fs2open.github.com VS old-knossos

Freespace is open source.

I am not familure with the.. um.. I guess you could call it the landscape of the freespace community but this was a top search result.

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

and here is a github project that looks correct.

https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com

And now, for free, an opinion. I enjoyed decent, but did not like freespace, I am sure there is fun subtlety to the game, but I bounces off it hard, combat in open space ended up being just these really boring circle battles. Much funner combat when you have tight claustrophobic corridors to deal with.

You want some Hard Light, I got it.

I mean...

That last one is an open source engine for a trio of existing free games, but if we count open source engines for commercial games the amount of famous examples grows exponentially. All id Software games up to Doom 3 have had their engines made open source and have a huge number of modern versions available for all of them. So Arcane Dimensions, the greatest by a mile Quake campaign ever made, was completed just three years ago and you need a modern open source engine like vkQuake to play it - even the Quake Remastered engine can't handle the huge AD maps. There's also an open source Morrowind engine, an open source Freespace 1/2 engine (Diaspora above actually runs on this), an open source point and click engine called ScummVM that runs so many old adventure games it's almost an emulator...

If you want those, you can download them through fan-made launcher here: https://www.hard-light.net/ (scroll down until you find Knossos Mod Manager). The minimal size of the download is 3+ GB, and it defaulted the in-game resolution to 4K, which I had to change in the launcher's settings. If you want to install that, look for "Freespace Upgrade MediaVPs" in the "Explore" tab.

Please visit the official Hard Light Productions network and HLP Discord some time for more FreeSpace and FSO related resources, information, and help.

This is probably second only to DOOM in the amount of work that's been done on the original engine to make it awesome. Check it out here and grab the installer; note that you will still need the game files (available at GOG) to play.

But Freespace 2 is totally woth it, and a steal at... 8 USD or so? So buy it, install Knossos (https://fsnebula.org/knossos/) and You will have a TON of fun :)

It's still availabe through the Knossos installer even without having to own a copy of Freespace 2.

Now updated with modern graphics! Buy the old games on GOG.com and visit https://fsnebula.org/knossos/ .

Welcome to FS2. They recently came out with a mod manager that makes things much easier than they used to be here is the link. It's called Knossos . The forum pages for the freespace open project is called hardlight productions, and the page I linked is simply a download repo for the manager.

Get Knossos, install the latest version of the mod named "Blue Planet Complete"

If anyone does decide to play FreeSpace 2, I'd highly recommend using the Knossos mod launcher, which will make it easier to run on modern systems in addition to allowing you to play with updated graphics with the MediaVPs mod!

Buy Freespace 2, enhance it with Freespace Open: https://fsnebula.org/knossos/