Mequa, don't be discouraged what you see here. Martin, as I'm sure you've noticed, is somewhat of a fluke... He has a lot more ambition than the rest of us, and obviously, he followed a completely different path than us. The entire point he was trying to make was that while you are posting what may work for you, everyone has to do his or her own thing.
Personally, the biggest hindrance I can personally state about making a TC is the lack of sufficient planning. I got started on a Gundam TC even before Nova was released. Is it released yet? Hell no. Do I consider it dead? Again, hell no. I fully intend to bring my ideas to life, even if in the end, it is not released for Nova. It may take 5 more years to finish this damned thing, but eventually, I will release it.
'What's taking so long?' you might ask. Primarily, I started by plotting out a bunch of systems, and making 3D graphics to put into those systems. A noble start, building the universe in layers> systems, ships to go in those systems, governments to contain those ships, a story between those governments, and finally, missions. I believe this is the same path Uncle Twitchy is following with his Star Trek TC. Unfortunately, I realized at one point that my graphics really sucked. So I redid a bunch of them. They were much better. But still not to the point I liked. I then looked at my universe. Oh man it was ugly. So I scrapped it, and went back to the drawing board. I still have all of my ships, and still have all of my systems, but at this point, I'm just thinking about how I'm going to lay everything out, and how it will all interact.
In this, I'm something of a perfectionist. I won't release something professional until I think it is perfect. That may be part of my problem, but the entire point here is exactly what I mentioned above, in the first paragraph. Everyone follows the same path. I started in what turned out to be pretty much the same direction as Uncle Twitchy, until I realized that that what I was doing didn't work for me. So, in response to your advice:
1. Adequate resources and time really have nothing to do with it. I'm so damned busy I hardly have time to do what I please, but even so, that isn't stopping me from at the least thinking about what I want to do. All it takes, in my opinion, is the ambition to get it done.
2. As others have said, it may be better to try to make a TC, just to see just how much work it is to do it. If you can get it done, more power to you. But if not, you will come back with valuable knowledge about the plugmaking process.
3. Again, that's not necessary. You may have ideas you want to try out, and use the dev corner as a sounding board (excuse the pun). That 'rule' only came up as a result to the fact that many people tried to get into development, and announced what they are going to do. Turns out, they didn't have the ambition. By all means, ask for advice, get the word out, ask for help. Just don't say '0|/|9 7h15 1$ 73h 13373$7 |>|u9 3/4r!'. Ev4r.
4. As I said, that is one way to do it. Another is, as I said, to do things in layers. Put out all the systems. Populate the systems, etc.
Best!
~ SP
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Fear the SpacePirate,
He made a (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/infernostudios/search.html")plug-in search page(/url)...
And he'll board your ship! -mrxak
*** (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/infernostudios/")InfernoStudios(/url) was last updated 06 June, 2004. ***
when no one knows you, comes off as arrogant and people will react against you and your advice alike...