Bridge Commander Central
BC Forums => BC General => Topic started by: Dante Leonhart on May 12, 2007, 01:00:22 PM
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Hey guys. This is my first postee here! ^_^
I'm gonna go straight to the point cuz I'm fairly excited about this email I just got. Derek Chester, the guy who wrote the story for BC has supposedly sent me an email but I wanted to verify that this really is him before I got my hopes up. I was wondering if anyone here or at bcfiles had any Activision contacts so that I could be sure that its him. I'd be willing to send the email addy and the message itself in a PM if necessary!
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I took this directly from bridge commanders credits code
CreateSingleDatabaseCredit("Story Editing", pSubSeq, 5, 0.00, 3)
CreateSingleCredit("D.C. Fontana", pSubSeq, 7, 0.05)
CreateSingleCredit("Derek Chester",
its probably not much help
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no I don't rly think that helps...
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Looks legit to me...
but still, its hard to say if the email is legit,someone could be playing games with ya,but I found this:
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,36040/
you can search for him,hes definitly involved with BC and Legacy supposidly,and probably other ST games..do a yahoo search he pops up everywhere..you might eventually find a email link that matches the one you have..
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Oh man... if only there was some verifiable contact info on the page!
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http://www.gamedaily.com/star-trek-legacy/pc/game-features/4940?articleID=34363
^^another one,he was co-writer of the story in ST Legacy..supposidly.
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Most certainly interresting.
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Definitely, but REALLY need a way to make sure this guy is who he says he is. Too bad there's no contact info anywhere there for this guy.
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nvm I solved it for him
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I blame Nebula.
Yeah, supposedly this guy has a live video page and it seems legit and matches up with the email I got. If this is the real deal, them I am very excited. Hopefully it checks out.
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tell him to give us the source code lol
if he doesnt have it, he must know someone who does :P
or tell him to come here to BCC, and help mod the game lol
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tell him to give us the source code lol
if he doesnt have it, he must know someone who does :P
or tell him to come here to BCC, and help mod the game lol
Indeed!
I would even like to have the source code without the (licenced) 3d engine!
Why? Because with Excalibur, it wouldn't even matter. ;)
[EDIT] If you won't mind, would you tell us what this is about?
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Yeah get them here so we can finally slap someone who is responsible for this big amount of buggy code for this Crash Commander game.
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Sounds very exciteing! A real live BC developer! Didn't think those guys were still around anymore lol must have noticed your find work for the BC community Dante.
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Yeah get them here so we can finally slap someone who is responsible for this big amount of buggy code for this Crash Commander game.
Yeah, we are really pushing it, aren't we? 8)
It's bound to fall over a couple of times.
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Sorry, guys I don't want to post the actual email in a public forum, but from what I gather, he found the BC videos I made and was impressed. Oh, and the guy isn't a coder, from what I gather, he's the scriptwriter for Bridge Commander, so I dunno if he knows ANYTHING about writing code for BC. BUT he has wrote scripts for a few lil known TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and Deep Space Nine... as well as worked with D.C. Fontana.
In any case, he was wanting to involve me in a 'project' he's working on. I would love to help him if he's really who he says he is, but considering the turmoil I've been through recently, I needed to be absolutely sure.
*whipsers*If I do end up at Activision HQ though... I'll be sure to snag the source code ;)
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Lol he was an author for the plot, why would he know anything about the game engine..
I have previously spoken to eric novales and a few other scripters of BC... and emailed a couple of the guys who worked on bridges.. Overall they remember very little of the development.
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In any case, he was wanting to involve me in a 'project' he's working on. I would love to help him if he's really who he says he is, but considering the turmoil I've been through recently, I needed to be absolutely sure.
*whipsers*If I do end up at Activision HQ though... I'll be sure to snag the source code ;)
Grab the code Grab it!
Hope you do work on this project with him Dante, it would be so cool. :D
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Lol he was an author for the plot, why would he know anything about the game..
I have previously spoken to eric novales and a few other scripters of BC... and emailed a couple of the guys who worked on bridges.. Overall they remember very little of the development.
I would be surprised if they did remember *anything* to be sincere.
I exchanged some emails with Erik Novales when i was working on developping a way to port bridges into game (first nebula bridge, 2003) and by that time, when Totally games was still alive, they could barely remember anything.
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I think BC is the only totaly games, game that I have lol
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It's him. it is. trust me.
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Sorry, guys I don't want to post the actual email in a public forum, but from what I gather, he found the BC videos I made and was impressed. Oh, and the guy isn't a coder, from what I gather, he's the scriptwriter for Bridge Commander, so I dunno if he knows ANYTHING about writing code for BC. BUT he has wrote scripts for a few lil known TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and Deep Space Nine... as well as worked with D.C. Fontana.
In any case, he was wanting to involve me in a 'project' he's working on. I would love to help him if he's really who he says he is, but considering the turmoil I've been through recently, I needed to be absolutely sure.
*whipsers*If I do end up at Activision HQ though... I'll be sure to snag the source code ;)
Actually...I never wrote for Battlestar. If you look closely at my bio...I wrote for DS9 and Lois and Clark, just wanted to clear that up. Also...any source code that was turned over to Activision from TG...would now be in the hands of CBS/Paramount, as they had to turn over all Star Trek related material after losing the license in the lawsuit. And they are known for throwing things out including the entire sound library for TNG forward. But BC was a really fun process...and Tony Evans would be your best bet for remembering anything with Scripting...and he's now at Obsidian. Dave Litwin...I have no idea where he went off to after TG, but he's a good guy. As far at TG goes...theres basically no one left there who worked on BC with the rest of us. So it doesn't surprise me that they don't remember much...but I can say that Dorothy and I are hugely proud of that game and how it turned out. Glad you all enjoy it.
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Is it possible that there's a Bridge Commander founding father in our midst?!
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Welcome to the boards, and you definately should feel proud about BC, its probably got the strongest storyline in any trek game (although thats all personal opinion :P)
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Yeah, we are really pushing it, aren't we? 8)
It's bound to fall over a couple of times.
Sorry, can not agree here: Take the random function as an example: It crashes! when you pass 0 to it. -I do not want to know what happens, when you pass a negative number to it - havn't tried yet.
Yes we pushed the game a lot, but this is by far is no excuse for the big pack of bugs in this broken game.
Please note that I do not blame the story writers for this and while the original python scripter of this game were obviously new to the python programming language, they did a fine job. - Even with the big amount of code they had to write.
But If I will ever see one of the C-Programmers...*censored*
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Welcome to the boards, and you definately should feel proud about BC, its probably got the strongest storyline in any trek game (although thats all personal opinion :P)
Thank you for the kind words Mark. Dorothy and I had a lot of fun writing it...and were saddened when a pitched BC2 was halted after only two months of production. Everyone had definite ideas of what we could do to add even more to the game that was actually in the original design docs.
I still have fun playing it. And while opinions vary...I never had any trouble running it, and think its still a very fun single player experience. Much like "A Final Unity" which Dorothy and I remember and thought was a great Trek adventure. I think her only regret - and mine - is that Secret of Vulcan Fury was so mishandled by Interplay...eventually culminating in its cancellation.
You are all doing some amazing things with the game...and telling your own stories with it. We're thrilled that the modders out there are able to keep BC alive and well while pushing it to even higher levels of performance. Still have a lot of Mods to try...as the selection seems rather large from what I've seen. Though Chris Jones tells me I should check out Kobyashi Maru...which I plan on doing very soon. One I have been familiar with however for a while now...is NanoFX...which I love. Especially since it enhances the single player game.
It is my sincere hope that CBS/Paramount and Bethesda choose to do something truly special and in the spirit of Trek with their next project. Hopefully something like "25th Anniversary", "Bridge Commander", "A Final Unity", or "Klingon Academy". You can be sure that Dorothy and I push for quality both in the gameplay and story departments...sometimes they listen, sometimes not. But we'll always try and tell stories in the original Trek style. Again...thanks for all the kind words.
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I hope you have checked out the MVAM mod by Sneaker (http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/file/MVAM_Infinite;26555)?
Also, thank you for the story in BC, even though I hardly play it (that said, I hardly play BC :P I'm more of a programmer, which is why BC is perfect).
If you ever run into a problem with BC, you'll know where to find me (I run the Technical Support).
@Defiant: True, and the way Lens Flares are handled are also nerve wrecking (you can't remove them through code :( ). Not to mention tractorbeams (so close, but you just can't change the way they look), and a couple more. ;)
But, programming the Win32 API is way worse. :P
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"A Final Unity"...really. I loved that game, still have it somewhere in my collection. I think I'll go play that once again just for kicks. Played it on my dad's first computer...Pentium 1 @ 133 Mhz, 32 Mb, 1.5 gb hd and a 1 mb video card. Story is excellent and the programming was great for it's time since it had 3d battles.
lol, ok. I better put the reference manual down for the game and play the game or something.
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"gapes" Wow we get everyone on here dont we? I want to say thanks for the storyline for BC it was a good plot and just made me think I was in an episode when I played it, which Im sure was the intention :D
Yes theres many mods you can try, and the modder's have all done exceptional work on them all, from the small shuttle pods to the Massive Sovereigns, NanoFX, BC Core, Immersion and all the other great enhancements to in my opinion the best loved ST game out there to date.
A final Unity... I need to play that again, only completed it once years ago and loved it.
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Hopefully something like "25th Anniversary", "Bridge Commander", "A Final Unity", or "Klingon Academy".
Even if all you had done was confirm your credentials and then reeled off that list, I would still have felt a great surge of confidence in the future of Trek gaming (wasn't even sure that there was one!?). With the exception on 25th Anniversary, which had a navigational bug in my copy preventing following the storyline, I absolutely loved each and every one of those games. (A Final Unity is still one of the most immersively convincing games I've ever played.)
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Agreed. Second to Bridge Commander, I really never felt as much a part of Star Trek lore than I did when playing that game. AFU just did everything RIGHT. The voice acting was great. The graphics (for the time) were spectacular. The story was borderline epic yet stayed within the confines of a TNG episode. And your decisions affected the outcome of many parts of the game, even split-second decisions you make at the START of the game can come back and have consequences all the way down to the very end - a feature even Oblivion cannot boast.
If I tried to come up with a reason why AFU was NOT a good game, I would fail miserably.
What puts BC above AFU in my mind was that you actually WERE THE CAPTAIN. Unlike AFU where it was more like you made a decision and then watched how the TNG crew reacted - in BC I felt more like I was participating instead of watching TNG crew.
Now that I think about it, those were the only two games that that did a good job of incorporating the bridge as well as external combat. - Unlike SFA o_O
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Agreed Dante, I did like SFA and SFC though even without the bridge and the "feel" of really controlling the ship as a member of its command crew, I never did get to play the 2nd or 3rd starfleet command, anyone here got them? They worth me tracking down?
BC rules for its vessel and universe interactivity, AFU rules simply through sheer storyline and the fact that even today you can go back to it and get lost in it, well I can anyway, anyone remember BOF? That was rather fun too, damn annoying at times as well! :D
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Welcum aboard Writeall. :mrgreen:
The only two things I never liked with SFA was the weapon placements and the lack of "diplomacy" options.
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Cool, one of the original writers of the story is in our midst! Welcome to our humble abode, Mr. Chester.
I can't say I've played many Star Trek games. Most are terrible, so I tend to avoid them. BC stood out to me, however, because of how realistic the ships play! The story was pretty darn good, too! It stayed consistant with how Starfleet operated, but still managed to incorporate battles left and right!
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Though Chris Jones tells me I should check out Kobyashi Maru...which I plan on doing very soon
I can talk to Defiant, Im sure he would be happy to put you on the Beta team for kobayashi maru 1.0... then you can marvel at the lovely bridges :P
It is my sincere hope that CBS/Paramount and Bethesda choose to do something truly special and in the spirit of Trek with their next project.
Well after Legacy being a bit of a mess technically, Im hoping that Bethesda are indeed intending to do an in-house game as the rumour mill suggests. They seem to have an afinity for using Gamebryo so maybe we will get something quite similar to BC :P
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Anyone miss activision ? Personaly I think they did the best trek games, especialy obviously BC itself :D
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I never agreed with the assessment that activition was bad for trek gaming (until they dropped the franchise lol), activision generally publish decent, enjoyable games and the star trek titles were no exception.
In comparison though, bethesda have a history of releasing exceptional games. I remember when morrowind was announced, the idea of a non-linear game, with an unrestricted 16 square mile map, and visualisations that stood up to the best FPS games of the day... initially no-one beleived them. The same could be said for oblivion and many other games from bethsoft.
So when we are talking about in-house titles I believe that Bethesda will give us better quality then Activision, although that is no slur on Activision.
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One thing I will say positive about Acti, as I pointed out in my Making of BC vid on my live-video page, is that they have the money and resources to do full scale productions. However, in all my dealings with them, I find them to be clueless when it comes to knowing what they should be making...and what they think gamers want. They really have shifted focus in the last eight years to the "Broad Appeal" business model. Games like Interstate 76 aren't made there anymore, and all in house development has been suspended for many years now. They buy companies like EA and simply stripmine the licenses they own. The exception to that rule are companies that have creative autonomy in their contracts...such as Raven and ID. The licenses that have really kept them afloat all these years have been Doom, Quake, Spider Man, Tony Hawk and in some cases Star Trek as well. But the biggest Star Trek successes they had in terms of the quality of the games was due solely in my mind to the developers. In House Team - Armada 1, Raven - Elite Force, Totally Games - Bridge Commander. The rest of the Trek titles...Away Team, Hidden Evil, Stafleet Command III, Invasion and the like weren't all that great...but thats my opinion of course.
I would say that Interplay turned out just as many titles that were hits financially and with the fans as Acti. The business model at Acti usually consists of - interfere with development, take tons of useless focus groups, marketing profiles, push the title out no later than Quarter 4 for shareholder portfolio and finally fire the team responsible for making the product no matter how good or bad it was to make a cleaner looking balance sheet.
If Raven or ID or Valve or Blizzard let go of each team after completing a project...then gambled on whether they could get them back after leaving them in limbo while deciding whether or not to make a sequel for three months...they wouldn't have gotten very far.
Interstate 82 was a great example of this. No one who was involved with I76 was involved, and the game lacked the magic of the original. Starfleet Command was made originally by Interplay and Quicksilver...so all the sequels in my mind are based on that work, so its not necessarily re-inventing the wheel.
With Interplay I can remember...25th Anniversary, Judgement Rights, Klingon Academy...I also remember Spectrum Holobyte making A Final Unity. I think and honestly believe that...if you make a quality product...no matter how long you take, it will be successful. Example...my favorite company...Blizzard. They have delayed games to get the balance and gameplay perfect before release...they have even cancelled whole projects that they felt weren't meeting their quality standards. At Acti, they would take a substandard product that they know is lacking and say, "ship it...lets see how much return we can get for what we put into it". Blizzard doesn't do that...because they know that ultimately it will damage their reputation and standing...and more importantly the "faith" they've garnered in the gaming community. The minute you abuse consumer faith in your product...you're on the downslope.
I would agree however that Acti did make some really fun games in the past. I really liked Interstate 76, Muppet Treasure Island, Mechwarrior 2, Heretic II, Elite Force, Battlezone 1 and 2, Armada 1, Twinsens Odyssey and Bridge Commander (-: There are probably a few more though I can't think of any at the moment. Its a big company with the second largest distribution in the world for games...they're bound to have successes. But they've also had their share of failures and...dissapointments.
Bethesda is known for taking risks and actually blazing new trails in development. Things that Acti would never attempt to do, and ironically they have so much more money to work with than Bethesda. Bridge Commander was a project that Larry Holland and his team devised - began work on - then took it to Acti to pitch and they picked it up. Same for Raven and Elite Force. So it isn't so much Acti always coming up with good ideas, as they were the ones who were controlling the license during that period - right place, right time. Armada 1 was a sci-fi RTS similar to Dark Reign that was already in development at Acti before they got the Trek license. When they acquired it, they simply decided to shift the focus of that RTS by dropping in Star Trek units and having Patrick and others voice the cut-scenes - opportunity knocked.
Bethesda had to make Legacy to obtain the license...the two were linked. So I wouldn't say that's all they are capable of...I'd be more inclined to say that they and Maddoc were handed a mess...and they made the best of it they could. That game had been cancelled three times and was previously in development at Acti if that gives you any idea. I think we can look forward to some positive things coming out of Bethesda in the future...now that they have a blank canvas from which to begin work. And personally...I loved doing Tactical Assault with Quicksilver...great game and really was fun to play. Its on a handheld is the only drawback...but it was designed really well for a handheld game. But thats Quicksilver for you...quality and they always put their best foot forward.
If anyone would like to publish this novel I've written please let me know, (-: I hadn't actually intended it to be this long but my writers typing skills just went to town, lol.
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I'm curious...When the storyline was created for BC, was the story written like a screenplay for a movie? or is there a specific way just for the developement of a game? (Derr, I guess not since you have to include 2 posibilities for each decision made in the game, I would assume.)
My brother is going to college for screenplay writing and I was wondering if it is similar. (I am trying to include my brother in my production.)
I suppose I should check out your live video page for the making of bc video...
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Ditto, can you post a link?
You have great taste in games. I76 was an awesome game. And Tactical Assault, despite not exactly being realistic in gameplay (My benchmark in those terms is Klingon Academy *Drool* - but then I think all Trek games should be Space Sims or FPSs, or a mix of the two) really feels like Star Trek, and not just any Star Trek, it feels like 23rd century trek. A really enjoyable game. Pity there's no VO to draw you into the strikingly well written plot and characters.
But who was responsible for the Vor'cha class being in the game?! *cocks shotgun*
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Yay, hes here, cool...now we need to find the others, that acctually remember the game..lol...if any..
And BTW Writeall, Nano(the guy who did NanoFX 2.0) is acctually making a large scale graphics engine for future Trek games.
So hes putting his skills to good use, I dont think he plays BC anymore but he did an awsome job on NanoFX
His site,if you havent been there yet: http://www.nanofx.org/phpBB2/
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its probably got the strongest storyline in any trek game
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disgree with you mark.
BC's story was good, it's true, but not a patch on Klingon Academy. Christopher Plummer and David Warner were awesome, the FMV sequences were brilliant, and the Klingon Civil war was amazing.
Someone totally needs to to a KA total conversion for BC, I'm amazed to realise that not only have I not seen it suggested before now, but that I haven't thought of it before either.
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Although it hasn't been suggested to do a 1 on 1 TC, it has been suggested on serveral occasions to port certain parts of it to BC. I believe the Advance Power Management by Defiant is the product of one such occasion.
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Don't want to hijack the thread further, but I don't think doing a proof of concept would be too hard.
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Don't want to hijack the thread further, but I don't think doing a proof of concept would be too hard.
Then why don't you create a thread for it? ;)
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I'm curious...When the storyline was created for BC, was the story written like a screenplay for a movie? or is there a specific way just for the developement of a game? (Derr, I guess not since you have to include 2 posibilities for each decision made in the game, I would assume.)
My brother is going to college for screenplay writing and I was wondering if it is similar. (I am trying to include my brother in my production.)
I suppose I should check out your live video page for the making of bc video...
Well, it depends on the project. Obviously on DS9 we wrote in Final Draft. When Dorothy and I did BC we wrote in Final Draft...then exported it to Word so others could make notes in other colors and we could track changes on the variations on the script.
Writing for Tactical Assault was completely different. Much like writing for comics in that we had limited space per line delivered on screen, and of course no one wants to sit there and read for too long when you don't have VO...so that was a consideration as well. We would start with an outline in Final Draft...then paste the dialogue into an Excel file. At that point we would have to make further alterations if the lines were too long per cell.
When we did Legacy...we wrote primarily in Final Draft...then exported it to word or a PDF and let the team look at the material that way.
With the branching endings and such on BC...we did alternate script pages for those...and Final Draft has a nice feature to let you lay out scenes that overlay with virtual 3x5 cards to organize your scenes. Hope that answers your question.
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Ditto, can you post a link?
You have great taste in games. I76 was an awesome game. And Tactical Assault, despite not exactly being realistic in gameplay (My benchmark in those terms is Klingon Academy *Drool* - but then I think all Trek games should be Space Sims or FPSs, or a mix of the two) really feels like Star Trek, and not just any Star Trek, it feels like 23rd century trek. A really enjoyable game. Pity there's no VO to draw you into the strikingly well written plot and characters.
But who was responsible for the Vor'cha class being in the game?! *cocks shotgun*
http://www.livevideo.com/Writeall
Thats the link to my LV page. I loved playing I76...it was just plain fun and a wild ride. I especially loved the mission when you had to save Taurus and jump that ravine while being chased by helicopters...lol, great fun. And thank you for your kind words on Tactical Assault...Quicksilver was great to work with, and writing that period of Trek was really a great opportunity. Originally they came to us with the idea of doing a TOS game...but we felt that doing the storyline in TMP era would be more interesting as there was a "lost period" there if you will where things happened that weren't seen previously...just as in Klingon Academy. Which by the way, Dorothy was called in by Interplay to fix. She had to change the original script and polish up the dialogue and story. I'll pass along all of your nice comments on KA...which I also loved to play.
As for the Vor'Cha...(we didn't do it) lol. We did inform the team that this particular design didn't come into service until the 24th century timeline...but the art had already been finalized and ironically...approved by Paramount. But...they did change the model slightly and they speculated that it would have been a predecessor to the eventual Vor'Cha design. Ultimately it was a design decision to flesh out the Klingon fleet for that era that PM would approve. Other than that one thing in TA however, I think the rest of the game was pretty well done.
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Its always good to see the Lost period of the TMP era, it has such character and possibilities because of its limited TV or FILM coverage and lets face it everyone loves the scene where Kirk looks at his new refitted Beauty of the USS Enterprise.
I will however celebrate the day that a new TOS totaly oriented ST game is made, I think I have only ever played one like that and for the life of me cannot remember its name. If anyone remembers it please tell me its name lol.
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25th anniversary? Judgement Rights? Secret Of Vulcan Fury (cancelled, so, no)