The Future of Space Empires IV

[Black_Knyght]

Atrocities said:
The amount of people playing SE IV has dropped off dramatically over the last two years to the point that the game is for all intents and purposes, dead.

Slanderous libel and utter gibberish, and I'll gut the scoundrels who claim it as such like the scurvy dogs they are !!!

That said, I will have to say I predicted this, and have seen a dramatic drop-off in general activity as well, CBmod not withstanding.

I've been working my a$$ off on a few shipsets, and trying my hand at a Mod as well, but it honestly seems that other than AT or Urendi Maleldil all the better-known personages who once contributed strongly to SE4 have left it by the wayside, except for occasional games. No one else seems to be seriously adding to or developing anything else for it.

So, to reiterate AT question - Why not get Aaron to release the source code for SE IV and let the modding community have at it?

As AT pointed out, it can't really be making any more money. To me the only real reason for holding out at this point seems to be to prevent any possible loss of interest in SE5.


IMHO

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, one factor is that Aaron sold the series to Strat as I understand it, so he doesn't have the only say in that.

[Fyron]

Black_Knyght said:
No one else seems to be seriously adding to or developing anything else for it.

I guess some Adamant patches don't count. Combat Wombat put out an update for Invasion! a few weeks back. Doom and gloom is much more fun, however.

Suicide Junkie said:
Well, one factor is that Aaron sold the series to Strat as I understand it, so he doesn't have the only say in that.

He still planned to release the SE3 source code at least, but he's been dragging his heels for a year now, pending some documentation cleanup.

[Xrati]

At this price, you have to wonder how much they're making on SE5?

http://store.purplus.net/spaceempiresv.html

I'd say that the problems with SE5 has severly hurt the series.

[Black_Knyght]

[quote]
Fyron said:

I guess some Adamant patches don't count. Combat Wombat put out an update for Invasion! a few weeks back. Doom and gloom is much more fun, however.

Apparently not as much fun as sniping at people without fully reading what was said, or trying to actually understanding it.

I didn't criticize anyone's efforts, nor did I imply they weren't valued. What I said was "No one else seems to be seriously adding to or developing anything else for it.", indicating that not much else NEW is being done, beyond occasionally updating existing Mods.

Both AT and Urendi Maleldil are, and seemingly have been solely, developing NEW mods for SE4, not updates.

While updates are terrific and always welcome, they do only improve on what's already has been done, and don't actually break any new ground.

[Suicide Junkie]

You should stop by the IRC channel more often

[Makinus]

While SEV is not a bad game, it's not the "spiritual sucessor" of SEIV, i always thought that SEIV is the modern sucessor of the old VGA Planets...

I do think that the good 4x space games went in this chronological progrssion:

VGA Planets > Stars! > MOO 2 > SEIV > ?

[Urendi Maleldil]

Does anyone else want to see SEIV on the iPhone?

[Makinus]

i do!

[Cipher7071]

You mean on a little bitsy screen? Some of us old guys have enough trouble seeing things on our desktops.