Derek Smart Lusting Rights To Freespace? 95
WMCoolmon writes "Derek Smart (of Battlecruiser 3000 AD PC space-sim fame) has started a thread on the Adrenaline Vault forums stating that he is looking into buying the Freespace rights from Interplay and building his own Freespace 3. (For those of you who have not heard of Freespace, it is a space shooter developed by Volition Inc. and Interplay in 1998, which has received almost univeral acclaim.) Discussion has turned particularly ugly following Derek Smart's post on the main Freespace 2 fan site. In addition, he has threatened to shut down the Ferrium Project (an open-source project meant to replace the aging engine of Freespace 2) if he gets the license. To quote Derek: 'I have FULL intentions of getting this license. If I DO get it, you and your teenny leetle friends on your Ferrous Oxide project, are effectively, shutdown because I don't piss around when it comes to IP properties'."
A review of BC 3k AD (2.6 out of 10.0) (Score:5, Informative)
Was its creator's dreams and promises of a realistic, dynamic game universe where you could roam at will in a large ship, finding adventure, managing a complex crew, conducting ground warfare, and engaging in space combat, ever for real? Or were they just wishes sculpted in Jell-o?
We will probably never know. Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. is now out, and as one of the games with the longest development periods in computer history (seven years), it will go down in legend as the most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software ever released. (And, yes, I'm counting Falcon 3.0 and Patriot.) Who exactly is to blame is a subject for another time and place, but it is sufficient to point out that Dr. Derek Smart said a year ago that the game was "done except for the manual" and turned in his code to Take 2, who were supposed to test and refine this code graphically and then publish it. Neither of them is immune from culpability in this farce. Maybe they deserve each other.
Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. was planned as a universe simulator, without any real gameplay in the conventional sense, just a world to explore in a large starship that carried several smaller, faster fighter craft. Realizing that this was an unfulfilling structure for a game, the developers added a mission-based campaign, so that you actually have objectives and some sort of narrative. In the end, BC3K shipped with three modes of play: "Xtreme Carnage" is a jump-in action mode, Advanced Campaign Mode is a series of linked missions, and Free Flight is the free-range storyless mode in which you wander the galaxy looking for trouble.
According to the hype, BC3K offers an exciting array of new features. With a set of systems - including a bridge view, a tacops screen, a navigation mode, and various screens which process and provide information - you can travel to different star systems, scan planet surfaces, send out shuttles and fighter craft, interact with aliens and distant empires, and conduct landing missions and ground combat with jet-pack-equipped space marines.
Well, that was the plan. Little of it actually works, however. First, the game crashes constantly, more than any game I have ever played. Almost any action you perform will cause the program to go south. I didn't know what half the functions were or how to use them. Most of them don't work: going into orbit around a planet, using jump points, navigating to distant star systems, docking, and so on; the list is long. Objects pass through other objects. Ships don't do what they're told. Equipment won't work. I won't even go into the alleged ground combat mode because I couldn't make heads or tails of it, never got it to work, and haven't been able to find anyone who can even tell me if it's even in the game or not. Best of all, the campaign can't be played past the second mission, which is structured in such a way that it cannot possibly ever end.
All of this is made a thousand times worse by a manual that is more like an un-manual. If I fed my dog a set of Scrabble tiles he could have crapped a better manual. Online information only clouds the issue, with a long, rambling set of designer notes from Derek Smart that make him look like a charter member of the Jodie Foster Fan Club (John Hinkley Chapter). Take 2 is promising a replacement manual (as well as extensive bug fixes) for all registered users some time soon, but by then it will be too late. Right out of the box BC3K is the single most impenetrable game since Patriot.
The whole debacle is only aggravated by a core design that, even if properly documented and tested, was flawed from the outset. There is too much going on in too many places, and none of it is well-crafted. A messy network of screens, pop-up boxes, and function keys make managing even the most rudimentary functions a chore. Nothing is smoothly integrated or in
Re:My first experience of slashdot bias (Score:5, Informative)
It reached the point, long ago, where saying the name "Derek Smart" in an online forum was it's own punchline. It's also rumored that saying his name three times within a thread will cause him to appear and flame everyone in forum into oblivion... this has actually happened on many occasions.
So, you can understand if people tend to assume that he's not the best person to take over a fondly remembered game series... add to that his threats to shut down an otherwise worthwhile open source emulation project and the bias shown here on slashdot is quite understandable.
Re:I did not think it was possible. (Score:2, Informative)
if the guy that made BC3000AD is making Freespace 3, then may god help us all, prefereably by having somebody put a contract out on this Derek Smart
Re:My first experience of slashdot bias (Score:3, Informative)
Further more he is a liar, a braggart, a bully and an all round crazy person.
May I present the evidence for the prosecution:
http://www.werewolves.org/~follies/
At the site above are many instances of Mr Smart lying, bullying people then lying about the lies etc etc.
Re:My first experience of slashdot bias (Score:2, Informative)