5 replies to this topic

[fireside]

Looks pretty good from the video at the bottom. Supposed to be released 3/22
http://gamerant.com/...-ea-tao-138896/

[TheNut]

Likely if the game is successful, it will give EA an opportunity to reboot the series with fresh new staff. Should be interesting to see the numbers after tomorrow's release. I also see they're using a modified Freespace 2 engine. Funny to think that an engine used for Descent is being used for Wing Commander. And to come out with those visuals, they must have gutted that engine.

[fireside]

Quote

And to come out with those visuals, they must have gutted that engine.

Yeah, I think it's kind of like all the improvements they've made with the Quake engine. I played some of the originals, so I'm interested to see what it's like in 3d. They did a good job with the old ones for sprites, I thought. It seemed believable at the time anyway. I think it was kind of a 2.5d. I've had my joystick sitting near my computer for ages and not used it, so I'll have to dust it off.

[touch_the_sky]

And it actually is out! Awesome.
Yep

Need to check it out, this is weird now cause I never thought the series will ever come back to life. Still got a rusty copy of Vengeance of the Kilrathi (WC 2) lying around somewhere

[sanman]

I like the concept, but I wish they hadn't blatantly lifted all their taglines from the Lord of the Rings trailer:

[xenobrain]

Just want to clear up one misconception: The FreeSpace engine has little or nothing to do with the Descent engine. IIRC some of the same people worked on both games, and for trademark (avoidance) reasons FreeSpace 1 was renamed Descent: FreeSpace, but the two do not share engines, or even the same universe.

As for the engine being "gutted", not really. I've been following the FS2open project for a few years now, and comparing the code from today's svn to the original checkin, it's still largely similar, albeit stuffed with more features and tons of bugfixes. Even the renderer seems to have shaders "spliced in" rather than being a rewrite (which would be nice since it's using a ton of immediate mode functions).

Still a very, very impressive effort which has enabled absolutely amazing community creations like this, Blue Planet, The Babylon Project and Diaspora. I can't wait to see what's next....