Diaspora: Shattered Armistice -- Battlestar Galactica Space Combat Simulator

fubar-bdhr (68)in #introduceyourself • 8 years ago (edited)

This is an indie game I worked on quite a bit a few years ago with amazing graphics and true to the series flight mechanics. Lets start with a bit of history.

In 1999 Interplay released FreeSpace 2 a game by Volition.

_{^{FreeSpace 2 box cover art}}

FS2 was the sequel to FreeSpace and the last in the line of the Decent game series. While one of the best space combat games every made it didn't have the greatest of success due to poor marketing. Jump forward a few years to 2002. Volition is now owned by THQ and with the FS2 assets belonging to Interplay Volition decides to release the FS2 source code. This was the birth of the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project. The code was updated and further developed for years and development still continues. All projects can use and contribute to the SCP. Modders updated FS2 assets and soon started creating total conversions. The Babylon Project (I'll probably do a write up on this at some point) was the first of these released. During the new Battlestar Galactic series a game called Beyond the Red Line began development. It met with initial success and released a demo on March 31st, 2007. Soon after the BTRL team split due to irreconcilable differences. Diaspora was born of those who split off.

_{^{Beyond the Red Line release image}}

The Diaspora team maintained rights to use some of the assets. Development started strong but lapsed. Most of the assets were unfinished or needed complete reworks to be usable in game. The ones that were ready were not in a format that the game could use. This is when I joined the team. I was already working on The Babylon Project and learned some basics of modding working on that. Taught myself a little C along the way and contributed to the SCP as well (mostly bug fixes). I started working on mission creation in the FreeSpace 2 Editor affectionately know as FRED.

_{^{The FreeSpace 2 Mission Editor}}

Table data was incomplete for all assets which made it near impossible to make missions. I started working on that but table data needs working models. I learned to use 3DS Max to setup the models and export them to a format that could be read by the games model conversion utility.

_{^{Gemini Freighter being rigged in max}}

_{^{Prometheus being imported to game}}

After much trial and error we had placeholder working models. Finished models were still a long way off but it was enough to move development forward. Missions moved forward, effects were introduced, code was added and tested, sound effects created. Along the way some models were finished. Fighters both Colonial and Cylon came to life with weapons the series imagined but forgot to use most of the time.

_{^{Colonial Viper MK7e with full loadout being tested}}

A civilian fleet was assembled.

_{^{Six Pack tanker/hauler work in progress}}

Even the mighty and terrifying BaseStar went from a shell placeholder to a nearly finished placeholder.

_{^{BaseStar work in progress}}

Alas the BattleStar was still mostly concept. A call for modelers went out and with the release of a trailer some took interest. Eventually the Sobek Class BattleStar was born.

_{^{Sobek Class BattleStar work in progress}}

Nearly complete development slowed to a halt again. With little cooperation from some of the team this is where I decided to move on. I still helped occasionally if needed but some of the team members it was just became too stressful to deal with. It took another year for the last bit to be finished. On September 4th, 2012 the game was officially released.

Whether your a BSG fan, a space sim fan or just like playing games. I hope you enjoy the game. I put quite a bit of time (thousands of hours) into it's development. The bast part is it's completely FREE!!!!

Release Thread: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=81859.0

Lets leave off with some bloopers and fun pics I saved: