Wow, if they're spaced out that much, of course it'll take 300 pages.
Not my choice, believe me.
I also hope everyone is as grateful as I am for the horrible privations LOAF has put himself through for the greater glory of Wing Commander. These documents, when complete, will constitute the greatest WC event ever since the release of Unknown Enemy.
Well... thanks for the kind words - but as with UE, I think this will be hard to appreciate until something is available to the general public.
Let me explain a bit about my project.
There's a huge amount of *history* contained in documents like the Prophecy Beat Outline -- but it's a diminishing resource. As time goes on, there'll be fewer and fewer storyboards, game layouts, movie props, script revisions, etc. in the world. So the idea is to get my hands on whatever I can and store it digitally.
I'm doing this first wave based on my own collection as basically a show of faith and a proof of concept. I've been lucky enough to have been given a lot of development-related odds and ends over the years... and by scanning all the documents and photographing all the artifacts in detail and making them available online, I'm hoping to show that the project has merit and appeal to anyone else who has such things in their collection.
After this first wave is completed (I have maybe 8,000 pages to scan total) we're going to show the results to all the former Origin people we can track down - and offer to do the same for any of their documents and artifacts. Got design documents, scribbled notes, old e-mails, video tapes, 3D models? We want to archive them. If you don't want them online, we're happy to oblige - we'll store them electronically for future reference. If you don't want to give away your things, that's fine - we'll come to you and scan them (Hades, Chris and I are planning an August expedition to Austin... and I'll be living there again shortly). Do want to get rid of them? We'll scan and preserve them and donate them to Joe Garrity's museum when we're done.
All scans are 300 dpi BMPs, and will be stored as source materials on sets of DVDs... copies of which will be given to anyone donating material to the project for safekeeping (and a set will be stored with Joe, for safekeeping... and another sent to EA, for god knows what).
It seems like, in my mind at least, an excellent way to honor Origin - recording the history behind all the amazing game development they did.
(I'd also like to open the project up to more than just Wing Commander... but I don't know much about the other games, other than having played them. I'd like the Ultima LOAF and the Crusader LOAF and the Wings of Glory LOAF to join up with this project to make sure their projects are represented...)
(... okay, maybe I am the Wings of Glory LOAF...)
Friend got back to me, actually. He's a bit unsure - mostly intimidated by size.
Yeah, I get that a lot. *Zing* Seriously, though, I think I've worked out the PDF angle... I found a fairly easy to use tool, and once I've generated a PDF Viper is going to compress it into a web-managable size (he got the demo Beat Outline down to 3 megs from 10). But thanks for your help - I'll certainly come to you if the current plan doesn't work out!
