Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ghostavo on July 04, 2004, 08:19:52 pm
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I was cruising around Gamespot's Gamespotting and this caught my eye (http://www.gamespot.com/features/6101857/p-7.html).
"FreeSpace 2 was the last great space sim, and it was fantastic." Oh Yeah... "Of course, it required a joystick." WHAT? Since when?
If you read since the beginning (http://www.gamespot.com/features/6101857/index.html), you will see they, as many people, are worried about future of the games' industry in 2005. They say no good game is being announced to come out in the next years. I still don't understand why hasn't the Space Sim Genre got new "great" titles since... well... to be honest... '98! They also mention two games that have been mentioned here in the forums, StarShatter and Galactic Federation. Yet they don't ask about why no developer is making a Space Sim... isn't that a contradiction? As I'm writting this post I have no idea why I have done so...
help? :shaking:
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Independance War 2 was good.. but nothing has come close to FS2 and the genre is just about dead.
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Space sim's bit the dust way too soon...
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Originally posted by neo_hermes
Space sim's bit the dust way too soon...
That's why we're bringing out the cloth duster here :)
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Yeah I kinda got into spacesims (okay actually just freespace 1 and 2) late into the game so I'm really curious what were the factors that lead to the deline of the genre. :(
I usually hear people say its the vicious cycle of lack of marketing thus low sales which results in lack of development. Other's say that it's the nature of the game itself which takes time to get into. etc.
Is there any article anyone knows out there that explains it?
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i think alot of it has to do with multiplayability. lag shooting is a ***** in space. Look at M$, they delved into mechwarrior and took a great series and trashed it, then freelancer, which is a good game, but not a great game. Star wars is star wars, and we were all riding high on the legend of star wars when we started playing these games, but the newer movies are lacking in the magic, and i think that is carrying over into the entire genre. The two big names are faltering, those being star wars and wing commander. Even then think about M$ venture before freelancer....starlancer. To be honest i found it to be a second rate rip off of fs1. It came out same time as fs2 iirc, and let's face it, fs2 smokes it. So what are your choices.....choose a sucky game from a company you know, or take a chance with a company you don't know? Not many people are willing to take a chance with 50 bucks. The only reason i own starlancer is that i bought it used for $1.99, at that price it's not so bad, but would i ever pay as much for it as i would for fs1? not in a million years.
The genre of the space combat sim is dying, We need a good game with a good advertising campaign. Freespace never got the billing it deserved. If it had, we might be playing fs3, instead of having our guys make it for us. Wait a minute...i like the fact that they are doing what we want them to do.
I think that in the end a number of factors can be counted as reasons for the decline of the space sim, not least of all is what i call the Post Millenial Freefall. Think about it, the year 2000 was always an invisible barrier between science fiction and science fact. We could always look to that barrier as the future, and dream of that future. We are now on this side of it, and nothing has changed. We were supposed to cross into sci fi, and we haven't. Space sim fans in today's world are probably the closest to "The Lost Generation" that there has been. We have no war to fight, save that war that we create ourselves.
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
Space sim fans in today's world are probably the closest to "The Lost Generation" that there has been. We have no war to fight, save that war that we create ourselves.
*weeps*
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Originally posted by Cabbie
Yeah I kinda got into spacesims (okay actually just freespace 1 and 2) late into the game so I'm really curious what were the factors that lead to the deline of the genre. :(
BLAME CANADA!
Er... Interplay. I'm glad they were piledriven into the ground. GG NUBS KTHX DIE! Crappy games.
They released the first game ever to require up to 1GB of HDD space to play... I believe it was, Starsiege? Or Shattered Star? Something of the like... way back in the day...
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StarSiege is from Sierra and takes only 300mb ;)
FreeSpace 1 (FS1 I believe can get up to 800mb or so) and 2 (that gets into the GBs) take quite a big chunk, same with Baldur's Gate and BG2.
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
Star wars is star wars, and we were all riding high on the legend of star wars when we started playing these games, but the newer movies are lacking in the magic, and i think that is carrying over into the entire genre.
Well said.
Theres nothing left to ignite the imagination of the "masses" anymore. And imagination is something one needs to immerse in games like space sims, in order not to dismiss them as boring, far-fetched etc.
Somehow this progress has been ongoing since 80's, the more realistic the games have become, the less willing (capable?) have people become to excercise their imagination as part of the gaming experience.
There is no passion nor fascination, only instant satisfaction - point-blank.
I'm afraid the genre will continue on it's downslope till consumer-level VR-tech products hit the market.
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
haven't. Space sim fans in today's world are probably the closest to "The Lost Generation" that there has been. We have no war to fight, save that war that we create ourselves.
Agreed, it's realy sad that Space sim genre almost died
but there is still hope for space sim
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Didn't someone post a link the other day to a new sim?
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Space sims--FreeSpace 2 was the last great space sim, and it was fantastic
:nod: that it was, i have yet to see anything that came close to freespace's massive scale of things..
Starlancer looked purdy, but lacked a sense of scale
freelancer was the same, both had lackluster stories..
has anybody shown the lads up at Volition what the SCP has been up to as of late?
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of course, this all might change when the next Elite (is it 3 or 4?) is completed. I wouldn't hold your breath for that one, though...... methinks the release target is late 2005 or 2006
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@ vyper *cough* looks at the Galactic Federation thread... *cough*
edit: oops was talkin to vyper
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About the fact that we aren't close to sci-fi there should be much to be said...
Note that your blamed MS is currently researching with success stuff like advanced machine interaction (with a cam or even better, stereo cams and a microphone the computer will learn from human voice, gestures and so on and act properly... Someone remembers Star Trek i'm sure), "light" human/machine integration (not chips underskin but rather using the skin itself as a power and communication bus, patented a couple of weeks ago) and so on...
Basically those who survived the New Economy bubble are developing to commercial feasibility most of the prototype stuff shown in the late 90's... And if the various space agencies will finally collaborate maybe mars won't be so far...
Going over more experimental stuff scientists have been able to send subatomic particles faster than lightspeed...
Now, maybe with some time and the rising cost of oil (all hail GWB for that...) cold fusion will be an interesting topic again...
Finally, things doesm't appear suddenly so we get used to them... But 20 years ago things like the actual knowledge level about DNA (not to mention the staminal cells not sure about how it's written in english) was more akin to SCI-FI than reality...
Hell, in 2001 Space Odissey Kubrick showed the video phones as big as a TV, now you have them as portable devices inside your cell phones...
Getting back on topic, the gaming industry is getting concentrated in few hands, and really conservative ones... Like in holliwood games are getting incredibly expensive to develop and they have less economic potential (in most cases) than movies...
Personally i'm watching very closely Strategy First, if they screw up Jagged Alliance i'll gut them alive...
About Starlancer, it was more of an unofficial Wing Commander than something akin FS... Look at the creators and you'll get the names...
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Originally posted by Zarax
About Starlancer, it was more of an unofficial Wing Commander than something akin FS... Look at the creators and you'll get the names...
yeah, i know, the roberts guys..
the fact being, that there hasn't /been/ anything close to freespace ever since it was made..
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You're right Turnsky, that's why i think someone should dump the idiotics consoles... They are ruining the PC environment...
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Originally posted by Zarax
You're right Turnsky, that's why i think someone should dump the idiotics consoles... They are ruining the PC environment...
don't be too harsh on consoles, they can be quite good depending on the game..
the problem being is the developers/producers for such things, and the target demographic.. pre-teens and teenagers for the most part. and the dumbing down of complex games to suit that demographic.. and most of these people have ADD and a shorter attention span than that of a gnat ;)
and when they're converted to PC, the results can vary...
a dual development schedule between a PC and a console is usually a very good idea, KOTOR is testiment to that.
another prime example of the problems with Console->PC conversions, is Halo... it's good on Console, but it has astronomical requirements on PC.
personally i think Space sims will make a comeback, since we're receiving a glut of FPS's on the market.. good or bad.
we only need a space sim to define the genre once again, then it may revive it all over again..
that said, i want more complex, in-depth games, with a kickass story, dammit!
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that said, i want more complex, in-depth games, with a kickass story, dammit!
I'am waiting that too.
don't be too harsh on consoles, they can be quite good depending on the game
There is some awesome games in console like Ninja Gaiden etc.
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Well about...oh....5-6 years ago there was the RPG genre which had died a solid death. No new significant games were coming out and people legitimately through that the genre had died. It came back with a vengance...now I suspect that the space-sim genre will never come back quite like that but I am hoping for a small rennaisance.
There has been mention of EA "going back to its roots" and that could mean another Wing Commander game. The other point is that no significant space combat has come out since 1999 with the release of FreeSpace 2. StarLancer came out at the same time and FreeLancer is not what I'd call a space combat game (not to mention the fact that the mouse thing is still somewhat annoying in comparison).
Anyone who thinks that the joystick and buttons are too complex is kidding themselves and cheating themselves out of a game. Simple fact is that IL-2 Forgotten Battles and LOMAC have tons of buttons, radar modes, convergence settings, jammers, warning recievers, manual and automatic landing gear settings, radiator/cowl flap settings, supercharger settings....need I go on. FreeSpace 2 feels simple in comparison when I come back to it. All you need to know for controls is: Fire guns, Fire missiles, afterburner, target, change gun and change missile. The rest is superflouous and something you can learn later on. Its easy and accessible and it died because stupid marketing by people at Interplay killed it and the genre. They were worried about a conflict between the mediocre Trek combat game they had coming out and FreeSpace of all things...
But hey...we got our revenge. It took a little while but they have faded from the face of the gaming industry. I think we can all guess that its the same practicies that killed FreeSpace 2 and the best space-sim on the market that ultimately destroyed the company. Too bad we still have to suffer for it...
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Of course there are people who enjoyed both games without joystick :rolleyes:
I hate people who say space sims are too complicated, and then go play flight simultators which are by far the most complicated games ever to be released, and even those you just need to learn for a while longer.
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We are suffering Ice? While i would like to see our community grow, i tend to think of the people here as more the Elite Lucky. We've been privledged to own a copy of FS2, and for pleasure we expand on something we know. We do this because we love it, even if i tell you i hate fredding, i must love it, or i wouldn't keep doing it. Look at everything that we have accomplished in this community. We won't even discuss the SCP. ;) If this is suffering, keep me in torture for a while, cause i am loving it.
In a way it's good that FS3 was never released i think, because as castor said, there is nothing left to ignite the imagination. Rediscovering our home planet has truly opened the doors of imagination for us, and i think that once we had all of the answers that FS3 represented, it would have closed many possibilities as being infeasible.
I like this suffering. :)
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Masochism is a strange thing, no? ;)
I agree wholeheartedly, ShadowWolf :nod:
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I agree with ShadowWolf :)
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Originally posted by IceFire
Well about...oh....5-6 years ago there was the RPG genre which had died a solid death. No new significant games were coming out and people legitimately through that the genre had died. It came back with a vengance...now I suspect that the space-sim genre will never come back quite like that but I am hoping for a small rennaisance.
There has been mention of EA "going back to its roots" and that could mean another Wing Commander game. The other point is that no significant space combat has come out since 1999 with the release of FreeSpace 2. StarLancer came out at the same time and FreeLancer is not what I'd call a space combat game (not to mention the fact that the mouse thing is still somewhat annoying in comparison).
Anyone who thinks that the joystick and buttons are too complex is kidding themselves and cheating themselves out of a game. Simple fact is that IL-2 Forgotten Battles and LOMAC have tons of buttons, radar modes, convergence settings, jammers, warning recievers, manual and automatic landing gear settings, radiator/cowl flap settings, supercharger settings....need I go on. FreeSpace 2 feels simple in comparison when I come back to it. All you need to know for controls is: Fire guns, Fire missiles, afterburner, target, change gun and change missile. The rest is superflouous and something you can learn later on. Its easy and accessible and it died because stupid marketing by people at Interplay killed it and the genre. They were worried about a conflict between the mediocre Trek combat game they had coming out and FreeSpace of all things...
But hey...we got our revenge. It took a little while but they have faded from the face of the gaming industry. I think we can all guess that its the same practicies that killed FreeSpace 2 and the best space-sim on the market that ultimately destroyed the company. Too bad we still have to suffer for it...
:nod:
I always regarded FS as an arcade game, not a sim. That's why I bought it in the first place (based on a demo) - it was simple to play, yet fun. As such, it would easily work on a console - just look at the Starfox/Starwing games for proof of the basic concept.
At the mo, the only hope I can see is if there are Star Wars tie-ins that are both good and popular - that'd do a big job in opening up the genre again.
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Originally posted by IceFire
(not to mention the fact that the mouse thing is still somewhat annoying in comparison).
:lol: you want to know hard?.. try playing freelancer with a wacom graphics tablet, it's a wee bit sensitive, but fun nonetheless.;)
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About the demographic stuff...
It's more an excuse for saving money... Developing an interesting story and quality games costs more... I've seen stats claiming that the average gamer is over 20 years old, not exactly an adolescent (in theory, as the coefficent of maturity is falling down and in average today's 16yo boys are quite more moronic than they were some years ago, at least IMO)... FS Community is a wonderful user elite of mature gamers (where maturity is not directly correlated to age) that i personally take as shiny example of how an user community should be...
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anyone remember using the mouse to torso twist in mechwarrior 2? now let's talk sensitive.
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I was a Mechwarrior 2 and 3 player and still occasionally i try a few shots there...
I used mouse torso twist but in most games i'm a keyb fanatic ;)
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you played mech3 online? We played at MSN, mostly in clans. Iron Horde, we were mercs, thus my IH.
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Anyone who thinks that the joystick and buttons are too complex is kidding themselves and cheating themselves out of a game. Simple fact is that IL-2 Forgotten Battles and LOMAC have tons of buttons, radar modes, convergence settings, jammers, warning recievers, manual and automatic landing gear settings, radiator/cowl flap settings, supercharger settings....need I go on. FreeSpace 2 feels simple in comparison when I come back to it. All you need to know for controls is: Fire guns, Fire missiles, afterburner, target, change gun and change missile. The rest is superflouous and something you can learn later on. Its easy and accessible and it died because stupid marketing by people at Interplay killed it and the genre. They were worried about a conflict between the mediocre Trek combat game they had coming out and FreeSpace of all things...
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Me thinks we should remind Gamespot of our existance.
Of course by saying that outloud, it automatically means no one will do anything about it.
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Why dont people at my age play space sims? (14 to 15 to 15, or anywhere in high school. for that matter)
Because:
a) The idiots of the gaming industry play crappy sports game, Wal Mart titles, or anything that just "looks cool".
b) All the extremely deep nerds and geeks play RPG's and FPS titles. No one ever bothers with Sim's anymore.
c) People just dont have a thing for sci-fi. Halo didnt feel sci-fi to kids because the ring you played on look surprisingly like Earth, and you have human buddies who just fight aliens. That was the only difference were aliens.
So, I come to the sad conclusion that all the older people play FS2 and all the younger ones dont. I only know one friend, he is 15 now, who actually bought FS1 when it came out, he friggin loved it, and then eagerly bought the expansion, which sucked, and almost didn't buy FS2 becuase of the crappy expansion, but when he bought it he just went "OMG" and bought a 70 dollar joystick. That thing has buttons coming out the wazoo.
So, there you have it. The only way to make a quality space sim, is to do it ourselves! :nod:
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Bah, the real RPGs died shortly after FS2...
What you have now is mostly arcade/rpg "hybrids" and sloppy CRPGs...
The big hitters are sport games and FPS plus some arcade racing sims like NfS...
The RTS genre is going on replicating the same old mix with new graphics and with that we've covered most of the gaming industry...
And oh, i almost forgot the worst of them all: Movie "inspired" games... There's nothing as bad as them...
@ShadowWolf_IH: I played MW3 before getting broadband... Anyways, abandonware rulez!
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
anyone remember using the mouse to torso twist in mechwarrior 2? now let's talk sensitive.
I used my joystick POV hat to do that, actually........
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I just emailed that gamespot employee.. he responded in under 10 minutes
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
i think alot of it has to do with multiplayability. lag shooting is a ***** in space. Look at M$, they delved into mechwarrior and took a great series and trashed it, then freelancer, which is a good game, but not a great game. Star wars is star wars, and we were all riding high on the legend of star wars when we started playing these games, but the newer movies are lacking in the magic, and i think that is carrying over into the entire genre. The two big names are faltering, those being star wars and wing commander. Even then think about M$ venture before freelancer....starlancer. To be honest i found it to be a second rate rip off of fs1. It came out same time as fs2 iirc, and let's face it, fs2 smokes it. So what are your choices.....choose a sucky game from a company you know, or take a chance with a company you don't know? Not many people are willing to take a chance with 50 bucks. The only reason i own starlancer is that i bought it used for $1.99, at that price it's not so bad, but would i ever pay as much for it as i would for fs1? not in a million years.
The genre of the space combat sim is dying, We need a good game with a good advertising campaign. Freespace never got the billing it deserved. If it had, we might be playing fs3, instead of having our guys make it for us. Wait a minute...i like the fact that they are doing what we want them to do.
I think that in the end a number of factors can be counted as reasons for the decline of the space sim, not least of all is what i call the Post Millenial Freefall. Think about it, the year 2000 was always an invisible barrier between science fiction and science fact. We could always look to that barrier as the future, and dream of that future. We are now on this side of it, and nothing has changed. We were supposed to cross into sci fi, and we haven't. Space sim fans in today's world are probably the closest to "The Lost Generation" that there has been. We have no war to fight, save that war that we create ourselves.
Dude. :eek: You should be a writer.
Hmmm.... http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/gamespotting/gamespottingfaq.html
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I remember another great game that got "freespaced" (ie, the parent company buried it) back in 1992. It was called Star Control 2. The sound was WAY, WAY ahead of it's time (it used MOD's instead of crappy synthesized sound).
I think that the space-sim industry really needs a savior. I think FSO might just be that savior.
The RTS genre is going on replicating the same old mix with new graphics and with that we've covered most of the gaming industry...
The FPS genre is doing that a lot too. Doom 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein are two good examples.
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I would normally think about it, but i need to feel something for my subject, i feel a great deal for the future combat sims...ie mechwarrior type games, and space combat sims, most notably star wars and fs. Most games just don't inspire me. On the other hand, i also deal mostly with my opinion, and not fact.
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For those that plays 4X Games i suggest Galactic Civilizations, it's a quite nice game...
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
We are suffering Ice? While i would like to see our community grow, i tend to think of the people here as more the Elite Lucky. We've been privledged to own a copy of FS2, and for pleasure we expand on something we know. We do this because we love it, even if i tell you i hate fredding, i must love it, or i wouldn't keep doing it. Look at everything that we have accomplished in this community. We won't even discuss the SCP. ;) If this is suffering, keep me in torture for a while, cause i am loving it.
In a way it's good that FS3 was never released i think, because as castor said, there is nothing left to ignite the imagination. Rediscovering our home planet has truly opened the doors of imagination for us, and i think that once we had all of the answers that FS3 represented, it would have closed many possibilities as being infeasible.
I like this suffering. :)
...Amen.
This prayer is the thing that mannaggers, company-sharks and the darn owners of the industry lakc: love and passion
These people are in love with making money, and once they found out making computer games was such a hit they leeched onto it a sucked it dry of life.
Now they kill this form of media in the same manner they have done with movies and books....substandard mass services for the desenitised submoral immature masses.
(No I'm not a closet commie, I'm a real commy - a reformed one who knows that a socialist support is the most a human can offer another without taking his freedom or raising a dictator)
Gaming in the early 90' was a hobby a (at least in Hungary) a privilage of a few weirdos, who had the Imagination to immerse themselves in some simulation.
A game is always walking a rope since a thousand little factors determine wheter it can entertain - and bring catharsis.
The early PCs hadn't had the resources or the interface to provide the gamer with much - so they were simple. However they could still immerse.
As the proccessing power increased the games could incorporate more and more elemets - until they reached the limits of the interface.
Then games started to once agin get simplifies 'cause that's the only way they could contain more elements...
Than the interface (...or the gamers' integration :D ) caught up and the simulation once again became complex...
This thing will forever go on in this business, however...:
That's not the problem.
The problem as I mentioned above is the actual lack of valid content. You're given your daily dose of a game like your sode to go with your lunch....
What the gamers have to do to make a turnover is pour their heart into the devlopers and once again fills our medium with passion.
Games like Civilisation, Pirates seemed like simple child games, but they offered an unprecedented immersion into phenomenons no one could live through earlier.
Spacesims offerred the thrill of a dogfight for the common soul...
Games are more than a waste of money, or an otaku trap - they're a channel for learning about life, maybe there is something to this whole stuff Fred Gallagher makes Large prant about...
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The only main problems I can find with Freelancer is that the AI is poorly developed and that it lacks proper flight controls, the good side to Freelancer is that everything is moddable which allows me to make my own system and populate it with over 200 NPC's (randomly generated). Also that and choose whether I want all the factions to be at war with each other.
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Part of the problem is the simple question of 'atmosphere', when you played Freespace, you really were a pilot fighting a last desperate battle against the Lucifer, you felt like you were acting out a movie. In freelancer, it would be a somewhat long and boring movie :(
I don't know whether it is simply because I am getting older, but games don't draw me into them like they used to. But I still enjoy some older games, Dungeon Keeper 2 was so enjoyable that I, about a week ago, wrote up a massive document about what could be added to the game these to make it up to date without losing the original playability.
My own opinion is to make writers code on very basic systems, relearn the art of optimisation and maintaining interest by using gameplay, not eye candy. Then, once the main code is in place and running well, let them have their toys back to add the extra polish for faster computers ;)
Though, of course, no doubt several programmers would disagree ;)
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Originally posted by Kazan
I just emailed that gamespot employee.. he responded in under 10 minutes
what'd he say?
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i have to agree with flipside on part of his statement. I've always said that one of the big things wrong with the new star wars was that there was a bit TOO much eye candy. So much that you get lost looking at it and end up losing the focus of the scene....or what the focus should be. Eye candy is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong, but for me one of the most memorable moments in the original star wars was when the falcon left Mos Eisley. The simplicity involved of the belly gun firing and then the dramatic assent into the air. I don't know why, but it was magical for me. The costumes were simpler in design, more functional than eye catching. That's where alot of new games are faltering i think, playability vs eye candy. No to mention the hurried feeling to them. When i first played Starlancer i knew that they hurried on the project, same with freelancer. Get it out before christmas. They should have been more worried about the game itself, it had the potential to be a great game, instead it feels rushed and almost unfinished. If there is one reason i like our mods, it's the simple fact that we don't put a deadline on them, when we see something that can be better, we make it better, because we have time. Look at the rushed feeling of other games.....mechwarrior 3 Pirate's moon, or Mechwarrior 4, or even mechcommander 2 to some extent. The playability suffers so that we can "have it in the stores by christmas season."
I think that has done more to kill the genre than almsot anything else. So many space combat sims have come out that sucked, because they had a weak storyline to begin with, and then they weakened themselves further by placing time restrictions and saying "that's good enough." I had one thing i lived by when i was working construction....how would i build this if i was building it for my mom? Go ahead and laugh, but let's face it, if building that wall the way it got built wasn't something you would do in your mom's house, it's something that you shouldn't do in someone else's, because it isn't right, it just looks right. Know what i mean?
I love eye candy, but it should be dessert, the story and missions should be the meal.
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Originally posted by Sandwich
Dude. :eek: You should be a writer.
:nod:
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ShadowWolf_IH :yes:
I don't get why companies hurry projects, I mean look at Blizzard for example, every game they launch is an instant success and you don't see them releasing a game before it's done. Warcraft III alone took years to program, design, etc...
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I agree fully with the things some of you guys say especially with ShadowWolf. When Mike Kulas annouced that there defently won't be a FS3 back in the those days when the FS comunity was most active, i think it felt like a virtual blow to the face for every FS fan around the world. BUt as the time went and as HLP steadily grew i felt more confident about the future and didn't think more about FS3.
And about the Space Sim genre, it will eventually die out, i think the only thing i vould save it is that scientists at NASA can prove that there really is life out there somewhere in our universe, a measly litle sign vould be sufficent to boost the space sim genre back on tracks.