Descent: FreeSpace
Encyclopedia
Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War is a 1998 space combat simulation IBM PC compatible
computer game
developed by Volition, Inc. when it was split off from Parallax Software
. Published by Interplay Entertainment
, it is also known as Conflict: FreeSpace – The Great War in Europe. In 2001, it was ported
to the Amiga
platform as FreeSpace – The Great War by Hyperion Entertainment
.
The story places the player in the role of a human pilot in the Galactic Terran Alliance, as it engages in war with the alien Parliamentary Vasudan Empire. This war is interrupted by the appearance of the enigmatic and militant Shivans, who begin slaughtering Terrans and Vasudans alike. Putting aside their differences, the Terrans and Vasudans form an alliance, and the player is assigned to missions to stop the Shivans' genocidal
advance. The player pilots a starfighter
, and alongside competent AI wingmen
, completes these missions to determine the fate of two races. Important battles in the story feature capital ship
s, which dwarf the fighters piloted by the player, and explode spectacularly on destruction.
Descent: FreeSpace was well received as a single-player space simulation that integrated all the desired features of its genre, but its multiplayer mode was plagued by lag and inaccurate tracking of statistics. Its expansion, Silent Threat, which comprised additional missions, was also released in 1998. Its sequel, FreeSpace 2
, was released a year later in 1999.
flying out on missions to investigate, protect, or destroy certain targets. Some have categorized it as a flight simulator, since it has more controls and commands than a typical arcade game. However, its flight model is simple, akin to that of the game TIE Fighter
, though it incorporates some elements of Newtonian physics
such as precise collision physics. In the single-player mode, the player flies through a series of missions in a campaign.
Before flying a mission, the player goes through a briefing, which details relevant information and objectives. Ships and weapons are selected following the briefing, adding an element of strategy to the missions. When flying, the game's perspective is a first-person view
from within the cockpit
, but the only visible interface is that of the head-up display
(HUD). The player can customize the HUD by changing its color, or by toggling the information displays.
Missions must be successfully completed for the campaign to advance. However, not all objectives must be met for a mission to be considered successful. Results of a mission can affect later missions; for example, an enemy capital ship allowed to flee in a particular mission may return in a later mission. Completed missions can be replayed on the in-game mission simulator. Training missions are mixed in with the regular missions (and can be skipped), gradually introducing players to advanced commands and techniques as the missions become more sophisticated. The game has been said to be easily playable with the keyboard alone, or together with a mouse or joystick.
The game features multiplayer matches online
or over a local area network
(LAN). Players can either band together to complete cooperative missions
, or split up into teams to battle against one another. Voice chat
is available, although reviewers advised it to be used only on broadband
or LAN. Online gameplay was free over the services offered by Parallax Online, which also kept track of players' statistics and rankings.
, and have spread among the stars as the Galactic Terran Alliance (GTA). The player is thrust into the game during the fourteenth year of war between the GTA and the alien
Parliamentary Vasudan Empire. While text within the game provides some speculation on the origins of the war, its history is never fully explained, to keep opportunities open for unrestricted development of the story in sequels and expansions. The plotline was described by Volition as multi-pathed, and would branch slightly depending on the player's mission performance. This was intended to enhance the replayability value of the game.
The introduction movie serves as a prologue, giving players an idea of the story right from the start. It establishes a Terran-Vasudan war, and gives a short glimpse of the fearsome alien Shivans. The player flies several combat missions against the Vasudans before encountering advance elements of the Shivans, who attack the two races indiscriminately. Unable to target or even damage the Shivans with their primary weapons, players must embark on several missions for the new Terran-Vasudan alliance to catch up with the Shivans' technological superiority, while fending off a Vasudan death cult
, the Hammer of Light. The player becomes instrumental in capturing the Shivan cruiser SC Taranis. The promise of rewards for capturing the Taranis turns out to be a MacGuffin
. Its capture only serves as an introduction for the game's main boss
, the Shivan superdestroyer SD Lucifer. The Lucifer makes its entrance by destroying the captured Taranis and many other allied ships, putting an end to the encouraging mood which was being built up till then.
At certain points during the campaign, monologue
s by members of an extinct race, the Ancients, are told in pre-rendered cutscenes. With an undertone of sadness, they detail the Ancients' encounters with the Shivans millennia ago, suggesting the long history of the Shivans' actions, and their effects on developing sentient
species. They also foreshadow
the destruction of a homeworld and, more importantly, reveal the secret to destroying the Lucifer. The destruction of the Lucifer in the subspace between the Sol
and Delta Serpentis
jump nodes marks a twist in the ending; the subspace corridor is destroyed and Sol is cut off from the Terran survivors outside who must face the possibility of meeting the Shivans again. The expansion Silent Threat continues the story in a straight-forward manner. The player joins the Galactic Terran Intelligence (GTI) while the Terran-Vasudan alliance is in a fragile state, and is told to preserve the alliance by ruthlessly pacifying rebellious elements and fending off remnants of the Shivan forces. However, it all turns out to be a cover-up
, as the GTI is plotting a coup
, and has constructed a Terran-Shivan hybrid superdestroyer of their own, the GTD Hades, which the player must destroy.
, which also spawned Outrage Entertainment. It is not part of the canon
of the Descent
computer game series, and contained none of its ideas and only small portions of its code. It was only prefixed with Descent to avoid trademark issues with Mijenix Corporation's "FreeSpace", a disk compression
utility. Volition also used the term "FreeSpace" in the game to initially describe what became later known as subspace. The game was conceived by Adam Pletcher, with all the features of space simulator games his team had found to be fun. The games TIE Fighter
and Wing Commander were their primary inspirations, and those influences made their way into the game's flight model, along with the influence of historical WWII
dogfight
s. Themes from the fiction of Star Wars
, Space: Above and Beyond
, and Ender's Game
form a part in shaping the background and story of the FreeSpace world. The chaotic battles between masses of ships commonly found in science-fiction anime
became one of the features of FreeSpace.
Begun with a crew of five, the project grew to a staff of 17. The game's code was built from scratch. Most of the software modules were interlinked with each other, increasing the job's complexity and difficulty. The code incorporated small portions of Descents code for specific functions. Kulas, who had worked on several versions of Flight Simulator
and Descent, brought his experience into the game's artificial intelligence
(AI). The game's difficulty levels are based on advancing the enemy AI, rather than simply increasing damage and "hit points" of enemies. Some realism was incorporated into the game's physics, such that an impact on one part of a starfighter
's body will send it spinning appropriately, unlike sphere-based collision detection, in which an impact would simply 'push' the starfighter in a particular direction. Due to time and budget constraints, many of the initially planned cutscenes and stories were cut from the final product. Examples of such cuts include a campaign path where the Terran-Vasudan alliance goes on a retreat, and scenes of racial tension within the alliance. Despite the promise of a deathmatch
mode for multiplayer, it was cut from the final product. The expansion Silent Threat also suffered the same fate of cuts due to budgetary and time concerns.
Apogee Software
announced on December 12, 1997 that they would be exclusively publishing FreeSpace for the first three months before handing the publishing rights back to Interplay Entertainment
. This was part of their agreement with Interplay for the latter's purchase of the rights to Descent, and Apogee decided to release FreeSpace as shareware
, with themselves as the merchant of the registered version. Interplay, however, bought the full rights to FreeSpace from Apogee in late April, 1998, keeping the ownership of the game solely to themselves.
Volition aimed for a quality release, and promised to deliver a product without major bugs. Minor bugs
would be fixed in a prompt manner. The shipped game, however, had deficiencies admitted by the team, such as problems with the multiplayer code, and a few design issues. The game underwent four patches, which resolved most of the bugs, and improved the multiplayer performance. Complaints about an online mission giving unfair scores led to Volition removing the mission from scoring play. Another patch allowed EAX
capability to be enabled for Creative
Sound Blaster
sound card
s. Interplay played its part in drumming up the community's interest by holding contests, and expanding material for the FreeSpace universe. Meanwhile, Volition created official star maps, and released Vasudan voice clips and story development notes. Interplay hired science-fiction writers such as Fred Saberhagen
, Simon Hawke
, and Jeff Grubb
to write weekly FreeSpace stories for two months. Preparing for Silent Threats release, Interplay held a contest from July 28 to August 25, 1998, in which the submitted fan-designed missions could win their authors prizes such as free copies of Silent Threat, FreeSpace apparel, and gaming hardware. Entries were judged by a panel from PC Gamer
, and qualified entries constituted half of the missions in Silent Threat.
On December 14, 1999, Hyperion Entertainment
announced their acquisition of the license to port
FreeSpace to the Amiga
system. The publisher was changed to Haage & Partner Computer on October 18, 2001. Despite the game's official release being announced for December 2001, the approval to do so could only be gotten on January 7, 2002. The game was shipped without a printed manual, but had additional German and French language
support. Hyperion had stated they would port over Silent Threat if the FreeSpace port sold well. To date, Silent Threat has yet to be ported over to the Amiga platform.
and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
in its reviews, and stood up well against them. It has been said to be a combination of the two games, possessing the better qualities of each; the plot is fairly epic, but the player is still just a pilot caught up in it all, fighting amongst fleets of starships. As the game took inspiration from space simulation classics and offered comparatively little of its own innovation, it was called unoriginal by a few reviewers.
Most reviewers glossed over the game's story, but a few found it lacking the depth needed to captivate the player. Some suggested that the game would have been better if the player had a greater role in controlling the outcome of the story. Without this impetus, these reviewers found themselves simply playing a "very sweet looking arcade title", and felt detached from their wingmen and environment. This feeling was made worse in Silent Threat with its "cold and inhuman" briefings and non-player characters.
Several reviewers praised FreeSpaces graphics, claiming asteroids are realistically rendered against softly glowing nebula
e, while galaxies and stars of varying colors lay in the background. Others felt differently, stating the 3D effects
were less spectacular than those of the software rendered version, the nebulae were unconvincing, and the ships' textures were blurry and lacking detail. However, reviewers unanimously agreed the explosions in FreeSpace were the most spectacular they had ever seen, and were impressed with the many small details of capital ships breaking up. Sharky Extreme was dismayed by the game's inability to go beyond 640x480 screen size. The game's AI also received praise from reviewers, as the player's wingmen
were competent on their own and could be trusted with orders, even to the extent of co-ordinating attacks on capital ships. Likewise, the player's enemies acted in concert with each other to achieve their squadron's objectives.
Despite one reviewer's glowing praise for the FreeSpaces online multiplayer over cable modem
s, the majority at that time were on dial-up access
and roundly condemned the online multiplayer mode. The chief complaint was lag. GameSpot's Desslock was amazed the game dared to advertise as being able to support 16 players online when it could not even support two players on 56k modem
s. Combatsim.com's Fitzgerald called the multiplayer "bug ridden" after experiencing many of his shots not registering hits or kills on enemy ships after over 40 minutes of play; all of it due to lag
. Other reviewers found their situations similar with their guns only firing seconds after depressing the trigger, and their ships randomly jumping over the playing area.
Silent Threat was judged to be a decent but uninspired add-on. The campaign missions were either standard escort or destroy missions, and offered no new equipment which were unable to compete against the older equipment. The stand-alone missions, however, were toasted for the way they were conceived. The contest-winning entries gave breadth to the game's variety of missions. This was made possible with the free editor FreeSpace Editor, or FRED for short. With the ability to import personal audio and 3D animation files, the editor allows users the same capability as Volition to create their own missions. The possibilities offered by the editor resulted in a call to the community to stop the flood of "Battle of Endor"-type missions, and to design missions following Volition's Jason Hoffoss' Zen
philosophy of accomplishing more with less.
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
computer game
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
developed by Volition, Inc. when it was split off from Parallax Software
Parallax Software
Parallax Software was a video game developer best known for creating the Descent series of computer games. Parallax Software was started in 1993 by Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas. After the release of Descent II in 1997, the company was split to form Volition, Inc. in Champaign, Illinois, and...
. Published by Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
, it is also known as Conflict: FreeSpace – The Great War in Europe. In 2001, it was ported
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
to the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
platform as FreeSpace – The Great War by Hyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is a Belgian software company which in its early years focused in porting Windows games to Amiga, Linux and Macintosh. Later on, they were contracted by Amiga Incorporated to develop AmigaOS 4 and retired from the gaming business...
.
The story places the player in the role of a human pilot in the Galactic Terran Alliance, as it engages in war with the alien Parliamentary Vasudan Empire. This war is interrupted by the appearance of the enigmatic and militant Shivans, who begin slaughtering Terrans and Vasudans alike. Putting aside their differences, the Terrans and Vasudans form an alliance, and the player is assigned to missions to stop the Shivans' genocidal
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
advance. The player pilots a starfighter
Starfighter
"Starfighter" is a science fiction term used to describe small, fast, usually one-manned craft designed for armed combat .The appearance and use of fictional starfighters is often modeled on fighter aircraft, with little regard for the actual physics of spaceflight...
, and alongside competent AI wingmen
Wingman
A wingman is a pilot who supports another in a potentially dangerous flying environment. Wingman was originally a term referring to the plane flying beside and slightly behind the lead plane in an aircraft formation....
, completes these missions to determine the fate of two races. Important battles in the story feature capital ship
Capital ship
The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they generally possess the heaviest firepower and armor and are traditionally much larger than other naval vessels...
s, which dwarf the fighters piloted by the player, and explode spectacularly on destruction.
Descent: FreeSpace was well received as a single-player space simulation that integrated all the desired features of its genre, but its multiplayer mode was plagued by lag and inaccurate tracking of statistics. Its expansion, Silent Threat, which comprised additional missions, was also released in 1998. Its sequel, FreeSpace 2
FreeSpace 2
FreeSpace 2 is a 1999 space combat simulation computer game developed by Volition, Inc. as the sequel to Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War. It was completed ahead of schedule in less than a year, and released to great critical acclaim...
, was released a year later in 1999.
Gameplay
Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War puts the player in a starfighterStarfighter
"Starfighter" is a science fiction term used to describe small, fast, usually one-manned craft designed for armed combat .The appearance and use of fictional starfighters is often modeled on fighter aircraft, with little regard for the actual physics of spaceflight...
flying out on missions to investigate, protect, or destroy certain targets. Some have categorized it as a flight simulator, since it has more controls and commands than a typical arcade game. However, its flight model is simple, akin to that of the game TIE Fighter
Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Star Wars: TIE Fighter, a 1994 space flight simulator/space combat computer game, is the sequel to Star Wars: X-Wing, and the first game of the series that puts the player on the side of the Galactic Empire....
, though it incorporates some elements of Newtonian physics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
such as precise collision physics. In the single-player mode, the player flies through a series of missions in a campaign.
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
from within the cockpit
Cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. Most modern cockpits are enclosed, except on some small aircraft, and cockpits on large airliners are also physically separated from the cabin...
, but the only visible interface is that of the head-up display
Head-Up Display
A head-up display or heads-up display is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints...
(HUD). The player can customize the HUD by changing its color, or by toggling the information displays.
Missions must be successfully completed for the campaign to advance. However, not all objectives must be met for a mission to be considered successful. Results of a mission can affect later missions; for example, an enemy capital ship allowed to flee in a particular mission may return in a later mission. Completed missions can be replayed on the in-game mission simulator. Training missions are mixed in with the regular missions (and can be skipped), gradually introducing players to advanced commands and techniques as the missions become more sophisticated. The game has been said to be easily playable with the keyboard alone, or together with a mouse or joystick.
The game features multiplayer matches online
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
or over a local area network
Local area network
A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
(LAN). Players can either band together to complete cooperative missions
Cooperative gameplay
Cooperative gameplay is a feature in video games that allows players to work together as teammates. It is distinct from other multiplayer modes, such as competitive multiplayer modes like player versus player or deathmatch...
, or split up into teams to battle against one another. Voice chat
Voice chat
Voice chat is a modern form of communication used on the Internet. The means of communicating with voice chat is through any of the messengers, mainly Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, inSpeak Communicator or Windows Live Messenger...
is available, although reviewers advised it to be used only on broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
or LAN. Online gameplay was free over the services offered by Parallax Online, which also kept track of players' statistics and rankings.
Plot and setting
FreeSpace takes place in a fictional future where humans have discovered how to travel long distances by jumping into subspaceHyperspace (science fiction)
Hyperspace is a plot device sometimes used in science fiction. It is typically described as an alternative region of space co-existing with our own universe which may be entered using an energy field or other device...
, and have spread among the stars as the Galactic Terran Alliance (GTA). The player is thrust into the game during the fourteenth year of war between the GTA and the alien
Extraterrestrial life in popular culture
In popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin .-Historical ideas:-Pre-modern:...
Parliamentary Vasudan Empire. While text within the game provides some speculation on the origins of the war, its history is never fully explained, to keep opportunities open for unrestricted development of the story in sequels and expansions. The plotline was described by Volition as multi-pathed, and would branch slightly depending on the player's mission performance. This was intended to enhance the replayability value of the game.
Destructive cult
A destructive cult is a religion or other group which has caused or has a high probability of causing harm to its own members or to others. Some researchers define "harm" in this case with a narrow focus, specifically groups which have deliberately physically injured or killed other individuals,...
, the Hammer of Light. The player becomes instrumental in capturing the Shivan cruiser SC Taranis. The promise of rewards for capturing the Taranis turns out to be a MacGuffin
MacGuffin
A MacGuffin is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is...
. Its capture only serves as an introduction for the game's main boss
Boss (video games)
A boss is an enemy-based challenge which is found in video games. A fight with a boss character is commonly referred to as a boss battle or boss fight...
, the Shivan superdestroyer SD Lucifer. The Lucifer makes its entrance by destroying the captured Taranis and many other allied ships, putting an end to the encouraging mood which was being built up till then.
At certain points during the campaign, monologue
Monologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...
s by members of an extinct race, the Ancients, are told in pre-rendered cutscenes. With an undertone of sadness, they detail the Ancients' encounters with the Shivans millennia ago, suggesting the long history of the Shivans' actions, and their effects on developing sentient
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
species. They also foreshadow
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing or adumbrating is a literary device in which an author indistinctly suggests certain plot developments that might come later in the story.-Repetitive designation and Chekhov's gun:...
the destruction of a homeworld and, more importantly, reveal the secret to destroying the Lucifer. The destruction of the Lucifer in the subspace between the Sol
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
and Delta Serpentis
Delta Serpentis
Delta Serpentis is a star system in the constellation Serpens, in its head . It was a member of indigenous Arabic asterism al-Nasaq al-Yamānī, "the Southern Line" of al-Nasaqān "the Two Lines"., along with α Ser , ε Ser , δ Oph , ε Oph , ζ Oph and γ Oph .According to the...
jump nodes marks a twist in the ending; the subspace corridor is destroyed and Sol is cut off from the Terran survivors outside who must face the possibility of meeting the Shivans again. The expansion Silent Threat continues the story in a straight-forward manner. The player joins the Galactic Terran Intelligence (GTI) while the Terran-Vasudan alliance is in a fragile state, and is told to preserve the alliance by ruthlessly pacifying rebellious elements and fending off remnants of the Shivan forces. However, it all turns out to be a cover-up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
, as the GTI is plotting a coup
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
, and has constructed a Terran-Shivan hybrid superdestroyer of their own, the GTD Hades, which the player must destroy.
Development
FreeSpace was Volition's first project after the split from Parallax SoftwareParallax Software
Parallax Software was a video game developer best known for creating the Descent series of computer games. Parallax Software was started in 1993 by Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas. After the release of Descent II in 1997, the company was split to form Volition, Inc. in Champaign, Illinois, and...
, which also spawned Outrage Entertainment. It is not part of the canon
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
of the Descent
Descent (video game)
Descent is a 3D first-person shooter video game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Entertainment Corp. in 1995. The game features six degrees of freedom gameplay and garnered several expansion packs...
computer game series, and contained none of its ideas and only small portions of its code. It was only prefixed with Descent to avoid trademark issues with Mijenix Corporation's "FreeSpace", a disk compression
Disk compression
A disk compression software utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size. Unlike a file compression utility which compresses only specified files - and which requires the user designate the files to be compressed - a disk compression utility...
utility. Volition also used the term "FreeSpace" in the game to initially describe what became later known as subspace. The game was conceived by Adam Pletcher, with all the features of space simulator games his team had found to be fun. The games TIE Fighter
Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Star Wars: TIE Fighter, a 1994 space flight simulator/space combat computer game, is the sequel to Star Wars: X-Wing, and the first game of the series that puts the player on the side of the Galactic Empire....
and Wing Commander were their primary inspirations, and those influences made their way into the game's flight model, along with the influence of historical WWII
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
dogfight
Dogfight
A dogfight, or dog fight, is a form of aerial combat between fighter aircraft; in particular, combat of maneuver at short range, where each side is aware of the other's presence. Dogfighting first appeared during World War I, shortly after the invention of the airplane...
s. Themes from the fiction of Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
, Space: Above and Beyond
Space: Above and Beyond
Space: Above and Beyond was a short-lived mid-90s American science fiction television show on the FOX Network, created and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong. Originally planned for five seasons, it ran only for the single 1995–1996 season. It was nominated for two Emmy Awards and one Saturn...
, and Ender's Game
Ender's Game
Ender's Game is a science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. The book originated as the short story "Ender's Game", published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Elaborating on characters and plot lines depicted in the novel, Card later wrote additional...
form a part in shaping the background and story of the FreeSpace world. The chaotic battles between masses of ships commonly found in science-fiction anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
became one of the features of FreeSpace.
Begun with a crew of five, the project grew to a staff of 17. The game's code was built from scratch. Most of the software modules were interlinked with each other, increasing the job's complexity and difficulty. The code incorporated small portions of Descents code for specific functions. Kulas, who had worked on several versions of Flight Simulator
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs for the Microsoft Windows operating system, although it was marketed as a video game. It is one of the longest-running, best-known and most comprehensive home flight simulator series...
and Descent, brought his experience into the game's artificial intelligence
Game artificial intelligence
Game artificial intelligence refers to techniques used in computer and video games to produce the illusion of intelligence in the behavior of non-player characters . The techniques used typically draw upon existing methods from the field of artificial intelligence...
(AI). The game's difficulty levels are based on advancing the enemy AI, rather than simply increasing damage and "hit points" of enemies. Some realism was incorporated into the game's physics, such that an impact on one part of a starfighter
Starfighter
"Starfighter" is a science fiction term used to describe small, fast, usually one-manned craft designed for armed combat .The appearance and use of fictional starfighters is often modeled on fighter aircraft, with little regard for the actual physics of spaceflight...
's body will send it spinning appropriately, unlike sphere-based collision detection, in which an impact would simply 'push' the starfighter in a particular direction. Due to time and budget constraints, many of the initially planned cutscenes and stories were cut from the final product. Examples of such cuts include a campaign path where the Terran-Vasudan alliance goes on a retreat, and scenes of racial tension within the alliance. Despite the promise of a deathmatch
Deathmatch (gaming)
Deathmatch or Player vs All is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into many shooter and real-time strategy computer games...
mode for multiplayer, it was cut from the final product. The expansion Silent Threat also suffered the same fate of cuts due to budgetary and time concerns.
Apogee Software
3D Realms
3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...
announced on December 12, 1997 that they would be exclusively publishing FreeSpace for the first three months before handing the publishing rights back to Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
. This was part of their agreement with Interplay for the latter's purchase of the rights to Descent, and Apogee decided to release FreeSpace as shareware
Shareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
, with themselves as the merchant of the registered version. Interplay, however, bought the full rights to FreeSpace from Apogee in late April, 1998, keeping the ownership of the game solely to themselves.
Volition aimed for a quality release, and promised to deliver a product without major bugs. Minor bugs
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
would be fixed in a prompt manner. The shipped game, however, had deficiencies admitted by the team, such as problems with the multiplayer code, and a few design issues. The game underwent four patches, which resolved most of the bugs, and improved the multiplayer performance. Complaints about an online mission giving unfair scores led to Volition removing the mission from scoring play. Another patch allowed EAX
Environmental audio extensions
The environmental audio extensions are a number of digital signal processing presets for audio, present in Creative Technology's later Sound Blaster sound cards and the Creative NOMAD/Creative ZEN product lines...
capability to be enabled for Creative
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster
The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...
sound card
Sound card
A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...
s. Interplay played its part in drumming up the community's interest by holding contests, and expanding material for the FreeSpace universe. Meanwhile, Volition created official star maps, and released Vasudan voice clips and story development notes. Interplay hired science-fiction writers such as Fred Saberhagen
Fred Saberhagen
Fred Thomas Saberhagen was an American science fiction and fantasy author most famous for his Berserker series of science fiction short stories and S.F...
, Simon Hawke
Simon Hawke
Simon Hawke is an American author of mainly science fiction and fantasy novels. He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D...
, and Jeff Grubb
Jeff Grubb
Jeff Grubb is an author and game designer. He has worked on a number of computer and role-playing games and has written a number of successful novels, short stories and comics...
to write weekly FreeSpace stories for two months. Preparing for Silent Threats release, Interplay held a contest from July 28 to August 25, 1998, in which the submitted fan-designed missions could win their authors prizes such as free copies of Silent Threat, FreeSpace apparel, and gaming hardware. Entries were judged by a panel from PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
, and qualified entries constituted half of the missions in Silent Threat.
On December 14, 1999, Hyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is a Belgian software company which in its early years focused in porting Windows games to Amiga, Linux and Macintosh. Later on, they were contracted by Amiga Incorporated to develop AmigaOS 4 and retired from the gaming business...
announced their acquisition of the license to port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
FreeSpace to the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
system. The publisher was changed to Haage & Partner Computer on October 18, 2001. Despite the game's official release being announced for December 2001, the approval to do so could only be gotten on January 7, 2002. The game was shipped without a printed manual, but had additional German and French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
support. Hyperion had stated they would port over Silent Threat if the FreeSpace port sold well. To date, Silent Threat has yet to be ported over to the Amiga platform.
Reception
FreeSpace, which was placed 20th in PC Gamer UKs 1999 Top 100 Awards, was frequently compared to Wing Commander: ProphecyWing Commander: Prophecy
Wing Commander: Prophecy is the fourth direct sequel in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander science fiction space combat simulator franchise of computer games. The game was released in 1997, produced by Origin Systems and distributed by Electronic Arts...
and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is the third installment of the X-Wing computer game series, although it is not a regular part of the series....
in its reviews, and stood up well against them. It has been said to be a combination of the two games, possessing the better qualities of each; the plot is fairly epic, but the player is still just a pilot caught up in it all, fighting amongst fleets of starships. As the game took inspiration from space simulation classics and offered comparatively little of its own innovation, it was called unoriginal by a few reviewers.
Most reviewers glossed over the game's story, but a few found it lacking the depth needed to captivate the player. Some suggested that the game would have been better if the player had a greater role in controlling the outcome of the story. Without this impetus, these reviewers found themselves simply playing a "very sweet looking arcade title", and felt detached from their wingmen and environment. This feeling was made worse in Silent Threat with its "cold and inhuman" briefings and non-player characters.
Nebula
A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases...
e, while galaxies and stars of varying colors lay in the background. Others felt differently, stating the 3D effects
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
were less spectacular than those of the software rendered version, the nebulae were unconvincing, and the ships' textures were blurry and lacking detail. However, reviewers unanimously agreed the explosions in FreeSpace were the most spectacular they had ever seen, and were impressed with the many small details of capital ships breaking up. Sharky Extreme was dismayed by the game's inability to go beyond 640x480 screen size. The game's AI also received praise from reviewers, as the player's wingmen
Wingman
A wingman is a pilot who supports another in a potentially dangerous flying environment. Wingman was originally a term referring to the plane flying beside and slightly behind the lead plane in an aircraft formation....
were competent on their own and could be trusted with orders, even to the extent of co-ordinating attacks on capital ships. Likewise, the player's enemies acted in concert with each other to achieve their squadron's objectives.
Despite one reviewer's glowing praise for the FreeSpaces online multiplayer over cable modem
Cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...
s, the majority at that time were on dial-up access
Dial-up access
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network to establish a dialled connection to an Internet service provider via telephone lines...
and roundly condemned the online multiplayer mode. The chief complaint was lag. GameSpot's Desslock was amazed the game dared to advertise as being able to support 16 players online when it could not even support two players on 56k modem
56K modem
56k modems are voiceband modems nominally capable of download speeds up to 56 kbit/s . In the late 1990s, they were the most popular access method for personal Internet usage, but their use had declined as broadband technologies such as DSL gained wider availability.-Speed:The 56 kbit/s...
s. Combatsim.com's Fitzgerald called the multiplayer "bug ridden" after experiencing many of his shots not registering hits or kills on enemy ships after over 40 minutes of play; all of it due to lag
Lag
Lag is a common word meaning to fail to keep up or to fall behind. In real-time applications, the term is used when the application fails to respond in a timely fashion to inputs...
. Other reviewers found their situations similar with their guns only firing seconds after depressing the trigger, and their ships randomly jumping over the playing area.
Silent Threat was judged to be a decent but uninspired add-on. The campaign missions were either standard escort or destroy missions, and offered no new equipment which were unable to compete against the older equipment. The stand-alone missions, however, were toasted for the way they were conceived. The contest-winning entries gave breadth to the game's variety of missions. This was made possible with the free editor FreeSpace Editor, or FRED for short. With the ability to import personal audio and 3D animation files, the editor allows users the same capability as Volition to create their own missions. The possibilities offered by the editor resulted in a call to the community to stop the flood of "Battle of Endor"-type missions, and to design missions following Volition's Jason Hoffoss' Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
philosophy of accomplishing more with less.
External links
- Official FreeSpace – The Great War website (archived)
- FreeSpace – The Great War — Hyperion Entertainment's website for the Amiga port