no homeworld 2?

Uhm, what about "Beyond the Red Line", yeah its not ready yet, but its our best hope!!
http://www.beyondtheredline.net/

Yeah, I was going to say Beyond the Red Line too. Frak!

Hey what gives Chick?

Yeah Homeworld and if you add this mod:
http://www.battlestarmod.com/
Then it's perfect.

Also, there's this but it may be half dead:
http://www.beyondtheredline.net/

Is that BSG enough for you?

I think Beyond the Red Line wasn't mentioned because it's kinda a "rogue" or "pirate" project as far as NBC Universal is concerned. NBC Universal is ultimately the owner of this blog via the SciFi branching. I don't think their lawyers want Chick blogging about something they see as a violation of their IP. Actually surprised we're aloud to mention it here in the comments.

That said, I never understood why the powers that be didn't produce a properly done licensed space combat game. I guess things got tied up with legal.

I second that. If you're going space strategy you have to include the Homeworlds (The 2nd is better). And if you're going space flight simulator you have to talk Privateer, The Darkening (The sequel with Clive Owen), and of course Starlancer and Freelancer.

Star Control 2 FTW! This game rules.

One more vote for SC2. It is without doubt one of the best PC games ever made. It's weakest point depending on your tastes would probably be the combat, but the campaign is fantastic.

FTL Jumps across the galaxy? Combat missions against artificial life? Hours of gameplay with amazing visuals? Where's Mass Effect on this list? That's how I'm getting over BSG.

The best Star Wars game out there in a while is also the best Battlestar game. Head on over to the Xwing Alliance Upgrade project.

http://www.xwaupgrade.com/

One of their people has made a Battlestar TOS add on pack so you can have fly your viper along side an X-Wing!

The BSG Xbox Live Arcade game is terrible, just watching my friend play the demo once after he downloaded it was enough to make me never want to play it (though I think I did eventually). The source code for Freespace 2 got released a good few years back, and there's a massive modding community that's updated the visuals, and even a Battlestar mod (though not sure if it's old or new, think it's new) and a Babylon 5 mod if you like that sort of thing.

Battlestar Galactica: Space Alert! I Played the heck out of that game when I was a kid. I would love to get my hands on one. I know it's a ultra simplistic game with flasing red lights, but that was Gameboy to my generation. :-) Good times!

Don't forget Diaspora (http://www.diaspora-game.com). It's made up of most of the team behind Beyond the Red Line. We're using a more episodic release model instead of the long haul full campaign model. We aim to have the first campaign "Shattered Armistice" released around the end of May.

Am I the only one who noticed that the header graphics on this and Sci-Fi Wire's page are from Beyond the Red Line?

thanks guys i will check out your site.

Hey, hey...the BSG mod for Freelancer...good stuff folks....

http://www.bsg-galactica.com/

try www.diaspora-game.com It's BSG sim.

Yeah, shiv that rocks, it's just wall paper and models: no game. Thx.

Beyond the Red Line, is the best game beats most of these games hands down. Use FRED and edit your own maps throw Asteroids and multiple mining ships in the mix for an awesome dog fights, or try 5 on 50 for the mix of Cylons Vs Fleet.

If you haven't played Homeworld 2, it's a must. It's an amazing narrative and the graphics are still competitive for its age. The story line is nearly a mirror to the BSG story line. The music is an amazing ethno-tribal-orchestral mixture that would make Bear McCreary proud. I highly suggest checking it out. I've played the story arc game through at least six times.

Speaking of Mass Effect it has a great BSG easter egg; wherein, one of the alien races created robotic beings who overthrew their creators, destroyed their world- sending their survivors into space, and proceeded to terrorize the galaxy. Cylons anyone?

Speaking of Mass Effect it has a great BSG easter egg; wherein, one of the alien races created robotic beings who overthrew their creators, destroyed their world- sending their survivors into space, and proceeded to terrorize the galaxy. Cylons anyone?

How did you leave out Ur-Quan Masters?

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Seriously, it's kinda the obvious pick here.

Good feedback, guys. Thanks for the comments.

As for leaving out Homeworld and some of the various space combat sims, I pretty much just wanted to narrow it down to one particular space combat sim (Freespace 2) and one particular real time strategy game (Sins of a Solar Empire). To my mind, those are the best choices for recapturing the epic space battle porn from the TV show. I loved Homeworld: Cataclysm, but personally prefer the elegance of Sins these days.

As for mods, I'm not aware that NBC or Sci-Fi has ever discourage BSG mods, and they certainly have never asked anyone to not write about them! it's a shame Beyond the Red Line petered out, but I'm glad to hear some of those guys are working on Diaspora. The Freespace one sounds pretty cool, too. I'm sure there are also some great BSG mods for games like Sins and GalCiv. I just don't personally know of any, so cheers to some of you for taking up the slack for me there and mentioning them.

Finally, Aeon, you might want to, you know, *read* the article before posting in the comments section about things that might have been left out. :) I refer you to game #4.

place 1 should read: "Eve Online" ;)

you forgot to mention the PS2 BSG has a cheat so you can have the ORIGINAL Starbuck and Apollo as your wingmen. yup, Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch are flyin' with ya. well, their voices, anyway.

"Frack!" I succumbed to reading just the list and got buuuurned! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Place #1 should read:
"Beyond the Red Line--if the development team had been able to keep its act together"

For those that don't know, Beyond the Red Line was a fan-based project, based on the Freespace 2 engine, that started in ?early 2006?--they released a demo around that time.

I kid you not, what they put together was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Everything--visuals, control mods, voice acting--was top notch. The models were frakking amazing.

(No, not a happy ending): As always happens with large-scale fan-based projects, they couldn't get themselves organized, motivated, and in agreement. The inevitable falling out happened in ?Summer of 2008?. (This was after a very long period of essentially no updates and developer silence--maybe 12 months)

BtRl is a shell of its former self. The founder of the project remains, but he seems to have lost his mind and he certainly hasn't produced anything since the team broke up.

Large parts of the original core team decided to form another project based on BSG with the FS2 engine, called Diaspora. They're trying their best, but, to be honest, it doesn't live up to the original BtRl--the models are sloppy, progress is slow, controls seem clunkier.

I was about as excited as a kid in a candy store when BtRl demo was released. I was sure we'd have a full-fledged, fan developed game--not just a game, but something that RESPECTED the BSG universe--in our hands by summer 08, tops. (The BtRl demo was released right around the time the Xbox live BSG game was released. The former put the latter to shame--here you had a bunch of fans at home doing orders of magnitude better work than a professional team.)

As an observing bystander to the debacle, I've learned alot about fan-based development--its potential and its weaknesses. Seems like amazing things can be made by a bunch of dedicated fans; also seems like, without the motivations and controls of a formal workplace model, a lot of those amazing things fall to dust when the fun starts to fade--as will inevitably occur with any sort of large-scale project at some point in the process. It's made me yearn for and simultaneously seriously doubt the long-term viability of fan/mod ground-up game creation.

Battlestar Galactica: Space Alert I still have one and still play it!

OH MY GOD!! I am recalling the vaguest memory of BSG: Space Alert. I didn't have it, but a friend did in elementary school. Wow... kick to the brain.

I also remember SC2. My friends and I had a blast playing that.

The PS2 BSG game wasn't too bad. I liked it more than the general reviews it got. I only made it so far, though, before one level that was just impossible to beat.

I second Peter Powers. Best frakin' space game out there is Eve-Online.
http://www.eveonline.com/
See ya there. :~)

@Chronic: Quite a few statements there about Diaspora that I find very hard to agree with.

Slow progress? Granted, we dont post as many updates on the website as we should but whoever bothers to check out our forums even semi-regularly notices that we post new stuff on a nearly weekly basis. Hell, now that the show is over we decided to open up the developement more and post work-in-progress threads in public for more feedback from the fans.

As for model quality... heh, as a professional 3d artist I can definately say you are wrong there. In fact, we who left BtRL brought with us all the models we had made and remodeled the ones we missed at a higher quality. The only ship really missing at this point is Galactica herself, but she's not a top priority at the moment.

It is true that some of our early screenshots feature placeholders that dont really stand up to close scrutiny but those are being phased out as proper models come off the production line.

And the controls, how did you figure they are clunkier? Played the game? I can guarantee that apart from some tweaks, they are very similar the ones you saw in the BtRL demo.

Sorry if I sound a bit agitated, just wanted to set a few things straight.

I agree eve online seems to fill in nicely I've also been playing star trek: legacy quite a bit. I also intend to fill my time trying to prove I am a living descendant of baltar and caprica 6. So who wants to go on an archealogical dig in Africa to find evidence of that last raptor admiral Adams was flying?

Oops meant adama

@Chonic + Lt. Cannonfodder: thanks for the views on what happened to Beyond the Red Line. @Tom, I had always assumed it was "aggressive advisory letters" from NBC/Uni legal that led to the project's ultimate entropic dysfunction, not a petering out of group dynamics as the case seems to be. I guess I watch 30Rock too much and figure "the man's" always the culprit.

Still baffled why somone was never licensed to put a real game out their. I mean, they got a licensed pencil and paper RPG out there, and just didn't get around to the bigger market out there?

The space sim market is (mistakenly or not) considered dead these days by most big game publishers. Which basically means that an official BSG game would probably be based around Homeworldesque space RTS style combat instead.

The official game is a good example of this. From what I hear the reason it was so poor was nothing to do with the talents of the designers or the limitations of the platform and everything to do with the suits dumbing everything down to make it more accessible to the casual gamer.

That doesn't explain why they didn't do an RTS of course.

@ LtCannonfodder:

Sorry you disagree mate; hopefully you can prove me wrong, but I'll hold my breath.

Best of luck

@Marty: No problem--check out the BtRl original demo at

http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demospecs.html

to get a taste of what 'could have been'

I'd point you to a Diaspora demo, but no such thing exists, though they claim that they're going to release the first package in late spring. We'll see.

i love stare wars

they need a bsg game that is like a mixture of klingon academy, star wars battle fronts and return to castle wolfenstien

Just want to put in another strong disagree with Chronic Re BtRL vs Diaspora. He's pretty much... well, very misinformed. To begin with, most of the BtRL models went over to Diaspora, and the ones that didn't have been replaced by better quality models - hell, the entire engine's been updated since BtRL was released to allow normal maps - that's enough to make things significantly better right there, if the models were equal (which they're not). As for the controls, that's pure BS as nobody, AFAIK, outside the dev team has played the game (Diaspora) yet. Moreover, the controls are largely defined by the FreespaceOpen engine. While table values affect the way eac ship handles, the basic controls and the way everything works is part of the engine. Nothing will be lost moving from BtRL to Diaspora, or, for that matter, moving between the equally impressive fan made Wing Commander or Babylon 5 games that run on the FSO engine. Hell, the quality and ease of use of the controls were one of the things that got FS2 so much praise when it was first released.
And progress, from my PoV, seems pretty snappy - certainly better than BtRL in terms of announcement to first release (if they keep it, which, admittedly, remains to be seen).

So yeah, anyone who read Chronic's stuff, be assured, he's... at the very least mistaken. Diaspora has, IMO and, I think, backed up by the facts - much more potential than BtRL ever had, if for no other reason than a greater ship diversity (making user made expansions much easier). I'd urge anyone who's not looked already to check out the Diaspora stuff for yourself if you've been put off by what he's had to say. And, if you're a bit impatient (or get sick of the BtRL demo) don't be afraid to try some of the other Freespace based games There are a couple of standalones (the TCs I mentioned) or FS2 can be bought really cheaply from a company called "Good Old Games" (Google them) and updated to FSO with no fuss. If you like space combat games, you'll not be disappointed. :)

And, just so you know, I'm not associated with either the Diaspora or the BtRL projects. I'm a long time Freespacer and BSG fan who's been, at various times, excited for both projects. I just don't like inaccurate information that might scare people away from one of the more promising FSO mods around at the moment.

@Chronic, why the hostility towards Diaspora, the guys are updating us with info all the time, the models look fracking awesome, and as Cannonfodder said its mostly the same models from btrl just with a little tweaking. they have said from the start that they wont be releasing a demo instead opting for episodic content which means instead of waiting godsknows how long for a full release that may never come we get little snippets at a time, the progress on this mod is looking very promising and i for one cant wait to get in the cockpit

That's great that you think that (ANF23 / BW). I'll be sure to come back here and update my thoughts when Diaspora releases additional material, e.g., the promised ?May? first release. I call them like I see them, and what I see is a less developed project with inferior models as of early-April 2009 (in comparison to the earlier Btrl project, released in ?early 2006?).

To be clear, I'm not hostile toward Disapora. I'll tell you exactly what I am:

a. I'm disappointed regarding the inability of everyone to play nice and continue what seemed to be excellent work--the BtRl demo (which, again, is easily accessible to this day via the link I provided). For a project that looked that great that long ago, seems that a lot of time and energy and effort must have been wasted such that no final release occurred and a whole nother venture was launched.

b. I'm calling it like I see it with Diaspora. From what I've seen, from what I've had access to, and from my own experience working with the FS2 mod-enginge, I'm less than impressed. That doesn't mean I don't think it could be an awesome project--I hope it becomes one. I hope I'm proven wrong.

c. I"m pretty surprised at the defensiveness/condescension in the above two posts. I doubt that intelligent people--this describes the BSG community essentially to a man/woman--will be "scared off" by what I wrote. It's all out there for them (and me) to judge. Moreover, again, I really am not hostile toward the project. I just don't think it thus far stands up to work that was done 3 years ago in BtRl, and that's unfortunate. Again, I hope I'm proven wrong if/when a release ever occurs from Diaspora.

What? No Xenosaga Episode 1-3? That is like the closest you can get to BSG with gaming.

There's a lot of BSG-related game mods that can also help out, not just with space fighter Sims themselves. There's a TC mod for "Crysis" that's being made by the same people who did the "Homeworld 2" mod. There's a space light (not fight) simulator that's freeware called "Orbiter" where there are downloadable, fan made BSG vehicles (not just with the new series, but the old ones too). And there's "The Sims 2" where there have been Sims made of actors and actresses of the show (and if you have the Open for Business EP, you can download a custom made Centurion servo for you game).

Frak No more BSG on T.V. !! good thing its on DVD; My girlfriend didnt like it that she had to see it on Fridays and repeat on Sunday !! Wait till she gets a load of what I am doing ALL weekend.. LOL.. BSG, Me, & Beer.. Gotta love it.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned Egosoft's X-series? They're really solid space sims with combat on both fighter and capital ship levels. They're also fairly up-to-date - X3: Terran Conflict came out late last year (and looks amazing). The massive mod community has released a ton of mods based on sci-fi films & shows - including BSG.

Egosoft's Website:
http://www.egosoft.com/news/current_en.php

it's also available on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2820/

yes,the games are great..but..BSG is over!..I..just cant believe ..it hurts.... this. much...Ughhhhhh.....

Hey, if any of you remember the microsoft game Freelancer. there are a few mods out there with BSG format. The best ive played is the NSU mod.
The mod is full of other Sci-fi friends too. star wars babylon 5 stargate. just to name a few

Hi~

let's have a real dedicated BSG game with fps and flight sim not a substitute game with a few passing clues to BSG I live in hope .

Frakking Damn BSG is over Frakking Damn again but lucky for me i got the whole show on my hard drive and i can watch it when ever i want too.

BSG was without a dought the best SCI-FI show on TV and its a shame it had to end, but all good things must end.
The good thing about TV is they will have reruns in the not too distant future and we can watch BSG all over again.

I think it forgets some of the mods, such as the BSG mod for FS2 as well as the mod for HW2. They are really good, and I think they deserve mention more than anything else.