I don't know who you talked to but apparently it wasn't the right people if you got indifference bordering on hostility.
As far as growth goes it would be nice.
The problem has always been knowledge and time.
Time to do what needs to be done on the site and knowledge of how it's done.
We need people with knowledge of how to update the site and at the present time that's aspx...
Akataka was in the process of recoding the entire site and making a new set of forums but he has a life as do the rest of us who put the time in necessary to keep the site running.
If you are willing to help out I'm willing to talk about it.
We have the server although it's old and needs to be replaced and the connection, 100 MB... SWAT_OP8R has volunteered to help out but needs to learn aspx.

Its not just the website. I mean the greater community seems to have general indifference towards itself. A lot of people have good ideas for helping to revitalize the community but few are willing to work on those ideas. There are at least a dozen threads on here loaded with ideas to help the greater community, specific parts of it, or TLR specifically.

Seems to me, what we need is some coordination. Someone who knows this community well needs to start a dialog. Call it a town hall meeting or whatever... Just bring people together and hammer out plans for the community's future.

For my part, I've outlined the projects I'm working on. The game/mod forge and hosting cooperative were started to support Openlancer, but both can become general community resources if someone tells me what to do here. Just give me some direction and I'll see to it that the community's needs are met.


-Burn

Seems we have tried that, but real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way. Due to health issues, my time has been curtailed a little, until I can get some medical things done. But I still am here, more on the weekend though. I'm off today due to my truck breaking down to the tune of over $700

It seems to me that the problem is simply that Freelancer is a very Olde game. Starlancer etc. is even older. There's nothing out there that can feed new members into the community - mods only go so far. The new forum additions (DS, Darkstar and all that) have added very little. In short, it's stagnating because we have nothing new. If a sequel to Freelancer was announced (which it never will), you might expect some more life in here as interest is regenerated.

In the meantime, the forum will slowly die.


Yeah, yeah, I'm a miserable old cynic.

patience

there is ongoing work which will do many changes

Still just hurry up and wait... Alright, I'll keep the forge and co-op on hold for now.


-Burn

Are there any upcoming microsoft games you could cover?

I doubt it. Most of their active IP is wrapped up in franchises or aimed at boosting xbox 360 sales.


Another space sim that hasn't gotten much attention around here is Starshatter. Its an indie game, has decent mod support, its fairly cheap ($30 at GameStop a couple weeks ago), game play scales from fighter pilot to capship captain to fleet commander. I really like how their dynamic missions are handled, its like playing a RTS skirmish in first person (same concept is being used in OL). Its worth a look. My only gripes are a poor storyline implementation, no shields on fighters, shields don't protect against missiles, capships cannot be repaired, and a minor GUI issue with playing at lower resolutions.


Can we get a little more detail on whats happening behind the scenes here?


-Burn

Covering additional games won't help unless they are explicitly related to the Lancer series from the outset. Putting "Freelancer" into Google nets TLR as the fourth hit but you put in Dungeon Siege or Darkstar One, TLR isn't even in the first 10 pages.

You could cover any game you like in existence but unless you proactively 'advertise' (to use the word as loosely as possible) your coverage don't expect your effort to pay off.

We never added meta tags for the other games so I'm surprised they show up in a search at all. We added those games for the community members.

Why? Every little bit helps...


-Burn

little things cause work... often alot of work... and usually wont come along with positive development
concepts usually are more effective and im working on such a concept for LR already

@ Evil thing and everyone else in this room

hasn't anyone thought about "modding" FL2? yes that would involve alot of work, but think, we can make our own story missions, and yes it would be a pain to get voice and all that sorted, maybe new characters etc? a new voice for trent who had some bio-mech operation or sumat that happened when he was captured by some random robots . imagination and knowledge is what would be needed most i think

www.mod.pff-clan.us

Openlancer

Thats certainly possible but most modding efforts focus on MP, not SP. Any kind of FL2 mod project would need to start with a community effort to extend the Lancers canon so we end up with a campaign storyline everyone can agree on. Then draft the game design doc and a task list for a cooperative development effort.

Another option to consider is a complete engine replacement "mod". About six months ago BP talked to his friends at MS and got unofficial permission to "do anything we want with FL as long as the CD is still required". This would be a larger undertaking than a FL2 content mod, and would require some serious programming, but would yield vastly superior results. OL had planned to do this for a while but it was dropped for a list of reasons. If a few people are interested in working on this then we can fork OL and start a cooperative development effort.

Either project would significantly benefit from a development forge... Again, whats going on behind the scenes here in relation to setting up a forge?


-Burn