Yes Please Now Please: Diaspora

Battlestar Galactica (the new version, clearly) remains something of a magnet for game projects, and there's good reason for that: its depiction of space battles remains a masterpiece in scale, affecting minimalism and sinister awe. Mighty fine-lookin' standalone Freespace 2 mod Diaspora does, it appears, absolutely nail all of that. If the finished project can even slightly live up to the apparently in-game footage below, we're in for a frakking amazing time.

Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

It is, as you may have gathered, a space combat game - something we see all too little of, because publishers these days are wimps. This'll be free but episodic, made from love, passion and duty by some of the folk who worked on previous Freespace 2-based BSG adaptation, the semi-defunct Beyond The Red Line. The split was somewhat acrimonious, as far as I can tell.

So Diaspora is the future, and it's doing incredible things with a decade-old engine. For details - including the cheery revelation that, while you don't get to fly the Galactica, you can land on it - check out the site.

Unfortunately, there's no time-frame for release, as it's a spare-time project for its team. Always the problem with ambitious mods, but hopefully this particularly enticing space sim won't sink without a Thrace.

[Thanks to Seth D. for the tip]