My ideas for VSU: Black-Paralysis first started forming in August 2002. At that stage it had become apparent that Vegastrike was becoming more like Privateer, and less like Wing Commander in terms of game-play. Although happy with this, I wanted more. So I planned to develop a companion data set to Vegastrike, set in the same universe, but with more of a Wing Commander feel to it. What is now in development is the third iteration of the mod whose second title is VSU: Black-Paralysis.
The first title, for those interested, was thought up the day of the decision to create the mod, not written down, and forgotten the day after. It was, as far as I can recall, the perfect name. However, over the next week I was completely unable to recall it. Hence, with the need to name the folder containing my working data, I came up with Black-Paralysis.
For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is my inbuilt skill for putting off large projects, nothing much has happened since. Only recently has my interest been rekindled to a significant extent. Hopefully, from here on out, development might actually move forwards.
Set about 50 years after the events in the standard Vegastrike universe, the core of the game will revolve around a set of systems used by the Confederation for various types of high level research and development. Isolated from the core of the jump network, an Aeran exploration party drops, undetected, out of SPEC. With isolation the main line of defence, what little security exists within these systems is overwhelmed by the alien force, and much in the way of research, personnel and facilities is lost before reinforcements, in the form of a scheduled SPEC convoy, arrive.
The player will be dropped into the middle of that, when the Aera first arrive. What happens next isn't quite a matter of "I don't want to spoil it", but rather, "I haven't decided".
At the moment this is a one man effort and development is rather slow, if you think this sounds cool and want to start helping (experience with Vegastrike would be a bonus, but not necessary), then drop me, dandandaman, an email (address available from the sourceforge project page).
-- Daniel Aleksandrow
