X³: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC), is a space trading and combat simulator from German developer Egosoft and is the culmination of their X series of computer games. Described as a stand alone game, based on X3: Reunion, it boasts new plot lines, features and assets. It was first released on October 2008 for the European market and Steam.

X3: Terran Conflict is based in the same universe and using the same engine. X3: Reunion had several popular fan made mods, the most popular of which was named The X-Tended Mod. The Mod was created by a team of artists, musicians and modders and added new content and functionality to the game. XTM received attention from Egosoft who interviewed members of the team and hosted the mod for future downloads. X3: Terran Conflict has several assets used by the XTM mod and several members of the XTM team worked closely with Egosoft to develop the game.

Following the announcement of the game, several screenshots and videos were made available, showing gameplay, new features and content. A teaser trailer for X3: Terran Conflict was made available one month after the game was announced. It featured several new ships, stations, weapon systems and graphical effects. Terran ships, which were first seen in X3: Reunion's finale, made an appearance in this trailer.

A series of four informative gameplay videos were slowly released throughout the course of development. They were titled after each of the games main gameplay premises; Trade, Fight, Build and Think. These videos featured a narrative introducing several new features in Terran Conflict. The first video, entitled Build was made available on July 30, 2008. Focusing on station construction and player progression, this video reveals the existence of new stations and ship classes, as well as a new gameplay feature to control large numbers of ships. This video confirms that the player headquarters, which was introduced in X3: Reunion version 2.0, is available in X3: Terran Conflict.

A developer blog was made available, documenting several experiences with the game development by several team members. An XTM and X3: Terran Conflict developer Bobby Wilkinson, known in the X3 community as Syklon, was the first to post, detailing some new aspects of the game.

"Source: Wikipedia, "X³: Terran Conflict," available under the CC-BY-SA License."