[acespace2142]

Although i see posts only a few days old on the fourm i still would like a general consensus on how big the community is for this amazing game and i would also like a few questions to be addressed such as

1.How many people still play online?
2.is freespace open still being updated?
3.what is the latest mod to have been released?
4.what in essence makes this 15 year old game better then any modern game i and many others have encountered ?
 

[General Battuta]

Nobody plays online right now, the netcode is in bad shape. FreeSpace had a great multiplayer scene back in the day, but the netcode needs to be overhauled to modern standards. There are probably a few thousand people playing single player and co-op.

FreeSpace Open is being updated constantly! You can see new builds of the engine coming out almost every night. New stories and ships get released steadily.

The latest mod to be released will be listed on the highlights bar at the top of this website, and in the WXLauncher used to start FreeSpace Open.

There are a couple things that make FreeSpace great:

1) It has a superb flight model and gameplay setup. It's easy to pick up, but hard to master. Big huge warships actually act like big huge warships, with bristling point defenses and huge weapons to hammer each other - they're not just props. The weapons are fun, the combat's gorgeous and fast-paced, and the missions are sharp and well designed. No other space sim has ever handled the interplay between fighters and warships as well as FreeSpace 2.

2) FreeSpace 2 has some of the best story and dialog writing in all of gaming. The script is tight, atmospheric, and full of secrets and interpretations to argue over for years. The voice cast is amazing. No other space sim has managed to pull off a story as tight and thematically interesting as FreeSpace 2.

3) We've had 15 years to rebuild the engine. We made it more beautiful, more powerful, and most importantly, more flexible.

This means we can do insane, insane stuff with FreeSpace Open. We can build visual novels or let you fly capital ships. We can make FreeSpace into a horror game or a perfect Battlestar Galactica flight simulator. And we can do it all with a mission editor and a set of text files that are really easy to learn.

[acespace2142]

Thank you for the quick response, exactly the answers i was looking for. its very rare to see a game designed so well that people still want to build on it, the most amazing thing i think though is that even after all this time the original freespace mechanics have not changed at all as they were and still are top quality and set the standard for any space combat sim that will ever come out.

[Cobra]

Thank you for the quick response, exactly the answers i was looking for. its very rare to see a game designed so well that people still want to build on it, the most amazing thing i think though is that even after all this time the original freespace mechanics have not changed at all as they were and still are top quality and set the standard for any space combat sim that will ever come out.

It also helps that Volition released the source code to FreeSpace 2 15 years ago. Not saying our Code Wizards wouldn't have been able to figure it out, but still.

[FrikgFeek]

Thank you for the quick response, exactly the answers i was looking for. its very rare to see a game designed so well that people still want to build on it, the most amazing thing i think though is that even after all this time the original freespace mechanics have not changed at all as they were and still are top quality and set the standard for any space combat sim that will ever come out.

Well, to be fair some of the mods/full games built on the engine do change the fundamentals of flying in Freespace. Diaspora is a good example of this, if not for the UI and HUD you wouldn't know you're playing a FSO game.

And while the flight mechanics rarely change much in mods based in the FS universe the AI is another story. One of the reasons newer mods offer a lot of replayability is that they give you smart AI you'd be hard pressed to find in any other flight game. This smart AI combined with the inherent fairness of the "insane" difficulty is what keeps a lot of vets coming back.

[procdrone]

we stronk, we many



Just making a random post to actually back up the "numbers"!

[karajorma]

3) We've had 15 years to rebuild the engine. We made it more beautiful, more powerful, and most importantly, more flexible.

This means we can do insane, insane stuff with FreeSpace Open. We can build visual novels or let you fly capital ships. We can make FreeSpace into a horror game or a perfect Battlestar Galactica flight simulator. And we can do it all with a mission editor and a set of text files that are really easy to learn.

I think it's only 13 years for the engine if I remember correctly. And I think the mission editor FRED should get some of the credit. FRED is pretty easy to learn as editing software goes but is much more powerful than even some of the design tools AAA gaming uses today. So because of this it means that when the source code was released in 2002 there was already a thriving community of mission and ship builders to take advantage of it. I'm pretty sure that if we had the kind of tools fans of other space sims have to use, we probably wouldn't be around here today.

[Talon 1024]

I'm pretty sure that if we had the kind of tools fans of other space sims have to use, we probably wouldn't be around here today.

Speaking as someone who used to mod Wing Commander: Secret Ops, the modding tools were quite limited.

Simple missions could be made with a 2D mission editor, but complex missions require a lot of programming, voice acting coordination, and cartesian coordinate system knowledge, as there is no way to visually position ships or navpoints when you're doing complex mission design.

You had to have a program called "3D Exploration" in order to convert 3D ship models to .peo, and old model format used by Homeworld, and then you had to use peo2wcp to convert to WCP/SO format, and then you had to use WCPPascal to "compile" the mesh. You then had to convert the textures to MAT format using the appropriate numbers, and then you had to make a new ship or change an existing ship to use your new mesh.

Nowadays, modders can use my Wing Blender plugin to make/convert models to WCP/SO format.

And dealing with MATs can be a real pain, especially if you don't know what conversion tools to use or how to use them to get the results you want.

[mosshadow]

I never knew FS2 had a multiplayer scene.

[Grug]

I still lurk around from time to time to check in on the FS2 and hard-light scene. The community was one of my favourites to visit when I wore a younger man's clothes and was knee deep in the modding scene.

Still forever hoping for the announcement of a phoenix to be born for the sequel that shall not be named...

Do miss you chaps.

[Mongoose]

Gruuuuuuuuuuuuuuug!

[Grug]

Mongoooooooooooose!