This is a re-post of an article I wrote for Star Trek Games before the site was taken down, since it is still relevant and answers some commonly asked questions I am re-posting it now.
With the project now in its second year, I am writing this as a retrospective view of the projects beginnings and how our vision for the final product has evolved over time.
The roots of Excalibur lie in the hot bed of creativity that was Bridge Commander modding from early 2003 to 2006, during that time the community was a hive of originality, and creativity with people achieving things that were genuinely new and fresh.
The credit for this creativity of course lies with the people who created those great modifications, people like Nano for NanoFX, Apollo for the Advanced Technology Pack, Sneaker98 for MVAM, and possible most importantly Dasher for the foundation scripts which made it all possible. The community had an incredible array of artists creating truly wonderful ships, including Rick Knox, Red Dragon, Chronical guy, ScotchN`Soda and of course LC Amaral.
Looking back now however, I realise that while these people were responsible for the mods, none of it would have happened if Totally Games hadn’t created such an open and flexible game engine; after all Bridge Commander wasn’t the only Star Trek game around, but it was always the most moddable.
Now it’s going to be contented by those still active in the community, however for me by 2006 the golden age of Bridge Commander was over; modification of the game had reached a limit and most new releases were basically rehashes of things that had been done before. These problems were compounded by the age of the Engine, now looking rather archaic in design by comparison to the new PixelShader beauties that were being developed for DirectX 9.
In early 2006 Mleo Daalder had an idea for a complete overhaul of the scripting system for Bridge Commander, leaving the core game in tact but establishing a more up-to-date framework for modifications which would take Bridge Commander into the future. Dubbed “phoenix” this idea had a lot of verbal support from a group of rather elite modders, many of whom later joined the Excalibur team.
However the issues that would have arisen from the project (such as no backwards compatibility for older mods) became a limit. In addition people began to question where so much work was worth while when the game would still be limited by the core engine of the game which would have left us with DX8 graphics and other outdated elements, a question that would later be answered during the development of Excalibur. The idea was never truly abandoned but things went silent.
Nothing much happened for a while after that, I continued my work developing new bridges for the game and working with Bridge Plugin to create new effects and improve playability. It wasn’t until later in 2006 that Luiz came to me with the idea of an entirely new Story for Bridge Commander based around his Excalibur book. We further discussed the idea with Mleo and Lost Jedi and some aspects of the phoenix project began to re-surface as part of this new mission pack, and Excalibur began to emerge as a near-complete overhaul of the Bridge Commander engine, with new scripts, ships, effects leaving very little that would be recognisable from the original game.
We began working towards this concept in October 2006, developing ships and interiors for the story, while Mleo and LJ developed new scripts and systems. We worked with limited success to improve the core features of the BC engine including attempts at true ship animations and improving the renderer. Finally in January 2007 we announced the project via BCfiles, and work continued in earnest.
At this point however, the concerns that originally hindered the Phoenix project became a reality; the further we moved forward the more we were restricted by the Bridge Commander engine, and by mid 2007 we realised that something would have to give.
Looking back we were on a bit of a knifes edge at that point, but we were in luck because Lost Jedi had already began talks with Nano regarding the NanoFX engine. After some long discussions we finalised a deal to work on the NanoFX engine. While this would release us to create our own new and exciting vision it was not without a cost; the late 2008 release went out of the window, and some members of the team who were not willing to leave Bridge Commander eventually left.
Excalibur had reached its current form, a brand new game that would be open to modding in a way that has never been seen before, in fact we took the attitude that while we would be developing large amounts of art and content, the game would need content from the community in order for it to reach its potential.
Excalibur has changed a lot since its genesis, and while we are constantly moving closer to our final goal the Excalibur concept continues to change as more people join the project bringing a unique perspective, and so even now the game continues to evolve.
