This explains a lot.

I guess that many of the short cutscenes were more important for the software mode of the game, as a kind of visual enhancement. I started with the 3dfx-version right away, so I never had the feeling that I needed any kind of visual “aid” for my experience. The models and the textures were indeed that good.

Since first playing I-War2 I've been wondering if the name of the Stepson clan was derived from the name Stephen Robertson? Or is that merely a coincidence? :)

Thanks for two of the greatest games of all time, man!

No it's just a coincidence. The only names I know for certain were based on team members were the names on the UNO and the Spartacus.

Oh and thanks for the kind words, but I was only a small part of two teams of very talented people that created those games.

It is awesome getting to see this game again after so long ( we still have the original disks but they don't work so well with xp/win7). There was one question about the game I never really understood though.

It's been a while since I played the mission, and i haven't gotten that far yet in this run, but late in the game...

*SPOILERS*

If you side with King instead of the alliance, you get an extra mission as a navy ship where you get a choice between either going after the hospital ship, or shooting down your wingman and joining the alliance. If you side with the alliance, the story moves on as usual. If you follow orders and destroy the ship, you get an ending cutscene where you're basically a pilot for a space garbage truck due to blowing up the ship.

*END SPOILERS*

Obviously blowing up a ship like that is something you file under the "not good" category, but I never understood why you were punished by the navy for following the orders they had specifically given you for that mission. What was the deal there?

I don't know the exact reasoning behind that ending to tell you the truth. However I could easily imagine that you might get scapegoated for destroying the hospital ship by King's administration if the truth got out. They'd be looking for someone to shoulder the blame, and as you were following orders you might get demoted rather than punished more severely.

Hey I just wanted to thank you and the rest of the team for making a wonderful game duo in a world where as you said "the bottom dropped out" of the genre. I've played Iwar 2 many times and I played IWar 1 long ago once. EoC is still my favorite free form space game, even with a lack of real trading I find I've spent more time with this than the old elites or Privateers or newer X games, or starwraith. I'd love to see #3 but I won't keep my hopes up.

On a side note, I am amazed at how well EoC runs and looks on my modern machine. I played it when it first came out and thought it looked good and ran well enough. Now at 1900x1200 with 16xAF and 32xAA, it looks fantastic and never even hiccups. I was very pleased and a little surprised that the engine accepted the forced settings without a glitch. I'm not one to judge on looks but the lack of jaggies in modern games has spoiled me.

Also a personal thanks to for the custom Jafs mod. Can't live without that one, even though I love Jafs, his comments and lack of speed got old after a while.

Thanks for the kind words!

I am amazed how well EOC has scaled to run on modern hardware. Especially when you consider it was developed on Pentium II 400's, with GeForce 1's.

It's a tribute to the very clever programmers and artists that worked on it and made it so future proof.

I-War 1 wasn't so lucky as it belongs to that era before 3D acceleration became standard, and before D3D became the main 3D API.

I'm glad I wrote the Custom Jafs mod. I'm very happy it's made your experience with the game better.

Squelching Jafs and giving him access to the big freighter are a couple great things the mod community (and you) have done. I'll justify getting the big freighter by figuring that the Stepson family would have given one to Cal eventually, if only to keep from having to listen to Jafs over the air as often. ; )

BTW, can Jafs permanently die if one allows his freighter / SNAR-V to be destroyed?

No Jafs can't die, and neither can Az or Lori.

I actually wanted to make them remote pilot their ships, so you had them on hand as a bridge crew. It would have explained why if Jafs freighter or the turret fighters were destroyed your crewmates were still around.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to convince the team that was a good idea. I did manage to get them to agree that we should have Smith on board for some missions at least, as you need someone to do the technobabble stuff, and also to give the player information they themselves wouldn't know.

I just wanted to share again some words on one of my favorite game of all time (top 3 of...200 or something like that).
Too bad half of the fun of iwar1, that was leading a crew/doing imaginary crazy tech stuff (dump antimatter in the ring ! shoot that bastard folowing us ! i need this pcbS Now ! etc...) was remove for a dreamcast failed concept. Anyway this nglide thing finally allow me to replay iwar1. I was slowly putting pieces together to build a top end 1998 config voodoo 2 and such stuff just for iwar1 but it is no more needed, thanks to gog and nglide i can enjoy full hd glide graphics.
In the end steven i must say you did a great job on defiance; it's my favorite of the saga. iWAR1 and Defiance share the same near perfect gameplay but iwar1 storytelling is not very fun because the crew and "the unknown captain" aren't very friendly/funny.
Defiance is perfect. It has the gameplay AND the storytelling.
I must add that you guys at particle make an unbelievable game engine but the mission design was absolutely marvellous. It is much less repetitive that all game of the genre and should be inspiration when you see howw most of today game are repetitive boring. I-war really need some thinking to go on.
Iwar 1 was also very good because you felt the dreadnought was a very powerfull big bad machine. Puffin patcom freighter and fighter when the number is reasonable are fearing you and your pure power is very well felt. At the opposite you better had to be very carefull against cruiser or organised fleet. Death is close !

Iwar2 killed that with it's simplified gameplay and ability to destroy everything alone without too much worries. The free form part was great though.

Very interresting thread to read, I still cross my fingers for I-War 3 to get made. :o)

I wonder if it would be possible to implement headtracking into I-War 2?
I made myself a Freetrack setup and works very well in a lot of games.

Just started to play the game for first time, if the approach of FREESPACE 1&2 was the best ever for combat "sims" on space in a WW2 style fighters, some of my friends always said me I-War is the other game on the top thanks to the real physics and realism, as a big fan of space sims i should say all the opening is spectacular, and the orbital elevator was a proof the ream were fans of really hardcore scienfiction.

I know nowadays the game is pretty "old", but im really excited to finish configuring everything for a nice "flying" on my WIN7 and 360pad, and enjoy it as it deserve :)

Since I´m a GOG member, I do have a look at the IWAR forum from time to time.

I still have the original game boxed with booklet, so nice.

After playing IWAR i´ve never touched any other space sim. At this time I was a sim freak and every other space sim was just too arade style for my taste.

And up to today I´m still convinced, that the athmosphere of IWAR can´t be beaten.

Too bad at those days I missed IWAR 2. Here in Germany the reviews weren´t so good and the change to simplified gameplay killed my interest.

But after reading the posts here I guess that was a misstake.

I´ve allways wondered, how Partical Systems managed to develop such a beautyful fine running engine, with so low system requirements.

Thumbs up for the artists, who did this good job.

Nevermind

Speaking of beauty, is there a way to enable LOD 0 (most detailed models) for I-War and Independence War 2? After all, modern computers have more than enough computing power to render the full models.