't shown off).

Don't know what you're talking about here. There is no asset that goes by that name in BWO.

[Nightmare]

Was this one dropped? It was posted in an old interview (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=61539.0 /pics are down now), where you said that you made it for BWO - a fighter with moving parts that could take various positions.

[Raven2001]

...which I also heard from other people. I don't remember exactly who said it first. I guess it was someone from old team. Later I dug out some discussion about being "heartless merc" that looks like confirmation, but this stuff is internal BWO case. If this statement is wrong, that's a good news .

IIRC, I made that comment in the context of all that drama with Goober. That was a really crappy situation, and there were implications that people would appropriate my work without my consent. If that would've been the case, then yes I can totally picture myself making such a "threat", since I do take ownership of my work seriously.

Seems to me that there has been a lot of unwarranted and untrue gossip around things.

I even found it after someone mentioned it recently. Every mission is crashing for unknown reasons.

Odd. I'm pretty sure that at least 3 missions were working as intended and not crashing on last year's builds right before I had my health issue and vanished. All that was left was the last mission of the demo.

Was this one dropped? It was posted in an old interview (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=61539.0 /pics are down now), where you said that you made it for BWO - a fighter with moving parts that could take various positions.

Ahhhh, now I remember. Yeah that was a quick mockup I did and suggested to the folks in charge back then. But it didn't end up staying at all.

[Nightmare]

But there's a chance that the new Demo gets released, or?

[Raven2001]

Like I said: if Spoon finished it, he has my blessing to go ahead and release it if he wants. You can quote me on that.
I never had the chance to talk to him after he left the project, as my own stuff quickly escalated before he left. But will do so in due time.

[JSRNerdo]

At some point there was a quick talk in internal regarding selling *3d prints* of models, in order to fund further work on BWO

With Inferno act 1 complete and BTA development still awaiting further instructions, I will accept the market rate in donuts and sarsparilla.

[Nyctaeus]

At some point there was a quick talk in internal regarding selling *3d prints* of models, in order to fund further work on BWO

With Inferno act 1 complete and BTA development still awaiting further instructions, I will accept the market rate in donuts and sarsparilla.

He will do it in no time. He's living, sentient mission generator.

I volunteer to texture whatever requires texturing. In real PBR glory. I accept payment in Master's blessings.

[Nightmare]

At some point there was a quick talk in internal regarding selling *3d prints* of models, in order to fund further work on BWO

With Inferno act 1 complete and BTA development still awaiting further instructions, I will accept the market rate in donuts and sarsparilla.

He will do it in no time. He's living, sentient mission generator.

I volunteer to texture whatever requires texturing. In real PBR glory. I accept payment in Master's blessings.

Didn't you say that BWO "is dead and should remain dead because several expert level mission designers such as Spoon and Battuta opted out"? Not that I'm questioning JSRNerdos skill or wouldn't like to see BWO released, just wondering...

[Nyctaeus]

At some point there was a quick talk in internal regarding selling *3d prints* of models, in order to fund further work on BWO

With Inferno act 1 complete and BTA development still awaiting further instructions, I will accept the market rate in donuts and sarsparilla.

He will do it in no time. He's living, sentient mission generator.

I volunteer to texture whatever requires texturing. In real PBR glory. I accept payment in Master's blessings.

Didn't you say that BWO "is dead and should remain dead because several expert level mission designers such as Spoon and Battuta opted out"? Not that I'm questioning JSRNerdos skill or wouldn't like to see BWO released, just wondering...

Let's say I said that because there were numerous strange issues inside BWO team, and while I barely touched them, I'm at least partially aware what was happening. I disappeared before BWO died for personal reasons, but still I had access to internal, and heard numerous stories. Let's just not continue this. In short: BWO in old development model never had a chance to happen.

And yes, I would like to work on assets for BWO but only if someone coherent decide to pick up this mess and continue development. Nerdo is this kind of guy.

[Raven2001]

Let's say I said that because there were numerous strange issues inside BWO team, and while I barely touched them, I'm at least partially aware what was happening. I disappeared before BWO died for personal reasons, but still I had access to internal, and heard numerous stories. Let's just not continue this. In short: BWO in old development model never had a chance to happen.

What exactly are you talking about? Because besides that debacle with Goober (which became quite public eventually), I don't see what was "strange" about the issues inside the team:
In the last years, when the decision was made to make development more public and opening the doors to more people, things weren't strange at all: someone would offer to help, they'd do some work and then disappear, for whatever reasons. Even when we decided to let model creators to release most of the work they'd get done for the project. You even saw the fruits of that: Blackwolf released the Ceres, Dagger was supposed to release a variant of the Aaru but I'm not sure if he ended up finishing that. In fact, bar 1 or 2 assets, the idea was that I was taking care of the "exclusive" models myself, so that any other modeler that would help out could release their work as soon as they finished it, and also to give them more creative space and autonomy. I'm not sure if you were still around when we started doing that, though. But already for a while there was no "old development model" as you label it. We changed it completely.
There was also the issue that at some point, I was taking on more and more management responsibilities instead of creating, and that culminated right before life forced me to vanish from HLP. But basically, at some point and with the small amount of time I had, I wasn't just taking care of model creation and art direction, but I "had to" manage things in pretty much every department: talk to people, find solutions, review\create documentation, tabling, etc etc. I obviously came up short on that. I overextended. But someone had to try and do it anyway.
That part of my responsibilities intensified even more when Spoon and Battuta offered to help, to get them up to speed. Spoon was working at an amazing speed that unfortunately I couldn't keep up with, which prompted his (understandable) leaving. I also feel there were some miscommunication issues with Spoon. And those are on me, 100%.

These were issues, but by no means they were "strange". So what "strange issues" are you talking about?

[Nyctaeus]

I've heard about problems regarding communication between project leaders and other project members, ideas for new features which delay the release even further, lack of involvement from project leaders, and most notably - help offerings from various modders from outside of BWO team, who later got involved but left due to some unspecified decisions of BWO leaders.

I have no idea what was really happening in the past. I just encountered multiple opinions that BWO is a project that is doing nothing to help itself to get finished, and leaders are popping up with more and more very ambitious ideas over and over again instead of releasing anything at all.
I don't want to bad-mouth anybody, blame anybody for current status of BWO or anything like that. Hell, I don't want dramas, it's not my case, not my mod and I don't even care.

I know for sure that I've seen people working on it, lots of cool assets, mission files etc. Now I see only lots of gossip, dead mod and people asking for future of BWO.
More official statement regarding present and future would be welcome instead. What's going on with BWO? Are there any plans to continue this? Can we count on something like dump release? Can other people take it, and finish it?

[Nightmare]

Well there seems to be some sort of communication issue in general. If Raven had (hopefully has not anymore) health issues, that's a terrible thing, but even though I've always checked BWO board, there was no info about it. I mean there's no need to detail anything, but I think if somebody said "current mod leader can't work on this due to heavy RL issues" everyone would've understood this, instead it seemed like BWO had just been abandoned by everybody and nobody cared about it anymore, the only post in nearly a year was the info that the website went down.

[JSRNerdo]

With Inferno act 1 complete and BTA development still awaiting further instructions, I will accept the market rate in donuts and sarsparilla.

I am serious about this, by the way, but on one condition:

Like I said: if Spoon[`_`] finished it, he has my blessing to go ahead and release it if he wants. You can quote me on that.

[Gloriano]

*Waves to Raven*


I think the best way to do this is the same thing, MT did and release everything to public as far as i know the missions are much better condition too. And then maybe someone can finish it if they want.

[Raven2001]

I've heard about problems regarding communication between project leaders and other project members, ideas for new features which delay the release even further, lack of involvement from project leaders, and most notably - help offerings from various modders from outside of BWO team, who later got involved but left due to some unspecified decisions of BWO leaders.

I have no idea what was really happening in the past. I just encountered multiple opinions that BWO is a project that is doing nothing to help itself to get finished, and leaders are popping up with more and more very ambitious ideas over and over again instead of releasing anything at all.

About "problems regarding communication between project leaders and other project members", I'll be the first one to admit it: it did happen. Especially when it comes to Spoon. We wanted him to take on not only Fredding, but also to take a look at what we had mission wise and offer input\make decisions regarding the mission structure and design. Basically we wanted him to take the lead and have autonomy on that field, as long as he kept to the overall vision. I don't think he understood that, and the blame falls on me and Blackdove for not communicating it properly. He did do a great job at redesigning\rebuilding the Demo's missions in record time.

"ideas for new features which delay the release even further"; "and leaders are popping up with more and more very ambitious ideas over and over again" - Simply not true when it comes to the last 5 years (or more). When I got into a de facto leadership role, the first thing I did was to take a look at everything we had, and try to figure out ways to cut corners, or ways to motivate people to contribute. That's where the idea of modelers being able to release their assets as soon as they finished them came from, for example. Other things we wanted to pursue were: cut some missions out, have episodic releases.
Yes there were some "new features" on the table, but those wouldn't delay the release further. Features like using Fury's AI for the fighters, for example: the missions aren't in any way done from various angles, including balance. Adding Fury's AI or not would have no bearing on what it takes to complete them.

"lack of involvement from project leaders" - Half-true. And I won't say more about this one because I don't want to throw people under the bus. And from my part personally, I didn't always have the time I should have to dedicate to the project.

"help offerings from various modders from outside of BWO team, who later got involved but left due to some unspecified decisions of BWO leaders" - I know what situation, you're talking about specifically. And about this one all I will say is: it's very easy to blame others over "unspecified reasons" (mystery!! ). Those reasons will have to continue being "unspecified" because, again, I'm not in the business of shaming others. You can ask the gossipers to be brutally honest with you (and themselves, perhaps?).

I know for sure that I've seen people working on it, lots of cool assets, mission files etc. Now I see only lots of gossip, dead mod and people asking for future of BWO.
More official statement regarding present and future would be welcome instead. What's going on with BWO? Are there any plans to continue this? Can we count on something like dump release? Can other people take it, and finish it?

I will, in a couple of days

Well there seems to be some sort of communication issue in general. If Raven had (hopefully has not anymore) health issues, that's a terrible thing, but even though I've always checked BWO board, there was no info about it. I mean there's no need to detail anything, but I think if somebody said "current mod leader can't work on this due to heavy RL issues" everyone would've understood this, instead it seemed like BWO had just been abandoned by everybody and nobody cared about it anymore, the only post in nearly a year was the info that the website went down.

I'm sorry, but when you're in an hospital bed with a tube in your chest, go through surgery, can't even get up etc, informing your online modding community that you're not available is the last thing on your mind. And after that whole ordeal, there are all the other little things like focusing on putting your life back in order, recuperating physically (still ongoing), etc.
Not even Blackdove got to know about it. I simply vanished, and that's on me. It just didn't seem like the most important thing to care about in the last year. Sorry.

I am serious about this, by the way, but on one condition:

Like I said: if Spoon[`_`] finished it, he has my blessing to go ahead and release it if he wants. You can quote me on that.

In that case, there's nothing stopping you from grabbing the old Demo and give it a facelift. If it's consulting that you feel you need, I'll be around to answer your questions. Send me a PM if you wish.
As for the Cairo - the only asset that the Demo uses - it's finished and I'll release it soon.
But I do recommend talking with Spoon first. He did a really amazing job on the first 3 missions of the demo, at least. Would be a shame to not use that.

*Waves to Raven*

I think the best way to do this is the same thing, MT did and release everything to public as far as i know the missions are much better condition too. And then maybe someone can finish it if they want.

Heya Gloriano.

How did that work out for MT?



I'll write a separate post in a couple of days regarding the past, present and future of BWO. Stand by.

[Nightmare]

I'm sorry for that.

I really didn't knew how big your problems were and apologize in case you considered that post insensitive.

[Raven2001]

Not at all, don't worry about it

[BlackDove]

Yeah, I didn't even know about it, but was reticent to move this in any direction, because Raven is wholly in charge of the assets, which is a substantial bulk of the whole project. While it would be possible to move the project in different directions due to his disappearance, he is the one who has the final say on those things, so that would just be improper for me to decide.

[Gloriano]

Heya Gloriano.

How did that work out for MT?

Well i dont think it worked really well but i think most assets were bare bones, but if BWO is in better condition on assets and missions it could work maybe if there is people interested enough i think that's also one problem as the game is already what 20 years old so a lot people have moved out

[Nightmare]

Heya Gloriano.

How did that work out for MT?

Well i dont think it worked really well but i think most assets were bare bones, but if BWO is in better condition on assets and missions it could work maybe if there is people interested enough i think that's also one problem as the game is already what 20 years old so a lot people have moved out

Sure, but I think that BWO has some bonus for there seem to be quite many people around now who played FS around 2000 and might recognize this, though I don't know how many them turned into skilled artists in the meantime...