Steam Greenlight - Bridge Commander II

alexmakepeace

Just stumbled across this.

Maybe old news. Might not go anywhere. But I thought it might be worth sharing.

mirrorchaos

interesting, but since its in its early stages, needing a team and such and such. i doubt this bc2 will hit the decks for quite a few years. so not really anything to get worked up about all the same just yet.

captainoblivous

You might want to check out ST Excalibur first tbh. That's the one that's been in the works consistently for the last few years as a labour of love by the old BC modding community.
There has been a number of projects using the "BC2" moniker over the years, and as far as I know they've all fallen by the wayside for one reason or another.

This one you've linked seems to be using a lot of the old (really old) P81 meshes which weren't that good on their release in the early 2000s.


http://www.stexcalibur.com/
That's the one I'd suggest being excited for.

mirrorchaos

captainoblivous wrote: »

You might want to check out ST Excalibur first tbh. That's the one that's been in the works consistently for the last few years as a labour of love by the old BC modding community.
There has been a number of projects using the "BC2" moniker over the years, and as far as I know they've all fallen by the wayside for one reason or another.

This one you've linked seems to be using a lot of the old (really old) P81 meshes which weren't that good on their release in the early 2000s.


http://www.stexcalibur.com/
That's the one I'd suggest being excited for.

im aware of excal but i havent really seen anything coming from it since never really and if the new bc2 team beats the excal to the punch in a few years time, the excal team may as well pack up and close shop. frankly they should just close shop anyways, contact the bc 2 team and merge into their operation, it would certainly make the whole thing a lot more stronger and that labor of love will become a reality a lot sooner.

captainoblivous

mirrorchaos wrote: »

im aware of excal but i havent really seen anything coming from it since never really and if the new bc2 team beats the excal to the punch in a few years time, the excal team may as well pack up and close shop. frankly they should just close shop anyways, contact the bc 2 team and merge into their operation, it would certainly make the whole thing a lot more stronger and that labor of love will become a reality a lot sooner.

I'll admit that they haven't put out much.
The problem Excalibur has had over the years is that it is being built upon a totally new engine, from scratch, by a bunch of guys who loved Bridge Commander. As I recall it actually started off as a mod for BC that was imaginatively called "BC2". After a while it became apparent that the old netimmerse engine that BC was built on wouldn't be able to handle what they had in mind the team moved on to a totally new engine.

This is a progress chart that shows roughly where they're at right now. It's more than one can say about that "BC2" project. Saying that the excal team should just "down tools" and "close shop" to join the BC2 team is rather dumb to be quite frank with you. It would mean a huge amount of time would be wasted on administration, organizing the newly merged teams, figuring out what bits of code they have and what can be merged etc.
It would be a colossal waste of time.

admiralcarter

Excalibur looks way better then this "BC2" stuff... as said they use an own engine and are some years ahead.

Quality over quantity. They might have a slow progress but the production result might be better then the current looks-rushed-BC2...

There were many Star Trek Mods or Standalone stuff that raised, looked promising and died before Alpha Stage. I am just reffering to TCW wich looked kinda promising and they had solid screenshots and all that... but it was never finished.

Excalibur is running steady for years now. It might really come out as one of the rare finally finished fan-productions.

mirrorchaos

captainoblivous wrote: »

I'll admit that they haven't put out much.
The problem Excalibur has had over the years is that it is being built upon a totally new engine, from scratch, by a bunch of guys who loved Bridge Commander. As I recall it actually started off as a mod for BC that was imaginatively called "BC2". After a while it became apparent that the old netimmerse engine that BC was built on wouldn't be able to handle what they had in mind the team moved on to a totally new engine.

This is a progress chart that shows roughly where they're at right now. It's more than one can say about that "BC2" project. Saying that the excal team should just "down tools" and "close shop" to join the BC2 team is rather dumb to be quite frank with you. It would mean a huge amount of time would be wasted on administration, organizing the newly merged teams, figuring out what bits of code they have and what can be merged etc.
It would be a colossal waste of time.

that depends on the circumstance to what you mean by stupid. if you mean by stupid and the team isnt releasing details that they could be in some sort of financial difficulties to keep going and you may not know but call me it anyway, then by all means :P.

how would anyone of us know what the current circumstances are right now, and just because one has started up and the other has been in development for an ice age, doesnt mean the new one would be any more slower then excal has been.

captainoblivous

mirrorchaos wrote: »

that depends on the circumstance to what you mean by stupid. if you mean by stupid and the team isnt releasing details that they could be in some sort of financial difficulties to keep going and you may not know but call me it anyway, then by all means :P.

how would anyone of us know what the current circumstances are right now, and just because one has started up and the other has been in development for an ice age, doesnt mean the new one would be any more slower then excal has been.

As has been said above, there has been a ton of fan projects calling themselves a successor to Bridge Commander. A few have put out some nice looking screen shots, but none of them have gotten anywhere other than cancellation or project death.
Excalibur has a lot of very good people involved with it and it is very well organized. It will be finished. It will take a few years yet, but it will be finished. They have put in an immense amount of work already on the project, there is a lot left to do before they can put out even a playable demo but if they were to simply pack up and call it a day right now a lot of people would have simply wasted an immeasurable amount of their time and energy. From what I know of these people, that is not something any of them would contemplate.
Remember, it is a spare time project and not their livelihood so it is going to be a while longer than a professionally produced game.

I meant "stupid" as in "A colossal waste of time and effort". I meant exactly what I said in that post.

Bottom line, Excalibur has been going a lot longer and has put out something concrete in the past that uses code that they are building on (the various model viewers). They have put out tutorials so people will be able to make their own stuff for the game from day 1. It is all on the website/forum I linked earlier.