[chief1983]

You can interpret this question however you feel like answering.  You can be as technical or general as you wish.  Things such as goals, type of play, all the way down to specific campaign details (assuming you want campaigns) are welcome.  Surprise me.  We need to make this our project though.  Without goals, we're just wandering, and while I have nothing against wandering in general, it has no place here anymore.

[chief1983]

Why thanks for asking Chief, I'd be glad to tell you what I want.  I'm hoping for a game that blends the Star Wars universe with the amazing FreeSpace engine.  I don't want a clone of the Lucasarts games, since after all, this is our own project, and we can treat it however we want.  I'd like to see the current FreeSpace engine have the chance to show what it's capable of, but with a general Star Wars feelings.  Creating something reminiscent to the Lucasarts games would be nice, but I don't want it to lose the FreeSpace feel altogether.  I want amazing graphics and an attention to detail.  I'm not worrying so much about good low-end performance, because if you want to play a Star Wars game on a low end computer, there's already tons of options for that.  I want to be able to say that this is our work, and that the Star Wars Conversion is _the_ Star Wars project for the FreeSpace engine.

I'd like to see some amazing campaigns from the community, original, and possibly some recreations of canon material.  I'm more concerned with material from the original trilogy, but I don't want to rule out the possibility of ever having new trilogy and EU material included as well.

I don't want the game itself to ever be slanted towards the light or dark side.  If anything I would leave that decision up to additional campaigns.

Any other thoughts?

[Wobble73]

How about finished 

[Dysko]

First of all congrats for the promotion

Maybe something set in the 3 years gap between Episodes 4 and 5? The player could be a Rebel pilot based on a small fleet always on the move to avoid detection by Imperial forces. He could find some Imperial secret weapon and be ordered to destroy it (or something along that line).

[brandx0]

Personally what I'd like to see most is a feel totally stepping away from the lucasarts games.  After the original X-Wing they established a baseline and have built their successors around the feel and (worst of all) pace of the original game.  While it was amazing for its time, I think that we could do better.  Freespace has some impressive graphical and engine capacities, and I'd love to be able to sit back and watch this game, and feel like I'm watching the Star Wars Movies (Original trilogy...) or better yet, be playing the game and imagine I'm actually out there.  It's immersion that these games lack, a lack of scale, a lack of speed.

All in all, make it fast paced, make it cinematic, and make it dangerous.

[chief1983]

Personally what I'd like to see most is a feel totally stepping away from the lucasarts games.  After the original X-Wing they established a baseline and have built their successors around the feel and (worst of all) pace of the original game.  While it was amazing for its time, I think that we could do better.  Freespace has some impressive graphical and engine capacities, and I'd love to be able to sit back and watch this game, and feel like I'm watching the Star Wars Movies (Original trilogy...) or better yet, be playing the game and imagine I'm actually out there.  It's immersion that these games lack, a lack of scale, a lack of speed.

All in all, make it fast paced, make it cinematic, and make it dangerous.

All right!  Now that's the kind of ambition I want to see too.  And that's exactly what could separate us from, and possible put us above, the Imperial Alliance project.  Whereas they go for almost a direct port of the Lucasarts series into their game, we have the ability to make something different, and I think that's what one of our main goals should be.  It's also a very good reason to warrant having another mod besides theirs.  I like it.

[Goober5000]

I kinda want both.  I want that, but I also want to play the TIE Fighter campaigns in the FSO engine.  I'm not sure that that's what IA is doing; I thought they were developing their own campaign too.

[chief1983]

From what I've read they're putting a lot of effort into recreating the exact feel of the old games' engines.  Maybe not the campaigns necessarily, but the way it feels to fly.  The 1/3 2/3 full throttle thing, the HUD, all sorts of things.  Of course, their forums have been dead since November, so I'm wondering what's holding them up.  Either way, I would like to play the old campaigns in the FSO engine too, but I want to have someone more educated than me vouch for the legality of that.  Seems to me like script copying could be a bit of a copyright issue as much as model copying.

[MarkN]

The thing  would want most is the high firing rate and short bursts seen in the films (although the reason would have to be different due to the lack of a primary waeopn lock in freespace). But if the weapons have a high fire rate and a high energy use so that they do a lot of damage and then run out of energy in a few seconds, this would make not only a game dynamic that is more like what is seen in the films, but also is very different from Freespace.

[TopAce]

The missions we will make cannot be same as the old X-wing or TIE Fighter ones. Simply because we allign our missions to the models we have, not the other way around. We only make those models we are able to finish, the TIE Fighter campaign has a lot of ships in it, ranging from all kinds of neutral fighters to passenger liners and cargo ferries. We simply can't do that much.

I already wrote some minicampaign plotlines and that's the direction I want SWC to be heading: not strictly following my mission ideas mind you, but have several minicampaigns instead of one big one. The more campaigns we have the more possibility the player has. One campaign can be about an exiled Rebel pilot escaping Imperial authorities and the other can be about a high-ranking TIE pilot who wants to gain the Emperor's trust. We might as well connect one with another or have two completely unrelated to each others. The possibilities we have only depends on the amount we work on it. Perhaps it sounds too ambitious.

As far as balancing is concerned, I want something new in that because, after all, this is the heart of the game. We can modify weapon stats as much as we prefer and we can make use of FreeSpace's gameplay features, for example the energy distribution system. I would like SWC weapons to be somehow different from those of the X-Wing series: we could make standard concussion missiles fast, low-damage warheads while its avdanced version could be a slower, more powerful one. Having it this way doesn't make anyone automatically choose the advanced version when available. We could also make a new type of swarm missile or tactical weapons. I think we already have a leech missile.

[chief1983]

It would be nice to balance the advanced missile with the standard, but maybe something else besides making it slower, like having a dumbfire vs aspect seeking, or maybe the advanced takes more loadout space than the standard.

[TopAce]

Certainly, I just mentioned this speed-power thing to make you see my point, of course there are a lot of numbers to modify for a weapon.

[BS403]

I want the project to have a quality Death Star that is full size.

[Turambar]

post-movies and pre-Vong would be nice.

mostly because i absolutely hate the NJO series.

maybe if youre feeling really creative and adventurous, you could be a NewRep unit sent out to reinforce the Empire of the Hand out in the Unknown regions.

you could have rebel, imperial, chiss, and any other type of alien ship you could want, all in that one area of space.  it has the most possibilities, and thats where I feel the star wars books should have gone next, instead of randomly being invaded by uber space monsters


edit: actually, that doesnt seem like too bad of an idea.

after the peace treaty between the New Reps and the Empire, there isnt a whole lot of tension (not on the surface anyways) between those two groups, but maybe they'll both send fighter squads and maybe a support ship each to go and help Fel and the Empire of the Hand combat the threats of the unknown region (which, while threatening, would not be vong related).  of the story elements could be based off the Hand of Thrawn and Survivors Quest books.  You could also get a lot of great character interaction with the Imps and NewReps, as well as some uncharted territory with the groups from the Empire of the Hand.  there'd be all kinds of chances to deal with familiar threats as well as with exotic enemies, plenty of missions for both.

[Col. Fishguts]

I want something released

No seriously, it always seemed as if the SWC project wanted to accomplish too much at once.
My advise would be : Create a simple basic mod pack (X-Wing, Y-Wing, Mon Cal cruiser, TIE-Fighter/Interceptor/Bomber, ISD), slap some single missions or a mini-campaign on it and release it. Then build up from there, more ships, more weapons, more missions, more eye-candy.

That way you gain some attention, some feedback and probabaly more people who woul help. I know this sounds a lot like the history of TBP, but it seems to be a working concept. And don't get me wrong, I'm not critisising anybody here, I'm just thinking out loud what I think to be a reasonable approach to the work.

[TopAce]

Making a simple first release has always been a plan, thing was that some really fundamental ships (Star Destroyer, Mon Cal Cruiser) were never fully completed. We could make missions with the ships we already had - and we did make some - but what would a Star Wars space sim mod be without a Star Destroyer? It would be like a witch without a black cat or a sweeper.

[archangel35757]

I'm new to FS2, so forgive me if I say something that has already been done...( or stupid )

Well, first I think we need to ensure that the Star Wars feel is preserved... by this I mean the jump to lightspeed and coming out of lightspeed should be as close to Star Wars as possible... I also like the way the ships jump out in the TV show "Battlestar Galactica" when we see them flash and disappear.  I think this is the same as Star Wars from that perspective... but the starfield effect of coming out of lightspeed should be like Star Wars.

I think the dumbfire rockets should be replaced by something else... (since I don't recall dumbfire rockets in SW) you might consider replacing them with the sonic charges like Jango Fett used against Obi-Wan... which were "dumbfire" in a sense and used more like proximity weapons and would have awesome effects in an asteroid field-- try to capture the movie explosion effects on the sonic concussion waves.  Also, a similar facsimile of the Star Wars torpedoes should be made... (if not done already).

The player interface/HUD should definitely have a Star Wars look & feel... but I'm not so sure I like the duplication of the X-Wing Alliance HUD by IA-- don't get me wrong, they've done an excellent job with it, but I think we could come up with something better-- cockpits are always going thru avionic upgrades anyways right?  But I think a great HUD is key since that's what we'll be looking thru all the time and so it should help facilitate the illusion of immersion... if some aspect of it isn't right then our brains will subconciously reject it.

Has the code been worked out to make it possible to play as a turret-gunner like on a Corvette or Capital Ship?  Where you can tab thru the turret positions and fire at passing ships?  If not this should be accomplished...

Also, cloaking should be kept to canonical Star Wars ships that actually had that capability... so as not to cross universe paradigms.  Perhaps the Capital ships could have a Cap.Ship-to-Cap.Ship missile (simply make a beefier dumbfire missile for this...).  Perhaps add-in Cap.Ship-to-Cap.Ship cannon turrets that would fire high-explosive dumb projectiles-- and make these playable as well as the laser-turrets.

Fighters should have a faster sense of speed... and all models should have exceptional detail.  Especially when you're up close to capital ships...

[G0atmaster]

What would I LIKE to see in this?

In essence, nothing short of everything.  IDK if it's do-able or not, but I'd very much like to be able to relive all the major battles throughout the storyline, I.E. Anakin's space battle in Ep1, through to Endor, through all the battles in the X-wing series of books, to Admiral Thrawn's last battle, etc etc etc.

An idea I just got on how to make this coherent in terms of story, is follow one character who's present in most of those battles, and when he dies/is for some reason absent, end that campaign there and make a new one that follows another char through another dozen battles or whatever.

Or you can just have it all as one and have the pilot's name change.  Just some ideas.

[aipz]

It's nice to hear that the project is being resurrected - I wish you all the best May the Force be with you !!!

The main problem is that even after 3-4 years of your hard work nothing was released to public/
was left incomplete ...

My advice is simple:
work in small parts,
1. Basic "Base" release
finish the basic craft (X-W,Y-W, Z-95,T-F, T-B, a few freighters/utility craft 1-3, a space station, CRV. Nebulon-B, Dreadnought and it's ok for a beginning - a period between episode 3 and 4; as it is generic and the craft can form a strong basis for the future releases - and can represent both Rebels and Empire - these capships were used by both sides of Galactic Civil War) and balance the basic weapons (lasers, ions, turbolasers, concussion missles and proton torpedoes)...
Throw it away to public  without more complicated ships (even such a SW icon as ISD!!!),without any missions
but make it stable, nice looking and include FRED so that people can start making some missions

It will consolidate your team, bring public attention and start a completely new chapter...

2. Ship/weapons packs for base and separate missions/campaigns
Think in TBP terms - base and missions
To speed things up don't alter the which thigs/features which were balanced by betatesting and were included in previous base releases, but  make sure that the new ones are balanced   and properly working

Add whatever ships you like as long you keep the SW feeling right and a logical gameplay
And don't try to do everything at once as you will spread your effort too much and needlessly waste time...

Hope these simple methods will help you a bit...

[Mongoose]

As a general Star Wars fan, my one honest wish is to get behind the controls of an X-wing and fly the Death Star trench run in the FS_Open engine.  If you guys can get to that level, I'll be absolutely ecstatic.

On a lighter note, my second wish is for you guys to produce a finished product that gives "BoE Syndrome" a positive connotation.