After been working on Beyond of Beyaan for 3 years now, indie dev Brent Patterson decided to take the plunge and embrace a Kickstarter campaign. Brent doesn’t ask for much money though, as his idea is not to use the funds to finance the development of a complete game. All of the money, he says, “will be used in obtaining assets for the game.”.
Beyond Beyaan is an indie turn-based space 4X game for the PC inspired by the Master of Orion series. Brent’s original idea was to develop a game very close to the original Master of Orion formula. But, later on, he changed his plans slightly and decided to add modding support and also to make his game open source.
The game is on Alpha-funding on Desura since April of 2012. We wrote a preview back then. At the time, Beyond Beyaan was still not quite playable yet. However, some parts of the game already offered a few enjoyable moments. At the time of this Kickstarter campaign, Brent says that his game “is already halfway developed”. There’s a demo available in case you want to give it a go.
After many twists and turns, Brent’s recent goal now seems to go after a space 4X game engine. He hopes that others may pick up from his creation and develop their own games, or create mods for his game. The idea is to profit from licensing this engine. The game is open source and can be found in Google Code here.
Brent’s Beyond Beyaan proposal in a nutshell:
- Turn-base space 4X game (engine)
- Modding support
- Open source
- PC platform, Desura
- $10 pledge to get the game
- ETA: February 2013 (Alpha?)
- Kickstarter fixed campaign (only gets funds if $2.000 are reached)
Well, what do you think? If you share Brent’s vision, or just want to help him out achieve his goal, you can do so by pledging on his Kickstarter campaign.
By the way, to help spread the word and generate further interest, Brent is hosting a contest on GOG to giveaway five Master of Orion 1 + 2 games and one Master of Orion 3. You do not have to back the project to participate in that giveaway.
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That’s great, I hope he gets many times the amount asked! ;)
This is one of those few games made with passion.
Indeed it is. Funny and cool races by the way. I mean cyborg trees, that’s hilarious and genius at the same time.
Thanks for your post! Just to clarify, I’m not expecting to get rich off of this game. My goal is to see more 4X games succeed, and I hope that my project can boost others to their successful completion, be it using my game, my code, or whatever.
They can create a free game using my game’s code if they use the same licensing. So yeah, this project is for everyone’s benefit!
Just a note, this doesn’t include my game’s assets, which is not free to use ;)
You’re welcome Brent. Yes, it’s clear that others can create their own free games with your code, but it’s also clear that they need to license the engine (negotiate with you) to get commercial. Otherwise you’d have gone with a weaker and more permissive open source license.
I’m not criticizing at all :), I’m just stating the facts so that it’s clear what the options are for people thinking in using your code, especially if they intended to get commercial.
So this would be at least the fourth open source 4x engine I have seen. While OpenMOO2 and ThousandParsecs seem to be moribund ATM, FreeOrion just keeps trundling along. It runs on a variety of platforms which, in my view, is more conducive to open source success than a “Windows Only” codebase, but maybe that is just me. Good luck!
I’ve gotten quite a few questions about if it runs on Linux. However, the problem is that I’m already heavily invested into using the 2D engine that I’m using now, and it only works on Windows. To change that would require me to overhaul the whole game.
So yeah, if you’re going open source, having it work on multiple platforms will get you more success.
This is quite a learning experience for me!
@Rock But not everyone wants to use FreeOrion. It’s good to have multiple projects, even if they overlap, because they provide different perspectives on design.
I agree. I am studying them all for exactly that reason. And I wished Zerann good luck and I certainly understand that the game is locked into c# and Windows at this stage. Given the choice of graphics engines it would not make sense to even think about porting it while the code base is still under active development.
However I won’t be contributing code to or even purchasing a “Windows only” game myself. I would need to see Mac supported at the very least before that happens. I don’t claim to represent any huge groundswell in this regards, but I am looking for a 4x coding project to get into on a hobby basis and FreeOrion seems to be the best choice for me ATM.
I like it. I’ll support ya!
Backed!