''Spacebase DF-9'' is a space simulator

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

developed by Double Fine Productions. It was prototyped during Double Fine's open Amnesia Fortnight 2012, directed by JP Lebreton. After being released as an open beta on October 15, 2013, it was officially released on October 27, 2014, for

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, OS X, and

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. After the official end-of-life of the game in May 2015, the community took over the development based on an open-source

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fork. The community fork of this game has also since been abandoned, the last update Patch v1.09 Unofficial - Jan 16, 2023 marking the end of community accepted contributions.

Gameplay

The player designs, builds and maintains a space station, and must keep its inhabitants happy while fending off alien threats.

Development

''Spacebase DF-9'' was one of several ideas presented for voting for Double Fine's '' Amnesia Fortnight 2012'' project, where users would be able to vote for the game concepts they felt they would want to play the most. ''Spacebase DF-9'' was an idea presented by designer-programmer JP LeBreton. The title received the second most votes and was one of five other titles that Double Fine stated they would develop into full games. A full commercial version of the game was announced on October 15, 2013, with an alpha version being available to purchase through Steam Early Access. Double Fine announced on September 17, 2014 that the full game would be released in October 2014. In addition, they promised to release the game's Lua

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

to allow the community to develop new content and features independently.

Release

In September 2014, Double Fine announced that they were going to bring ''Spacebase DF-9'' out of early access status, and add features to make the game a full commercial release, due to a lack of sales for the game during the early access period. After the commercial release, Double Fine will release part of the source code and no new features will be added, but Double Fine will still be offering support of the game and making bug fix releases. The news was met with controversy, with some fans expressing anger over the fact that the game would not continue development, and some developers questioning whether a failure by a well known developer to successfully use the early access model would tarnish that model for other developers. The release of v1.0 commenced on October 27, 2014, simultaneously with release of Lua source code. The

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version included a tutorial mode, goals screen and bugfixes. After the release of v1.0 on November 21, 2014, twelve employees were laid off including the programmer and project lead JP LeBreton. On December 16, 2014 Greg Rice posted on the official technical support forums stating that there were no further plans for patches and there was no team assigned to the project. Double Fine officially ended support for ''Spacebase'' and ceased development of the game in May 2015. Part of the game's

was released to the public under the CPAL

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,derelictgames / Spacebase V2 Updated Code
on gitlab.com ''"This is a community maintained fork of DoubleFine's original game, which was open sourced May 12, 2015 under the Common Public Attribution License"'' and since then, fans have worked to continue the game's development and support. The game's community has provided bug fixes and extensions to the game based on Double Fine's documented plans, and the first community patch was released in October 2015. The second unofficial patch was released in February 2016.NEWS
on gitlab.com/derelictgames/spacebase-v2-updated-code ''"Patch v1.08 Unofficial - Feb 14, 2016"''

Reception

''Spacebase DF-9'' has a 46/100

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score. IGN gave the game a 6.8/10 score and commented: "''Spacebase DF-9'' is charming, and its random events give you more to do and worry about than something like ''Banished''. However, it lacks the depth and polish needed to make the tasks of expansion and crisis management go smoothly."

References

External links

*
open-sourced community-fork
on gitlab.com {{Double Fine Productions 2014 video games Double Fine games Early access video games Game jam video games Linux games MacOS games Indie games Simulation video games Single-player video games Windows games Lua (programming language)-scripted video games Video game controversies Video games developed in the United States Games financed by Indie Fund Video games scored by Chris Remo Commercial video games with freely available source code