DarkSpace: История космической цивилизации и войны с К'лутами.

DarkSpace is a massively multiplayer real time strategy computer game developed by PaleStar. Released in December 2001, Players can also store modified ship layouts in a personal storage "garage". In 2049 the UGTO sends three ships to explore the Centauri system, where a small outpost is established. Many years of space exploration follow, with humans visiting 11 solar systems and colonizing 10. Human colonies are now so far from the Sol system that they fall outside of UGTO control. These systems became known as the Farstars. During the First Stellar Conflict the Farstar colonies fight for control of planets and resources but are eventually stopped by a UGTO police force. The UGTO attempt to shut down all independent shipyards, causing planets to rebel and begin the Second Stellar Conflict. After twenty years of war "the Sol loyal systems once again prevail over the Farstars due to their superior firepower". After investigation by both UGTO and ICC intelligence a joint force arrives to investigate. The taskforce is attacked by an unknown assailant and takes heavy casualties, but the UGTO manages to capture one of the enemy ships. The ship is piloted by an alien species named the K'luth, who reveal themselves to human colonies soon thereafter. The DarkSpace game begins in the midst of a human civil war, which has been intensified by reports of an alien species aggressively spreading its domain throughout the known universe.

DarkSpace was created by Palestar, an independent development company founded by Richard "Faustus" Lyle. Lyle had the idea for DarkSpace in 1995, when he wanted to make a "massively multiplayer game with real time elements based in the Master of Orion universe"; After getting the game to a playable alpha state in 2000, Palestar teamed up with Blue Byte to publish the game. Blue Byte, attempting to leverage the brand power their Battle Isle series, rechristened the game Battle Isle V: DarkSpace. Prior to the publishing agreement Palestar had offered closed beta test signups on their website. After Blue Byte became involved they handled the testing arrangements instead. In early 2001, Blue Byte announced a closed beta test of Battle Isle: DarkSpace testing was to begin in February, and those who had previously signed up through the Palestar website would get first consideration. Remaining beta testers would be selected randomly. The initial group of testers was small, but worked closely with each other and the DarkSpace developers. According to Lyle, beta testing "really help[ed] to work out the bugs and correct gameplay issues". They evaluated the projects Blue Byte was funding and decided that DarkSpace did not fit into the Battle Isle series. Consequently, UbiSoft canceled their publishing contract with Palestar, forcing the small outfit back into independence. Palestar launched a new DarkSpace website in May 2001. After a new back end infrastructure for the game was written and released (GameCQ), a new public beta test began.

The DarkSpace public beta test ran during the summer and fall of 2001. According to Palestar, DarkSpace reached 10,000 registered players in September and 20,000 registered players in November. Since the game was free and reasonably fun, a large number of people drifted through, many of them sticking around throughout the test. Development proceeded at a decent pace, as features were added, bugs fixed, and changes made. Eventually, however, the money provided when Ubisoft canceled the publishing contract would run out, so the game needed to develop a revenue model. In December 2001 Palestar teamed up with Playnet. com to host the game, and DarkSpace moved to a pay to play model, charging $9.99 per calendar month for unlimited access. Players could still access a tutorial and demo mode for free. DarkSpace hit store shelves in December that year.

In June 2009 Palestar released the source code for the DarkSpace game engine, named Medusa. The engine is available under three different licenses. Several days after release the DarkSpace game servers were overwhelmed by downloads and the engine source code had to be temporarily taken down. The source code is currently hosted on GitHub.

Since release and the transition from pay for play, DarkSpace has had several patches and changes. While the game has always been "under development", the pace of updates has varied. At times changes will be fairly frequent; at others long delays have been known. Palestar's small size (a single part time programmer since 2002, two from 2008 onwards means that speedy changes are not always possible, or wanted. Despite these problems DarkSpace continues to develop. Due to limitations mentioned above, volunteer assistance has generally been welcomed in many forms and many of the moderators, game developers, and administrators of the game, forums, and chat rooms are unpaid volunteers. Darkspace became free to play on March 12, 2010 with no restrictions. Players can purchase credits via the online store, or receive a monthly income of credits plus other benefits by subscribing.

After its release DarkSpace received several positive reviews. Michael Lafferty of GameZone called DarkSpace "a game that looks good, sounds great and plays well", while Brett Todd of GameSpot thought "[n]early every scene could have been clipped from a big budget movie" The gaming website Respawn UK named DarkSpace 'Best Space Game of 2002'. However, several reviewers felt that the learning curve was too steep: Lafferty said "when first launched, the tutorial in DarkSpace was somewhat daunting", A common complaint was that DarkSpace suffered from a lack of players. Tim McConnaughy wrote in his GameSpy review that "there are too few players for such a massive strategy element". Berntsen agreed that "there simply aren’t as many players to show what it really can do", Several reviewers commented on this. Todd noted that "players are intended to work together in their respective factions and complement one another with the specific tasks of their vessels. ".

The login and chat system for DarkSpace uses a back end system called GameCQ. GameCQ was similar to Blue Byte's portal software, the Blue Byte Game Channel, due to Richard Lyle having written much of the latter. However, as time has progressed GameCQ has developed into a completely different entity. The GameCQ system deals with all login requests, as well as session information and chat abilities via a process called the MetaServer. When a player connects to one of the available servers, details are passed between the MetaServer and the selected game node so as to authenticate that user. The game servers themselves are processes which are loaded with a game map. These can range from a single solar system to a collection of them linked by jumpgates. If one map is connected to another and both are located within separate servers, the MetaServer will facilitate the transition and authentication. DarkSpace has two forms of game mode, Scenario and the MetaVerse. Scenario being a single process loaded with a map that contains one solar system, and will rotate to the next based on win conditions. The MetaVerse on the other hand is a collection of multiple processes running multiple maps linked to one another, this can be expanded whenever required based on the player base expanding or shrinking. The game client and server are a product of the Medusa engine, which is Palestar's own proprietary engine.