Bringing
Modders Together

Paladin Gaming is suspending play of the Ship Interiors mod for the moment, because INFERNO is finally complete! The first missions of Act 3 go live tomorrow, but can be watched now with channel membership. Once the channel hits 900 subscribers, I'll livestream the complete Inferno campaign, new voice acting and all, as the milestone special. :)

Dudes, dudettes, agentic AIs, welcome to the second episode of The New Roughly Monthly HLP Newsletter 2.0 - this time, its regular(ish)

We have a bumper month this month with lots of juicy news, so let's take a big 'ole bite

Inferno

Inferno 3 is out with full voice acting, completing the epic cycle (checks notes) 23 years after Inferno Classic came out. Inferno was one of the OG Mega Projects, so to see it finally come to fruition is fantastic. Has the HLP 'Act One Curse' been lifted?

Campaign News

FreeSpace RTS Fleet Command

Mighty has recently released and already updated their FreeSpace RTS Fleet Command mod, which turns FreeSpace into, you guessed it, a Real Time Strategy game à la Homeworld. If you ever wanted to take an 'admiral's eye view' of FreeSpace combat and boss around a whole fleet of ships, this is for you.

NB – not to be confused with FreeSpace: Fleet Command, the FreeSpace themed Total Conversion for Homeworld 2 and Homeworld 2 Remastered, the latter version is being fixed by Willywolfy

Belisarius's Mystery Project

Belisarius has teased us with cryptic images of his upcoming project. Do I know what it is? No. Would I tell you if I did? Also no

SCP and Coding News

FSO engine updates

FSO 26.2.0 RC 1 has been released for testing, so give it a whirl and let the team know if you run into any issues

QFRED

QFRED is now in the engine and in Knossos. Devs can use it by having a recent nightly build and clicking "QTFRED"

It's currently at feature parity with FRED, but it has a lot more QoL features and works on Linux.

Creators, give it a try, and if you run into any issues, please contact Mjn.

Upcoming Scheduled Streams and Recent Uploads

IllFatedGamingTV (AKA RedMageJoe)

Red Mage Joe will be doing horror themed streams for 'spooktober'. Sunday streams will feature Amnesia: The Bunker, Hellmart, a Bloodborne-inspired Ocarina of Time mod, and the remake of a classic 2009 Flash game called CURSED!

Spooktober

Renegade Paladin

Renegade Paladin of Paladin Gaming has been streaming the FS2 Campaign with the immersion-enhancing ship interiors mod.

However… he may have something special lined up for Friday
Friday tease

Non-FreeSpace Stuff

Inquisitor, a long-time HLP member who was the original leader of the Source Code Project, has released his own full-fledged game

Mechanized Corps: Rebirth& drops you into the war-torn year of 2361, where Mechanized Corps fight for control of the Sol system's resources. Choose from four customizable classes, arm yourself with devastating weapons, and fight in intense squad-based combat. Battle offline or online with friends!

Check it out on Steam

And take a look at its Discord

Interviews

Interviews will be posted separately around the middle of the month. Who will it be this month… you'll just have to wait to find out 😉

That’s all for this month. Remember to get in touch with me to add your stuff to November's edition.

After 26 years of development, the Inferno saga is finally complete, with full voice acting, dozens of new ships, a 50-mission campaign, and Shivan- and Earther-blasting galore.

If you already have Inferno installed on your machine, you can just update your existing Inferno install to version 3.0.0. If you don't, click the Knossos link.

Get it on Knossos:

Hey everyone!

Over the past 2-3 weeks, I've spent quite a lot of time delivering two major features and fixing a few bugs on our landing page.

Search

First of all, the search box at the top of the homepage is finally working. It searches for partial words in post content, titles, mods, and usernames.

Based on the homepage's adoption, I expect there will soon be plenty of content that will be much easier to find again using the search engine 😊

Discord Notifications

The second major addition is Discord notifications. People posting on the landing page can optionally choose to notify the community on the #announcements channel. I hope this will help build stronger relationships between creators and the HLP community. We'll see 🤔

Thanks to Zacam for properly configuring the HLP Discord webhook and to Belisarius for troubleshooting deployment issues.

Minor Improvements

The previous update also introduced several features for creators, allowing them to edit posts in Markdown, embed YouTube videos and playlists, and integrate their forum avatars.

What's Next?

Further down the roadmap, I'm planning deeper integration of the homepage features with the forum, and possibly mod subpages with related news and comments. For now, these features mostly exist in my head and require more thought, as well as some initial conceptual work.

I'm also open to community feedback and your ideas for new features. If you have anything in mind, you know where to find me 😏

-- shiv

01 Newsletter September 2026

Ladies, gentleman, Russian Bots, welcome to the inaugural episode of The New Roughly Monthly HLP Newsletter 2.0 - this time, its regular(ish)

It won't be quite as pretty as Axem's, at least until I have learnt how to do it all, so hopefully there will be a glow up in October.

But what September's might lack in aesthetics, it makes up for it with lots of juicy content

Blue Planet: Chanticleer

Blue Planet: Chanticleer Director's Cut is out, with new head animations, a ton of new artwork and many bug fixes

Campaign News

Inferno

Inferno 3 open beta is out, with the final release coming the 30th of September (yes really!)

The Terran Vasudan War Project

The Terran Vasudan War Project, which started development in (checks notes) the 2000s is now feature complete and the team in the polishing and bugfixing phase. They'll soon be handing over scripts to their voice actors and hopefully be ready to release sometime this autumn.

Fate of the Galaxy

The long-awaited Star Wars themed Total Conversion Fate of the Galaxy is close to release. I sense the Force will be strong with this one 😊Take a look at their ModDB page to find out more.

Explosion Freeze Frame image - Fate of the Galaxy - ModDB

Solaris

Showing what the FSO engine can be pushed to do, Darius shows off in-atmosphere helicopter action complete with terrain, ground based structures and trees… lots and LOTS of trees!

https://youtu.be/ENlvstSD0a0?si=sSBkI8cZ2WxPUx2f

Asset releases

Sessile_Nomad released a lightly edited Asmodeus POF that fixes the difficulty Azreal transports had docking with it.

https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=100123.new#new

Tools

pof tools 1.6 has finally been released, featuring a long list of welcome improvements, including the path autogen feature from its predecessor pcs2. Get it here: https://github.com/Baezon/pof-tools/releases/tag/v1.6.0

Eye and Ear Candy

Check out these old FS1 and FS2 postcards and magazine ads

https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=100108.0

SCP and Coding News

ShivanSpS has been making progress on the FSO Android port

FSO engine updates

FSO 26.0.1 RC 3 has been released

Upcoming scheduled streams and recent uploads

IllFatedGamingTV (AKA RedMageJoe)

RedMageJoe is streaming Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Modded Morrowind.

Weekday Chill – Modded Morrowind: Friday the 4th of September 2026

Joe Plays - Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy: Sunday the 6th of September 2026

Renegade Paladin

Looks like Renegade Paladin put the YT playlist embedding feature into a good use in this playthrough of FS2 MVPs with the superb Ship Interiors mod which increases the immersion factor considerably: https://www.hard-light.net/mod-update/8?page=1

Interviews

As I was pushed for time this month, I decided to interview the longtime stalwart but silent member of our community, SirKnightly!

Sessile Nomad

So, SirKnightly, how did you get involved in modding with HLP?

SirKnightly
….

Sessile Nomad

What made you want to get involved?

SirKnightly
…

Sessile Nomad

What has been your proudest accomplishment with HLP to date?

SirKnightly
…

Sessile Nomad

Your upload schedule is very hectic. Do you have any tips for aspirant modders on how they can stay on top of everything?

SirKnightly
…

And that concludes our interview with the strong but silent SirKnightly, a man of few words but many uploads. Hopefully next month's guest will be a little more talkative. Volunteers wanted, but if I don't get any, I may pick on someone at random 😉

That’s all for this month. Remember to get in touch with me to add your stuff to October's edition.

New FotG Summer update is here that highlights work completed since the last newsletter, along with community contributions to the FSO ecosystem and upcoming plans for the near future! In short, we plan to publicly release FotG soon after FSO 26.0.1 Stable is out, with a guarantee to have it out before GTA6!

https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=100129.0

Starting tomorrow morning, Paladin Gaming is featuring the Ship Interiors project by KamiGaAtaeta! Check it out.

Good news everyone!

As you may or may not know, Goober has recruited me to pick up where Axem left off and resurrect the HLP newsletter.

So, what's it going to include? I'm open to suggestions, but so far, I'm thinking:

Highlights

Campaign News

• Campaign releases and development updates

Asset releases

• Models etc.

Eye and Ear Candy

• Annis, cutscenes, fan art, music, sound effects etc.

Coding News

• FSO engine updates
• Scripting / Sexp releases

Screencap Contest

• Eye candy image of the month

Interviews

Memes 'n Humour

• Memes, jokes
• I was today years old when…
• Bloopers
• 'Doh!' moments

Trivia quiz

But I need content to put in it, or it will be a very flimsy newsletter. So show me what you got by DMing me with info, images, videos etc. to see your name in lights (well, illuminated by back screen anyway.)

I'm aiming to have the first edition out on or about the weekend of the 29th and 30th of August, so please send me your updates before then.

If you have any queries or suggestions, DM me those too 😁

Looking forward to working with you all

Best wishes,

Iain 'Sessile_Nomad' Baker

This update fixes a bug in Mission 1 (Behold a White Horse) where Gamma wing isn't carrying Trebuchets, and makes the intercept portion easier my spawning the Lapith bombers further away.

We're in the final stretch of TVWP! 🚀 Only one mission left needs some work, while the rest are already in the testing/polishing phase 😎

After 26 years of development, we're finally releasing the finished Inferno on September 30th, with a full 50 mission campaign. Mark your calendars.

Inferno 3 has entered open beta. The current version is 2.9.9-beta 8.

Things it has:

• shivan superjuggernaut.
• conclusion of the inferno saga.
• 17 new campaign missions - making a total of 50 missions. (Note: The original Freespace 2 only had 35!)
• 8 bonus missions that were left on the cutting room floor.
• new head animations.
• tons of new command briefing and intel animations.

things it does not have currently:

• voice acting.
• bug-free status. that's why it's a beta - let us know if there are issues.

it has been 23 years since inferno r1 was released in 2003, and it's our honor to get this one to you now.

Download link: https://fsnebula.org/mod/Inferno

Forum link: https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=100018.0

oh, and we have an all-new website. http://inferno.hard-light.net

It includes all kinds of improvements - a new command voice, bios for all your wingmen, command briefings for Ned's inbox, and lots of bug fixes. Get it on Knossos.

We're excited to unveil the brand-new HLP homepage to the community! 😊 We hope you'll enjoy the new look and features and that they'll bring FreeSpace players and modders even closer together.

This is the biggest update to the website in years, aimed at modernizing HLP and making it a better place for creators and fans alike.

The new website allows modders to publish their own news feed entries. If you'd like to share news, screenshots, videos, or project updates, contact us on the forum, in #website-support Discord channel, or via private message to Belisarius, Lafiel, or me (shiv).

This is only the initial release and some features, such as search, are still being worked on. We appreciate your patience as we continue improving the site.

P.S. I'd like to thank Lafiel for the code contributions, Belisarius for the DevOps support, and Zacam for trusting our vision and providing architectural guidance.

-- shiv