Open letter to the C4 Community

Bare with me, this will be a bit long winded. I want to explain what Odyssey is and where it is headed:
First the beta will be available in the next few days I am looking at the release for Sunday.

First a little background, OD is a project I have wanted to do for over 6 years. Clear Back when I was running Get Ranked
and creating new maps on a regular basis for that server, I wanted new objects, I also wanted the game play to have more options than the C4 has.
As for the OD content, 95% of the mod content is new, not ported from BHD or another game, I created it.
Keep in mind I am not a game developer, I drive a truck for a living, The game objects are not as good as a professional can make,
but they still should add some fun to C4. As time goes on like any thing you spend time doing my models and textures will get better.

At different times over the years five members of the community showed me C4 could be modded and the game improved.
INSO, Bane, Master X, Avenger and Bluetiereign all took the game and added something new, either new content or anti cheat
of some kind, and put information out other players could use. Rather they know it or not, their example is what pushed me to do this.
For that I would like to thank them for everything they did.
C4 was the first PC game I liked to play, I got it a few weeks after release and I was still learning how to use a computer at the time.

So here is what Odyssey is !.
An open source community project designed to be open ended,
By that I mean OD was never planned as a mod I would release and that was the end of it.
My idea was to take C4 push the game engine to see how much we can do with it.
Then use that as the first phase of an on-going project.
Some high lights to the mod are lighting effects never seen in C4 before. large scale buildings that will change the way c4 is played,
Search and Destroy ( unlocked for the C4 UD but never released) and themed maps.
There is even a stargate and spawn buildings.
Because this was planned as mutilplayer, there is no single player missions in the mod and most of the ai have been removed.
However the space suacers, star fighters and some other items will attack and can be used for coop or single player.

Open source and the community:
Over the next few months much of the information I used on OD is going to be made public.
The C4mod forum was set up as a c4 modding source of information, and most of the information
will be posted there. This includes the modding tech and the file editing that was done including the exe file
and the editing I did to the meds. I am aware this is going to step on some toes and make some players unhappy.
Keep in mind the players that are cheating know this information already.
It is my hope some other members of the community will take that information and help with the project.

As a side note Avenger gave me perrmission to use the fix he used in the v2 exe to enable unlocked games from the menu.
That information is not going to get posted. I also had to use the C4UD maps to see how the S&D way points and def file listing was done.
If you play OD and you like version 2 you owe Avenger Bane and Master X your thanks when the full version is released
(beta is being released with version 1 only).
I could not have found that edit for the game types on my own, Master x also showed me how to get into the game .exe
So i could set up the mod to use a self contained .exe.
As for the version 2 exe, I don't play version 2 and would not have wasted my time messing with it.

I need feed back, and idea's. That means even if you don't want to map or mod and you just want to play.
I want your feed back on changes that would make OD more fun to play.
This is your chance to get objects put in a game you think would be cool and would like to have added.
This all so means if there are things in the mod (the one hit weapons setting for example) you don't like post your opinion.
One of the reasons I am doing OD is to help grow the community again. I am open minded about this and my main interest is to
make OD something the community wants to play.

The c4 MOD website and forum are not complete yet, and the downloads will be a few weeks away before the page is posted.
I want to get the mod out so I am not going to wait to get it finished, part of the open source theme means my textures are available
to the community, so are the 3D Max files I created for the game object models. There are aslo some installer kits with edited
mod.exe files with new icon colors available for anyone who wants to do there own mod but can't edit the game exe to create a self contained mod.

Anti Cheat:
I think anti cheat can be created for C4, however it needs to be implemented both player side and on the server.
I think a mod is the best place to start, I also know there are players out there that can code now.
This is an open invitation to implement your ideas on OD, the idea being players will need to download the mod to play it.
This is the best chance to get control over the mod before they download it.
Even a simple file sum check of the .exe, some .3di files and def files would cut 95% of the cheating out.
Before I started OD I was starting to learn some programming, I plan to take some time after the first full version is released and learn some more.
I do not know enough at this point to code anticheat I do have some ideas that would help.
I did take some simple steps to make it harder to cheat on the mod.

The future:
First well see if there is any interest left in C4 or if players even want to play a mod.
Either way A full version release will follow the beta, the time frame will depend on what needs fixed or changed.
Looking at this as an open ended project would mean when the content gets boring or stale OD keeps the best content
maybe (textured better) and new stuff gets added.
I am thinking after 6 to 8 months would be a good time frame to look at small updates.
Each update would be a complete new dowload of the mod,
ie uninstal the old version then download and instal the new version.

Because I went into this thinking it should be community open source even if I get burned out the information and content
will be available to the community, for someone else to take over.
So if someone is thinking this sounds like something they would want to get involved in, keep in mind anything you add would
be open source, with you getting credit for your work.