From: http://ospora.co.uk/ospora/resources/background/ :
The History of OSpora
"You have to know the past to understand the present."
- Carl Sagan
"Study the past if you would divine the future."
- Confucius
1999 - A Promising Beginning
The story began when Altitude Productions Limited, a small London-based computer games and web design company, started advertising for beta-testers for a new online game on the 8th of October. Previous projects of theirs had included multimedia presentations that were distributed on CD and through the Internet and freelance programming on computer games, but their new project would be one to make their name known.
The beta version of the game entitled 'Diaspora' was released to the public on the 18th of October 1999, coinciding with the launch of their website 'NetDiaspora' (which is now, sadly, offline).
Diaspora could best be described as a 2D point-and-click space trading game. Players could sign up, buy a space ship and begin their adventure into an incredibly addictive and immersive universe. Players were encouraged to hunt AI characters, trade between planets and work their way to the top of the hierarchy by teaming up with other players. 'Guilds' of players fought wars for money, protection of the innocent and more importantly, for fun. All in all, a promising beginning to the game.
2000 - Ups & Downs
The first version of Diaspora was replaced with what we shall dub 'D2', during May, which massively expanded the opportunities for players, by bringing planet ownership and a larger map. After a patch (giving guild chat and revised ship prices) was released in July, D2, the second phase in Diaspora's life, was wildly proclaimed a success, with a review of 95% in PC Gamer Magazine's December edition and with around 35,000 player accounts created before Christmas.
During November, Altitude expanded D2 further with a new set of ship plans and extensions to the game's universe. The new space ships were to be far more powerful than anything that had been seen in Diaspora before, and were met with mixed feelings. While some liked the extra speed, power and range, others thought that it unbalanced the game too much. In any case, the cost of these ships being 80% greater than any others was to spark a torrent of cheating (via 'macro' and 'bot' trading) so that players could afford the purchase, and loss, of the Helios Behemoth (the best ship in the game).
In December, Diaspora was dealt a near-fatal blow, when (reportedly) Altitude suffered a powercut while transferring files to another computer, causing the database to be damaged. With no suitable backups to use, Altitude were forced to start the game running again from scratch, but used the opportunity to make some minor changes to the game and to purchase a new server.
2001 - A Fresh Start Ends In Disaster
Diaspora returned with a clean database in early January, and the community immediately faced the problem of identity theft. Many screen-names of the more famous players were registered by others who intended to either hold them to ransom or to abuse the popularity in an effort to recieve donations. Some attempts were successful in both cases, which only fuelled the problem.
In response to the growing playerbase, and the equally expanding number of cheats, Altitude appointed a community manager known as Bloatzilla. While attempts were made to reduce the level of cheating, ultimately the problems were never solved, with increasingly ridiculous amounts of credits (the Diaspora currency) being generated through various illegitimate methods, and many players using hacked clients to allow for faster travel, harder hitting guns and invisibility.
During May, NetDiaspora, the Diaspora website was attacked by hackers and the community forum was lost. The players persevered and built up a temporary forum, allowing them to continue the discussion of in-game politics and the future of Diaspora. The official website did not return.
With June came fresh promises from Altitude regarding the state of the game. Among the coming changes were tweaks to the ship statistics, working missiles, better missions for players, stronger AI to hunt and, of course, the all important plan to remove cheating for good. Ultimately, while the new patch was nearly finished, and in fact available for download from Altitude's FTP server, Diaspora's community would be disappointed for the final and most significant time, when Diaspora went offline in late August, with no word from Altitude as to what the future may hold.
Even though rumours and hopes of Diaspora's return were abundant, players began to move on. Exodus was announced in September as the first of many spinoff games.
In October, a small group of players began the production of a temporary replacement for Diaspora entitled 'Rillaspora', in an attempt to satisfy the fans of Diaspora and to keep the players together as a community. Guerilla, the game's creator, came very close to recreating the original look and feel of Diaspora, but originally intended for the short term, and despite the effort put in, Rillaspora did not manage to live up to the standards of Diaspora.
2002 - The Clone Wars Begin
Early 2002 saw the birth of Diaspora's second successor; Xiaspora, which was written in Visual Basic, making it unlike it's predecessors which were produced in MS Java. Xiaspora has arguably seen more success (in terms of player numbers), but also many more problems, than Rillaspora, with both games experiencing multiple player database resets and various exploits allowing players to cheat.
The community became further divided during this period, with more replacement games beginning production, each promising to pick up where Diaspora left off and to live up to the potential which we all saw in the game concept. The first to spring up after Xiaspora was Ascendent Realms, which was rapidly followed up by it's producers with plans to purchase and bring back the original Diaspora in May. Fugulacuna was announced by the community during August.
Though divided in their efforts, the last hope for the community seemed to rely on the success of one of these spinoffs and clones.
2003 - The Beginning Of The End
While nothing could top the disasterous year of 2001 that the community survived, 2003 managed to deliver more bad news. Slowly, one by one, the spinoffs started to fall, with Fugulacuna the first to be abandoned rapidly followed by the breakdown in negotiations for purchase of Diaspora (admist rumours that Altitude wanted upwards of �20,000 for the game).
Discussions persisted about the potential sale, until, in June, Altitude filed for Bankruptcy, and the opportunity was lost. Shortly afterwards, Dare2Play, the producers of Ascendent Realms ceased responding to members of the Diaspora community on their forum and removed the forum section dedicated to Diaspora discussion. While there is no information to confirm this, it is assumed that the development of Ascendent Realms and the existence of Dare2Play have ceased.
2004 & Onwards - The Final Chance
Rillaspora and Xiaspora went through many changes in 2004, but nothing changed in either of them that managed to provoke the community into reuniting under one roof. In June, Rillaspora was taken offline indefinitely, and will probably not return. With no development on it for well over a year, the game was going nowhere, and slowly the community and playerbase drained away. The game host decided that enough was enough and pulled the plug.
Of all of the Diaspora spinoffs and clones, the hopes of the community lie in one of three games. Today, Xiaspora is the only remaining Diaspora clone, and while it appears to have outlasted the clone wars, whether it will last at all remains to be seen. Exodus continues it's perpetual development, having gone through three rewrites, but most have given up hope of it ever being finished or released.
The OSpora project began in March and aims to deliver an Open Source game, which not only lives up to the potential of Diaspora, but goes much further. It is our belief that OSpora is the last chance to recreate what we once had, and that we must learn from the mistakes of the past if we are to succeed in our goals of continuing the Diaspora legacy and reuniting what is left of it's community.
If you would like more detailed information about anything discussed in this article, please feel free to drop in and ask us in the OSpora Off-Topic Forum.
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