[Lucika]

BWO has been 'done' for four years and if it hadn't got hung on models and VA would be out by now.

The other campaigns you cited there simply haven't been worked on (except yours, I'm guessing.)

Scroll of A. is, I presume. As for Ransom, I could have cited Project-03. My point still is that we have big plans but we are thinking about a status quo. Of course, since I am just a member of the community and not leading it by any way, I guess it is not my mission to question the establishment of future HLP'ing. I'd just like to point out that we have much greater plans than I think we should.

[The E]

I think you're quite wrong there. BP2 was as ambitious a campaign as we could imagine, and it went from first failed concept to fully rebuilt campaign in about 18 months.

Now granted, a lot of that is down to the BP team being very, very good at what they do, but it's helped by the fact that we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to accomplish, and a great deal of discipline regarding new assets and new ideas.

I should also point out that projects like BWO, NTV or Scroll of Athahardtospellword have, simply due to their age, suffered from a great deal of personnel rotation, which is the reason why they're not released yet. I do not know why they had these issues, but it's one reason why the BP team is trying very hard to only do stuff that we know can be done in a reasonable timeframe.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you commit to a long-term project, be clear about your priorities, and be conscious of your abilities (and, of course, don't be afraid to ask for help). Don't say "This will be doomed!", that's a sure way to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Make a list of what you need to have and what you want to have, and then look for people who can help you get these things, in exactly that order.

[Sushi]

I don't see FreeSpace expiring until something else in the genre can scratch that itch we all have.

I would suggest that the once-thriving Quake III Arena mod community is dead, because there's just so many FPS games that modders will migrate to later versions of the iD Tech engine, or to the Unreal or Source engines, which are simultaneously more powerful, more popular, more versatile, and better looking.

FreeSpace doesn't have that advantage. We've seen a few mods for Homeworld, and occasionally a crossover will pop up for FreeLancer or something, but essentially the genre is dead. That means if we want to play games in our genre with new content, we have to work with what we have... which, I'm glad to say, is growing to be as powerful, as popular, as versatile, and as good looking as any professional studio today.

Until we get a space-shooter with an editor as powerful as FRED, a structure as simple as ships.tbl and weapons.tbl, and modding tools as good as VPView and PCS, FreeSpace will continue to draw talent.

I came to post almost exactly this. 

Right now, there is no space-shooter engine out there that can do what the FS2_Open engine can... much less one that does it for free. When eventually something better comes along, I'm sure there will be a mass migration to the new game.

[Reprobator]

True,  fs2o is still the best space shooter engine, got some hope with naumachia for the multiplayer part 

[headdie]

another aspect to all this is that with GoG there are now new legitimate copies of the game being distributed fuelling the expansion of the community

[Dilmah G]

I think you're quite wrong there. BP2 was as ambitious a campaign as we could imagine, and it went from first failed concept to fully rebuilt campaign in about 18 months.

Oh now I wouldn't call it a failed concept, it would still have been damn good if released in its first incarnation, IMO. Although the rebuilt version is so brilliant it functions like a whole new game.

[TopAce]

I should also point out that projects like BWO, NTV or Scroll of Athahardtospellword have, simply due to their age, suffered from a great deal of personnel rotation, which is the reason why they're not released yet

Can't speak for BWO or NTV, but Scroll of Atankharzim doesn't suffer from personnel rotation, but instead a lack of enthusiasm, and that the project leaders are either no longer active members or its staff is occupied by real-life or other preoccupations. Goober is ATM the project lead, and as we know he's an integral part of the SCP, and with 3.6.12 Final out only very recently, we understand why Atankharzim isn't progressing at the pace it's meant to.

[mjn.mixael]

While it would be a really nice sight to see people who were introduced to the FreeSpace universe as younglings showing the game to their children, it probably won't happen.

Just introduced this to my brother in law last year... he loves it. (He's young-ish). I'm going to show him the basics of modding next week. But more importantly, he has introduced this to our nephews (age 12).

[Krackers87]

Dude, people still play pong, pacman, and space invaders, and still find ways to remake or build upon those games. We not going anywherez essay.

[Villapipo]

Hi all, another new user reporting!

This is how Freespace came into my life: it was recommended in every gaming site I've been so far. It was praised in every gaming forum I've read so far. The name Freespace will come up from everywhere, over and over again. So yes, I do believe Freespace isn't going anywhere that easy.

[TopAce]

Dude, people still play pong, pacman, and space invaders, and still find ways to remake or build upon those games. We not going anywherez essay.

And FreeSpace is possibly the least popular among those games.

[Goober5000]

I should also point out that projects like BWO, NTV or Scroll of Athahardtospellword have, simply due to their age, suffered from a great deal of personnel rotation, which is the reason why they're not released yet

Can't speak for BWO or NTV, but Scroll of Atankharzim doesn't suffer from personnel rotation, but instead a lack of enthusiasm, and that the project leaders are either no longer active members or its staff is occupied by real-life or other preoccupations. Goober is ATM the project lead, and as we know he's an integral part of the SCP, and with 3.6.12 Final out only very recently, we understand why Atankharzim isn't progressing at the pace it's meant to.

What you're describing is personnel rotation.  Remember that Scroll was started by Sesquipedalian, and led by him for about two years before he got married.  Then it ground to a halt.  Galemp and I are the only members of SA who were on the team when Sesq was active and are still on the team now.  We were, and still are, very enthusiastic about SA, but we were busy on ST:R for all this time.

Now that ST:R has been released and we've had some chance to recover, I'm clearing out my schedule so that I'll be able to lead Scroll effectively.  That's one of the reasons I handed SCP project leadership over to chief1983, and that's why I'm finishing up TVWP and getting that out the door.  I don't have as much free time as I did in college, so I can't be working on a dozen projects simultaneously like I used to.



Anyway.  I have a theory about campaigns and projects hosted on HLP.  It seems to me that if a campaign doesn't produce a major milestone within a year or eighteen months, it is very likely to take an extremely long time to develop.  This can be due to personnel rotation, staff burnout, staff graduation from college/high school, etc.  It's one of the reasons the 20-mission limit for hosted campaigns was introduced.

[TopAce]

Oh.

I thought personnel rotation meant "The current staff has no idea what the original staff wanted to do."

[Goober5000]

Nope.   It means that a lot of old people have left.  Fortunately, in SA's case, I've been able to recruit a lot of new people in the past year to replace them.

[Spoon]

Hi all, another new user reporting!

This is how Freespace came into my life: it was recommended in every gaming site I've been so far. It was praised in every gaming forum I've read so far. The name Freespace will come up from everywhere, over and over again. So yes, I do believe Freespace isn't going anywhere that easy.

Welcome mate

[Rodo]

Welcome mate

That.

Welcome Villapipo

[Krackers87]

Dude, people still play pong, pacman, and space invaders, and still find ways to remake or build upon those games. We not going anywherez essay.

And FreeSpace is possibly the least popular among those games.

You know, the fact that after all these years, and long periods of time with me just lurking these forums, the fact you are still here contradicting **** i say means nothing has or will change. 

[Fury]

Go get the latest mediavps, BP: AoA update and BP2: WiH and then tell me how FS2 is dying.

[Fearless Leader]

There's almost an entirely different crew of people active here than there when I first found this website in '05.
Im not very active anymore (not that I was to begin with), but every couple years I see something that reminds me of this place, and when I log back in Im always surprised with new campaigns and mods. 

People come and people go, but Im fairly sure that there is not a near end in sight for FSO. This place looks better than ever  and it really is the last best hope for Freespace.

[Mongoose]

I have to chuckle at this thread, as I'm of the opinion that the FS community as a whole is the polar opposite of "dying." I mean, I started out my online days as part of the Descent community, and I'm still peripherally involved with it...if you want to talk about a legitimately slowly-dying modding scene, it's a far better example.  (Kind of makes a good comparison, too, since Descent and FS are sibling series in a few respects.)  Unlike FS, Descent's modding community always centered around the multiplayer side of things, with singleplayer missions never gaining much of a focus...and unlike FS2, Descent 3 never had its source code released, preventing any sort of massive upgrades or additions to the engine.  (The source for the first two games was released, leading to a few separate projects that are still active today, but D3 is the most commonly played multiplayer-wise now.)  So as time has gone on, and fewer people played multiplayer on a regular basis, level-making activity has also slackened off.  There are still several projects in-progress and in the works, but nowhere near the volume of three or four years ago, and the corresponding player pool has shrunk to a small group of die-hards.  (Hell, I don't even play regularly myself.)  I don't really see that course reversing in the future, not unless Interplay by some miracle manages to turn that "Descent sequel" press fluff into reality and the end result isn't drek.  (The MMO game Miner Wars does have some interesting promise too, but I don't know how well it'll translate over.)  It makes me legitimately sad when I remember how things were five or six years ago compared to how they were now, and even that five or six years ago was well after the community's true peak.

So yeah...for a gaming franchise that hasn't seen a new entry in more than a decade, the FS community is amazingly vibrant and healthy, and with the absolute glut of released/near-released material over the past year, I don't see that changing any time soon.