StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Sci-fi flight sim games are deader than a doornail, at least on the PC. Although there are still blips on the proverbial radar, such as X2: The Threat and Freelancer, it seems that the sun has set on one of the premier gaming genres of the 1990s, a decade that brought us a number of fantastic entries into the Wing Commander and X-wing series, and which was capped off by one of the finest PC games ever (of any genre), Freespace 2.

Hunting down enemy ships in the middle of a nebula was one of the most unique aspects of Freespace 2.
The first game in the series, the awkwardly titled Descent: Freespace - The Great War, an offshoot of the popular Descent series of free-flight 3D corridor crawlers, told the story of the eponymous Great War between Terrans (humans) and an aggressive race of aliens called the Vasudans. The galactic balance of power was soon shifted, however, with the appearance of the Shivans, a third race with highly advanced technology that quickly started cutting a swath through the opposing forces. All attempts to communicate, let alone negotiate, were met with silence. Faced with mutual extermination, the Vasudans and humans quickly ended their hostilities and formed a pact to fight against the Shivans. They were ultimately successful in repelling the invaders, although at the cost of permanently cutting Earth off from interstellar travel. The memorable final battle took place inside hyperspace, as you commanded a squadron of bombers tasked with taking out the massive Lucifer warship while it traveled toward Earth.

Freespace 2 continues with the storyline 32 years later, as a rebel group of humans, the Neo-Terran Front, fights a civil war against the Terran/Vasudan alliance, who are accusing the human leadership of selling their race out to the Vasudans. Amid this tense background, the Shivans reemerge from the void of space, forcing the alliance to fight a war on two fronts. Things start to get strange, however, when the separatists learn how to communicate with the Shivans and appear to join forces with them.



The massive capital ships served to supply a large portion of the game's fireworks.
Freespace 2 wasn't a game that shocked the world with innovative features or a new type of gameplay. Instead, it's great simply because of the fact that it executes. With the proving ground of Descent: Freespace behind it, Volition left the crutch of the Descent license behind and set about making a resoundingly solid game that takes the standard features of the space sim and genre and turns the volume on all of them up to 11. The confidence and variety of the mission designs are exceptional, and the feel of the dogfights and mission flights is outstanding. The new additions to the game are notable as well. Whereas the first game was mostly fought with missiles, bombs, and laser weapons, Freespace 2 includes deadly beam and flak cannons for the capital ships, leading to some ferocious battles. Some of the more entertaining portions of the game take place as you simply watch some of the massive, 5-kilometer-long capital ships duke it out while you and the rest of the fighter peons swoop and dive around, attempting to dodge the beam weapons that are ripping through space. In addition to the asteroid field battles of the first game, the sequel also adds battles that take place inside a nebula, where your vision and radar is clouded, making it impossible to see or detect threats until they're almost on top of you.

The game is also notable for its smooth-as-silk learning curve, one of the least-appreciated aspects of designing a game as complex as a space sim. Although at the beginning of the game you are assigned tasks as simple as aiming and shooting at enemy fighters, you eventually ramp up to tasks like ordering different wings of AI teammates to go after different targets, shooting down enemy bombs after they're launched toward a friendly ship, and cycling through the systems of enemy ships until you can disable their weapons or their engines without destroying them completely. You even eventually engage in such cloak-and-dagger exploits as staging a defection to the NTF in order to sabotage their efforts from within, and taking a captured Shivan fighter behind enemy lines to obtain critical scans of their capital ships.



If you got too close to an exploding capital ship, its shock wave could rip your ship apart.
One of the ways Freespace 2 deals with this critical mass of information and button pressing is to spread the tutorials out through the game. This allows you to play through tutorials to learn what you need to know before you begin the missions. You then go through more tutorials when you earn the flight wings needed to fly a new class of ship. The game strikes a perfect balance between giving the player plenty of commands and options to fool with and actually making the interface usable for people without the time to memorize a 400-page manual.

All in all, Freespace 2 isn't one of those games that's remembered as being particularly innovative, but the sheer quality of the presentation and the gameplay makes it a fitting sunset to a once-beloved genre, and one of the greatest games of all time.

Where can I get FreeSpace 1 or FreeSpace 2?
Unfortunately both FreeSpace games are becoming increasing harder to find. FS2 has a very strange licensing agreement which states that "You may give copies away to friends..." which means that if you know some who has a copy you can get them to copy it for you perfectly legally. If you have no friends (or least friends who also suffer from Freespacelessness) you will have to search harder.
There are still places on the web which still sell the game but they can be very difficult to find.
The situation in the UK improved slightly with the release of the game on White Label re-release. This version has both FS1 and FS2 in one package for £10 (sadly without the Silent Threat add on for FS1). For a while this meant that both games were available. However now that the copies have been sold it is even harder to find FS2 in the UK than in the US.

If all else fails many people have also reported finding copies of both games on E-bay. Some of these auctions attract collectors and this results in the price rocketing upwards but occasionally they miss one and you can pick it up fairly cheaply.
If you are looking for FS1 and already have FS2 you may wish to try The FS1 to FS2 port if you fail to find FS1.

A copy of FreeSpace 2 has been uploaded to the Home of the Underdogs website. It's not the full version and is greatly lacking in many areas (for instance you can only play in 640x480 and there is little or no voice acting) but as far as modding is concerned this is a full version and will therefore allow you to play add on campaigns etc. You can find this version at The Home of the Underdogs Website. I've made a page with information for those who have downloaded this version which you can find here. With the info on that page you should be able to bring the HotU download up to a full FS2 install with cutscenes. There's also information on the page which should help people who have the HotU version when installing user made campaigns. This version is a good way for someone on dial-up to download the game as it allows you to get hold of the core of the game as quickly as possible and then slowly get the extras.

There are several places to get FS1 and FS2 using Edonkey or BitTorrent. You can get the torrents for FS1 & FS2 here, here, here or here (FS1/FS2)
You can use these links to get FS2 via E-donkey. CD1, CD2, CD3
And here's a link to FS1 and Silent Threat


The Game Warden site was at one point offering downloads of all 3 FS2 ISOs. At the time of writing this has been discontinued but the site's admin has expressed a desire to start this up again as a queued system where you request a number in line and then are allowed to download the files. It's worth checking to see if this has been implemented yet.

Surely downloading FreeSpace is illegal?
Well that's actually an interesting question. If you ask ten different people in the community as to whether it's illegal or not you'll get ten different answers. I'll present all the facts for you, give you my own interpretation of those facts and let you decide.

Source Code Release - Volition released the source code to FS2 a few years back. Many people assume that this means that this makes the game legal to copy. It means nothing of the sort. Volition only have the right to release the code. The artwork, ship models and other intellectual property appears to have stayed the property of Interplay. This means that it is 100% legal for you to distribute the source code itself and any programs built using that source as long as you don't attempt to make a profit from it. You don't automatically gain the right to distribute the rest of the game just because the code is released and as far as I can see there are no provisions in the license that allow you to do so.
Abandonware - A lot of people use the argument that FS1 and FS2 are abandonware. Since Interplay never gave anyone the right to freely distribute the game that claim can't be used to say the game is legal to download. If you look at Home of the Underdogs they'll freely admit that games like FreeSpace are illegal to download from their website. They justify this by saying that it's a bigger crime to allow games like FreeSpace to fade away and be forgotten just because no one is selling it.
The EULA - Here's where it gets interesting. FS2 has two EULAs. The one that is saved to your HD on install is just your average EULA. The one presented on install however is different as it quite clearly states "You may make copies of the Software for your personal noncommercial use and to give to friends and acquaintances on a no cost noncommercial basis". Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself.

Please click here, I won't break format

So who can you legally describe as a friend or acquaintance? Do ISO's downloaded from the net count as copies of the software? That paragraph is the cause of most of the confusion surrounding the legality.

My View - My view tends to be this. If you make a copy for someone you know you're protected by the EULA. Downloading a copy from the web and especially from P2P like BitTorrent and EDonkey is probably illegal as you most likely won't know the sources you're getting the file from.
However I subscribe to the HotU view that it is a bigger crime to let FS2 fade away. Considering that HotU have had a copy of the game available for download for a couple of years and no one has ever knocked on their door it's pretty likely that no one will be complaining at you for downloading a copy yourself

DEATH wrote:It's available for free (Legally) as the Freespace SCP release pack.