Hey there Kaz. Heard a lot about you.
Well, as you may know, I am VERY interested in preserving Freespace. I mean, come on, look at what I've done. That means compatibility with FS2 means compatibility with FS1.
I've read all the pages, and I have quite a bit to say.
Is it possible? Ultimately, yes. We have incredible talent here, in every position, judging by all the work done on FS mods. I've seen coding, models, maps, missions, web pages, you name it, all in the name of Freespace. There's no doubt that we have the resources and the motivation.
However, we lack coordination. It's been said that "if we can't get a single mod or campaign done, what chance do we have here?" What game studios have and we don't is that everyone works together in one building at the same time: programmers, sound engineers, writers, modelers, everything. We have forums, ICQ and Email. Not the greatest medium for full development. I'm extremely impressed with what we've had so far, but having unpaid, undedicated people all over the world it won't cut it.
This brings me to my next point: if we're really serious about this, we're going to need full-time staffers. I don't know how many of you are professionals, but if we're building an entire game we need a production studio. This is unlikely considering many of us are still in school. (What were those demographics again?) Kids working after school and on weekends, including activities, sports, homework, studying, and real jobs, can't produce something like this, particularly if it takes 24 hours to get feedback on something.
Now for copyright issues. As it's been said, if you can create a program that can read copyrighted files, you can distribute it, so long as you don't actually distribute those files. VPView isn't illegal now is it? Also, I've had a lot of questions concerning the Port's legality, but I haven't heard from Interplay yet.
The way things are going, I feel that by the time this is finished, Interplay and THQ will be bought out or bankrupt, Volition will be independant again or sold to someone else, and Freespace will be all but forgotten. (I think 'abandonware' is technically illegal but nobody cares or is going to make money off it.) In theory you could do it legally, but make damn sure you know the laws in case Interplay starts poking around.
Engine use? If you write it yourself, you'd know exactly how it works and would be able to do anything you want with it. Unfortunately you would probably have bugs to be filtered out, it would take a long time, and developers would have to wait to start working. There are, however, many engines for low or no cost, tried and tested. I highly suggest looking at all of them and seeing if one tickles your fancy. If not, you can pick up ideas on how to implement a certain feature in your own engine. You should definitely look at the Descent II engine as it was the las game Parallax completed before working on Freespace, and probably has some clues in there.
Project leader(s): A team of 3 dedicated people in different time zones, avaliable for counseling on any subject at any time, is ideal. If you want one overlord, well...
Originally posted by Inquisitor:
...gotta find someone who has pulled off a mod, start to finish, maybe that's him, maybe not.
Gee, I can't think of
anyone who fills that position...
Seriously, I'm starting University and will have no free time to speak of, so I can't help, let alone lead.
In short, we have everything a professional studio has except constant access to each other and each other's work. This could possibly be offset by the vast number of people willing to work on it. If we could acquire a dedicated filesharing server, and have staff on call,
we COULD do it. By the time we do, though,
the FS2 source could well have been released.
