Slashdot Mirror
Freespace 2 Source Code Released
Initri writes "I read a news article (here) on Gamespot that the Freespace 2 source code has been released by Volition. You can download it there, or you can also download it here. Since I don't have the game installed anymore, I wasn't able to try out the code, but it did successfully compile under MSVC 6.0. Looks like there's a lot of learning potential here." Freespace 2 was one of my favorite games, and I wasted many hours playing it.
People have stopped palying FreeSpace about 3 years ago
Under what license is this released? And is it the full sourcecode (with other words: is the 'engine' code also included)?
I don't want to download the whole file through a dial-up connection...
xer.xes -- 4181
They are charging for downloads, $10 for their ftp service.
This is a great development actually. It took many years for the doom, quake, quake 2, and abuse source to hit the net (well, maybe not quake's since it was stolen) But out of all of those games, the only one that i have in my "waiting to play" file. that's right, i have been too busy with other things to actually play this game. This is finally the opportunity to start playing... well, maybe after i beat JK2 :)
I wonder if it includes the documentation on how to get it to run on a MIPS machine, as many people have mentioned that it gets better milage on such a system, if you pour hot grits down natalie portmans petrified pants that is.
Please mod this one down so that it doesn't blow up my columns.
Get Firefox!
this place has more information, and the code for free download. it's only a 4MB download so it won't take long. let's see how fast it gets slashdotted...
http://www.freespace-2.com/ddn/sources/freespace2
As I've never heard of the game before this /. article - would somebody mind filling me in as to what type of game it is - what it's about etc?
Video Game cheats, hints a
http://www.skippy2605.firstream.net/freespace2_pub lic_4_24_02.zip
/*
* Copyright (C) Volition, Inc. 1999. All rights reserved.
*
* All source code herein is the property of Volition, Inc. You may not sell
* or otherwise commercially exploit the source or things you created based on the
* source.
*
*/
line 447, projects\freespace2_public\code\Parse\Encrypt.cpp
"ushort haha_you_dumbass = 0xe2A8;"
I've mirrored the code on FilePlanet for those of you who can't download from 3DDownloads. Enjoy!
This is exactly why I'm not a right-winger. Instead of trying to present a well-thought out argument, you immediately go for character assassination.
The right-wing is very good in principal, but it absolutely sucks in practice.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
"Freespace 2 was one of my favorite games, and I wasted many hours playing it. "
So when did playing your favorite game and enjoying it become 'wasted time' on slashdot?
Freespace2 was an excellent game. Certainly the best space sim ever, and a personal top 5 favorite. The only thing that sucked was that after completing it, there were tons of loose ends hanging about. Setups for Freespace 3, of course -- but the problem is, Volition themselves have said that there never be will be a Freespace 3. Even though they'd love to make it, Interplay owns the rights (Volition got bought by THQ) and FS2 didn't sell too well. Interplay will just let the franchise gather dust, and THQ won't buy it from them. Argh!
But this is great news. Perhaps we can finally see a Freespace 3, released as a free mod for the original game! If someone will pester Volition enough, they might share some of the script for FS3. If not, the least they can do is tell us what happened to Admiral Aken Bosch...
As a major contributor to the fan community of Freespace 1/2 I'll give you the background on this. Freespaces 1 and 2 were Originally relesed when Volition used Interplay as their Publisher. Since then Volition has been bought by THQ, a rival publisher although Interlplay still heald the rights which is why thes has been a bit sluggish. Interplay, as you know, was consumed by Titus recently and with a lot af campaigning by Dave Baranec (Head Programmer for Volition), on behalf of the fan community managed to get it relesed. Go over to http://www.3dap.com/hlp (Hard Light Productions) which is where the main hub of FreeSpace Development exists now since Volition's official BB was closed due to abuse. And don't forget to check out the forums. There is also a project going to create a Freespace Like game from scratch.
Well, first off, there's more information at http://www.freespace-2.com/ddn/sources/freespace2/ , along with a rar version that's about 2.7 meg.
/ , along with information about the engine and a mailing list.
The source code for Descent 1 and for Descent 2 has also been released, and you can find them at http://www.freespace-2.com/ddn/sources/freespace2
I'm not entirely sure, but since Parallax developed Descent 1 & 2 for Interplay, and Volition developed the Freespace games for Interplay, I think that Interplay would be the one to get credit, at the very least for convincing the other two to release the source. Interplay is earning major karma points...
-Jason-
Freespace 2 was one of my favorite games, and I wasted many hours playing it.
Weakling. It isn't a good game unless you have wasted YEARS playing it. %-)
The correct spelling is "fourth".
The spelling you used, "forth", usualy denotes forward, as in, "We shall go forth."
Also, only one exclamation point is needed in all cases. "Bicheeeez" is obviously a misspelling for "bitch." Bitch means female dog but in slang usage it has come to mean disagreeable woman. It is an impolite word for formal situations. It should only be used in the company of more proletariat men. Slashdot might not be the best place for the use of such a word, as some might think you to be uncouth.
Also, you need to be sure of complete sentences.
A more correct post might read as:
Subject: I have the fourth post!
Comment: I do like having the fourth post. I also enjoy the fact that none of you fellow posters were able to obtain the fourth post.
no one claimed it is opensource. and the licence determines whether the code is open or not, not the compiler.
Although I suppose I'm more interested in whether anyone has got their eyes on this code to use it in a Elite style game :)
Havent done any graphical development for a while, but that sure does get my fingers itchy!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I have seen many VB apps claim to be under the GPL; but since Visual Basic has no open source compiler, no sir, they are not.
If you weren't busy being an idiot, you'd have noticed that no one has claimed it to be open source.
If you don't like it, don't download it and don't play it. But don't bother the rest of us about it.
For is interested in developing MODs and whatnot for this game I'll stick a load of links to the fan communities for this game and with some info about them.
Hard Light Productions It has only been going for about a year but this is where the main development for freespace goes on with active forums containing Render art mods and general discussion.
Freespace Watch The freespace branch of Volitionwatch, a large fan site covering all volition games with fairly strong links to Volition themselvs. Volition frequent the forums there. The place is slightly less MOD oientated than HLP but there are still lots of projects hosted including one total conversion for Babylon 5 which is well underway.
...a Babylon 5 mod. Freespace is after all a B5 clone.
My favorite space shooter was escape velocity on the macintosh. It really did rule; it combined space shooter aspects with trading. And the price of goods varied from planet to planet and the price of fuel varied and you went from world to world trying to keep your head above the water as your debts mounted and you tried to do the every profitable three-way trade and yet arm yourselves and not get in the middle of the war between the rebels and the empire. There were pirates, you could do missions for the military. You could buy carrier ships. You could become a pirate.
There were some AMAZING add ons for the game to. I remember one that added the Star Wars book universe including the death star.
If anyone ever managed to make a network version of that game...
-Jay
http://www.uiuc.edu/~jthomas2
http://www.gamespy.com/games/971.shtml
Is it worth downloading and such...then going out and buying a new joystick for? Or should I just let it pass on by and continue waiting for SW:G? ;-)
This is exactly why I'm not a left-winger. Instead of trying to present a well-thought out argument, you immediately go for pointless philisophical mumbo jumbo.
The left-wing is very good in principal, but it has proven disasterous in practice and discourages personal property.
Despising the living crap out of you. --ManBeef
Since I don't have the game installed anymore, I wasn't able to try out the code, but it did successfully compile under MSVC 6.0.
Is this the complete source code of the game and if so, why couldn't the author try out the code without having the game installed?
Also, I had never heard of this game before now (I live under the third rock on the left) so I'm wondering if it is still available for sale somewhere or if I need to start scouring the web for a used copy? From the screenshots, Freespace 2 appears to be similar to Homeworld and Terminus. The latter is noteworthy as a there are versions for Linux and Mac OS 9. I was quite suprised (and very pleased) to find all three versions included in the same box.
Assuming it isn't using MFC, it probably could be ported to gcc in a week tops.
May we never see th
I have seen many VB apps claim to be under the GPL; but since Visual Basic has no open source compiler, no sir, they are not.
It doesn't need a free compiler to be free software. (Wasn't Emacs GPL'd before GCC was finished?) The GNU GPL, section 3, states that "However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable." So as long as you distribute Visual Basic's runtime separately from the application, it's possible to GPL a VB app. (VB.NET makes this even easier because the .NET runtime is available from Windows Update.) However, a free app that relies on a non-free compiler is still useless to the Free World.
Will I retire or break 10K?
there's a robotech mod for freespace. very neat. i'm hoping the source to freespace will help them out.
bah. start over
The word "forth" brings to mind something other than a programming language to a Slashdot user?
May we never see th
It uses directX 5. It might be fun to bring that whole thing up to speed with DX8.
So it seems there would need much work to have an opengl/SDL port of the game.
Don't expect to play this game tomorrow on your favourite OS.
You can compile VB apps without the VB IDE.
Only you can save the wide space !
Just sign here.
Call me a cynic, but I wonder if this wasn't a clever to trick to sell some of the many copies lying around. They did produce a whole bunch of "Game of The Year Additions" in an attempt to cash in further on a popular title - maybe they didn't sell as many as they hoped.
Then again, it may just be bandwidth limitations. Though, the full game is smaller than most modern demos.
Anyway, this is a windfall regardless; if they did do it to clear out old copies, it's a good idea and other companies should follow suit. I just hope they used OOP, as I've always wanted to see how it's used "in the industry".
You are correct. But do if you please allow me to add that I could not agree with you more.
Time playing Freespace 2 was NEVER wasted.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
Could you please give me an example of how it discourages personal property?
I own my car that gets 31 miles to the gallon. If the right-wing would have had it's way, we'd still be using leaded gasoline and getting 15 miles to the gallon.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
That makes it a bit unclear what you can do with it. On the one hand it says "All rights reserved", which means you can't distribute derivative works without Volition's consent. But on the other hand, it explicitly says you can't sell or otherwise commercially exploit derivative works, which sort of implies that you can distribute them as long as you're not doing it for profit. But it'd be nice if this were more explicitly stated.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I just finished playing FreeSpace 2 again from scratch just the other day. What strange timing.
Okay, my gaming backlog has gotten seriously out of control. They've released the source code for a game that I haven't even gotten around to playing yet! I really need a few weeks off from real life to catch up. (Of course, I probably need to upgrade my Pentium 200 first.)
Why not tell as the the name of the game is Descent. we all are not so enlightened as author.
I think the coolest possibility is newtonian mechanics.
I played this game years ago, and although weaving through giant lasers was nifty, I couldn't help but be annoyed by the incorrect phyics.
I'm half-temped to buy the game now, and change the phyics module myself. That would probably be one of the easier changes of the list.
Dave
The mission editor is MFC, nay, it's MFC^n. Lots of code... lots of dialog boxes...
chdir("c:\\con\\con");
perhaps you're aware that socialism is the extreme left form of liberalism. Socialism is defined as the absence of all personal property.
Perhaps you've heard of social security, a system where people are discouraged from saving on their own (personal property) in order that they become dependent upon a substandard gov't allotted retirement check.
Perhaps you've heard of excise and other sales taxes, which raise prices (to pay for usually liberal boondoggles) and therefore disourage purchases.
I could give you all the examples you want, but I somehow doubt you're really interested in examining the facts.
WINE
I could never get past the stupid Sathanas.
poop.
If you don't own the game, the executable won't
run without the data from the full game... so
don't bother downloading it if you don't have the
CD with the graphics and other data files.
I'm a begining programmer and I want to try to go though this and see what I can learn from it, but this much code is a little overwhelming, so I wanted to ask if anyone who knows more could give me a good file to start with. Or am I just an idiot for thinking that someone who's only taken one semester of C++ could ever figure this out? Thanks
Iesus Christus magnus est.
This is what Open Source should be about. Granted, there will never be a day where all software is free and source code is available. The simple idea of that is balderdash. Most of the software industry would grind to a halt. But I digress.
:) ). Chances are they won't. Chances are, if they become familiar with the code enough and learn enough about game programming, there is a good chance the person may seek employment from that company. So it does have potential to benefit the company.
This is definitely a step in the right direction and should be viewed as a giant step in the right direction for the open source movement. Granted, the code isn't free to use commercially, and only the engine is included in the source; the point is that several free projects have this engine to work off of, and programmers-in-training can examine the code and learn from it.
This should be seen as 'doing a good deed' and 'helping the community'. It's there so everyone can learn from it and boost the overall gaming industry.
It is also a giant leap in the right direction for free software in that companies are acknowledging the free software movement and releasing the sources to the products which no longer are sold or generate a substantial revenue. If the BeOS source were to be released, the community as a whole would benefit greatly. Not to serve as flamebait, but BeOS is superior to almost all othe Operating systems today, and if the source were released, it would have a good chance of becoming #1 if the vollunteer developers put enough effort into it. Other projects benefit from seeing the source, as well. They may choose to intergrate certain elements (the BeOS UI on linux.. *wipes drool off keyboard*), or they may choose to simply examine the technique of how an operating system SHOULD be written. Heck, the thing boots in less then 5 seconds on my slightly dated pc.
This is certainly a nice change from the game publishers requesting that sites such as The Underdogs take down full versions of titles produced by independent developers whose assets were purchased by the publisher after they went bankrupt.... and the games are no longer sold in any stores, and the publisher refuses to sell them or provide a copy if contacted. and many of these games were made over 10 years ago. Sometimes lobbying them to make the games free works, but there is a little-known organization which is the software world's equivilant to the RIAA which urges companies not to release their dated products free with the thinking that other companies may follow and unintentionally destroy the software industry.
Isn't that pathetic.
But why would the publisher want people to learn from their code? They could be worried the person may found his own gaming company, release a product which puts them out of business (highly unlikely
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
There is a completely free GPL'd space simulator for linux already (and windows) it's called Vega Strike... I believe they are in the need for developers, so it would be a better idea to work on this than to play for people in teh commercial market
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
It just failed for me idiot. Its not inane.... I had to use this 24000 baud modem tonight,
As the lead developer of vega strike I'd rather have people interested in a flgiht sim help me with vega strike
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
instead of wasting their time coding this one...
mine is openGL and works on linunx, mac, etc...just needs a little touch up and art to be ready for distribution in version 0.2.2
No you are not an idiot. The hell with school and just hack like a mofo. Seriously, in the end, all professionals are self-trained. Best of luck.
It's nota my planet, monkey-boy - Dr Lizardo.
You forgot about Vega Strike, the Open Source 3d space sim for OpenGL in linux, etc :-)
:-) just needs some art and networking components
it's already ready for a major release here
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
has all the stuff FS has really feature wise
I just dug this game out again a few days ago and was looking forward to playing again. Then I found out I was missing Disc 2. Aaargh!! Now this story shows up just to rub salt in my wound. :(
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Can anyone comment on this?
I've been looking for a place that sells the game (preferrably from the UK) but I can't seem to find it. The Freespace 2 site directs you to Interplay... which seems to have no knowledge of this game.
Where the heck to I buy it?
---Nathaniel
OK, now the source is out, let's see if anyone can help me here :-) (Or direct me to the better people to talk to)
:-)
Neither Freespace game works on my PC. This sucks, because they've always seemed really cool when playing them elsewhere. However, it misreads my joystick. Despite nominally taking its config from Windows, it puts the centre quite some distance off meaning the hands off attitude is a spin and I have a very low possible turn angle in one direction.
This, as you can imagine, is irritating, especially as tech support, once I'd confirmed latest DX, took the 'oh, it does that sometimes' position.
I already own a legal but useless copy of Freespace 2 and a Cyborg 3D, so can test it pretty extensively. I like this sort of game and want to be able to play it. If anyone wishes to debug this problem I will gladly assist with playtesting any fixes produced, debug info from my PC as required, whatever is needed beyond actual code because I'm not too hot at C++
Anyone?
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!