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Derek Smart Lusting Rights To Freespace?
WMCoolmon writes "Derek Smart (of Battlecruiser 3000 AD PC space-sim fame) has started a thread on the Adrenaline Vault forums stating that he is looking into buying the Freespace rights from Interplay and building his own Freespace 3. (For those of you who have not heard of Freespace, it is a space shooter developed by Volition Inc. and Interplay in 1998, which has received almost univeral acclaim.) Discussion has turned particularly ugly following Derek Smart's post on the main Freespace 2 fan site. In addition, he has threatened to shut down the Ferrium Project (an open-source project meant to replace the aging engine of Freespace 2) if he gets the license. To quote Derek: 'I have FULL intentions of getting this license. If I DO get it, you and your teenny leetle friends on your Ferrous Oxide project, are effectively, shutdown because I don't piss around when it comes to IP properties'."
Just give'er Derek. It is your time to shine. Lets see a AAA title based on the FS Univers, that would rock!
I didn't think it was possible, but he is worse than Theo (OpenBSD).
My goodness, he appears to have a chip on his sholder about 1000 miles wide and IIRC didn't it take years for BC 3000 AD to be patched enough to have the features listed on the back of the box?
Linkage
When Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. is dead and gone (and within a week of release it was on a fast track to oblivion), one question will linger: Could it have been a good game?
Was its creator's dreams and promises of a realistic, dynamic game universe where you could roam at will in a large ship, finding adventure, managing a complex crew, conducting ground warfare, and engaging in space combat, ever for real? Or were they just wishes sculpted in Jell-o?
We will probably never know. Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. is now out, and as one of the games with the longest development periods in computer history (seven years), it will go down in legend as the most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software ever released. (And, yes, I'm counting Falcon 3.0 and Patriot.) Who exactly is to blame is a subject for another time and place, but it is sufficient to point out that Dr. Derek Smart said a year ago that the game was "done except for the manual" and turned in his code to Take 2, who were supposed to test and refine this code graphically and then publish it. Neither of them is immune from culpability in this farce. Maybe they deserve each other.
Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. was planned as a universe simulator, without any real gameplay in the conventional sense, just a world to explore in a large starship that carried several smaller, faster fighter craft. Realizing that this was an unfulfilling structure for a game, the developers added a mission-based campaign, so that you actually have objectives and some sort of narrative. In the end, BC3K shipped with three modes of play: "Xtreme Carnage" is a jump-in action mode, Advanced Campaign Mode is a series of linked missions, and Free Flight is the free-range storyless mode in which you wander the galaxy looking for trouble.
According to the hype, BC3K offers an exciting array of new features. With a set of systems - including a bridge view, a tacops screen, a navigation mode, and various screens which process and provide information - you can travel to different star systems, scan planet surfaces, send out shuttles and fighter craft, interact with aliens and distant empires, and conduct landing missions and ground combat with jet-pack-equipped space marines.
Well, that was the plan. Little of it actually works, however. First, the game crashes constantly, more than any game I have ever played. Almost any action you perform will cause the program to go south. I didn't know what half the functions were or how to use them. Most of them don't work: going into orbit around a planet, using jump points, navigating to distant star systems, docking, and so on; the list is long. Objects pass through other objects. Ships don't do what they're told. Equipment won't work. I won't even go into the alleged ground combat mode because I couldn't make heads or tails of it, never got it to work, and haven't been able to find anyone who can even tell me if it's even in the game or not. Best of all, the campaign can't be played past the second mission, which is structured in such a way that it cannot possibly ever end.
All of this is made a thousand times worse by a manual that is more like an un-manual. If I fed my dog a set of Scrabble tiles he could have crapped a better manual. Online information only clouds the issue, with a long, rambling set of designer notes from Derek Smart that make him look like a charter member of the Jodie Foster Fan Club (John Hinkley Chapter). Take 2 is promising a replacement manual (as well as extensive bug fixes) for all registered users some time soon, but by then it will be too late. Right out of the box BC3K is the single most impenetrable game since Patriot.
The whole debacle is only aggravated by a core design that, even if properly documented and tested, was flawed from the outset. There is too much going on in too many places, and none of it is well-crafted. A messy network of screens, pop-up boxes, and function keys make managing even the most rudimentary functions a chore. Nothing is smoothly integrated or in
No, I can't talk about it because like most issues such as this, the settlement terms are highly confidential (a DC requirement). Outside of our attorneys, the company primaries and the judge, nobody knows - or will know - the details.
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FROM: http://www.3000ad.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_
If DC is district court, isn't he lying? It would be up to both parties involved as to the release of the terms of the settlement/agreement, would it not?
How does he plan on shutting down the Ferrium project? The minute I read that, I instantly thought to myself that the fact that the source code for Freespace 2 has been available for some time which would be a huge dent in any attempt Derek tries to shut the project down. reveals that since the code for Ferrium isn't using any of the Interplay code it should be pretty safe. Of course, IANAL...
"The more you tighten your grip, the more games will slip through your fingers."
Just so you know, Derek Smart has been famous (as a dickwad) since maybe 1993 or thereabouts. He has a long and checkered history of attempting to do all manner of things, failing miserably, and then attacking his detractors, in court or elsewhere.
People don't attack a random game developer this way for no reason and for that length of time unless there's a good deal of substance to the rumors. Check out BC3000AD and you'll see what I mean.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Well, as others have indicated, Derek Smart has a bit of a history of ... saying things on forums. He talks a lot but, well, very few people have ever played his games, and even fewer are brave enough to admit it. For years, he claimed to have a Ph.D.; this was proven to be a lie.
It reached the point, long ago, where saying the name "Derek Smart" in an online forum was it's own punchline. It's also rumored that saying his name three times within a thread will cause him to appear and flame everyone in forum into oblivion... this has actually happened on many occasions.
So, you can understand if people tend to assume that he's not the best person to take over a fondly remembered game series... add to that his threats to shut down an otherwise worthwhile open source emulation project and the bias shown here on slashdot is quite understandable.
shutdown because I don't piss around when it comes to IP properties'."
I assume he'll be getting the money for the court case from an ATM Machine after entering his PIN Number.
But I'm not convinced Derek Smart is the person to make that happen. I think his games are over ambitious, unfocussed and buggy. I bought BC3000AD and sequel, given that I thought the ideas sounded good, but neither was *actually playable*.
While I love the FS series, and would love to know how it continues, I doubt Derek Smarts ability to do it properly, and I doubt he even has the inclination to make a FS3 game properly. I suspect he'd prefer to take over the IP and then make some sort of massive space sim game where you could command troops on planets, move armadas, trade, mine asteroids for ore, research new technologies, build the great library to steal inventions from the alien species, etc... you get my drift.
Wow, I've never heard of this guy before today.
If I treated people the same way he treats people, I'd probably be posting this comment from a hospital bed somewhere.
I'm seriously surprised he hasn't been killed in some kind of real-life drunken fight.
I've always been curious to know just how Derek Smart avoids all the big sites that mention just how much of a joke he is to the gaming industry.
I mean, really, if he looked outside forums once and while, he'll see that not only do gamers hate him, but the professionals in the industry use him as fodder for just about every big-ego-no-talent joke made.
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
Hello, I am also a Derek - Derek Meek, aka "Kazan" amongst just about everyone who knows me online. I am the project leader of Ferrium (the game engine project), and the Network programmer for the FreeSpace 2: Source Code project (i also do other various things for the SCP).
So Mr. Smart posted his message asking if we were interested I stated simply and calmly "We will not accept anything from you, sorry but your work in the past has been less than impressive." (not an exact quote, but very close). He then proceeded to insult me in very childlike fashion, and I calmly corrected him on all his misinformation.
That's when he threatend unfounded legal action by saying (direct quiote) "Let me assure you of one thing that you can go to sleep with tonite. I have FULL intentions of getting this license. If I DO get it, you and your teenny leetle friends on your Ferrous Oxide project, are effectively, shutdown because I don't piss around when it comes to IP properties. You would do well to ask around. I've sued publishers for less and I have attorneys around the world, literally on speed dial."
This legal threat is laughable when it comes to the Source Code Project. The intellectual property he may be acquiring from Interplay does not include the rights tot he source code - they belong to Volition, Inc. and we have an unlimited license to do what we want with the source as long as we don't make money of it. Furthermore any game content we distribute is protected by the laws protecting fan fiction.
When it comes to my project, Ferrium, they're downright laughable! Ferrium is a completely new game engine I'm designing from scratch and having members of the community right the code for. Neither Interplay or Volition have any claim to the intellectual property therein.
This seems to be very typical of him from everything that i've heard of him.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Read further into the thread on Avault where he made his announcement - like where he flames me after I politely told him we wouldn't accept anything from him.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
If those are his "revolutionary" ideas for the Freespace universe, then I fear that he doesn't understand what makes a space combat sim truly enjoyable. At the very least, someone should force him to play all the way through the previous game, and maybe Descent 3, using a really good joystick...
Rolling, banking, afterburning all over the place, laser fire screaming past you, dodging homing missiles left and right, huge beam weapons slicing capital ships apart in the background... THAT's a space combat sim. Not running around on a planet somewhere collecting goo. Not constantly picking your mouse up because you ran out of mouse pad.
He sued a site that gave BC3000 a bad review, and threatened to sue SomethingAwful for saying he was arrested for bank fraud.
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Derek Smart is an asshole. That is a well documented fact.
Further more he is a liar, a braggart, a bully and an all round crazy person.
May I present the evidence for the prosecution:
http://www.werewolves.org/~follies/
At the site above are many instances of Mr Smart lying, bullying people then lying about the lies etc etc.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
I remember reading countless Usenet threads dealing with this guy, egos, and Coke machines way back in college (95-96). Funny thing is, that quote sounds exactly like what he would have said back then too.
I guess some people are just assholes from cradle to grave.
Is this the same series that started with Descent: Freespace? Because that's the only one that comes to mind. I loved those old Descent games and I think they were from Interplay, right?
Let's also examine this exchange:
You see, to imply that someone has a psychological problem for which he needs medication is to incite an angry response. Maybe the social context is different in Florida or something.It is generally unwise for the public face of a game company to start flamewars with the potential fanbase. Hence, you don't see Gabe Newell showing up and talking smack whenever someone makes a fat joke. It is also unwise to believe this statement: "Gents, some of the posts in this thread, are EXACTLY the reason why game developers AND publishers hardly pay attention to a game's fanbase." Game developers and publishers don't stop paying attention to its fanbase because a few people start spewing vitriol about them. They simply learn to ignore their anti-fanbase. Derek Smart, on the other hand, pays way too much attention to his anti-fanbase.
Battlecruiser 3000AD is not as horrible as everyone makes it out to be. The initial reaction was mostly the fault of Take 2's decision to release it in a buggy, unplayable state. But because of the Derek Smart mystique (somewhat akin to the John Romero mystique), people get in on the running joke without really knowing anything about the game. Then again, were Mr. Smart not so outspoken, he probably wouldn't have as much name recognition as he does now. (Does anyone know who the lead developer for Extreme PaintBrawl was?) Maybe Battlecruiser would have just faded away if he hadn't kept himself in the news. So I guess it works for him.
This guy has to be the biggest ass in gaming history. Just look at the support forum for his last game, BattleCruiser 3000AD.
So-called Support Forum
Examples:
1) Now that this major patch has been released, starting from now on, all subsequent patches will only be available via the registration downloads page.
For this reason, you must register the game and ensure that your profile contains correct, accurate and useful information.
Today, a large number of records have been DELETED from the database. These range from single letter first/last names, to completely empty profile info. Now, those people will have to re-register. And if the same problem occurs, the database will again flush these records every week. After three such deletions, the CDKEY will be invalidated and you will no longer be able to register it.
I paid a LOT of money for this system and I don't like people making a mockery out of my system.
So, now would be a really good time to login to your profile and update it accordingly.
[ 05-10-2004, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]
2) From now on, ANYONE posting ANYWHERE on this site without their valid sys info in their signature, will be site banned. If you don't know what a site wide ban is, read this.
There won't be ANY warnings whatsoever. And once you are site banned there is absolutely ZERO chance of coming back here. Ever. If you feel so bad about it, next time you see my games on the shelves, just walk on by.
And this is how the guy talks to customers! Why would any company put up with this asshole?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
Well, yes, but in all fairness to Smart, the proprietor of that site (Bill Huffman) is also insane. If Smart is an arrogant egomaniacal asshole (yes) then Huffman is a crazy stalker. They deserve each other.