You may remember a few months ago a ambitious programmer Flow aka Streamline decided to attempt to convert Dukes Interstellar Army Simulator into C++ to create a more developer accessible version of Chapter Master as Journier worked on the original build along with Thy Reaper debugging, cleaning and etc. to make it more easier to update by hiring a programmer to help them.

Whilst Journier and Thy Reaper have seemingly gone dark for some time now with some suspecting their hired programmer having flaked on them, Flow has unfortunately decided to retire from the project and made his development blog private before shortly making this statement:

Hello!

So, I've disabled the blog and removed the references to it from 1d4chan (hopefully they won't get added back in) and here's explaining why. TL;DR at the bottom.

First up, I've immensely enjoyed the project so far, with some minor exceptions, and will probably continue to work on it in the future.

However, I will no longer be publicising the project or releasing it online. The reasons for this are threefold:

First, I do not have any sort of stable schedule as of last week with various freelance work taking up inordinate amounts of my time.

Second, I am increasingly afraid of legal intervention despite my attempts to distance myself from any copyright claims, also leading onto the next.

Third, it has become increasingly clear to me throughout the course of this project that people just don't care about things that aren't blatantly 40k. And I'm unwilling to make things that are blatantly 40k, beause I don't want to end up ruining my life in legal battles over something I was only doing to benefit others anyway. I attempted to run the project in as generic a manner as possible in order to avoid any copyright problems, and was continually met by e-mail and forum posts of complaints that I wasn't staying close enough to 40k lore. I even tried to spell out that I was specifically avoiding copyright, something that could well have ruined the entire purpose of avoiding the copyright in the first place, and it seemed to be forgotten within a day.

I really appreciate the help of everyone that's chipped in so far to the Chapter Master mod - Mukip who made some fantastic art, Smokazzi with the excellent music, Skeletus with all the naming convention help and Guardsman for his excellent art contributions. Obviously I make no claims to any of the assets put out in the recent versions - for anyone who wants to take up this mantle in the future please make good use of them.

I've come to realise that this project is impossible. Not because it's too difficult, or because the gaming requirements are too high, but because the project seems to belong to everyone. Everyone has their idea of what it should and will be, and the project will only survive if public support is sufficient to drive an individual to risk court battles just to satisfy a gaming itch. In this case, I didin't feel like the public support was there, and that's fine, it just wasn't to be.

Within two something months I'm pretty pleased with the progress I made, and if anyone is a C++ dev and wants to geti n touch with me, I'd be willing to consider passing along the current source - it really isn't too much work away from playable engine. However I will be completing it privately for personal and friends use only.

Good luck to whoever's next, may this be another notch on the Chapter Master belt of failed attempts.

TL;DR: Too afraid of lawyers, not enough reason to work despite them, gave it a good shot though.

Thankfully the community over at bay12forums has been understanding at his departure and have suggested alternative avenues:

SkeletusAurelius: Perfectly logical reason Flow. I think i can speak for all of us when i say we wish you luck on whatever you're doing next.

Still would like to see how the finished product looks, as i put some effort into it after all.

Retropunch: I respect that the decision is yours to take, but I'd like to point out some things and beg you to reconsider.

Whilst yes, some people do want this to be only 40k related - as nenjin said, you are posting on the Chapter master thread(!!!). Start one for 'moddable space battle simulator' and you'll get hundreds of people wanting it for creating their own universes (and obviously their favorites from books/films/games).

Secondly, lawyers are really, really nothing to be afraid of in this case - not even remotely. If you don't ship it with any art or content that was made by or for GW then there is absolutely nothing they can do. That's not a presumption - that is legal fact. Think about the amount of 'space marines/troopers' in sci-fi today - they don't all have to wrangle with GWs lawyers!

There's no way they can bring you to court for any of this either; lets say they went absolutely insane and decided that generic space marines were now their IP, the most they could do is give you a cease and desist. That doesn't give you a record or besmirch you in any way - you'd just have to stop and that'd be the end of it. That'd never happen, but if you're still worried about legal issues PM me and I'd be happy to take you through it all from the very top.

Seriously, just start an IAS thread with no mention of CM and you'll get a hell of a lot of support from all corners of the gaming world!

So to the C++ coders out there will any of you readers attempt to take up the mantle and be the next in the chapter in this tale of this noble attempt to create a game?

I for one certainly hope so.

To play my own part I'm still hosting backups of Dukes links and files which you can obtain below:

Interstellar Army Simulator 2015: Source Code: Link
Chapter Master 0.6555: Source Code: Link
Original Design Document (former project): Link
Features That Were Planned: Link

Don't know What Chapter Master is? The original review is here.
Just want to play the game? Then Interstellar Army Simulator and the mod and be downloaded here.
Also folks please remember to check the Archives for other posted updates.