Continued from the other thread :
You guys really need to slow down a bit here. You're well on the standard huge-internet-project-that-never-comes-to-fruition
Forget about volumetric explosions, bump mapping, and all that hoobedy doo.
If you want to see _actual_ results, scale it waaaaay back to start and then after you've accomplished a thing or two, start adding.
Things you might consider starting with.
- Have two guys get together and design and implement a complete set of 3 coherent interface screens. Artwork and all. Main menu, mission-list screen, and options. Put together a framework for hooking all the screens together and hooking into the "main game". This is actually a lot harder than it first appears, if you want real consistency, functionality, and acceptable artwork.
- At the same time, get a single ship flying around a basic starfield, controlled with the keyboard. Don't worry about collisions or "physics". Do it in an OpenGL window using your own rendering code. Nothing fancy (no lighting, probably not even textures). It won't be fast and it won't be flexible, but it'll be progress.
Give yourself 2 months for the above. Put a hard deadline on it - maybe even come up with some internal milestones of your own. Don't be entirely surprised if it takes twice as long. It'll be a good indicator of a.) how many people are actually going to spend real time on the project (my guess : <= 4) and b.) what your total capability level is.
Forget about licensing engines and all that baloney. If you don't build your basic 3d game design skill set, you're going to run into a big 'ol brick wall somewhere down the road (note to genius programmers - being able to call a half-dozen OpenGL functions to draw some triangles does not a 3d skill-set make).
Forget about geomods. One of the most brilliant programmers in the entire industry spend close to 2 solid years developing that technology. Forget about animated meshes and vertex shaders. You're about 50 steps ahead of yourself
The key to this whole thing is baby steps. Even more so because we're talking about an "internet" project. Just look at the "descent 4" project that's been ongoing for, oh, I dunno, 2 years with zippo to show. I'd bete good money they tried to tackle the same scope of project that takes professionals 2.5 years and 5 million dollars to finish
Plus, if you keep it small from the start, you'll have many more rewarding experiences as the little things come together, and you might be less likely to become disheartened and abandon things altogether.
There's a bunch of directions I could go here, specifically about software engineering, but I suspect your, uh, project director, is probably too stubborn to listen to anything I'd have to say, so I'll leave this as it stands.
