Author Topic: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?  (Read 17474 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Aardwolf

  • 211
  • Posts: 16,384
How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
I'd post this as a poll, but there aren't enough options in the world, so...

Let this be a place to tell the story of how you discovered and got your hands on FreeSpace / FreeSpace 2 / FS2_Open. Note, if your means of acquiring it were "less than legitimate" you probably shouldn't mention how you acquired it... but the story of how you got interested in it is still welcome!
« Last Edit: March 09, 2010, 03:06:48 pm by Aardwolf »

 

Offline Thaeris

  • Can take his lumps
  • 211
  • Away in Limbo
Re: How did you get FreeSpace?
GOG. Which, for the record, is probably the best method to date to get FS. I bought both FS1 & 2 from that location.

I was introduced to FS/FSO through BtRL. I'd have probably never gotten into the sim if it weren't for that wonderful demo.  :D
"trolls are clearly social rejects and therefore should be isolated from society, or perhaps impaled."

-Nuke



"Look on the bright side, how many release dates have been given for Doomsday, and it still isn't out yet.

It's the Duke Nukem Forever of prophecies..."


"Jesus saves.

Everyone else takes normal damage.
"

-Flipside

"pirating software is a lesser evil than stealing but its still evil. but since i pride myself for being evil, almost anything is fair game."


"i never understood why women get the creeps so ****ing easily. i mean most serial killers act perfectly normal, until they kill you."


-Nuke

  

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Played the demo, bought the game in '99.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Short story long:
A friend of mine brough the CDs of Freespace along back in 1999. Said that the game was cool and I should give it a try... I jumped on the offer - next month I saved my money and got myself my own copy form the store  ;)

That way started a long on-and-off relationship
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Scotty

  • 1.21 gigawatts!
  • 211
  • Guns, guns, guns.
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Got the OEM CD with my joystick, played it for years, then got the full game for Christmas last year.  Best Christmas present ever.

 
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Demo was on a PC gaming mag disc back in '98 (FS1), bought it immediately with money from a gaming championship actually xD
"Neutrality means that you don't really care, cuz the struggle goes on even when you're not there: Blind and unaware."

"We still believe in all the things that we stood by before,
and after everything we've seen here maybe even more.
I know we're not the only ones, and we were not the first,
and unapologetically we'll stand behind each word."

 

Offline Angelus

  • 210
  • The Angriest Angel
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
I bought the set ( white box with FS1+ST+Fs2 ) along time ago to be able to play the TBP project ( was a demo with a couple of missions ), which required FS2. After a while i forgot about that, since i prefer RPG over action games, and FS never seemed ... interressting enough. What a big mistake!

Years later, after finished playing the missions in TBP 3.2, i was looking for something new and i found some sceenshots of BtRL.
My first thought was, looks cool, but it has to be a fake ( C+C anyone?  :P ).

While downloading the BtRL demo, i prepared a mail to the DEVs of the game, just in case i was right and the game is a...PoS.
After playing it, i was amazed by the quality, so i joined the GW community.
I started Fredding, joined HLP, found by "accident" the old game cds while looking for something different, and then DLed FSO, was amazed and started recently a FS campaign.


EDIT: typos, you gotta love 'em. It was supposed to be ST, not ST:R.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2010, 05:39:16 pm by Angelus »

 

Offline Mongoose

  • Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
  • Global Moderator
  • 212
  • This brain for rent.
    • Steam
    • Something
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
I first saw the box for Descent: FreeSpace sitting on the shelf of a neighbor who had introduced me to the Descent series, but I thought it was just some weird spin-off thing and didn't really ask questions.  (Not having the Internets at the time meant that I couldn't look it up myself...ah, youth.)  I didn't think much more of it until I bought Descent 3, which had an ad for FS2 on its fold-out disk sleeve.  The little blurb about huge warships and these strange "Terrans/Vasudans Shivans" sounded interesting, so I kept it in mind.  I guess I eventually wound up picking up FS1 when I came across it in a store, and I was obviously immediately hooked.  (My younger brother used to be my "copilot" while I played, watching me and yelling out updates on things like hull integrity. :D) I later wound up re-buying the game just to get the included Silent Threat expansion...maybe not the best money I ever spent, but whatever.  

Due to the ridiculously-high eBay prices, it took me a very long time before I was able to get my hands on FS2; all I had to tide me over was re-watching the trailer (can't remember which game that was included on...Descent 3: Mercenary, maybe?), playing the demo (must have gone through that several times), and gleaning random info from posts here on the forums, which I was lurking by that time.  It wasn't until Interplay announced their 20th anniversary re-release that I was finally able to get my hands on it...for $50, compared to the current $6, but that was cheap then. :p Needless to say again, I was hooked even harder than I had been with FS1.  It took me a lot of waffling before I plunged in and attempted to get FS2_Open up and running, since the installation process wasn't nearly so well-documented as it is now, but that eventually worked itself out too.  (Good old 3.6.7...you crashed so often.)  Obviously enough, I've been hanging out here ever since.

 

Offline Falcon

  • 29
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
A long time ago I regularly loaned PC games I had to people from my church, who in turn loaned me their PC games. One of the games I was loaned was Freespace 2. Played and was hooked. The guy who loaned it to me let me keep the game in the end.

 
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
My father and I were are both avid Descent players, and he bought FS1 when it first came out thinking it was another Descent title. He never got into FS's style of gameplay and abandoned it early, but I picked it up and enjoyed it immensely.

Didn't play FS2 until years later. Like so many others, I didn't even know a sequel had been made. I think it was the ad in Descent 3 that eventually tipped me off. Got it off of eBay for a ridiculous price (GOG wasn't stocking it back then), and found my way here a few months later after hearing about Inferno.
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?" -DEATH, Discworld

 
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Got the OEM CD with my joystick, played it for years, then got the full game.
That way for me too. The joystick is broke now (Logitech), but I am eternally grateful to them :D

 

Offline Scotty

  • 1.21 gigawatts!
  • 211
  • Guns, guns, guns.
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Heh, I still use that same joystick to play FS, even ten eleven years after the fact.

 

Offline Snail

  • SC 5
  • 214
  • Posts: ☂

 

Offline Spoon

  • 212
  • ヾ(´︶`♡)ノ
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Read reviews, looked awesome
Played the demo a long long long time ago but I was still young and filled with fanboy feelings 'Wingcommander was better!' also, I didn't had money to buy each game I liked back then.

Fastforward a few years, saw the package of FS1+silent threat in stores in a foreign country, had my dad buy it for me. Could never get it to play. Lost the CD somewhere along the way.

Fastforward again to about a year ago. Saw a thread on 4chan's /m/ about freespace and how it was 'freeware'. Downloaded it from here and loved it to death. Then got into modding. Finally bought the game from GoG a short while back (didn't even downloaded it from there)  
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 

Offline ShadowGorrath

  • Not funny or clever
  • 211
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Vasudan Commander told me about it, then showed the FS2 ending cutscene :( and gave me the FSO installer link, which, at that time, allowed downloading the full game. :D Played retail FS2 at first though, not FSO.

 

Offline redsniper

  • 211
  • Aim for the Top!
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
I played Descent as a wee lad and somehow became aware of FS with this new magical internet. I thought it seemed like a dumb knock-off of Tie Fighter (aliens with five legs?! That's just silly) and just wrote it off.

Years later (2000, I think) a friend of mine from school came over with a newly purchased copy of FS1. I still thought it was dumb, but he seemed excited, so I didn't want to burst his bubble. We installed it on my family computer at the time and HOLY **** THIS IS AWESOME! We ended up playing to around the Taranis missions.

A little while later my mom took me to pick out a game for my birthday. I was pretty set on MW3: Pirate's Moon, but decided to check all the aisles... and there I saw FS2. I was torn, then saw I could make my own missions (like with Half-Life!) and that was that.

Made for a ridiculously awesome summer. :D
"Think about nice things not unhappy things.
The future makes happy, if you make it yourself.
No war; think about happy things."   -WouterSmitssm

Hard Light Productions:
"...this conversation is pointlessly confrontational."

 

Offline Nuclear1

  • 211
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
Played the original demo from the PC Gamer disc, got the full game for Christmas, played the FS2 demo soon as it was released, then got the full game for my birthday.  So, literally, I've been playing FS since I was ten. 
Spoon - I stand in awe by your flawless fredding. Truely, never before have I witnessed such magnificant display of beamz.
Axem -  I don't know what I'll do with my life now. Maybe I'll become a Nun, or take up Macrame. But where ever I go... I will remember you!
Axem - Sorry to post again when I said I was leaving for good, but something was nagging me. I don't want to say it in a way that shames the campaign but I think we can all agree it is actually.. incomplete. It is missing... Voice Acting.
Quanto - I for one would love to lend my beautiful singing voice into this wholesome project.
Nuclear1 - I want a duet.
AndrewofDoom - Make it a trio!

 

Offline Dragon

  • Citation needed
  • 212
  • The sky is the limit.
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
I found FS1 and FS2 on my father's shelf and decided to play (my father said it was medicore, but he prefers elite-style games like X3 or Freelancer).
I liked it, but didn't considered it state of art and forgot about it quickly (I was playing many games then).
Then, I encouncered Inferno and started to tweak it, and while I heard about Inferno SCP (it was actually an SCP path) I decided to try out what this "SCP" is.
After that, I started trying out mods, at first mainly to get new models to play with, but I got interested later.
I never really liked FS that  :v: made (partilly thanks to Polish translation), too much (I consider Wing Commander to be better), but the vast number of mods, new possiblities, constant engine improvememnt and simpleness of the modding system made me stick with FSO engine.
Blue Planet, Sync and Transcend were also a major factor which convinced me that mods based on FS story and using it's shipset could also be interesting (though I got bored with Derelict).

 

Offline Goober5000

  • HLP Loremaster
  • 214
    • Goober5000 Productions
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
( white box with FS1+ST:R+Fs2 )
wat

 

Offline -Norbert-

  • 211
Re: How did you get [into] FreeSpace?
I too first heard from Descent FreeSpace (or rather "Conflict. FreeSpace" as it was called in Germany and Austria for some reason) from a gaming magazine. Not sure wether it was Gamestar or PC games....
Played the demo and then bought the game. Actually it was the first game I ever bought myself, all the others up to then I got for christmas or birthday.
FS2 I bought on the first day it hit the stores and it also was the very first game I ever palyed online. Ahh the momories.... never played anything like Squadwar ever since.

Anyway because I'm a big Babylon 5 fan I found TBP and got hooked up with it back when it was still on Volition Watch. When they moved over here, I naturelly moved over with them and that was the first time I ever learned of SCP (3.6.7 times if I remember correctly).
And I've been a fan ever since, even did some very minor voice acting for Blue Planet (3 lines).