I'm the author of a small home-made experimental freeware FPS game called Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet (http://www.desura.com/games/revenge-of-the-cats-ethernet).

Despite being generally well received, ROTC never managed to attract a notable amount of players and is now pretty much dead.

This can be blamed partly on the game's somewhat niche appeal and its steep learning curve. But to me, the game's main problem has always been that is uses a closed-source engine, which made it impossible for a developer community to form around the game, which doomed it to stagnation and its inevitable death.

Interest in continuing development of the game exists both from me and other programmers, and since a more modern version of the engine used by the game has meanwhile gone open-source, resurrecting Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet as a proper open-source project is now possible. The only catch is that the game has to be re-made using the new engine.

All I need to make that happen is about a month's time and some cash.

If funding succeeds, I will be able to go to work full-time on creating version 1.0 of the yet unnamed open-source version of Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet, set up dedicated servers for the game and create an independent player database.

Version 1.0 Details

I am pretty confident that I'll be able to finish version 1.0 within a month.
Development will happen publicly visible using a GIT repository on GitHub (https://github.com/fr1tz).

Engine:

• Torque3D (https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D)
  

License: 

• Code: GPL version 2 
  Alternatively, people who have claimed a perk have the option to obtain version 1.0 under the NCSA license.
• Data: CreativeCommons Attribution 4.0 International

Initial features:

• All gameplay features of prototype 5.4 of Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet
  
• Support for completely optional player authentication using a newly created independent player database.
  

OS support:

• MS Windows (Native client & server)
  
• Linux (Native client & server)
  

An independent player database

I will set up an independent player database that can be used by any game.
The first version of this database will only support player authentication, but future versions will provide features such as clan management and player stats tracking.

In the case of this game, servers will provide additional cosmetic customization options to authenticated players, such as allowing them to customize the appearance of their Etherform and their CAT form.

Feedback needed!

I could really use some feedback on the campaign itself.

Did you consider backing the project but then decided against it? - Please let me know why.

Do you have suggestions how to improve this page? - Please tell me.

Is something unclear? - Don't be afraid to ask questions.

How to get in touch with me?

You can contact me via e-mail at mg@wasted.ch or find me in the #rotc channel on the FreeNode IRC network under the username "fr1tz".

Or if you're into that kind of thing, you can also find me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/m.goldener.