April 2009 Update news - Slipstream: The Price of Freedom Mod for Homeworld 2

Hello ModDB,

Slipstream is a great mod for Homeworld 2, and we have come a long way from where I originally meant for this mod to go. Homeworld 2 is making a come-back, and the future looks bright. Unfortunately, Slipstream: The Price of Freedom has become a tangled mess of coding and story, with some much on my end, but so little on your end. I cannot help but feel horrible that I have made it this big of a mess. But, I have hopes for this project. A good review done by birds_of_prey has shown what I need to work on here. But, you must understand that about 97% of work is done mostly by myself, about 1% is done by the SRI team, and 2% being work done by others outside of SRI. That leaves me with all the programming, while also the creator & writer of the Slipstream universe. This presents a problem, as I am soon to be a college student working part-time. With basically 100% of Slipstream being my problem, work, tends to not get done. But, in these troubled economic times, many are turning to free and open mods for games they already own. With Slipstream being one of about 3 mods currently seeing active development for Homeworld 2, that basically puts us in a near-monopolistic position for creating fresh content for this particular platform. So, I am asking the Mod Database community for few things that can help put TPOF into a direction we can all benefit from.

Help Wanted.

If you wish to help, send me a private message here: Moddb.com While, I cannot pay you, however, I can offer you advertisement for your work, and a reference if need be. We can work out the details as such. Until we can get a stable development base that is not one-sided, TPOF might be frozen at 2.4 (maybe 2.5) until such time we find what we need. Right now, I am looking for: 

• Homeworld 2 Programmer - specifically LUA. Anyone from Beginner to Professional will suffice. (more than 1 would be nice here; I would like to have someone with campaign programming experience.).
• A Modeler/Texture Maker - for making new ships.
• Artist - (using Photoshop/The Gimp/Paint Shop Pro/What have you.) To provide new artwork for backgrounds, ships, effects, etc.
• Code Debugger - Anyone who can debug Homeworld 2, and fix problems.
• Sound Maker - Anyone who can make music and sound effects.
• Advisors - Anyone who thinks they can help contribute to the storyline, and provide ideas for in-game content.

Some new Concepts.

I would like to share with you some concepts I have been tossing around for a while now. Some of them may or may not be viable, but I do want to go over them before I attempt to try them. Obviously TPOF is very experimental in the sense of its features & systems. While most of them are “Cool”, some are just impractical. So, the goals of this project will be redirected.

Development focus.

• Experimental Code - New, or Unproven systems will not be included in public builds, unless they are included in separate “developers preview” packages that may or may not ship with public versions.
• Unneeded changes - Building on the old phrase “If it's not broken, Don't fix it.”, If we introduce a system is proven to work, it will not be changed abruptly.
• Major Releases - We are going to drop our focus of major releases being whole number values (such as 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0), and have our major releases be labeled as we see fit, and will include tags to advise the user of what the build is (Alpha, Beta, or Stable).
• Beta Releases - Beta releases will be sent to developers and beta testers only.
• System Requirements - TPOF tends to have a problem with this, and we aim to try to nail down the requirements so your computer does not self destruct.
• Uniform UI - I want to try and focus on making the UI look more uniform through out the interface in its entirety.
• Campaign Compatibility - We want to focus on Slipstream being more independent from Homeworld. So, we will drop the Homeworld 2 campaign support, in favor of our own.

Ports

Originally, we did not intend to have Slipstream stay with the Homeworld 2 engine for long, but since we are seeing a decrease in the numbers of games that stick with the elements Homeworld first pioneered, Homeworld 2 seems to our best choice for now. In order to maintain better playability and compatibility, I am planning to go ahead and do a rebuild of TPOF's ships, subsystems, and weapons, while maintaining the original FX, Art, etc. Each source will run parallel to each other until the rebuild is complete. At which time, the original will be destroyed.

Story

While the storyline of Slipstream is not exactly complete on paper, I have a very good idea of where I want it to go. Currently, I am writing two papers, one being general facts about the Slipstream universe, and the second being a time line starting around 2020, and ending around 2691 (which covers both era one, and era two. [TPOF = Late Era II, ~2650]) Hopefully, I will be able to publish both of them for your viewing here soon.

Conclusion

SRI and TPOF will be undergoing a reformation for the next three or four months to hopefully set our focus in the right direction. We will be dropping our side projects, and our unannounced Slipstream:
Uprising will be put back into cold storage. Instead of taking large strides and tripping up, we will take baby steps into making a better SRI for all to benefit from. I hope that you all will join us in this process, and let us know how we are doing. That sums it up, and I wish you all good luck in this trying economic times. Now, I must return to my desktop, there is a lot of work to be done! And of course you can still download TPOF v2.4 below.