I played as much as I could (that is, what there is) of Ben Sanderfer's "GHOST IN THE MACHINE" -- DEMO VERSION (Buck.zip), an unfinished Buck Rogers-25th Century Module for UA. I wanted to compare how much Ben'd had to work with when starting the mod against what BR hacks have more recently become available (thanks to GoldBoxFan).
First though, I should mention that the writing is of the same high quality style evidenced in Ben's many other mods. The players are almost immediately caught in an entertaining, nearly noir-ish, intrigue brought to them by a beautiful mystery woman, which plops them on the wrong side of the law. There are only a handful of combats and a couple of important incidents before reaching the mod's unfinished edge. It certainly left me wanting to continue the adventure, and I hope that one day Ben will finish it.
Comparing this mod, again, with GoldBoxFan's BR-UA demo, I looked for areas that might still be absent in completing a full BR mod.
Neither had Buck Rogers MIDI music.
Both had a hacked Ckit (perhaps two different versions of the same one) with some good stuff, but also some problems. For example, both had issues with trying to divvy up won money from combats (leaving "Share" as the only option to appropriate the funds). I believe it would be impossible to fully replicate the BR engine through hacking UA, but clearly more could be done to get one of these Ckits closer.
Should Ben ever take up the mod again, he could make good use of the new BR Wallsets GoldBoxFan has furnished. Matching Combat Dungeons still need to be made, but that's not too hard.
Of course, Ben might have had plans to go beyond where BR had ever been before, so there's no way for me to tell if there might be even more art that his plan would require.
