I do believe the planets are aligning to allow Stomp Stomp Devastation, Faibanx 3D, or whatever you want to call it to continue development. In order to make the project as open and available for anyone to help out with it as possible, I've been waiting for decent free development tools to magically appear. There's been any number of 2D graphics programs available for doing textures like the Gimp, but for the purposes of 3D modeling for the game, I think Blender has advanced enough (although I need to do a double-check), and now the exact suite I had been proposing to base the "engine" on (DarkBASIC Professional) is now free...sorta. I had been hesitant to use DB Pro itself as it's (a) not quite a real compiled language, and (b) it costs money and people'd have to pirate it or buy it to use it to help with programming development. Now, the DLL package that comprised all the easy 3D stuff that DB Pro did (which they used to sell) is now free. Microsoft strongarmed, I mean, threw them some money, as THEY now give away their basic compiler for free and they wanted to get interest going in programming 3D games.
So now, with 2D/3D graphics software available for free, the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition compiler a free download, PLUS the DarkBASIC DLL add-on free now as well, the stage is set to fire up work on SSD/F3D again.
Also, with the free availability of VMware Player, I could even distribute a complete development environment as a virtual machine that people could run, except that the OS would still need to be licensed.
Anyway, the point of this E-mail is that I'm officially getting stirred up to develop a 3D stompy sexy scaly online simulation system again. Tell the New York Times!
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Maybe he can do the billboards in the cities or something.