Most of people who were our regulars don't know our early stories and our early team members, so here is a just a brief history of BCS-TNG.
It all started in 2005 when I came back to the community after being MIA for about 2 years, at that time another fantastic new guy showed up called Wowbagger. At the old BCU there was a scripting idea about a new mod from a dude whose name I sadly don't remember. The idea was about emergency system repair, it should sound familiar to some of you. Naturally both myself and Wowbagger made two different versions of the mod and we naturally immediately started working on each others idea. The product was a 1800 line monster called Emergency System Repair. During the process we've picked up two additional people, one you know as a legend of ST Excalibur called John or at that time Lost_Jedi and a concept artist called Captain Keyes.
During the conclusion of the ESR we all went our separate ways or at least some of us thought we did. A week or so after the completion of ESR we all gathered together and started a private forum for ourselves, we then decided to form a mod team which believe it or not was called Team EarthFX. Luckily the name didn't stick and we outvoted (I think it was Wowbagger) to rename the team to BCS-TNG. Anyway, the reason why we formed a mod team called EarthFX was simply due to a mod idea which was brewing. EarthFX name should give you a few hints, anyway the idea was to allow planetary landings. We had moderate success using nebulae effects and large asteroids however, other mod ideas had priority while quietly we worked on EarthFX. This was a time even before Jimmy become a part of BCS-TNG.
Anyway, what could have more priorities than a mod like EarthFX? BCS: The Beginning mod pack of course. We worked for a very long time on that, at that time it was when we also moved our base of operations to a new forum and at that forum we picked up Jimmy B who had the privilege of being a guinea pig for all of our mods. Almost each night we had a chat session and we would work almost all night on scripts, exchanging notes, suggestions, code... What is interesting is that 5 of us were on different continents. Me and LJ were from Europe while Wowbagger, Jimmy and Captain Keyes were from North America but that didn't stop us from meeting each other on WLM.
Time passed and we finally released BCS: The Beginning using the motto: The modding adventure is just beginning... Which was very fitting, I think. After BCS: The Beginning we also had some great ideas so each of us started working on their own idea. Wowbagger started working on BC: Armada, LJ started working on Immersion and I started working on DS9FX.
Each mod had a completely different concept. My goal was to provide a working wormhole to the community then it later on expanded into a mission like scenario (at some point). However, most of you don't know that my initial goal was to simply provide an extension for NanoFX, I never imagined that DS9FX would become what it is today. The goal was to simply provide new travel modes for BC, something like Slipstream mod but even that grew in scope.
Anyway, Wowbagger worked faithfully on his Armada whose goal was to bring Armada into BC -- it's "simple" as that ;). LJ as well was having fantastic success with Immersion. I remember even today playing around with early builds. However during the development BCs engine showed limitations on that front sadly. At that time we also picked up a few new members from the scripters corps who later became very important members of our team and forums.
Somewhere at the start of 2007 (I think) BC: Immersion's development was stopped for reasons which I've mentioned. BC: Armada development stopped because Wowbagger didn't have the time to work on the project for a while and I stopped working on DS9FX as well due to a lack of spare time (for a while).
LJ became increasingly involved with 3rd era and a cooperation was formed between 2 mod teams as well. Somewhere down the road an idea about Excalibur was born, however this is not Excalibur as you know it today. The idea was to simply extend STBC and create an overhaul of the game. Same thing happened as with Immersion, BCs engine showed its limitations so a decision was made to create a new game engine (the story is not as simple as that but this is a lengthy article as it is). We were invited to join, at that time Wowbagger had less and less spare time while I wanted to finish DS9FX, I just didn't like leaving unfinished business. Soon thereafter me and Wowie joined the team and were active briefly, however our time on the team didn't last long. Wowbagger as I said had very little available spare time while I was exhausted from working on DS9FX. Somewhere down the line we simply left for reasons I already mentioned, while John continued working on the project. I'm very proud of him and am happy of the success he has made on the Excalibur.
Couple of months passed and both myself and Wowbagger were ready to start over. We both re-started BCS (it's silly stating that as BCS-TNG forums were always there but we weren't very active). Wowie got back to working on BC: Armada only to disappear a few months after that was the end of Armada. However on the other hand we picked up a few new member for BCS-TNG, most of these new member would work on DS9FX Xtended for about 2.5 years. As I said I'm a perfectionist and I wasn't happy with the rushed out v3.0 and had to improve it and perfect it as much as possible. The end result you can see and download for yourselves. During those 2.5 years to keep our minds of DS9FX we've created some new mods as well and programs: TDIE, BCUT, Slipstream etc.
DS9FX: Xtended was the final mod which came from BCS-TNG workshop and was released under the motto: The modding adventure continues... Sure we've worked on DS9FX Xtended 1.1 briefly however but none of us has the spare time anymore to work on it. RL obligations caught onto us (jobs, girlfriends, kids... the usual) and we lost interest to be quite honest. This finally brings us to the present day.
I'd just like to simply end this long forum post with the following words:
The modding adventure ends...It was very fun creating mods now it's time to say goodbye to BCS-TNG. Now excuse me as I intend to drink a beer to salute BCS one last time
