Be Excellent To Each Other

Hurrah, BSG: Diaspora is out! And only after an agonisingly long wait that makes a genuine scattering of peoples in search of a new home seem like a day-trip...

This is basically a standalone total conversion of Freespace 2. You may remember FS2 as being the joint best space sim ever, alongside Tie Fighter. After utterly wonderful Freespace 2 inexcusably tanked due to the stupidity of mankind, the developers Volition made the game's engine freeware leading to probably the biggest modding scene for a game ever. The main modding effort involved developing the engine further, adding tons of new features and graphical effects. For example, dynamic shadows, revolving turrets, cockpits, etc.

The rest of the modders decided to do the usual thing; take beloved sci-fi TV shows with fighters in them and make them in game. The Babylon Project mod was considered one of the best, and though looking a little long in the tooth now is the last, best hope if you want to sink your teeth into some Starfury action. It also includes pretty much EVERY single ship from the show is in the game and some pretty good fan campaigns. The Omega Destroyers look the best, by the way.

But I always wanted a BSG mod more than any other. For a while that looked a happy imminent certainty with a team developing 'Beyond the Red Line', an impressive looking mod that had an excellent short-but-sweet demo featuring cylon raiders, vipers and a Tyrillium miner. Unfortunately the head of the project was (allegedly) an egotistical blowhard who allienated most of his crew and so there was a sundering, and much like with Beex and the great exodus from WoS, there was a new mod set up called Diaspora. Despite the odd promising YouTube trailer the forum for this mod had been pretty quiet for a long while (about four years, seemingly) and I'd given up hope of ever seeing it.

Well - it's out! And I've just played the short campaign of the first release and it is rather splendid indeed!

What you get is a standalone package with reasonable voice acting, amazing graphics and a real nicely judged tone that matches the series. The mini-campaign follows the exploits of the Theseus, a Sobok class Battlestar. This machine (which looks admirably correct if not quite canon) is a ship that's a little smaller than the Galactica (not by much though) and with slightly heavier firepower. It is however compromised by weaker armour. It has the two pods as usual and over eighty vipers and raptors. In the game you'll be flying both Vipers and Raptors against the usual complement of Raiders, advanced Raiders, Heavy Raiders and Basestars. There's also a lot of civilian ships and a colonial frigate.

Excellently, you're placed in a fully 3D cockpit which you can look around and when flying a Viper you get zipped down the launch tube and straight into battle. The graphics are frankly amazing. Seeing the Battlestar's turrets swing round and open up with their KEWs is a beautiful sight, as is the flak screen that they put up between you and the enemy Basestars. It's not an empty effect, etiher. I tried ignoring the radio command to stay the frak out of the firing solution and got peppered by shrapnel as a result. Watching the heavy ordnance zip across to impact on the enemy capital ships is also tremendous, as are the effects when one breaks up, or when you see a nuke hit the Theseus's armour. The ships even pop up just like in the show, with an FTL flash and sound effect. Basically, it looks and sounds just like the show.

I also have to give props to the music, which apes the shows style very well but has fresh compositions that are genuinely rather good in their own right.

So you get six missions and two tutorials (which you can skip) in all. It only translates as a couple of hours and a half of gameplay in total, but they are genuinely exciting and nicely balanced. The events take place in the opening days of the Cylon attack and the entire campaign is appropriately doomladen. (Though the ending is a little undercooked, in my opinion.) You also get some very fancy FMV's that further enhance the profession 'BSG canon' feel. Future releases are planned, that are promised to come quicker due to most stuff being in place now, and not at all to be agonisingly far off in a Valve-Time kind of way, oh no. Galactica will probably be released next, followed by Pegasus. Also, this release has happily been put out with the good ol' FS2 mission editor FRED2, so more fan missions should be working out way soon.

Here's a slightly clunky but impressive release trailer:



And first mission preview:



The entire download is about 1.7gigs. You can play with mouse and keyboard but I STRONGLY recommend dusting off an old joystick for this one, or using a controller.

The game's release thread with download instructions:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index. ... ic=81859.0

EDIT:

Been playing this some more so here are my tips -

The tutorial missions are a bit boring, but worth going through to learn the ropes. Plus they explain why the Theseus is in the fight. If you've played FS2 before though, or hate tutorials, there is a skip option in the top right of the screen.

I'd advise turning speech and SFX down to 75% and upping music to 100% and then cranking up the stereo volume for the best mix. Music is a little quiet otherwise.

The target reticule works a little different from standard FS2 games. Move the floating gunsight itself over the enemy to rack up the kills. Effective ranges are generally under 1000 feet, but can be further away with luck.

Remember the do's and don'ts of the TV show. For example, don't fly straight at or straight behind a heavy raider, as they'll rip you apart. However, taken from above, below or from the sides their sluggishness makes them easier targets.

Stay out of the frakkin' targetting solution!

You'll find that the point defence of the Battlestar is pretty good at intercepting missiles so don't worry TOO much. Also, wingmen are actually worth something in this game.

Basestars are hampered by a lack of anti-fighter turrets and such, so you can get in quite close sometimes. However, they will fling lots of Raiders at you.

Glide is excellent for strafing runs. When zooming along hit 'G' and then take advantage of Messr. Newton to spin your craft to rake the enemy as you remain flying in the original direction.

Try not to panic in combat landings like I do when they tell you that you have 30 seconds to get back into the flight pod. Make sure to lower to below 30 m/s (say 1/3 thruster) then afterburn if needed before nipping down to 5% thrust when inside the pod.

E cycles through escorts. H through enemies. T through all targets. N through nav points. F through friendlies. Prefix with a 'shift' if you want to go backwards through the list.

You have limited ammo so don't get carried away. Unlike FS2 there are no rearmings once a mission is underway.

Good luck out there and let me know if you play it. This is genuinely a great BSG game.

So say we yadda!

UNF.

Downloading this now. Thanks for the tip, Pete.

For those still bizarrely on the fence over whether to download this game or not, here's a top video of a mission that heavily features padlock view and glide mode. ('W' for glide, sorry, got it wrong earlier.) Especially good for when a toaster is on your ass, hit it, spin round and take the frakker out.



I highly recommend going and watching this in the full ZOMG! 1080 mode.