[Meatball]

Something on my mind...

I read something about Freespace was published in a magazine of some sort and this was thx to Hard Light Productions and your work, I wonder how many active members we have on Hard Light now modders, fredders etc, etc, and will the game ever again be revived by game companies?
A lot of work have been put in to Open Source, graphics, effects, campaigns.. Would this game ever be revived to such extent  that you could actually play multiplayer again by just refreshing it?
Not a lot of space shooters are out there, I've seen some new ones, and they get terrible ratings from IGN and I check them out and they truly are awful.
Freespace in my opinion, easily the best Space Shooter ever made. Still works great today since it seemed to an easily modded game. We now have graphics thats up there with todays best, except for a minor issues that hinders us to do better like Planets can only exists as an image. But we saw a prototype (if i may call it that) of flying on a planets surface in War in Heaven act 1. I thought it was pretty awesome and could probably be improved.

All this said. I love this game to death and it's one of my favorites of all time. I love space shooters, sci-fi and especially large fleet battles. EVE is the most popular Space Flying Game out there I believe, but it's completely different from Freespace and it's not even a fraction as energetic and does not give me the adrenalin or feeling of battle nor war.
Freespace does, and I would love to see it in stores again with a title like "Freespace Open" and its renewed and completed but/and still people could access this page for fanstuff, fanmade campaigns and everything we are givin it now.
I think it is very underrated because people hear it's an old game from 1999 and automatically thinks it's bad. Sure graphics like that could turn people off but that is not a problem anymore. But people still decline just because it's old.
Perhaps you guys are happy with a free mod but that was not my point, namely money doesn't seem to be such an interests that, I don't know. But I just want it to be more published and recognized and stores is one way.

Just speakin of my mind here.. And I would appreciate some replies

[QuantumDelta]

Multi works atm, and it doesn't take a lot of players (3-8) to make it truly enjoyable, so you can basically get the full retail FS2 experience with the 2012 graphics right now.

[Meatball]

I tried get the multi workin. But no one online which was my point.
Guess you haft to find some friends to play with which is one problem I have. I don't know any friends whom knew of this nor played it.

[General Battuta]

It is legally impossible to sell FreeSpace open.

[Mongoose]

And if you want to try and get a multiplayer game going, I highly suggest hopping on the HLP IRC channel (should be a link at the top of the site), since that seems to be the best way to find interested people.

[Meatball]

As I said. The publish and advertisment would be more important than actually selling it.

And why would it be illigal? You mean for you guys? What if Volition Inc or now it's THQ, decided to sell it again? Or is that whats impossible? They own the game... They could cut a deal.

___

I will try that Mongoose thx

[General Battuta]

As I said. The publish and advertisment would be more important than actually selling it.

And why would it be illigal? You mean for you guys? What if Volition Inc or now it's THQ, decided to sell it again? Or is that whats impossible? They own the game... They could cut a deal.

The conditions of the source code release preclude any form of commercial venture.

Volition Inc is and always has been Volition Inc. Volition's publisher when it made FreeSpace was Interplay. Volition's publisher is now THQ. Interplay owns the FreeSpace IP, and so Volition cannot use it or control it.

[Rga_Noris]

Because someone will ask:

"Can we get the IP from Interplay?"

Someone tried, we didnt want them too, no one will raise the money, because no publisher wants to distro a space shooter.

/thread

[Aardwolf]

Publishers are so 1990s. We have the Internet

[rhettro]

Fads come and go. I think there will be a point in the future where space sims make a come back.

[Thaeris]

This is true, and I'm not sure why so many think they'll never see the kinds of games they liked in stores ever again. Everybody used to make military flight sims, after all, and there were good ones and bad ones. Heck, some of those DOS games were more sophisticated than modern games in many aspects.

The world is full of programmers and independent studios that do their own thing, and could give less than half a damn about the musings of the big guys. There are indeed many new or newer space games in recent years that are everything from strategy to first person combat (as in flight or "arcade" simulators, not shooters). Who cares about wheter or not a large publisher releases a game or not? What you want is out there, somewhere, whether it be an open, free project like FSO or Starshatter, or games to come like Infinity. You have no shortage of options, people!

[The E]

For a long time, it looked like big stompy mech action was dead too.

[Mr_Blastman]

Because someone will ask:

"Can we get the IP from Interplay?"

Someone tried, we didnt want them too, no one will raise the money, because no publisher wants to distro a space shooter.

/thread

That's only because nobody has started a kickstarter yet for a space shooter...

Hey look, they asked for money to do a point and click adventure...  Point and Click Adventure!  (Monkey Island, Sierra games etc), only 400k and they raised over 3 mil? 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

[Klaustrophobia]

i would guess that for every successful kickstarter (and isn't this the only one?) there are at least 1000 failed ones.  honestly i'm amazed that this one was successful.  i guess fanboyism packs a stronger punch than i ever thought.  and i wonder how ironclad these pledges are.  are they all locked in, or can tons of them balk when the time comes to actually pay it out?

[niffiwan]

You hand over your credit card details when you pledge so I guess you could cancel your card to avoid paying up.    Aside from that though, I don't think there's anyway to back out once you've pledged.  According to Rich Burlew, the OOTS kickstarter lost approx 0.32% of their total pledge value "due to irresolvable processing errors or the like", admittedly which he also classified as a "shockingly low" result.

And while not every kickstarter succeeds, double fine is far from the only successful one

[Meatball]

Kickstarter would be a very nice way to raise money. If this now is needed. But more importantly, lets say we try to raise money on Kickstarter, I believe a good video from someone who represents Hard-Light Productions can get a lot of backers. If you now succed and get a lot of money for Hard-Light Productions and Freespace and Space Shooters future, what will you do with the money and spend it on? Right now Hard-light is doing pretty good as a fan service, I think hard-light productions shows the biggest of fan service for a game in the history of games. What more games have fan service that did what Hard Light Productions did and still doing?

So yea big question, right now in my eyes Hard-Light is doing fine as a fan service. With money, what could you guys do? I wish for the revival of this game and maybe have one of those online advertisements that usually pop up on most sites sides.

[General Battuta]

A necessary first step for any such effort is to get a simple, one-click installer that actually works and plays nice with routinely updated content.

[Jeff Vader]

^

[MatthTheGeek]

Yeah, I guess we have to do that, since we can't exactly force retards to become clever enough to follow simple-ass tutorials...

[jr2]

hip63 did some nice installers... that fixes the WinDOwS side of things, anyways...