There are those who believe that the era of great space combat games did not end with the death of X-Wing, Wing Commander, and Freespace franchises at the end of the 90's, that the freely released source code of Freespace 2 could have been the architect of
Wing Commander: The Darkest Dawn and even more new great space sims. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of Man, who even now create epic space combat games somewhere beyond the cyberspace...
Way back when Battlestar Galactica reboot's epic fail of a finale had not yet marred our enjoyment of the xbawks series, there was a fan project in the works using the Freespace 2 engine to create a BSG space sim in the spirit of the games of yore. Then, it was still called Beyond the Red Line, and even a playable demo was released. Then, the project team fell the victim of a 100-megaton dramabomb, and the majority of the team jumped ship and announced a "fork" they called Diaspora. BtRL team (that had the rights to the project name, but little else) responded by claiming they would also make a release of their own, even though they did not have the resources. Silence fell upon the interwebz, as the other team stopped posting news altogether while the other team at least posted new concept trailers and progress reports.
All hope had failed, and even the unexpected completion of WC: The Darkest Dawn did not help much. But then the unthinkable happened: RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DIASPORA. Yes, there is finally a playable version, completely free, and IT DOES NOT REQUIRE FREESPACE 2 TO WORK, IT IS A STAND-ALONE GAME USING ONLY ITS ENGINE.
If you ever played one of the Great Space Combat Sims and have been yearning for more for the past decade and then some, why are you not already downloading? If you are only beginning now, this might be the time and place, since the game does not require you buy another game or to fight modern Windows trying to get legacy software to work properly.
Torrents and direct download links here:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=81859.0Release trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWt2m1xtJbw
