Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Baron MacDoblin on November 29, 2003, 02:27:08 am
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So, like, I was whoring Fileplanet like always, and I saw Starshatter, and I thought, oh, cool, I always wanted to try it, I see there's a demo now. So I did, and I started up, and I saw the really nice main screen, and thought, whoa, this is cool, so I started the training campaign and said, nice ships, really different feel, and then I took off and went in the airplane and steering and thought OMG LOL LOL THIS IS JUST LIKE FALCOLN 2342424241!!!!!! and I wet myself. And then I played the capships steering and all and went W00T W00T W00T THIS IS LIKE THE WING COMMANDER MOVIE ONLY NOT AS SUCKY!!!!1111111111111111
In all seriousness, I am helluva impressed - AND THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING. I love how different Starshatter is from just about every other space game, ever - why did it take so long to get the idea of "flight sims in space"? The more I see of it, the more impressed I am.
http://www.starshatter.com
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Soooo... I-War clone, then? Or flight sim as in "actual gravity and air resistance in deep space"? They didn't make it too clear on the website, and I worry...
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Better than sex?
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Iwar2 is a flight sim in space. Everything else has been arcade shooters in space.
So, Starshatter: is it freespace style shooter, or Iwar2 style sim? Either way if it can at least give me the fun of Wing Commander 1 AND FLY BY STICK I'll probably buy it.
In going to download the demo, I noticed some screenshots. Is it just me, or is this like the UGLIEST HUD EVAR? I guess I'll see when I fire up the game later.
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Ugliest HUD? It was the models that offended my eyes, didn't notice anything terribly bad about the interface.
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Interesting. Control wasn't bad. Models were kinda skank.
Transitioning from LEO to air flight was kinda groovy. Starfighters don't handle well in atmosphere. In fact, it seems, they handle like you're on the other side of a link with really bad latency. Its all mollasses.
Padlock view is rockin. Only problem is that it takes the frames/sec to sec/frame.
Combat... well, I haven't got to that. So far its like Wing Commander wth some old school hard flight sim action going on. I'm not sure how much I like that. I'll wait for further developments before I pass judgment though.
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How would half of these 'tards know wether it was better than sex?
Hell, they're still overwhelmed by things like chocolate.
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He may be referring to the type of sex that doesn't really require another person.
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Dog-sex?
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an0n, I've noticed lately you've really been going on about no one ever being layed :D You just get your first one? :p
Anyway, yes, Starshatter is cool, yes the graphics are pretty neat, yes it has modding ability, but the interface is a bit too complex.
It is sort of a space sim, as it does have realistic physics, it's just that every ship's maneuvering is pumped up to the extreme.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
an0n, I've noticed lately you've really been going on about no one ever being layed :D You just get your first one? :p
Yeah. Your mom was great.
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[color=66ff00]Enough of the crap guys.
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Pfff. Spoil-sport.
*activates Maeg's kill-switch*
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[Watches Shrike twitch and fall to the floor]
Dude. Number three, not five.
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Let's get back to the really important point of this topic.
Since when has sex been trademarked?
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[color=66ff00]Since God filed the patent.
[/color]
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No, it was during that People Vs Larry Flint trial.
Flint trademarked the word Sex™ so the proper documentation couldn't be filed to send him to jail.
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Hmmm, sounds like a good space sim, but I have one question, no not about sex ;)
If I spend time to download this not knowing how big the file is, will it even run on a 600mhz, just wondering what the minimum mhz, or rather what is required to run it.
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If you have sex with your motherboard, yes.
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Oh neat, I wise brosing the Starshatter forums and apparently one guy made a FS mod all by himself. The search function is down though so I can't say anything about that.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
If you have sex with your motherboard, yes.
According to my wife I already have.. :D Something she said about me trying to make love to this pc since `im on it so much she said it was my girlfriend... :doubt:
Not... Goes off grabs wife and, well i`ll leave this part out for reasons of personal value. :p
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Originally posted by karajorma
Let's get back to the really important point of this topic.
Since when has sex been trademarked?
John Romero, for his new game Suck It Down™.
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Are you all playing the same Star Shatter I tried?
Whatever I played was crap and i'm pretty sure it was star shatter. Maybe there's some new version or patch that I missed but all I remember is that there were almost no stars or backrounds of any kind in space and that I couldn't see anything in the atmospheric mission. Maybe it doesn't like my vid card. whatever...
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Geez, you guys are harsh. You're going to hurt McDob's feelings.
Soooo... I-War clone, then? Or flight sim as in "actual gravity and air resistance in deep space"?
Neither, particularly. Starshatter includes three different user-selectable flight models (standard, relaxed, arcade), and three different flight regimes (starship, orbital fighter, airborne fighter). Some of the flight modeling is rather more realistic than Freespace, but the player is free to choose an arcade model if that is his preference. None of the flight models are meant to be as realistic as something like Orbiter, but the "standard" model is similar to that of IWar when in orbit, or Total Air War when in atmosphere.
Anyway, yes, Starshatter is cool, yes the graphics are pretty neat, yes it has modding ability, but the interface is a bit too complex.
The demo is more than a year old. The development version has streamlined the interface somewhat. The depth of complexity is still there, but I have tried to provide options so that players may skim the surface if that is their preference. Obviously, you can't have one game that is simultaneously as complex as Falcon 4 and as simple as Afterburner. Starshatter is somewhere in between those extremes.
If I spend time to download this not knowing how big the file is, will it even run on a 600mhz, just wondering what the minimum mhz, or rather what is required to run it.
The demo and patch files add up to less than 40 MB. The game will run fine on a 600 MHz machine, provided you have a half-way decent 3D card (TNT2 or better) and at least 128 MB of RAM.
The final version of the game is more RAM hungry, particularly in the dynamic campaign engine. However, you could get by on 128 RAM if you mainly want to fly single missions or do multiplayer or tinker with Mods.
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the models are crap.
i mean, come on: http://www.starshatter.com/shots/s05.jpg
that thing looks like it was made by some kid on his first day using 3dsmax.
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Thanks, I tried real hard to capture that feeling of youthfulness.
Just curious, what's an example of a fighter design that you do like?
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Don't mind him, he's Shivan. No tact.
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Originally posted by milo
Thanks, I tried real hard to capture that feeling of youthfulness.
Just curious, what's an example of a fighter design that you do like?
it's not the overall design so much. it's the lack of detail. plain, bloby textures; blocky, straight wings. very few polygons. give that thing some curves.
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Originally posted by Kamikaze
Don't mind him, he's Shivan. No tact.
Oh goodness, I don't mind criticism; it's just something you have to get used to in this business. For example, in the past few days I've seen people list Starcraft, Half Life, Counter-Strike, and Battlefield 1942 as being among the worst games they've ever played. Now if a company like Blizzard can spend millions of dollars on a team of twenty people developing a AAA title, and still get slagged off, imagine what I can expect as an indie developer working part time with no budget at all.
On the other hand, even the most unfocused criticism often has useful information buried within it. No game can ever be perfect, but the way to improve is to find the parts that people have strong negative opinions about and make them better (if that's possible). So while I don't have time to follow up on every random negative comment that I get, I do try my best to satisfy as many people as possible.
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Originally posted by Carl
it's not the overall design so much. it's the lack of detail. plain, bloby textures; blocky, straight wings. very few polygons. give that thing some curves.
Well, you have to remember that Starshatter is designed to run on a broad range of hardware. As an indie developer, I can't afford to target only those people with P4 2GHz machines and new Radeon cards.
Anyway, see if you like this design any better. It's a more advanced fighter that you encounter later in the game.
(http://www.starshatter.com/shots/raptor1.jpg)
(http://www.starshatter.com/shots/raptor2.jpg)
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Hey that looks almost like the Storm Petrel from the front.
Milo, its not bad but its not to my tastes. The Padlock view kills the frame rate--like murders it and then buries it in an unmarked grave. The designs in the demo are uninspired, to say the least. The HUD makes the eyes bleed. The flight model on realistic is not realistic. Its still pretty arcadey.
That said, you did one thing that I consider "the Right Thing". You get big props for understanding that some people have more than one stick attached to their computer. Letting me choose which stick I wanted to use was a stroke of genius. Will the game grok input from all sticks, accepting only X/Y input from the selected one, or what? I like to use a Nostromo N50 speed pad to augment this crappy game stick. Will Starshatter understand all possible keypresses from both controllers?
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I coulda done that...looks like a Morningstar too, only not as good. The WC: Saga guys did a better version.
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Originally posted by milo
Some of the flight modeling is rather more realistic than Freespace,
Am I missing something? When the hell did FS2 become the benchmark for flight sim realism?
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He's just saying that it's more realistic than FS, not that FS is realistic in any way. ;)
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Milo, even tho you're designing Starshatter to be run on a wide range of hardware, Milo, it still doesn't mean you have to make your ships as blocky as, well, Wing Commander IV.
For instance, take a peek at the Perseus in Freespace 2. It's smooth, yet very low-polygon. It has actual curves, not just a bunch of vertex-edited blocks stuck together.
I'd show you a picture of one of mine to show you what I mean if I could find it.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
Am I missing something? When the hell did FS2 become the benchmark for flight sim realism?
Any game can be used a benchmark to the extent that it provides a reference point. My goal is to help people who haven't played Starshatter understand what kind of game it is, and what it feels like to fly a fighter in the game. I thought to do that by placing Starshatter in a continuum of games that other people were likely to have played (and on this board, Freespace seemed like a good candidate).
From least realistic to most realistic:
Freelancer
Wing Commander
Freespace
Starshatter
IWar
Orbiter
In that spectrum, Starshatter falls a bit closer to IWar than it does to Freespace.
Does that make my point more clear?
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
For instance, take a peek at the Perseus in Freespace 2. It's smooth, yet very low-polygon. It has actual curves, not just a bunch of vertex-edited blocks stuck together.
Yes, but I don't like the way the Freespace ships look. I prefer designs that are sharp and angular, like the Raptor I posted above. Everyone has different tastes.
Fortunately, Starshatter is easy to mod. (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Mehrunes/bigsurprise.jpg)
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Originally posted by milo
Fortunately, Starshatter is easy to mod. (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Mehrunes/bigsurprise.jpg)
Whoa. That's damn cool.
I think you're doing an amazing job at it. Keep up the work, we need more people like this. :)
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I played it. Well, not that there wasnt much to play anyway. It's not bad but like the other people, I don't quite like the ship designs, and the interface looks too plain for my eyes.
My view is probably biased though since for me: the rest < FreeSpace ;)
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Few games can aspire higher than to be a clone of Independence War, don't see what the complaint there is. Unless it's the evil evil I-War 2 you're thinking, which is evil and should die and not be imitated in the least because it sucked ass and was a puzzle-based game. That's not personal taste, that's the truth- it murders Christian babies and sells their captured souls to Satan in exchange for puppies to torture and drown.
Anyway. Gotta agree on the curves bit- I dig blocky, too. But a lot of the models seem to be lacking a certain something... there's no really consistent theme, near as I can tell (nothing similar at all between the fighter Carl posted and, say, this (http://www.starshatter.com/shots/s09.jpg) except that I don't like them), so the focus should really be on just having a large variety of cool-looking models. That one you posted being a good example- it's got a coherent, vaguely recognizable design without being so generic as to bore everyone to death. More like that, less like the other two, and a lot of variety in the forms the ships take would probably be the way to go there. As it is, they're pretty spotty, with some good 'uns and a lot of models looking like they're just five-second placeholders until something more complete can be put in. You don't need a lot of polygons to make a good-looking ship, even- just good textures and an interesting shape. You don't need to make it curvy (though a few curved surfaces for variety wouldn't hurt), there's plenty of room in the "big 'n blocky" category. And some models that didn't look like hastily-textured fighter planes and spraypaint cans would make me twitch so much less, especially given how much else is just plain cool, graphically and otherwise, there.
Incidentially, you ever want help with models or something, I'm game. Just, you know, in case.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Few games can aspire higher than to be a clone of Independence War, don't see what the complaint there is. Unless it's the evil evil I-War 2 you're thinking, which is evil and should die and not be imitated in the least because it sucked ass and was a puzzle-based game. That's not personal taste, that's the truth- it murders Christian babies and sells their captured souls to Satan in exchange for puppies to torture and drown.
Iwar2's Flux is what every space combat game engine wishes it could be. All others are week and pathetic by comparison.
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Graphical engine was nice, yes. Matter of fact, everything was nice except the game they'd made to use all that stuff, which was why it sucked so horribly. Otherwise, it would have simply been a **** game, end of story. It was like they made the engine, finished the physics model, did the ships, crafted the Universe, did all the weapons and balanced out combat and so on and so forth, then got sick of it and let Billy from Mrs. Henderson's fourth grade class handle the gameplay and story arc.
Contrast to the original- ugly as all hell, you only get one (albeit quite versatile) ship, thoroughly linear until the very end, maddeningly difficult, and fun.
One had you improvising in combat and pushing a vessel that handled like a space cow to overcome often ridiculous odds for a clear cause, the other had you ferrying around ****in' cargo crates to no end. See a slight distinction?
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I didn't mind I-War II when I went off on my own and pick fights but the main campaign had some serious problems.
I got quite far but I gave up when I got to the final chapter when I came across a mission I couldn't beat after 3 tries. It wasn't that the mission was too hard that annoyed me. It was that it took 9 f**king minutes of complete inaction to get to the point I was failing on. In the rest of that time my ship was simply travelling to the location where the mission took place.
And lets not mention the fact that places actually took longer to get to once you got the capsule drive because the ship insisted on flying to an L-point and taking 3 minutes to get somewhere it could get to in 30 seconds using its near light speed drive!
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I remember a heck of a lot more combat than cargo pod ferrying. Off the top of my head, I can only think of three times when you had to ferry a cargo pod--unless you're talking about Jafs pickups.
The thing that killed me about Iwar2 was the unfinished nature of the engine. Infogrames forced PS to release the game before it was ready. That's why we had framework for, but no actual hooks for, upgradable PBCs for example. The story arc was enjoyable, pirating rocked (though the random distress calls should have been done better and some civilian cruiseship pirating would have been nice) and I absolutely loved the combat. There was a grand total of one mission that annoyed me (Escort the antimatter cargo, toward the end).
The only serious changes I would make to Iwar2 to make it better would be to add:
- time compression
- remove flight assist completely
- add a proper vertical thrust vector (you have to disable laterals to get a dorsal/ventral thrust right now)
- switch POG out for Python
- reimplement all in game systems in POG (basically ship control and weapons need to be rewritten)
- add a Padlock view
That pretty much covers it. Everything else about the game is spot on, as far as I'm concerned.
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Milo, I'm not saying the game is bad, I'm saying it can use some work, at least on the model front.
In fact, I think the game is quite incredible, especially considering that it's all done by you, correct?
I have not played the latest release, however, so I don't know what everybody's saying. But from my experience, you have a pretty solid game going, you just need better models ;) If you need any help, I'll be glad to give it :D
Anyway, if I may suggest one thing about the ships: you need to define the ship stylings. If you do not have a storyline just yet (another thing many people here, including myself) could help out on, you should get a rough thing down, and define a "good" side and a "bad" side, and decide on ship stylings for both.
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Well, the laser effects are good, ad I get the feeling, much as the stuff that was done for the SCP at first, there are a couple of 'let's get the Engine working' ships in there. It's easy to enhance, and I'm sure a few models will see a re-work before the end ;)
Good stuff :)
Flipside :D
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Mik: Perhaps I have more discerning tastes in piracy, I dunno. I think it wouldn't have bothered me half so much if I got a clear idea of some sort of exchange rate- it was all "collect X number of random cargo class and we'll give you another PBC", X being just about anything and "random cargo class" being same. After a while of putting up with this ****, I found it was much easier to just go on random raids and grab whatever I could without dying than it was to remember what specific exchange would get me what desirable item. And that was just lame, turned the whole thing into "future grocery trip"- I didn't know what I was getting, didn't know whether it was worth bothering for, didn't have the flexibility to do anything more fun than shoot the transport then blow up the escorts (read: board and hijack the ship, use fleet tactics or set traps beyond the basic-beyond-basic mines and "go get 'em, boys" which didn't really have any advantages over just rushing in- though I hear Ifleet solved this, lay total siege to stations in exchange for larger hauls), it was a wash. Were the piracy any fun at all (and, I mean, come on. Escape Velocity managed to make piracy fun as all hell, game was a quadrillionth as complex as I-War) I could have put up with the lame campaign. Were the campaign anything more than basically a series of puzzles (and rather nonintuitive, awkward ones at that), I could have mostly ignored the bad piracy and just gone through the campaign. Both sucked ass.
But anyway. Enough about one of the many names of the Devil. Starshatter. Right. Um, not a lot to add there. It does its thing, ugly models, everything else fine in my boat. Think I covered my initial impressions.
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The key was knowing where to get stuff. Say you needed to drop some bulk load lifters (which is construction gear) for a Neturon PBC. You head off for a developing planet and jack the freighters coming by. Mainly the whole grocery list thing was a way of getting you to be more discerning about your piracy. Me, I just found rich rich rich LaGs and jacked the hell out of them. Of course, I went on pirating trips for fun. I don't see where you get "lots of puzzles" from (like I said, I remember what? three? and they were all on one mission). Each to his own.
I never played Escape Velocity, but I keep hearing its good. One of these days I will seek it out.
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The demo is good, if not somewhat lacking in......pazzaz. But it is, after all, only a demo.
Whatcha need to do, milo, is release an updated demo.
Oh and make the textures more detailed.
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Originally posted by milo
Anyway, see if you like this design any better. It's a more advanced fighter that you encounter later in the game.
(http://www.starshatter.com/shots/raptor1.jpg)
much better :yes:
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Originally posted by milo
Yes, but I don't like the way the Freespace ships look. I prefer designs that are sharp and angular, like the Raptor I posted above. Everyone has different tastes.
Fortunately, Starshatter is easy to mod. (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Mehrunes/bigsurprise.jpg)
WOW!!!!
Freespace 2 as a sim-strategy!
Can't wait to command a fleet of Orions and Deimos!!!!
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Hey Milo, are you planning multiplayer?
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Mik: You should, it's definitely one of those bits of gaming history. Um, stay away from EV Nova, though, it's not all that great. Pretty, but not as freeform somehow.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
Hey Milo, are you planning multiplayer?
Yes, multiplayer support is basically done. You can run fighter melees head-to-head, or starship missions, or co-op ground assaults, or whatever floats your boat. The multiplayer game host can use the built in mission editor to create a custom scenario, and the game will automatically distribute it to all the other players.
You can run the game as a dedicated multiplayer server, or host the multiplayer server in the same process as the player GUI - just like in Freespace 2. Unlike FS2, you can join missions in progress if you arrive at the server after the game has already started. If you are not the game host, you can even exit the simulation and reenter in control of a different ship. There is a cool wargame scenario where two small fleets square off in a single system. You can take command of the carrier and create fighter packages to attack enemy ships, and then real live pilots can jump into the fighters and fly them.
I don't know how well it will work over slow dialup connections. The game design requires a lot of data to be shipped over the network, especially if you are in a starship battle with lots of defensive gun turret fire. But it works great on a LAN, and seems to be fine over cable and DSL.
I just need to add some code to check that everyone is using the same version of the game, and has the same list of mods configured - to make cheating more difficult. I was originally going to use an SHA1 digest challenge/response to verify the mods, but I'm concerned about performance. DamoclesX's Babylon5 mod is well over 150 MB of data (compressed!). I need to test the SHA1 code to see if it will take too long to digest a mod archive of that size.
Anyway, it's not quite the level of multiplayer support you'd find in Quake 3 Arena, but I think it is above average for the space sim genre.
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If Starshatter is better than sex, this world is coming to an end.
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Repent, harlequin!
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Originally posted by adwight
If Starshatter is better than sex, this world is coming to an end.
Or Milo is becoming the next Bill Gat.......oh.....wait. Nevermind.
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A one-person job...awensome!
Hey Milo, if you need any help at anything, I'm sure the people of the HLP will be more than happy to help!:yes:
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IMHO, the Vega Strike games under Howard Day have done a good job of making the Terran ships both utiltarian and unique, if a bit vertically-oriented.