Raising The Bar...

[Derek]

You know, as much as there are many improvements that could be made to SE4, at least it is not Reach for the Stars, a game in which the designer unequivocably stated that was designed so that people could NOT modify it in any way, not even changing artwork, is still buggy after being out6 months, and has very little, if any, designer support.

I'll stick with SE4, thankyouverymuch

Derek

[Tomgs]

Unfortunately I bought Reach for the Stars because I loved the origional (on my C64) and Version 1.2 (on my Amiga2000) but the new Reach for the Stars is in no way comparable to either of those classics. I would rather break out my C64 and play the origional. Yes it still works . Oh no the theme music from the origional is haunting me Da da, da da, da, dot dot da.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 12 January 2001).]

[Nyx]

Empire of the Fading Suns has comparable support from Holistic Design. They've given out parts of the source code to the fans in order to allow better modifications. They even gave one guy permission to create a completely new display window that shows "EFS Version 1.5 Nova Version 2.6" Where Nova is the fan mod Version number displayed in the game. They also shared the sub routine they used to create the game maps, and are still patching the game even though it's three years old.

Blizzard also did an above average job of patching StarCraft and BroodWars to tweak playbalance between the races. Even going so far as to get input from the top tournament players about what needed fixing and how much to tweak things to get them fixed.

Now, to give credit where it's due, Aaron is much better about feedback and replying to e-mail than any other game designer I'm aware of, and he puts out patches way faster than anyone else. But there are a few companies that care enough to try.

I think more of them would be willing to if they could only get permission to engage in what their bosses will consider a non-profit activity.

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