Nerples said:
I've been thinking about this for a while now ever since recently finishing Battlestar Galactica. I remember back in the day playing X-wing Verses Tie-Fighter no end. The sickening cockpit view staring out into the void of space. The visceral joy of manipulating my ship with the plastic joystick. I look at the market now and I see nothing of the sort (on consoles at least). If you've ever watched Battlestar long enough to see some of the spectacular space wars you'll know what I'm getting at here. Image a game like X-wing, only with beautiful graphics, intense detail and lighting, masses of enemies and stars on screen at once, and tell me that it doesn't sound like a game you might be slightly interested in. Go on, tell me. TELL ME!
Yes it certainly does: It's called Freespace 2 [http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Getting_started].
Been around since 1999 in point of fact, and has been substantially upgraded by the community (the link goes to the "Getting Started" page for the source code project), redesigning the engine with support for modern OSes and features, and substantially upgrading the graphics, effects, and models - all while remaining true to the sublime original, known to all true space aces as the greatest space shooter
ever.
In essence you get the best game the genre ever produced, with graphics that make it look like it hit shelves a couple of years ago at the latest, instead of more than a decade ago. And if for some reason the original Freespace 2 game
doesn't fulfill all your space-sim/shooter needs (heresy!), the Source Code Project has also been used to create several extensive total conversions, with campaigns set in various other science fiction franchises such as Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica (I believe one that's in the works right now is recreating the Wing Commander games using the new-improved Freespace 2 engine).
