FreeSpace Chronicled: The First Three Months

FreeSpace Chronicled: The First Three Months

by: Old Staff (Zarathud) - September 13, 1998 for Freespace Watch

About three months ago, Volition Inc. and Interplay Productions released an incredible game called FreeSpace. Aside from receiving wonderful reviews from the gaming press, FreeSpace found a home on many hard drives. This column will attempt to highlight the major events in FreeSpace history. Those active in the FreeSpace community will remember many, if not all, of these events, but those new to FreeSpace will find this column provides some context. In many respects, this is my attempt to answer a message I once read that "FreeSpace is Dead." To the contrary, the FreeSpace community is dynamic and energetic. And, from all indications, the FreeSpace community shall continue to grow and prosper.

The most visible embodiment of the FreeSpace community, its Internet presence, has changed in the last few months. These changes were reflected in the Official FreeSpace Webring, which changed with the community. Many of the original FreeSpace news sites (the TTD, FSC and FSE) closed, but other sites resolved to fill the gap and expand their content. Descent-FreeSpace.com and FreeSpace Intelligence continued unaffected by changes in the community, but the changes resulted in the Descent Chronicles being revitalized as its team expanded. Other news sites, such as Strobe and A Talent For War, continued after being hosted at new locations. Fan interest resulted in a number of personal FreeSpace pages, often with personal tools, resources, and missions. Groups of fans created FreeSpace squardon sites. One squad, the CyberRaptors, created a "Site of the Month" award for FreeSpace sites. Each site continued its search to find a niche in the FreeSpace community.

With the release of FRED, the FreeSpace editor, the design community flourished after the release of FreeSpace. Volition showed their presence in the design community, helping answer many questions about FRED and mission design. More experienced designers continue to assist other authors with their design questions on the FDL. Peter Drake created a comprehensive FRED FAQ, and then included a walkthrough of mission design. Pastel created a FreeSpace FAQ and continues to be one of the authoritative voices on FreeSpace design. As mission design issues became more complex, sites such as the SwapMeet and the FDL Review were created to give more detailed mission feedback. The Descent Chronicles staff began to review and rate missions for gamers, and other sites announced a similar intent.

Xanadu's Mission Archive soon became the central location for these third-party mission designs, providing a Top 10 and polls for the FreeSpace community. The number and quality of missions were noticed by Volition and Interplay. Interplay announced a FreeSpace mission pack called "Silent Threat" that would contain missions designed by the the FreeSpace community, as well as a new campaign. Many authors submitted their designs to Interplay's Mission Design Contest in hopes of winning prizes and securing a free copy of Silent Threat.

Many tools were released to assist those designers. The DDN released VPView32, which allowed users to peek inside the VP game files. This allowed animation and sound lists to be created. The AC utility allowed conversion of ANI animation files into PCX files. John Hanton created new ships and weapons for the FreeSpace Universe by editing the game files. And Garry Knudson created a Ship Viewer. Programmers in the community continue their work on several other tools, such as a mission organizer, a ship editor and a sound mixer.

Others in the community called for more detail in the FreeSpace universe. A group of FreeSpace fans created the FreeSpace Universe Reference Project, in hopes of filling in the technical gaps and creating a backstory. I created several summaries of the Great War campaign. Others began to debate the physics of FreeSpace wherever they could. Volition created an official star map and released clips of Vasuan speech and, finally, its FreeSpace Reference Bible of game development information. Interplay contributed weekly "FreeSpace Stories" from well-known science fiction authors, and announced another contest for amateur authors to contribute to the FreeSpace mythology. Techical and general FreeSpace discussions continue on FreeSpace bulletin boards at Deathlands (formerly ELM) and the FreeSpace Forum.

Internet and multiplayer play recieved attention as well, at first for their underachivements. But Volition continued to improve multiplayer performance, releasing several patches and a separate standalone server program. Many of the initial problems were resolved by the version 1.03 patch, but additional improvements should be noticed after the upcoming 1.04 patch. Parallax Online (PXO), the multiplayer service integrated with FreeSpace, promises to accurately track pilot statistics after the 1.04 patch. And to avoid an existing problem with some multiplayer missions giving excessive scores, multiplayer missions will be "verified" in the future. However, PXO allowed the FreeSpace community a central location to meet and fly missions against other pilots.

Single player gameplay revolves around completing the Great War campaign on ever-harder levels of difficulty and third party created missions or campaigns. The most difficult missions in the Great War campaign have created much discussion, particularly Clash of the Titans and Playing Judas.The cheat codes were finally published, allowing gamers to experiment within the game.

In the next few months, we can look forward to more missions and the Silent Threat mission pack. New animations, sounds and music is sure to be released by fans. And we can only hope for a release of a ship editor. Mission authors are developing more advanced designs and many campaigns are in the works. Resources for the designer are available and we can expect many will use them to fill in the gaps within the FreeSpace universe. More detailed FAQs are sure to be created, and current ones will inevitably be revised. With accurate ranking on PXO, squadrons can be expected to flourish and ladders will likely be created. Walkthroughs must surely be on the horizon to assist those still struggling with the Great War campaign. All things considered, the future of FreeSpace is very bright indeed. I am proud to be a part of the FreeSpace community, and I hope that many others join in to create the content necessary to make this wonderful game a classic, never to be forgotten.

Author's Note: I am sure that I have missed or, perhaps, misdescribed some of the important FreeSpace events during the last few months. Any inaccuracies or omissions are my own oversights, so please let me know of them. It is difficult to keep track of everything that happens, but I have done my best and hope that that everyone considers the scope of this task. However, I believe that this chronicle highlights many of the important developments in the FreeSpace community.