[karajorma]

The Big Questions

Diaspora?

Diaspora is a single and multiplayer space fighter combat game set in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica universe.

Die-A-Spor-A?

dahy-as-per-uh. noun the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland.

What ships can I fly? I want to fly a Viper!

Both Vipers will be available to fly. As will the Raptor, Cylon Raider, Blackbird and several other fighters from the BSG Universe.

And the Galactica?

No. You can't fly the Galactica. Wrong style of game. We'd rather concentrate on trying to make the best fighter game possible than try to do everything and spread ourselves too thin. There are other RTS mods and games who can do a much better job of that than we could.

You will of course be able to fly around the Galactica, launch from it and land on it.

When will it be done?

Our first release, Diaspora : Shattered Armistice, is already available to download from here!

Future releases will add more ships, weapons, and storylines.

The team basically consists of volunteers who are giving up our spare time in order to produce a game. Since we can't work on it full time it's very hard to make estimates. If someone important to the team gets busy with real life commitments things can slow down. They always pick up again eventually, but we can't give any predictions for when the game will be completely done.

However since we are planning on having episodic releases, as as we get close to completion on each one we will be able to give rough estimates for how long it might take us to get the next release out. Any estimate would be a best guess and would be subject to refinements and revisions depending on how much work is getting done and if we've hit any snags.

As for when we'll finally be finished and have every ship from the TV show in the game, we have no idea. It will take quite a while.

How much does it cost?

Diaspora is completely free. The download has everything you need to play the game.

Can I play online?

Yes. You can play as a team against the computer or another human team. Or you can just choose to play a free for all deathmatch against other human players.


Gameplay

Can I fly the armed Raptor versions?

Yes. The Raptor is available to play with already.

Will we be able to play stealth missions in the Blackbird/Stealthstar

Yes. In Release 2 though, so not yet.
The engine already supports stealth missions with dedicated stealth ships but we're planning on adding improvements to make it possible to also stealth other ships (such as the Raptor) by shutting down and simply drifting as this has appeared in the show previously.

Do you use Newtonian physics?

Nope. The show doesn't so we don't either. The show uses a cross between Newtonian and "Aeroplanes in space" which we are trying to reproduce. Going to a fully Newtonian model would actually result in combat being less like the show. Given that we are aiming to be as close to the show as possible that's simply not going to happen, no matter how many people tell us it would be cool.

You'll still be able to do all the cool flips and other manoeuvres you saw in the show though.

The engine itself can be made to support full Newtonian physics. So if someone wants to make a mod, they're more than welcome to do so.

Do I need a joystick to play?

The engine supports joysticks, mouse or keyboard. Occasionally you'll hear people say that you need a joystick to play but this is pretty much just a matter of opinion (like saying you need a steering wheel to really play a racing game). The game is perfectly playable on keyboard alone.

Does the game feature cockpits for all the ships?

With the exception of the Cylon Raiders, yes.  When playing as a Cylon you no more see the cockpit as a Raider than you see the inside of your skull as a human so the Cylons don't have a cockpit. We might need to make one for You can't go home again style missions but this is a fairly low priority.

Do you support Freelook/Track IR?

Yes.

Will I need a super powerful PC to run the game?

Anything moderately powerful from the last few years should run the game well but the absolute minimum specs required for the engine have proved to be pretty low actually. If your computer can run most modern games it will run Diaspora. You will need a machine with a dedicated graphics card though. The game might run on systems that only have Intel graphics chips but we don't support that.


Releases

How many releases are you planning on making?
We haven't set a limit on the number of releases we want to make but since we've decided on making a different battlestar the star of each release, we'll need at least 4 before we're done. So far only two of these have been mentioned in public

Diaspora : Shattered Armistice (Already released, based on the Sobek class battlestar)
Diaspora : End of Line (Work in progress, based on the Valkyrie class battlestar)

Our basic plan is to release several smaller chapters which explore side stories in the BSG universe building up to the final release which will follow the main plot line of the show.

What is a release like? What does it contain?

The goal for each release is to give the fans a new package of ships to play with and missions that show them off. Since we will be working on the releases at the same time as working on the main game each release will be quite small (4-10 single player missions per release most likely).

Okay I've played the release. What now?

There are several 3rd party missions available from here.


Modding and Mission Design

Can I make my own missions? Do I need to be an expert computer programmer to make them?

You can make your own missions without needing any experience in computer programming. Shattered Armistice includes the tools needed for fans to make their own missions and provides extensive help for those who wish to do so. It includes a Battlestar, Basestar, several RTF ships and the some of the most important Cylon and Colonial fighter craft so there is a lot of scope for making your own missions.
 The FS2_Open Engine's mission editor (FRED) is a very powerful yet fairly easy piece of software to learn. A common phrase for it is "A few hours to learn, a lifetime to master." Tutorials are included with the game that should allow you to learn the basics of mission building in a few hours even if you've never done any modding in your life.
 We've already had several fan made missions released. They started popping up only a few days after release, in fact.


Can I make mods for Diaspora?

Yes. There is a pretty sizeable modding community for the FS2_Open engine, based right here on HLP. You can find the modding forum here. The only thing the Diaspora team ask is that you stick to making your own stuff rather than ships from the show (as we're already making those and we'd rather not waste our limited time making something that someone else is also making). If you really want to make stuff from the show, consider joining the team (see below).

Can I use something from Diaspora in my game?

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, anything released by the Diaspora team is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This means that you can use anything you want (models, missions, backgrounds) in any way you wish, as long as you don't try to sell it and credit us for our work.

The Team

Who are you?

The majority of us are just Battlestar Galactica fans who wanted to play a computer game that let us be Viper pilots. Since we are hosted on a board that hosts other FS2_Open mods and games, occasionally someone wanders in and gets sucked into our Vortex of Evil without having seen the show. We usually make them rectify this grievous error of judgement pretty quickly though. 

The game engine is provided by the Source Code Project team (or SCP) who are working on improving the open source FS2_Open Engine. They provide the code, we provide the game that sits on it. Several of our members are on both teams.

How can I join? I have skills that may be helpful to you.

There is recruitment thread posted here.

Weren't you working on a BSG mod before this one?

The original core of the Diaspora team used to be part of the Beyond The Red Line team. A series of creative differences resulted in the majority of the active team leaving and starting this game. Since the split we have recruited heavily though and by this point we have more team members who had nothing to do with BtRL than ex-BtRL members.

So what happened?

I was told to always save something for my memoires. Let's just say that there was a difference of opinion over our vision of the game, release schedule and management styles and leave it at that.

You all sound so cool! Is there any way to chat with the team?

You can find us on the #Diaspora channel at Discord.