Beyond the Red Line

Beyond the Red Line is an unofficial and free stand-alone total conversion for the award-winning game FreeSpace 2, based on the reimagined TV show Battlestar Galactica. It allows players to fly into combat as either a Colonial Viper pilot, or a Cylon raider.

Gameplay
BtRL features an original soundtrack with pieces inspired by or remixed from Bear McCreary and Richard Gibbs' soundtrack. It also includes character-based gameplay and voice acting. The three-mission demo campaign follows a storyline that precedes the episode, "Scar", adding some background to the events of that episode. Online play, including "Deathmatch" and "Team vs. Team", is supported and a large multiplayer community has sprung up. The Mk II and VII Vipers are featured with authentic weaponry, flight controls, and semi-Newtonian physics (the development team state that, "if you've seen it on the show, you can do it in BtRL").

Development
On March 31, 2007, a demo was released that allowed players to play a tutorial, two single player missions and multiplayer. This demo has since been noted or reviewed in various gaming related websites and magazines such as The Escapist, Macworld, PC Gamer UK and Pelit. The development team has been interviewed on several occasions including a "making of" special in Pelit. The BtRL demo has also been featured on the covers of two Ukrainian magazines as well as in cover DVD of Finnish computer magazine Mikrobitti.

In October 2008, the majority of the team announced that they had left the Beyond the Red Line development team to work on a different project, known as Diaspora. Although Diaspora is also a Battlestar Galactica game built on the FreeSpace 2 engine, it is being developed independently of BTRL and the projects have no affiliation with each other.

In August 2009, it was announced that as a consequence of the Diaspora fork, BtRL's subsequent inactivity, and BtRL's perceived hostility toward its fans since the split, BtRL would no longer be hosted at Game Warden, its historical home. BtRL's primary website has been moved and the demo hosting mirrored on a number of providers.

No release date for the full project has yet been specified.

Reception
In February 2008 Beyond the Red Line received Mod DB's "Mod of the Year Award" for "Best Independent Game". That same year the game was also recommended over the official Battlestar video game (released: 2007 for XBox Live Arcade and Windows PC), citing the latter game's low production values and publisher's mishandling of the license. In 2008 the game was featured in Popular Science magazine. In December 2007 the game was featured in Computer and Video Games' "The Best PC Mods. Ever!" review.

Player feedback was initially very positive, and a number of dedicated Beyond the Red Line gaming clans sprung up. However, the limited number of ships in the demo, as well as netcode-related lag, hampered the multiplayer experience, and most of these clans have since become defunct or broadened their activities to Battlestar Galactica fandom in general.