By Tim Stone on May 24th, 2009 at 1:13 pm.
The nice chaps and chapettes at Moscow studio Digital Dimension Development have chosen to bow-out with a magnanimous flourish rather than a bitter “It was pirates and publishers what killed us!’ rant. BASE, their scandalously under-marketed Jumping Off High Things simulation, has been handed over to fans in a final act of goodwill. You can grab the full version here or a lite build (missing the hefty El Capitan venue) here.
The addition of a modded launcher.exe and gameplay-d.dll does away with licence checking and means you don’t have to put up with the fussier constraints of the ambitious dynamic career system. Check the launcher’s ‘freejump’ tickbox and you move from venue to venue in the blink of an eye, and have instant access to the full range of events. The modders don’t appear to have got around to a money cheat yet, so anyone wanting expensive gubbins like wingsuits early on, should spend a minute or two furiously tapping the fast-forward key on the map screen (In a lovely dash of realism, BASE avatars finance thrill-seeking through wage-slavery).
The jumping itself is surprisingly technical. Be sure to peruse the manual, memorise the control keys, and deactivate equipment failures before throwing yourself off your first cliff, bridge or TV tower. Oh, and check the wind direction too. A floating blue flag icon (look around for it) tells you whether the weather is going to blow you towards killy things or away from them.
24/05/2009 at 13:22 Flappybat says:
I bought this after it was shown in PCG. Great idea, shame it was fairly fiddly and lacking in variety.
24/05/2009 at 13:29 El_MUERkO says:
BASE needed a Steam release, exactly the kind of game to get a bunch of curiosity purchases. :sniff: another one bites the dust :(
24/05/2009 at 14:02 Okami says:
Obligatory awesome real life base jumping video: http://www.vimeo.com/1778399
24/05/2009 at 14:05 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
It took me a while to figure out that gratis is Latin first, Dutch second.
Thanks Okami, nice video
24/05/2009 at 14:29 Ben Abraham says:
What happens if you don’t deactivate equipment failures?
24/05/2009 at 14:37 TheSpork says:
You’ll end up on YouTube
24/05/2009 at 16:32 Pyrrhuloxia says:
503 error?
24/05/2009 at 16:48 D-Geezer says:
Yep, gettin the 503 error for the full version too.
24/05/2009 at 17:06 Valhoss says:
@Pyrrhuloxia, D-Geezer
Works for me. Got it downloading currently.
24/05/2009 at 17:08 user@example.com says:
I was getting 503 too, but it worked after a few attempts. Seeing from the article that it’s been pirated, I’m tempted to let their poor servers rest and go grab a pirated version myself, but I’d rather have the released package without needing to mess around with a crack, so… DownThemAll, I choose you!
24/05/2009 at 17:13 Valhoss says:
Yes. I’m only getting 30.0 kB/sec at the moment, so it should be ready 8 hours from now, assuming my horrible ISP doesn’t disconnect me at any point, which they have a habit of doing whenever they catch me downloading a file that’s any larger than 4 bytes, it seems.
24/05/2009 at 17:47 mysteriesofkabir says:
All I remember from playing this is a shoddy interface and repetitive gameplay. But kudos to them for releasing the source code.
24/05/2009 at 18:08 VPeric says:
Ah, the infamous RPS effect, second only to it’s Slashdot cousin! Both downloads seem to be going at snails-pace for me. Ah well, will just try in a couple of days.
24/05/2009 at 18:49 Tim Stone says:
Mysteriesofkabir, Did you try all the mission types? Cliff tracking requires a quite different approach from, say, nailing a precision landing or following a fellow jumper in a cameraman challenge. Factor in the random weather and the various equipment combinations/failures and I think D3 did a pretty good job of injecting variety.
24/05/2009 at 20:06 fuggles says:
For those with 503 errors, I got nowhere with Firefox and then tried IE – might be coincidence, but that worked first go.
24/05/2009 at 20:46 pirate0r says:
After like 20 attempts i finally managed to get it (the download) goin. Youthful exuberance = 1, 503 error = 22
24/05/2009 at 21:09 fuggles says:
Anyone else get a zip file full of errors and a game that crashed when you tried to enter a jump?
24/05/2009 at 22:24 user@example.com says:
fuggles: No. Works for me, I just need sleep more than I need to learn how to play, although the basics I have messed around with have been fun.
And then I died horribly in a wingsuit, so it’s realistic /and/ fun!
25/05/2009 at 01:58 Serondal says:
this looks amazing . a lot of the complaints about not enough variety are kind of silly. If free falling off a radio tower isn’t enough for you , you probably won’t like the game no matter what you get to jump off of ;P
25/05/2009 at 05:42 kaptin says:
Any license on this? Would be interesting to see if an online community would be willing to adopt, port and polish this.
25/05/2009 at 09:10 Aftershock says:
Well, i’m still waiting for AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa to get a release. Unless this is the same thing. I’m running with images off.
25/05/2009 at 09:35 Dr. Nerfball says:
Interesting game, yadayadayada. What I REALLY want to know is where those wires are going to on the 200 foot tall radio tower? Or is it just really out of proportion? Or is the guy doing it just a midget hallucinating the wires? Ooooh, the mystery of base jumping!
25/05/2009 at 19:22 Dirty Jesus says:
Just downloaded the full version of this and it asks me for a product key.
How do I get around that?
25/05/2009 at 20:47 fuggles says:
Read the article properly, in particular just after the second picture.
25/05/2009 at 20:48 Tim Stone says:
You need the launcher.exe and gameplay-d.dll file from:
http://code.google.com/p/d3basejumper/downloads/list
30/06/2009 at 16:02 rico says:
so how s the game,how it feel s to fly.i m downloading the game at this moment , and what are requirements for the game.[sorry for my spelling].
14/10/2009 at 00:01 minigames says:
If only I had the courage to base jump in real life!