Resurrecting Freespace 2
Browsing the Internet, I was pleasantly surprised at the active community surrounding the game. The community has banded together and more or less created a “Freespace 3″ with the now open source game engine.
The project entitled “FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project” adds
? Pixel shader version 3.0
? Vertex shader version 3.0
? Normal mapping
? Parallax mapping
Which means the game looks on par with some current games. It also now supports higher resolutions such as 1280×1024.
The game itself is a classic, and is up there with Tie Fighter as a example of how space combat games should be made.
The plot continues after Freespace 1 ends, with the Earth wormhole being cutoff to stop the Shivans (Standard evil alien race) invading human space.
With the Shivan’s out of the picture for now, the Humans & Vsudans (Another alien race) create an alliance. All is not well though, as a civil war has broken loose, with a human faction not wanting to join the Vsudans in an alliance.
After finding a new artificially created wormhole, the Shivan’s show up and start invading.
The plot has a few twists and turns, and is well written.
Gameplay consists of flying a craft, either in dogfights, bombing runs, defensive torpedo screening, or recon missions. These missions are nicely varied, and being able to choose your loadout and craft type, allows you to customize the linear campaign.
The defensive torpedo screening throws back to Tie Fighter, where you are tasked with defending a capital ship from bombers. The bombs/torpedos are fairly slow, so need to be shot down before reaching their target.
Also, Freespace 2 allows you to energy manage your ship. Diverting energy to engines will make your ship faster, diverting to shields will increase shield regeneration etc. This also features in Tie Fighter, and is a great feature.
Freespace 2 is a fantastic space combat game, and with the community graphical and mission addons make it even better.
[Freespace 2 on wikipedia]
[Freespace 2 Source Code Project on wikipedia]
[Modding Freespace 2]
[Buying Freespace 2]
Related posts:
January 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Hi,
Very interested in Freespace 2 but not sure how to get the game. Can you please send me your contact details so I can message you.
My email p.daniels@griffith.edu.au
Looking forward to hearing from you
Cheers
Peter
January 9th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Hi Peter,
Unfortunatly, Freespace 2 isn’t REALLY free anymore.
Previously the game was available at http://www.freespacezone.net (Dead site now). The files were even put onto such sites as iinet.net.au (and onto the DVD of PCPOWERPLAY). This was mainly because of a loop hole in the EULA that said it could be distributed for non-commerical purpose. (I recall reading somewhere that it was slipped in by the developers, or something).
Now though, another company has picked up the rights to sell the game.
Check out Good Old Games, they have it for $6US. You download it straight from the site. 1.2GB worth.
Michael