Quarto said:
I think that when somebody comes out of nowhere telling the members of a WC fan project that they should not make a WC fan project, he should be very careful throwing words like "trolling" around.
I can understand your aspect. However don't forget that, I answered to some hmm personal remarks.
On VS forums Someone came (out of nowhere) and told that Ogere3d'd be much reasonable choice as game engine at summer of last year. There was a mature game engine at that time. Of course that engine needed a lot of time to develop to that level. (The recent Privateer Remake release still uses the 'old VS engine).
But ogre3d is az uptodate quality engine, that supports the latest 3d effects. So the VS devels agreed that newcomer, and now he is cooperate in development of VS too. He helps porting the ogre3d engine.
Let me allow some personal story.
I know well the situation when a company becomes to bankrupt, and your favourite software or computer has no future anymore.
I had commodore 64 in my childhood as many other kids at that time too. Later I had an Amiga. They was wonderful computers of their age. Then commodore became bankrupt thanks to Ali Mehdi. He stop all development cut-back everithing, Commodore sold only its old models till all company was shut down and sold to escom. Anyone spent a lot of time to learn about every registers and bits of that wonderful hardware was upset. The special knowledge become useless in future.
(Interesting: Ali Mehdi is an owner of a medial computer newspaper publisher company. Bob Young originally was the co-founder of Linux journal, then he earned a lot of money as chairman and co-founder of Red hat)
Then I had a PC (of course I still kept all of my commodore machines). Dos seemed
like travel back in time, so I found OS/2. That was a great os and also compatible with all mainstream pc programs. After the win95 came out future os OS/2 became dark. There was more and more win32 programs were uncompatible with os/2. I tried win95 but that was far from the quality of os/2 (win95 was a windows based on a newer dos). Then I bought a my linux cd-rom (slackware) installed it. It was weird but I got used to it. I understood only open source can guarantee that an software or os won't disappear in the future. The 'funs' will always able to continue the development, even if a company disappears. (an example. eazel became bankrupt 4 years ago, but their nautilus is actively developed nowadays).
Open source is not a religion or an ideology, it is only the proper and effective way to manifest your idea, if you don't have ten millions of dollars to buy rights and coders artists etc. Of course it's not a magical wizard who turns your dreams real. If you want sg you must work on that. But there are usually some solution for your needs. You can cooperate with devels of that projects and add your options to them.
Open source is efficient way of development in case of: operating systems, development tools, scientific applications, business applications etc.
But that is right game programs are somehow different.
The first group contains timeless programs, for example there are no plans to release the ultimate edition of firefox browser. The games are different. There aren't main releases after the official release of a game in practice. Maybe mmorpg games will change it in the future. Because of this, the open source modell is not ideal for games in several cases. Also GPL or BSD licenses does not suite for game art.
But things're changing nowdays. There are several great oss games, like Battle for Wesnoth, NetHack, Globulation2, Glest, Flight Gear, Open Transport Tycoon, Planeshift or even ID's quake3. And Doom3, quake4 game engines will be also open in the future.
Some complex game engines are emerging, like ogre3d or crystal space. They are general purpose 3D engines, they'll be continially developed like firefox. They are not games, but they are bases of games. The game logic can be programmed (in case of ogre3d) in python language, that is much easier and faster if you want to create your game. The envolving game engine lets your game graphics to be keeped uptodate.
It's right there are several abandoned oss games, but who cares, there are several alive and kicking game projects.
Vega strike is much more than an alpha game project. It is useable even in its actual state, try it see it.
http://vegastrike.sf.net
I just wanted to give some good imho racional advice, and do not give offence any wc funs. I'm also liked the Wing Commander series, and It's pity that new owner of Origin (EA) abandoned completly WC games.
good luck
Peter Kiss