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[kziti kat]

You will be pleasantly surprised...   They are selling the last copies of the game for only $2.95 !!!!

[Jester_OC]

I know this is not a competition but you sparked my now nostalgic memory of SFC from my point of view.

How about finding after finishing an infotainment port of "Timeless Math the Mayan adventure", and the cancellation of a spy game.  I ended up working on a game based on Starfleet Battles.   A game I played a lot of in High School.  Not only that, out of the many names suggested by other team members mine is the one approved!  Then I get to work with the Designer to throw out months of design by committee crap to develop and sell the new interface (which becomes the interface we use) to Interplay's producers.  Then halfway through the project I become lead programmer.  I get huge amounts of influence on the design and get to write most of the damage routines, weapon systems, the networking to game interface, the entity manager and basic physics of the game.  I lost a few battles over game design but for the most part I can say that SFC was nearly exactly how I wanted the game to play.  

How's THAT for a trip down memory lane! And I think it has been 6 years for me.

Jester.

P.S. I must say that I think that without Erik's "think BIG" ideas my original vision of SFC would have felt much different.  Erik's big influences was the camera style (Too much SFB blinded me into thinking top down should be the main view mode) and I wanted planets and other items to be scaled much smaller with the idea that the ships where just an advanced form of Icon and that the ships were much farther apart from each other than it looked.  While that jives with SFB's logic, it is just too esoteric to explain to someone new, and while some people did not like the fact that our ships pushed through each other and did not RAM each other, the feel of the game became much more visceral with those changes.

     

[Captain KoraH]

 

Quote:
 I now realize the last 4 years of gaming have been utterly wasted...years that could have been so much more. Now, I'm left to relentlessly scrounge the grungy bottoms of overflowing bargain bins throughout southern ontario hoping against hope a copy of OP has been quietly neglected in a dusty corner of a broken down gaming store waiting for me to liberate it.  

THAT my friends, is how the true SFC fanatic is born!

[VelvetAcidChrist]

i found out about sfc in a pc magazine where it got a 70% score.i never played or heard about sfb before but this alien lookin ships made me buying a original north-amercan versionof sfc,and i live in germany.
i also had just bought me a ok pc with 400 mhz and 32 megs ram 8 mb vid and i finally got an phoneline with isp!
then i logged on mplayer.com and saw like 150+ people playing sfc and chatting and all had strange letters in their front.
well KNF-SylaStingray helped me setting up the game and signed me into starlance,actually i joined a fed fleet although i never liked fed.and my 1st game ever on mplayer,200l speed 7,me and my loved l-bch lol.from now on i was known as KNF-LestatEvil and also called "DJ Evil" for playing music in the rooms quite often.
i made friendship with cpt kirk icop,voidwar and jolley rogers quite quick and discovered my love for small bpv s and ships.
starfleet command is a part of my life for 4 years now *wow* and i wont miss a single day of it.
thx tadlren for providing me so much fun and joy during the last 4 years!
 

[Komodo]

I still can't get over it- 4 years!

I still remember the first time I went online- I was scared to death! LOL
I really didn't know what to expect...And so much that has happened since Dec 99 that first time! I've met so many people, and learned so much. You know what the best thing is? Making new friends online. Heck, I even made the trip to Missouri this summer to meet someone who's become a close friend over time- Mr. Nannerslug! And his pop Oldbuzzard too The trip is something I'll never forget, that's for sure! It was an honour to spend some real time face to face with a fellow junkie  

[Captain Ron]

Just thinking has it really been that long?

Checks when he registried here and goes yup!
Man I remember playing tech support at the Interplay forums as well.

[3dot14]

Quote:
I still remember the first time I went online- I was scared to death! LOL

Me too!

I steal remmeber how my F-CA was ripped to bits by a couple R-KR's... (my first ever online match).

In retrospect, no wonder, I was never above speed 10... counting on my shield reinforcements to protect me...

[FFZ]

   It seems kind of odd responding to this thread, seeing as I only bought these games a few weeks ago, yet SFB ws as dear to me as any game I ever played.

Back in the days before PCs became popular, in the late 1970s, cardboard games were what we did for fun (I was a teenager back then) and I remember when a small outfit from Texas realised a game based on Star Trek (yet they couldn't say Star Trek, as they didn't have a license).

It had a few ship types, Federation CA, CL, Klingon D7, D6, Romualn Warbid and War Eagle, and some frieghters, that was about it!

The game's designer was a professional engineer (Steve Cole) and the game was from an outfit called Amarillo design bereau(Never could spell that damned word )

Before long, it had a deluxe edition (more ship types, more counters, introduced the Kzin, Tholians and Gorn) and then in the early 80s, the game started to grow. At first, there were expantion books (which often had unclear, and even contradictionary rules) three in all. They added PFs, fighters, more ships, the Lyrans, the Hydrans, the Andromedains (It's a shame the Tholians and Andromedians never made it to SFC, nor did the WYN).

Before long, they had a campaign game which I still have somewhere,with a hex filled galaxy (but it was incomplete) and you could use it with SFB to create grand campaign games.

I remember so much fun out of those days, so many battles and campigns, it was a great series if you had a good gaming group, into the system. But eventually, real life made it's insidous way into things. A more demanding job, than a wife, and eventaully a son ended those great gaming days of yore. I had a personal computer from about 1998, but it wasn't very good, and I couldn't play advanced games on it, so I completley missed SFC's introduction. I had read several unfaltering reviews of it, but I was undaunted by them, the critics had hated SFB also, it was always to complex for the usual simple minds of reviewers.

So, that brings us to the present time, just recently, I finally built a good computer, and looked to add some nice games, so I looked at SFC. The screen shots looked excellent, and the price of the various games was not excessive, so I bought all four of them, and have started playing from SFC I Gold. I haven't regretted it at all, they were well worth the money. My only regret is I missed out on the last four years of talking about the game at sites like this!    

[Captain Ron]

Quote:
 It seems kind of odd responding to this thread, seeing as I only bought these games a few weeks ago, yet SFB ws as dear to me as any game I ever played.

So, that brings us to the present time, just recently, I finally built a good computer, and looked to add some nice games, so I looked at SFC. The screen shots looked excellent, and the price of the various games was not excessive, so I bought all four of them, and have started playing from SFC I Gold. I haven't regretted it at all, they were well worth the money. My only regret is I missed out on the last four years of talking about the game at sites like this!  

Swing on down to the models forum and introduce yourself as a person who would like to see what is available to spice up the looks of the ships in the game, they all can be replaced by some really cool looking ships. I would also look up a product called shipedit and download and install it, makes it much easier to get the models into the game. Then you should ask about all the mods made for the game by a fellow that goes by the name Chris Jones here, that is where you missed all the fun when the servers were still running some custom danaverse games!

[Chris Jones]

In the Summer of 1999 I was looking for a Star Trek game to play on the computer - I had Starfleet Academy - but it just didn't cut it. My brother told me of this cool new demo for Starfleet Command. The first mission I ever played was from that demo where you have to defend the freighters, IIRC. I was instantly hooked. At last there was a Star Trek game that was fun. I approached it from a Star Trek standpoint, rather than SFB.  Has it really been 4 years? I imaging we'll be here a year from now and so on..

My first modded ship in the game was the stock Federation Battleship with shields off the scale and more weapons than you could count. A monster was born.  

[Dash Jones]

Quote:
In the Summer of 1999 I was looking for a Star Trek game to play on the computer - I had Starfleet Academy - but it just didn't cut it. My brother told me of this cool new demo for Starfleet Command. The first mission I ever played was from that demo where you have to defend the freighters, IIRC. I was instantly hooked. At last there was a Star Trek game that was fun. I approached it from a Star Trek standpoint, rather than SFB.  Has it really been 4 years? I imaging we'll be here a year from now and so on..

My first modded ship in the game was the stock Federation Battleship with shields off the scale and more weapons than you could count. A monster was born.  

Ah, so that's how you finally beat me all that long time ago...

 

Just jazzin you (aka, just joking and teasing).

And now we see how far you have come!  And awesome it is to behold!

[Novae]

i downloaded the sfc 1 demo the first day it became available online, strangely enough by accident.  I had just got my first computer (home made by a geek friend), was working in North Dakota on an archaeology dig, staying in some strange hotel, and got internet.  being an avid star trek fan, did a search online, and found the sfc1 demo.  downloaded it all night, installed it the next day after work, and have been a fan ever since.  granted, i havent been playing much lately, though have been an elite player, fleet leader, major points scorer in a ladder league, created the NT Ship Guide and other guides to the multitude of ships, and generally felt welcomed by the community at large.  A good home overall, even with some occasional drama and disappointment.  Jolan Tru my friends,
novae (a Nexus Traveler)

[anon_poet]

I'ts been a long time but I just keep on coming back every few months to see whats happening on the boards.  I bought SFC1 after seeing it a couple of times on the store shelves (I knew what it was, having played SFB before,  I just was a poor college student).  I finally bit the bullet and bought it and played it on my dual processer computer that I had built a year before.  I didn't have decent 3d graphics in NT4 so I just used software mode on my matrox.  Just like everything else I seem to touch I didn't put it down until I had played through all the missions and then that was pretty much it, I had beaten the game, it was fun but time to move on to something else.  

Later on, after my girlfriend at the time moved graduated (masters physics) and moved away, I moved all my stuff back to my own apartment during which my computer suffered head skipping and yet another rebuild (I should know better).  So after loading up all the usual compilers and so on, I looked around at the few old games that I had trying to decide if I were to have a little fun and play something again.  Nothing really appealed to me.  I was looking at the box for SFC and the multiplayer just sort of popped out at me.  I was fairly hesitant about playing games online as I thought most of the players would be just little kids with too much spare time on their hands.  Loading up MPlayer (Mplauge as I so lovingly remember - although much better than the later gamespy), I jumped in the lobby and just lurked for a bit trying to get a sense of what was happening - everyone seemed to know each other already - I was the outsider.  After screwing up enough nerve I somehow got into my first game with someone who (and I remember this game exactly to this very day) I just walked up to and pulled a Gorn anchor (I was in a fed though) and scatterpacked.  I couldn't believe it!  My first time out!  With the game kind of chugging while leaving the mission I think I was sort of rude and disconnected before I was able to thank him.  (I later learned to be patient w/ the game).  

My stroke of luck w/ my first mission I don't believe lasted though.  I soon learned that there were some absolutly fantastic players on the site.  I joined a fleet and had someone who became a fast friend take me under his wing and I learned to become quite a proficient Gorn driver (boy I cheesed him off sometimes when I wouldn't listen to his advice).  We had barely started up an actual campaign game (8th fleet) with web based maps (turn based moves and production) and a whole hirearchy of command.  But that was soon to end because of infighting among one of the races for control of itself, as well as SFC2 coming out within the next few month.  All in all I would have to say it was one of the most positive online experiences that I have ever had.

I had never posted to the boards until after SFC2 came out and I went on to rant how another player was saying I was using bad tactics (ballet).  After I got the reassuring pat on the back from the people here I felt vindicated, even though the other player probably has never seen the comments.

I really have not contributed much to the boards except for my own selfish gain (hehe - evil laugh).  I designed ArticFires 10K hex map that was ever so fun until his machine went down.  I also (I think) have probably posted one of the longest nonfiction posts in my vain attempt to get intercept tracking integrated into the game (complete w/ code - I should have optimized more and used a table based system).

I will always have good memories of SFC, no matter what kind of headaches that patching and nonworking dynas had given me.  Hey I always seem to keep on coming back to see if anything new is out there that would draw me back.

But for now, I have a little better of a life than I had as a student back in Cincinnati.  I got a programming job, moved to N. Hollywood CA, and bought myself a TT roadster w/ all the trimmings except for the navigation (actually in the current IT envirnment I just feel lucky just to have a job), now if I can only track down that (as one of my old buddies used to say) playboy centerfold virgin, I will be all set!

Raise a glass in honor of all the fond memories that this game may have given us all.

Anon_Poet

played as:
8th CptG Jester
unsigned_char - after the 8th broke up

 

[SL-Punisher]

seems like only yesterday I was tearing fed-ca's a new one in my WE .