Board Thread:Announcements/@comment-24146651-20170726010208/@comment-30202282-20170808233514

It's the original GOF2. When it first came out it ran on java flip phones.

The iOS or android version we all know and love is a port - and a really well-done one at that. Pretty much everything was remodelled and redesigned to take advantage of the power smartphones had.

That said, there were some remnants of the original java game engine left. Later in development, particularly during the development of Supernova, Fishlabs ran into some serious handicaps regarding the game engine. Lots of fun concepts - flamers and missile turrets, for example - were announced but had to be removed because the old java phone particle system wouldn't play nice.

Once you get to the point where developing your game is almost as hard as modding it, there's not many plces to go from there.

Fishlabs abandoned GOF2 - they really didn't have much choice. More addons would've been hard to do.

At this point development on GOF3 began - I have some old concept art from that era that suggests we were agonizingly close to getting the GOF3 we wanted - but Fishlabs ran out of money. They were forced to file for bankruptcy, and were "saved" by Deep Silver.

Of course, Deep Silver saw the writing on the wall regarding mobile games. They needed F2P software, and they knew Fishlabs had a solid name. When they filed for bankruptcy, that must've looked like a fantastic opportunity. So they bought it and shifted GOF3 into something... well, what we currently have.

Some of the devs at Fishlabs weren't too happy about that, so they split off into Rockfish Studios. Everspace happened, and it's awesome.

I shared Rockfish's opinion, so I started making Millikan's Reach. Hopefully it's awesome someday too.

And, well, that's the story of GOF2. This post got away from me a bit, but, well, that's what I've been able to pick up.