How about licensed BattleTech game?

[Kuokkanen]

I was just thinking what if you acquire official license and make real BattleTech game? Game rules by Total Warfare, Mercenary's Handbook and others. Scenarios and campaigns either as house military unit or as mercenary with all the financial troubles. Maybe even strategic element of BattleForce 2 in addition of tactical level gameplay. Who wants some? [:D]

[Kuokkanen]

How long Chritmas holiday does staff of Vicious Byte have? Does anybody know?

[LarkinVB]

Vicious Byte is disbanded. Therefore there will be no more games from us.

Happy 2008 !

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: LarkinVB

Vicious Byte is disbanded.

Aww... What happened? And does members stay in business, or are you looking other kinds of jobs?

[LarkinVB]

Vicious Byte gathered to do TOS (in spare time) and disbanded afterwards.

Btw there are lots of things in TOS which I prefer compared to 'real' battletech.

[Megrez]

From a legal point of view, who does own the rights of the brand ToS, now? As u said Vicious Byte has dismantled, so if someone would like to acquire the brand to whom should address to?

[LarkinVB]

I don't think TOS is a brand which can be acquired as it i not registered anywhere. I can be wrong though and Matrixgames does have some rights. 

[Megrez]

And how much do you think it would cost to acquire the brand from Matrix Games or from who does have rights about it?

[LarkinVB]

TOS is no trademark protected by law. Of course it would be rude to use its name without permission from me.

[Gargantou]

The only thing I'd want to add to ToS if I could would be non-mech units, like maybe aircraft and wheeled vehicles.

Other than that, if I had the skills I'd like to look into making a third-party app that can interact with ToS for the purpose of having a dynamic campaign with a dynamic world(Perhaps something like the BattleTech lore with houses, but you being able to actually affect the war etc).

But overall, ToS is one of a kind, a mech-strategy game heavy on the sim aspect AND with good AI.

[Aensland]

Absolutely. I tried the Open Source mech game, was was the name... GearHead? It was disappointing, though. Sure, it had more RPG-style stuff which I really liked, but the mechs there and the gameplay just doesn't compare with Titans of Steel.
 
Actually, what makes a campaign, a campaign? Units that carry over into the next map? A campaign generator could have a list of mechs and keep track of them like, which maps they are able to appear on, and then simply use the random map generator for each map. It'd be pretty linear, unless we find a way of triggering different win/lose options (kill all, escort/keep alive, defend specific hex for specific time, etc), and depending on how a map was finished, you could determine whether a particular mech was available in subsequent maps or not.
 
Not very enthusiastic about non-mech units though. GearHead did sorta have them, but I remember them being very flimsy and unable to stand up to mechs; the main use for them was to quickly run across to the other exit of a map. Aircraft... well, i guess you could use them to replace the currently invisible artillery.