“I recall something about this from many years ago in which I read on some wiki page somewhere that the source code had been fully released.”

You probably read it in my comment on your Reaxxion article, which appears to have gone down the memory hole (the comment, not the article). I had just started playing through FSPort and STR at that point. Oh well. 😛

The great thing about Freespace 2 is that all the big ships have proper beam weapons, both for point defense and ship-to-ship combat. I think only the Lucifer had them in FS1, but can’t remember because it’s been a while. It’s one hell of a rush to be caught between two behemoths pounding the crap out of each other. It’s what I imagine being one of the strike craft in Homeworld (my all-time favorite game) is like.

Also, if you thought the Lucifer was bad, wait until you see a Shivan juggernaut!

Still have a soft spot for the y-Wing’s ability to snap u-turn so effectively in that game. The Naboo Starfighter update on PC for the Phantom Menace, and the Tie-Interceptor hidden behind the millenium Falcon… outstanding game.

I remember reading an interview with Michael Stackpole. (For the kids out there, he established a new type of novel in the Star Wars EU: A series without Jedi or Sith, just X-Wing Pilots fighting to scrub the Imperials out of power after ROTJ. Good series of books, starting with Rogue Squadron.) Part of his creative process was playing through TIE Fighter and XWA to understand the ships, the combat, and the weak spots. When you read his books you can tell, he has a firm grip on Star Wars dog fights and the weaknesses of capital ships, that other writers of the era, Zahn included, simply do not have.

The man could write Jedi fiction too. ‘I, Jedi’ is an outstanding product.

Amen, Reverend. I don’t drink that shit. I just use the memes))

And yes Putin can definitely kill everyone around him if he wants to – either with his bare hands, or by giving an order. He’s a scary dude.

Putin always comes across to me as very erudite, intelligent, well-read, and precise. Every time I listen to him speak, I learn something.

The reason why his words carry such weight is because, unlike the God-Emperor, he doesn’t spend any time whatsoever on self-aggrandisement. If you listen closely, you’ll see that he almost NEVER talks about himself. He always talks about the country and the people around him.

He is not charismatic in the way that The Donald is. Putin comes across as far more cold, dispassionate, and dangerous. But he is every bit as intelligent, and every bit as much of an Ur-Alpha – he is merely a highly secretive one.

And Putin is definitely an Alpha, not a Sigma. He WANTS to be at the top of the power structure and he goes out of his way to destroy those who try to rival him. He is not disruptive, either – he wants to keep and enhance existing power structures, not tear them all down and do his own thing.

The TFTC actually has two campaigns. The “classic” one keeps the original mission structure and attempts to make the XWA engine behave as closely to TIE Fighter as possible, while the “reimagined” one redoes all of the missions (or at least the ones they’ve finished, which I think is up through Battle 10) as though they were XWA missions.

WHOA. That sounds amazing. I definitely need to check this out. I loved those old LucasArts space sim games and I’ve never quite gotten over the fact that such games are no longer really produced in any meaningful way.

There are occasional bugs, and some of the missions are hard as BALLS, but the mod team is super responsive and you can skip any that give you too much trouble (which you could also do in XWA).

I remember. There was that one mission in XWA which required you to go back to the Azzameen home station and take it back from pirates, but there is some incredibly stupid bug in the code somewhere, in which, if Erin’s ship takes ANY FIRE WHATSOEVER, it immediately starts attacking Azzameen station. So you have to do your absolute damnedest to keep a bunch of enemy fighters off your OWN arse, while also protecting a freighter that the game’s AI flies as though it is drunk.

There were a few other redonkulous missions in XWA, but that’s the one that stands out in memory.

While we’re on this subject, FreeSpace 2 had its source code released forever ago, and a team of modders have kept it updated to this day.

Oh yeah, I’d clean forgotten about that. I recall something about this from many years ago in which I read on some wiki page somewhere that the source code had been fully released. I think I even downloaded FS2 on Linux and compiled it and got it to run… somehow… This goes back into the dim mists of antiquity. I played a couple of FS2 missions and I thought that it was an amazing game – it was a big improvement over even the original Descent: Freespace, and that’s probably one of the 10 best space sim games ever made.

For what it’s worth, I also managed to get the open-source build of Marathon running on Linux, again many years ago. I should really start that up again, once I actually have some proper free time…

Maybe he is extremely comfortable in his skin knowing that he can probably kill 99.999% of people in every room. Just kidding…. Or maybe not.

There are occasional bugs, and some of the missions are hard as BALLS, but the mod team is super responsive and you can skip any that give you too much trouble (which you could also do in XWA).

The ONE thing I don’t like about it is that now the Emperor’s Secret Order objectives are primary ones that cause failure if you don’t finish them, which can be annoying since they generally force you to drop what you’re doing and are usually time limited.

It’s super easy to get working too. All you need is a clean install of XWA, a couple of installer files from https://www.xwaupgrade.com/, and the TFTC installer. Get it now before Disney issues a DMCA takedown.

While we’re on this subject, FreeSpace 2 had its source code released forever ago, and a team of modders have kept it updated to this day. If you have the game, you can play it with modern graphics and resolutions, ports of Freespace 1, its expansion Silent Threat, and “reimagined” expansion Silent Threat Reborn (which is as good as either of the original campaigns), and a whole bunch of custom campaigns that either continue the FreeSpace 2 story or are based on other properties like Battlestar Galactica. All completely free, too!

https://www.hard-light.net/