Official "Derek Smart" Thread

So I remember reading PCXL's review of BC 3000 two years ago, and they say that sticking ear-wigs in your ear would make more sense then playing the game. So BCM comes out a while ago and I think to myself that Derek Smart has had a couple years to learn from his mistakes. I think "Well, it should be a lot easier to play now". Of course, if I weren't writing about Derek Smart, then I would be satisfied with his game, so I wouldn't write a review that starts with "it should be easier to play", which means all you TNL'ers would'nt be reading this post because it wouldn't exist(ooooh, paradox).

While installing BCM, I read part of the 150pg guide that comes with the game; each page filled with at least 10 new words that Derek Smart has invented. I thought "It will make sense after i play it for a while, like X-Wing". The options menu looked nice, and easy to navigate. I press the "Launch" button.

How uterly wrong I was. I started out orbiting Earth. I wanted to shoot something, I look at the starship controls.. all there was were acronyms. There are no complete words like "Weapon Select" or "Phaser beam", they are all labeled in different acronyms such as "ACM", "TBV", "MNL". There were close to 40 of them in one screan, each with sub menus that consists of more acronyms. I look in the manual, and it took me at least 3 minutes to find the real meaning behind it's acronym. I don't remember how I got to the options menu, but that made no sense as well. Instead of nice Treky words such as "Bridge" and "Weapons Bay", the names were horribly worded like "Mission Tactical", "Computer Line", "Targeting Mobilator", and such. I don't remember exactly what they were due to the fact that I returned BCM the following morning.

The absolute most annoying part of the game is how it was advertised. I was promised a world of "Real-time boarding of hostile forces; real-time defending". I imagined that if a ship disabled my craft and bordered me, the game would load a new level (aka X-COM style) where I would fight off the intruders FPS-Quake style (it does have FPS, btw, though its only for planet missions and they suck). No, thats not even remotely close to what happens. It is more like a "Sim hostile boarding and fighting". While I would be navigating my ship around Earth, a hostile force would magically appear on my ship with the little text-message of "You have been borded by hostile forces", following with sound clips of guns firing and explosions, and then maybe followed by "hostil forces killed" or "3rd deck breached, hostile forces moving up to deck 2". I wasn't involved at all. 8(

In conclusion, I think Derek Smart is too smart for his own good. Yes, there is probably a small group of geeks that religiously play BCM who even the D&D nerds hate and fear, but I can safely say there is no one else. If your listening, mr. Smart, you should take these kind words of advice into account:

1) Do not make an instruction booklet that is tougher to understand than a flight sim book. 150 pages is 140 pages more than we will read.
2) Do not make a game that is tougher to understand than a flight sim.
3) Do not create an interface that consists entirely of acronyms.
4) Do not make a game that you know only you will play.

There, I said it. Hopefully, Derek Smart will get smarter (or dumber) and create a game that the regular gamer can play.


Heres the topic part: Have any of you TNL'ers ever played a Derek Smart game? What did you think?

No, but I've heard so many 'wonderfull' things about him. I vaugely remember SA's "Derek Smart's Deasktop Commander".

ºTracer

I used to go to his website daily just to keep up with the soap opera.

I played the old version of BC and it was cool, but way too buggy to even deal with.

Quote:

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Originally posted by radiogeak
I wanted to shoot something, I look at the starship controls.. all there was were acronyms. There are no complete words like "Weapon Select" or "Phaser beam", they are all labeled in different acronyms such as "ACM", "TBV", "MNL". There were close to 40 of them in one screan, each with sub menus that consists of more acronyms. I look in the manual, and it took me at least 3 minutes to find the real meaning behind it's acronym.

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Ironically, I have no idea what game you're talking about, because you refer to it as "BCM" throughout your entire post.

You should have seen the abuse he used to get when he posted in the Voodoo-Extreme forums. Ahaha!

Who the fuck?

oh, sorry. BCM = Battle Cruiser Millenium.

Derek Smart's Desktop Commander!!!!!!

Mwuhahahaha. One of the best videos ever.

88mph: A somewhat well-known PC game producer. Well-known because he's supposedly an asshole.

Couple of things I remember: Him on the Elite usenet forum claiming that his next BC game will be better than Elite 4. Ooooh boy.

Second, a friend of mine was coding for some HL mod, and said that the sound producer of the mod was hired by Derek Smart. Who, later on, never paid the sound producer for his work. Hmm.

I'm pretty sure that outside of a few religious and/or political debates, the Derek Smart flamewar is the longest usenet flamewar in the history of the internet. Or at least one of the most funny and vile.

Him and Cleve Blakemore, anything they post is Comedy Gold.

I think I remember reading about Derek Smart in an old issue of next Generation. It was the one that had the cover story of the 10 most spectacular game fuckups(my words) in the video game industry. It might be someone else though. Wish I could find that issue, just to read an ex-atari programmers comments about Fight for Life.