Star Trek Infinite – The closest thing to Birth of The Federation 2 we’ll probably ever get

Well this is a bit of a surprise! We’re getting a new 4X strategy Star Trek game! I’ve told the story on this blog before of that night in 1999 when I finally got my hands on the last day 1 copy of Star Trek Birth of the Federation in my city and fell in love with it, playing it again and again for years and dreamed of a sequel that never came due to Microprose’s demise. In that same blog post I also gave you guys a tour of each of the major BOTF2 fan projects that are quite playable these days and continue to be worked on (I hope to do new tour videos in the future) and that without them and the BOTF modding community we’d would have had nothing over the years.

While we’ll probably never get an official Star Trek Birth of the Federation 2 it now looks like we’re getting an entirely new Star Trek 4X strategy game from Paradox called Star Trek Infinite that much like good old BOTF is set in the TNG era with Picard, Gowron, Gul Dukat, and many more characters from TNG, DS9 and Voyager! You can play as the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union (sorry no Ferengi this time haha) and a huge array of minor races to ally or conquer just like in BOTF. While this might not exactly be the BOTF2 sequel many of us have hoped for, it does look a LOT like the popular Star Trek mod for Stellaris, so I guess Paradox thought “lets make that a real thing” lol, grabbed the Trek licence and enlisted the help of Nimble Giant Entertainment who created the gorgeous looking big budget Master of Orion reboot a few years back to make it happen. Hmm the same people behind a Master of Orion game making a Star Trek 4X game… that story sounds familiar. 😉 While I’ve not played the Star Trek mod for Stellaris myself I’ve heard many times over the years from it’s players that it often reminded them of BOTF so it will be very interesting to see just how similar this new game will be. Judging by the steam screenshots there will be story/quest elements much like with Stellaris too. Will be interesting to see if the Borg make a nasty appearance (judging by the teaser vid they will just like in BOTF), how much control we’ll have over battle sequences, if the game does well enough to have more playable races added via DLC addons (eg Dominion), and how mod friendly it will be.

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1622900/Star_Trek_Infinite/
UPDATE: New videos and dev diaries HERE!
UPDATE2: Game released! Plus cool new videos HERE!

Starfield New Gameplay Trailer & Deep Dive Videos

I posted here earlier this year about the first Starfield gameplay trailer from Elder Scrolls series and Fallout series creators Bethesda and now as their huge new space exploration game with over 1000 worlds nears release we’ve been given some much bigger gameplay trailers and big reveals to drool and obsess over!

As expected the gameplay trailer footage is very impressive and they’ve also done a big deep dive tour and presentation video showing even more gameplay footage. You can tell they’ve learned a lot of things to do and not to do from similar games like Star Citizen (who are still nowhere near release lol), No Mans Sky and Elite Dangerous over the last decade.

The space combat reminds me of Freelancer, while the solar system and orbital planet mineral scanning stuff totally reminds me of the good old Starflight series (which Tod Howard revealed was an influence in an interview), the character skills/perks/attributes of course have the usual Elder Scrolls and Fallout style systems, and there’s a truck load of Fallout 4 style weapon crafting and base building too. As usual there’s a pretty epic physical collectors edition with a custom NasaPunk Starfield xbox controller & headset, a storage case and wrist watch from your in-game spaceship, and that physical watch will naturally connect to the game too (similar to the real world PipBoy they did for Fallout 4). All very impressive! God knows when I’ll get to playing all this stuff though haha!

Civilization 2: Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod – Dev Diaries 7-8

Regular visitors to my blog may have seen on my What Is Blake Playing Right NOW? page that I’ve been quite busy with Civilization 2 modding as part of the HUGE new WIP Civilization section and youtube series I’ve been working on for ages.

.
Because I’m a huge Heroes of Might & Magic fan the biggest project of them all is a HoMM2 total conversion mod and scenario for the great classic game Sid Meier’s Civilization II MGE created by Metropolis and me! Inspired by Tom2050’s amazing HoMM3 mod for Civ3 we hope to create the most HoMM2 like experience within the limitations of the old Civ2 engine.

PREVIOUSLY:
Dev Diaries 1-3 were posted HERE
Dev Diaries 4-6 were posted HERE

UPDATES:
Dev Diaries 9-10 now posted HERE

Dev Diary 07 – New Diplomacy, Dragon Launch & Animating High Council For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In this seventh dev diary for the Civ2 HoMM2 mod we take on the 3 final frontiers of Civ2 editing and change the diplomacy screen background, spaceship construction sequence, and grand council video advisors with cool HoMM2 content. In the case of the council I had to create animating versions of HoMM2 hero portraits!
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/diplomacy-dragon-launch-high-council

---

Dev Diary 08 – Custom Font Colours & Better Backgrounds For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the eighth dev diary we add custom font colours into Civ2 and completely overhaul all the ugly old GUI backgrounds.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/font-colours-better-backgrounds