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Derek Smart is a software designer and Internet personality living in Florida. He is the creator of the Battlecruiser 3000AD video game series, now Universal Combat.
Smart has participated in a number of public discussions on Usenet and the web.
3000AD Games
Smart's first game, Battlecruiser 3000AD was released unfinished by Take Two Interactive in 1996, and contained many bugs that made it very difficult to play.
Shortly before Take Two was to go public, Smart took legal action against the publisher for their release of the game in its unfinished form. In a statement lauding Smart's work and efforts, Take Two president Ryan Brant announced that the matter had been resolved. Take Two later went public and in its filings listed Smart's first game as accounting for 14.2% of its yearly earnings.
A constant stream of patches and upgrades were later released for the product over the next few months and, eventually, a final patch was released to fix most of the major bugs. Smart then later released the game for free on the Internet and hosted on the popular download sites.
Over the next few years, Smart continued to work on improving his game as he originally envisioned. In 1998 the popularity of the freeware downloads of the original BC3K game later convinced Interplay to publish an improved and finished version in 1998 as Battlecruiser 3000 AD 2.0. In 2001 Smart released this game for free on the Internet, where to this day continues to post large downloads at some of the popular download sites. For such an old product, to this day it remains in a top downloads list for the space-sim genre.
Smart continued to work on improving his franchise and advancing the technologies in his game. The sales of the Interplay release of the game gained him an exclusive deal with Electronics Boutique for his next game, Battlecruiser Millennium which his company 3000AD, Inc self-published and released in 2001.
In 2003 Smart signed a two product deal with Dreamcatcher Games for Battlecruiser Millennium Gold and Battlecruiser Generations. The latter being a brand new addition to the series, with newer technologies than its predecessors.
A few months later, the publisher had discussions with Smart that resulted in a decision to change the premise to be more action-based than the Battlecruiser series had been known for. The name was changed to Universal Combat.
The game was not ready in time for the 2003 holidays and was shipped in early 2004 at half of the originally announced price. In an attempt to prevent history from repeating itself, Smart took legal action against the publisher to stop shipment of the game which was still in final Beta stages and which he felt required more testing. He failed to obtain a temporary restraining order which would have prevented the publisher from releasing the game.
The game received average to mediocre reviews in several game magazine reviews.
Despite an earlier 2005 announcement by Dreamcatcher Games to publish Smart's next sequel, Smart later terminated his publishing deal with the publisher and severed all ties with Dreamcatcher Games
Smart's 2005 game, Universal Combat A World Apart is a full sequel to the original Universal Combat with a variety of revisions and enhancements especially to the graphics engine.
Smart also released Universal Combat Gold in 2005. This is an updated version of the original Universal Combat with new scenarios and graphics enhancements.
Also new to 2005 is the fact that both of the 2005 games can currently only be purchased via online resellers.
Published Products
External Links
Smart's game AI references
Controversy and Criticism
Bill Huffman has collected various materials on Derek Smart and compiled them into a comprehensive site, which content is extremely critical of Smart. Smart himself vehemently disputes the truthfulness of this commentary and regards it as libel & character assassination:
- Bill Huffman's Derek Smart pages at werevolves.org
- Battlecruiser 3000 AD entry in Gamespy's "The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming.