The goal of project Talimus (working title) is to create a fully playable single player 2D realtime strategy game based on the current work of the FcMP and Freecraft projects. The game will play in a medieval fantasy world, similar, but different, to Warcrafttm. Opposed the the FcMP project, Talimus will not be based on the Warcraft unit types and will not try to clone Warcraft directly, instead Talimus will focuses on creating a uniq world, a uniq story and uniq unit types. Even so some thing might look familiar, we will not try to clone any other game directly.
The goal of projcet Talimus is to get one or multiple single player games done. But the goal is not to create a huge game similar in length to comercial games, but instead focus on getting small, but 100% playable and tested campains done. Each campain will therefore be complete in itself, even so the story will most likly build on previous campains and might continue in parts in the next release. In the end there should be a lot of small campains, which all together form a larger game.
Project Talimus will make a clear cut between incomplete development versions and fully playable releases. Development versions will not be publically available on the main website, but instead be done on a seperate developers page and only announced to the development mailing lists. The goal is to not bother the player with incomplete and non-working stuff. The player shouldn't become a beta-tester without knowing what she is doing. Project Talimus will not release anything into the general public until it is done and once a release is done it will be done till the end of all days and no further changes will be done to it (except a few bugfixes or new translations into other languages).
The first step of the development process will be to work out the look and feel of the game, the story of the first campain and a short overview over the large story which should connect all the multiple single campains. To get the look and feel fixed we will first need to create a bunch of sketches that reperesents our units, then we will need to create 3D models of the units and finally render them into in game usable graphics.
The goal of FcMP is to create a Warcraft2 clone. So you can't expect new unit types or an original story. FcMP also lacks focus on the singleplayer site. The FcMP goal is also a bit diffuse, they try to create a complete Warcraft2 clone, all at once, without making a clear cut between development and playable versions. They also don't make step by step release, but instead releasing everything all at once, even if its unfinished. So in the end FcMP will stay as a development version for a very long time and will not be very intersting for single players. The project Talimus goal instead focus on the single player stuff only for the moment, we will not release anything at long as it isn't done.
It might be possible to release single campaigns every few months once the basic graphics set is done. But since the complete development of all campaigns won't be finished in a few month, maybe it will take years, we need to keep track of earlier releases and keep them alive, so that player that will start to play the game in a few years will still get the complete game and not miss the introduction campaigns. This can be either done by porting the campaigns to new versions of the Freecraft engine or by releasing the campaigns together with a static compiled Freecraft engine. Which way to choose depends on the number of incompatible changes in the Freecraft engine and the size of the campaigns.
Ultimatly the Talimus project might have an end one day. When all campaigns are done and the surrounding main storyline is told the project should turn into maintaince-only mode and just make sure that things keep running.
Project Talimus will be released under the GNU GPL, to ensure that the project is Free and stays Free. It will not only mean that it will be free of cost, it will also mean that you can get access to all the development stuff, source code, multilayer source images, etc. and are allowed to change it and make works based on the work of project Talimus.