-
is this great game genre that made us love pcs and buy them back in the 90s dead ?
i dont see 100s of multi player ships lunching from a mother ship to attack
the invading fleets .. on new high resolution graphics engine ..
while 100s of car racing and fps games are being made every year
were did the amazing space combat sim games went to ? and why?
just because free lancer game failed? F.E.A.R failed to sell online
but they didnt stop and made the game free :hopping:
-
Yes, I'm afraid they are.
-
I know it's not REALLY a modern space sim, but I really consider the SCP to be the modern continuation of the genre. I mean, it has the graphics and performance to fit the bill.
-
I think they're all to afraid to try to beat FS/FS2. :p But seriously, I agree with you. I'm hoping for more space movies and games to be released. It's not what the larger portion of the public want at the moment I guess. Also, the Wii, Xbox360 and PS3 are rocking the electronic world, and all people want are FPS, racing games and horror related junk. It comes in waves with movies, so I hope it's the same with games. For now, FSO will do the job just fine for me. :)
-
I think PC games that aren't MMOs are pretty much dead.
Almost any game shop is walls and walls of console games and like a small rusted shelf of PC games. Sad really.
-
Sad indeed... Only thing to do is support the games and hope that more better ones will come out.
-
there are some new space shooters from 2008 IIRC... anyways they are like :sigh:
and what happened with freelancer 2?? I read somewhere it is a dead project now..
-
Quote from another site about Freelancer 2:
Pistol reports that a neat site called Such Things That Never Was has run an article about the long-cancelled FreeLancer 2 project. Development on FL2 went on for quite a while, and included several Wing Commander veterans. We actually get regular e-mails asking for information about this game, thanks to what we thought was an obvious April Fools joke update. They say:
Quote:
At the time of Digital Anvil's closing, the company was working on two Xbox 360 titles, one of which was dubbed with the codename Project Lonestar (the other, Project Enwor, I'll go into at length at a later date) but also known by the name of Freelancer 2. I have not played much of the original, so forgive me that I cannot compare the sequel to the original. The player would have again been in the shoes of Edison Trent as he attempted to find out the truth about the mystery of the space station disaster that Trent survived whilst alluding some shadowy groups.
-
I'd rather see Starlancer 2 then Freelancer 2...
Freelancer 1 bored me to death.
edit: derp
-
Um. What.
Freespace 2 is already out.
This is a forum for it.
I think you probably meant Freelancer?
-
I'd rather see Starlancer 2 then Freespace 2...
Freespace 1 bored me to death.
Um. What.
Freespace 2 is already out.
This is a forum for it.
I think you probably meant Freelancer?
Dem's fightin' wurds 'round here, spewn!
-
Blargh, I meant Freelancer of course.
I've been typing the word Freespace so much these days that it's become muscle memory.
-
The "commercial" space-sim is pretty much dead. ("Pretty much" meaning you still get the occasional fluke release like X3, but mostly only rare low quality shooter style games in space)
The "genre" however is pretty much more alive than it ever was, if you take just a moment to look at the site you are on ;)
Been playing more Freespace this year so far than any other game... and i'm anticipating FS campaigns like BWO or Blue Planet:War in Heaven much more than any commercial game as well lol.
-
on the downside of that... If new space sims came out perhaps the beauty that is the FSO will die out. :[
-
on the downside of that... If new space sims came out perhaps the beauty that is the FSO will die out. :[
At this point it's rather likely that they won't be able to compete.
Just look at all the other game "remakes" that have come out lately... pretty much across the board gameplay was dumbed for the console crowd lol.
Along these lines... i am really glad that we won't see "Freespace 3 for XBox360 and PS3... oh yeah we'll port it to the PC too - maybe - but you better have a gamepad! :P".
-
There's also the fact the FSO already has a wealth of material available for it in the form of Mods and Upgrades. As Will Wright once said, something that will keep a fan-base interested in a game for a long period of time is the ability to create their own content, so whilst other games may flare into existence, the obsession with protecting IP in many companies means that flexibility is limited, also the tools available to console oriented games tend to also be limited.
This gives FSO a longevity that will be difficult to match from a company perspective, so whilst it may be outshined from time to time, after that game has faded, FSO will still be there, evolving and changing to suit the times.
-
It's not completely dead.
There's still MMO's like Eve Online, though I guess those might not count as space sims for some people.
There's also the Egosoft and their X series of space trading and combat sims, even if they do suffer from a bit of "jack of all trades master of none" syndrome.
-
Build.Trade.Fight.Think.Sit in the middle of nowhere at 10x acceleration for hours on end ;)
-
EVE Online is middle management that just happens to occur in space.
-
Build.Trade.Fight.Think.Sit in the middle of nowhere at 10x acceleration for hours on end ;)
Hey, you become thankful for all that idle flying time later on.
Heck, in my old X3 Reunion save I barely even used time acceleration anymore. I had so many assets all around the universe I spent much of my flying time flying in autopilot doing all the micro-management needed to keep everything running at peak efficiency.
That and I spent a lot of it blowing up people I didn't like with really big ships. :lol:
-
:lol:
To be honest, I have Terran Conflict, and it's a very enjoyable game in my opinion, though it wouldn't appeal to people who don't enjoy that micromanagement, been playing the series since BTF, and I'll agree there's a lot less sitting around waiting in the newer versions :)
-
:lol:
To be honest, I have Terran Conflict, and it's a very enjoyable game in my opinion, though it wouldn't appeal to people who don't enjoy that micromanagement, been playing the series since BTF, and I'll agree there's a lot less sitting around waiting in the newer versions :)
I played the X games too up to Terran Conflict and yeah they are somewhat enjoyable. My problem with them is that, while they offer a decent enough - although quite repetitive - open world with trade opportunities and random combat encounters...... someone seriously needs to whack them over the head, make them sit down and try to at least rudimentary make them understand what the words "storyline" and "mission design" actually mean.
As far as Storyline/Mission design go, X3 has always been sorta the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" aquivalent of computer gaming.... half the time your are outright disgusted and the other half you are wondering if someone really CAN be THAT incompetent or whether it's so bad on purpouse and trying to be amusing by setting a new kind of record of how abysmal games can be.
And no i'm not exaggerating... if anything i'm understating.
X2/X3 is pretty much redefining what "trashy" reallly means as far as story and missions go... and right afterwards it's trying to prove that there is no bottom to the concept of "abysmal".
The only way to get any kind of enjoyment out of it - for me anyways - was to pretty much to pretend neither story or missions exist and rather concentrate on the trading/building/random fighting part... until you get bored and/or realize that there really is no purpouse to having a huge empire other than earning more money and build a bigger trading/production empire.... and no purpouse to having a fleet of ships other than having it look pretty because the AI can't handle fleet engagements with 2 or more friendly capital ships without shooting itself in the foot (literally, friendly fire is several orders of magnitudes more deadly than enemy fire as far as X3 capital ship combat goes lol.).
Trade. Fight. Build. Think. In a way, X indeed allows you to do everything you ever wanted to do in a space-sim game... the problem is that at the same time it's trying very hard to make everything as unenjoyable as possible lol.
-
Could give us some examples of said horrendous story telling? I never got past the first part of X2 (whats up with that terrible control scheme/layout?) so I wouldn't know.
-
I'll agree there are some annoying bugs in the game, one of the most being that the Dolphin Hauler, one of the most expensive trade ships in the game, tends to crash into things and explode if you are in the same system whilst it's trying to dock.
As for the storyline, also agreed, it's pretty fragmented, part of the problem with open-ended games is that it tries to account for every eventuality, which was especially apparent in X3, where they actually had to 'loan' you ships to do missions in, because the game couldn't be sure you wouldn't be fighting a couple of Khaak Clusters with a fleet of Battleships. Terran Conflict is a little better in that respect, but still fractured, but there are multiple storylines you can choose from, but you are still left, at the end of the day with that 'what now?' feeling. No-ones ever really been successfully in creating a Universe that continues to evolve outside some 'scripted' definition. Though, perhaps one day, it might be fun to try.
I'd love to see a game that combined open-ended features with RTS features, so that, if relationships drop between two factors, the factors actually properly go into war mode against each other, launching attacks, building fleets, claiming territory etc, with the player having some, but not total influence and choice between their actions.
I won't even touch the 'I need new underwear' walking animation in X2 ;)
-
Could give us some examples of said horrendous story telling? I never got past the first part of X2 (whats up with that terrible control scheme/layout?) so I wouldn't know.
Well, the problem was, partly, that a lot of the storyline missions were completely unaffected by your own in-game efforts, you could, more or less, start the game, complete the storyline and then actually start playing the game as intended, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of the game engine ;)
-
Space-Sims are only sleeping ;)
There will be awake again sometime :)
And there are still space-simulations every year from russia. Like the Tarr Chronicles, Tomorrow War, Enosta etc.. Sure, there only offer elements we even seen in older games like Privateer or FreeSpace 10-15 years ago, but it's better than nothing.
My hope is Elite IV and that it can reinitiate this genre, again, like in the 90s. I still believe in it :D
my best female friend is studiing game-producing (she is a big freespace fan), maybe she will create a space-sim for us, in future, too :D
-
This has a bit of potential, I think. (http://us.jumpgateevolution.com)
-
This has a bit of potential, I think. (http://us.jumpgateevolution.com)
Depends... it's an MMO and that has me vary.
MMOs have that tendency to attempt substitute content and gameplay with much easier and cheaper to design repetition and "work" for rewards.
(i.e. the famous "carrot on a stick" that makes players jump through the silliest hoops end on end.)
Not saying jumpgate will fall into the same trap necessarily... just that MMOs have that "strong tendency" in general ;) lol.
As far as X3 storytelling and missions go... it was pretty much degraded to an intergalactic scavanger hunt with the occasional skirmish vs. a squadron of enemies that you could kill in your sleep and usually it ended before it got anywhere halfway interesting. I.e. pretty much 90% of the story was the devs making up Bulls**t reasons why you had to find Character X on this side of the universe so he could tell you another b***** reason to find character Y in another corner of the map.
The one moment that sent me into a giggling fit was in X3... as it showed you a cutscene with your ship following a bad guy into a tight tunnel within an asteroid. Problem: I was flying an M1 Battleship at the time that was about 10 times larger than said tunnel.... didn't end well ;) The game of course didn't care about your ship size and executed the cutscene with mindless abandon showing my "lumbering" battleship suddenly nimbly dodging and weaving behind the bad guys fighter (lol) ... until it well, kinda didn't fit into the tunnel ;). Still, hilarious lol.
But back to the story itself: X stories were pretty much all designed around being beatable with a cheapo ship and provided zero challenge even when using a cheapo ship. X3: Terran Conflict tried to offer a bit more challenge at least but never went beyond absolutely bland generic mission design either.. and worse, ended up introducing the need to pointlessly "grind (i.e. perform mindless repetitive tasks at nauseum)" for money and resources as a way to keep the player busy and draw out the storyline, a practice you would usually only find in MMOs. Of course in X3 as an offline game that would translate into using SETA (time compression) for 24-72 hours of real time while your automated factories made money that otherwise would literally take weeks of mindless repetition to accrue... but still... that's "gameplay"? seriously ? ;)
That pretty much sums up my X experiences: Early excitement at the possibilities followed by utter disbelief that they want to sell this kinda crap as worthwhile "gameplay" lol ;)
To illustrate the point... let's assume the final moments of the final mission of the X3 Terran Storyarc would happen in Freespace, it would go something like this:
Alpha1: Aright so why are we here? Because a scientist made the Xenon mothership/factoryship mad, that was peacefully helping these settlers before right?
Command: Right! We are here to protect the Settlers against this horrible threath. We ar...
Alpha1: Well this kinda sucks! There could have been civil war with the Terrans and the Commonwealth.... or a Xenon Invasion! But this ?! Some looney scientist messed with a poor friendly Xenon mothership and we come to repair it ? There wasn't even a single cool battle yet for christs sake! i mea...
Command: Shut up Alpha1!!! We have to get there immidiately and fix it before it can destroy us all! Form up and protect the fleet at all cost! We must prevail!
Alpha1: Aright aright, i see it, is it this huge big thing in the distance ? Gee that will take ages till we get there...... what's it doing there anyways? its kinda flying in random circles like its drunk ?
Command: Incoming Xenon Fighters! Protect the Fleet at all cost we mus...
Alpha1: (/taps missile hotkey a few times .. /watches a small pathetic Xenon squadron explode in the distance)
Command: Protect the Flagship! They must not get through! We...
Alpha1: Err Command? They already dead.
Command: What ?
Alpha1: They are dead, few minutes ago.
Command: Shut up Alpha1! This is serious! Lifes are in danger.
Alpha1: yeah yeah. Are we there yet?
Command: We must reach the Xenon Mothership at all cost! Protect the Fleet...
Alpha1: /sighs Protect it ... from what ?
Command: From the Xenons! Aren't you paying attention!!!
Alpha1: Xenons? Where?
Command: Well uh there is the huge Mothership back there!!!
Alpha1: Are we there yet?
Command: /glares
Alpha1: /twiddles thumbs
/Fleet finally arrives at the Xenon Mothership that is still flying drunk circles
Alpha1: Mh so why isn't it shooting at us ?
Command: Incoming Xenon Fighters!!!
Alpha1: /Tap/Tap ... eh yeah they not even trying eh?
Command: Protect the Flagship!!! We must survive! We must stop the Xenon threath!
Alpha1: It's still not firing... is there even someone aboard?
Command: All ships! Fire on the Mothership! Protect the Fleet! we must lower its Shields to allow our Marines to board it!!! All weapons lock on and FIRE!
Alpha1: Mhhh it's still not firing back...
Command: Just a little longer! Hold on and we will prevail! Do not let up! We must...
Alpha1: Geee /boring /jumps out!
Command: Where did Alpha1 go!?!? Ah crap!... aright aright we won! we boarded the Xenon! Alpha1? Hello!? come back please! we won! we must celebrate our victory! Alpha1?
ah yeah... something along these lines. Now that was actually more fun typing than playing the mission lol. And no i'm not kidding.. i really did get bored and the marines kinda were bugged and never made it aboard.... but as i jumped out the mission completed anyways. So basically i killed a few Xenon Fighters and watched a small Terran Fleet abuse a quite helpless Xenon mothership that never fired a shot. Bravo. How is that for a climax ?;) I don't really think player interaction would have been required at all to finish that mission... and previous X games were sadly similarily "challenging" lol.
-
Yeah, that made me wonder about that mission as well...
Funny thing was, I used a cheat script to generate one of them, and it appears they forgot to add the guns, once I'd added a bunch of weapons to it, it could pulverise anything that was silly enough to get directly in front of it
-
Yeah, that made me wonder about that mission as well...
Funny thing was, I used a cheat script to generate one of them, and it appears they forgot to add the guns, once I'd added a bunch of weapons to it, it could pulverise anything that was silly enough to get directly in front of it
Well in previous games they went out of their way to remove any kind of challenge at all... so it might as well have been on purpouse.
And the amount of fighters in the mission was simply way below "pathetic" as well lol ;)
-
X did not impress me either.
I would expect that there will still be grinding in Jumpgate, but surely it will be more bearable when you're not just watching your craft take gentlemanly turns at kicking each other's shins.
Basically I saw it and thought "this is how Eve should've been". Of course, only time will tell. The atmosphere of the forums at the moment is disturbingly League of Legends-esque, in that everyone is convinced the game is never going to be released.
(It also just occurred to me that these were my first posts on this account. This is actually a re-register and I totally didn't come here just to pimp Jumpgate >.>)
-
Hehe great stories there :yes:
Seems like I didn't miss out on much awesome :lol:
-
X did not impress me either.
I would expect that there will still be grinding in Jumpgate, but surely it will be more bearable when you're not just watching your craft take gentlemanly turns at kicking each other's shins.
Basically I saw it and thought "this is how Eve should've been". Of course, only time will tell. The atmosphere of the forums at the moment is disturbingly League of Legends-esque, in that everyone is convinced the game is never going to be released.
(It also just occurred to me that these were my first posts on this account. This is actually a re-register and I totally didn't come here just to pimp Jumpgate >.>)
What was your other name?
-
I don't have much faith in MMOs anymore.
A lot of people are going to hate me for stating this unpopular opinion, but I'm going to say it anyway.
I think the MMO genre the way it is now, despite being a financial success, is a huge failure in terms of game design. I've never seen a whole genre of games so bogged down by sloppy gameplay mechanics and bad design paradigms. The current models by which MMO games are designed seem broken and faulty all the way down to their core ideas and will never fulfill the full potential of MMOs as genre of video games. Nearly all of the current MMOs consist of taking the rulesets of smaller games, applying them on a scale they simply were not intended for, and trying to cover up the holes and gaps that result by throwing money at them. As long as game developers insist on sticking to these models, I don't think MMOs are going to get any better, what you see now may be as good as its going to get unless the way in which MMOs are set up gets a major overhaul.
*diverts all power to anti-flame shields*
-
Dear sir Paul
I wholehearty agree with thee.
-
I don't have much faith in MMOs anymore.
A lot of people are going to hate me for stating this unpopular opinion, but I'm going to say it anyway.
I think the MMO genre the way it is now, despite being a financial success, is a huge failure in terms of game design. I've never seen a whole genre of games so bogged down by sloppy gameplay mechanics and bad design paradigms. The current models by which MMO games are designed seem broken and faulty all the way down to their core ideas and will never fulfill the full potential of MMOs as genre of video games. Nearly all of the current MMOs consist of taking the rulesets of smaller games, applying them on a scale they simply were not intended for, and trying to cover up the holes and gaps that result by throwing money at them. As long as game developers insist on sticking to these models, I don't think MMOs are going to get any better, what you see now may be as good as its going to get unless the way in which MMOs are set up gets a major overhaul.
*diverts all power to anti-flame shields*
I wholehearty agree with the sentiment, but i disagree with your analysis.
I would argue the opposite... MMOs are too well adapted to social dynamics and basic human needs. It really "isn't" about gameplay or enjoyment, it's about need fullfillment and addiction on a very basic level, reinforced by social dynamics. It's all about how our brains reward center works. If we complete a task through hard work, our own brain sort of gives us a chemical "pat on the back" that makes us feel good. MMOs are built around this biological fact. Early levels usually introduce you to the mechanism, with easy tasks that do not take much time and rewards at a rapid pace..... the higher you go, the more gear you get.... the slower advancement becomes... but at this point.... our brain already got used to it... and craves it more and more... so the fact that "work cycles" get longer and rewards become fewer is not perceived as a bad thing.... nope, rather it increases the expectation... the craving of reward... to the point where expectation and craving become the same and is triggered by the work or "grind" itself. At higher levels you have social dynamics reinforcing the cycles. The biggest "Rewards" take a concerted coordinated effort of a group of people now ... and anyone not "putting in their time or lacking in effort" will get told off by the group.
The Result... being pretty much as close as you can get to a "virtual drug".
Real drugs work by rewiring our reward center the "quick and dirty way" and naturally hard drugs are quite dangerous for this very reason, even if you just take them once...
... but it doesn't necessarily need chemical stimuli to develop addictive or obsessive behavior. The percentage of exposed people that really do get addicted may be lower than with "real" drugs...
... yet, if you do get people to basically "condition themselves" through enough repetition, the final result is hard to distinguish, in that the drug or game becomes the focus and eventually whole purpouse in their lifes.
The basic mechanic of a typical MMO... is that of killing bigger rats with bigger swords. Gameplay remains more or less static... killing just takes longer the further you progress (and usually rats get graphically bigger with each level ;) lol) The reason this works at all is, as said above, that we are wired for progression at a very basic level... but the way MMOs abuse this basic human tendency ends up in behavior that's about as pathetic as a dog chasing a treat that you bound to their own tail until they collapse from exhaustion.
Now MMOs still are quite different as you look at specific games... and you will find exploitation of said basic human traits to different degrees and some games definitely are milder than others... yet, if you want to know what drives the masses to these games and how some games keep peoples attention and make them invest hours, weeks, months of their lives despite simplistic, even pathetic actual gameplay... then look no further than how our brain's reward center works lol.
Does everyone get addicted? Nope, of course not. Just like not everyone gets addicted to mild *real* drugs like alcohol or nicotine either. But the addictive nature of MMOs is something that the general public seems to get more and more wary about, as more studies are being conducted on the matter. It's pretty obvious at this point that at least "something" will happen eventually... in the very least a regulation concerning minors. People can argue how its everyones own responsibility how long they play as much as they want... in the case of adults i fully agree. Everyone has the right to waste their life in whatever way the want - in the case of minors however it is absolutely irresponsible to expose them to addictive mechanics of that calibre, so i would not be surprised at all, if we d see MMOs become "18+/21+ only" sometime in the next years at all.
-
@Mikes,
full agree. But thats how the most games work, not only MMOs ^^
Even the first console games back in the 80s gave you a bigger gun after harder bosses until the final level ;)
The real problem in our days is, the whole 3D graphic and special effects take so much work that there isn't much room left for emerged gameplay.
Talking about MMOs is more about how and who plays such games...
Especially WoW is an example how effective an simple design can be. And this is it all about, because it is so simple to learn and play, it's so successful. Not because it is a MMO or its loot system.
It's not completely dead.
There's still MMO's like Eve Online, though I guess those might not count as space sims for some people.
There's also the Egosoft and their X series of space trading and combat sims, even if they do suffer from a bit of "jack of all trades master of none" syndrome.
EvE is definitively not a space sim!
I tried EvE over and over again .... but i just can't chum with it ...
It really lack of a free flight mode, without this it's not really a space sim ... it has more strategic elements.
Apart from that EvE seems to be a really great game. Especially the community with their story vids like "TheFate_of_D2.mpg" or other vids show what a gigantic sim world can be build. But, you really have to like it and you have to put a lot of work over a long time into it.
I think game evolution went a long way and the mass of players simply want more than "only" flying a ship around.
I think the classic space sim genre is ... dead, so sad this is. Freespace2 was very late, Freelancer was too late.
Shooter have the same problem btw. What worked for some time now (outstanding graphic and nothing else) didn't get peoples attention any more. Game designers will and are already right now facing big problems. The needs for games a growing over the last years rapidly and i guess not everyone can keep up with.
So for some time we will see only sequels from successful games and i don't expect a big bang, a whole new game design and gameplay in near future (except Nintendo, they do in turn nothing else than invent new gameplay possibilities ;))
-
@Mikes,
full agree. But thats how the most games work, not only MMOs ^^
Even the first console games back in the 80s gave you a bigger gun after harder bosses until the final level ;)
The real problem in our days is, the whole 3D graphic and special effects take so much work that there isn't much room left for emerged gameplay.
I have to absolutely disagree with that i'm afraid.
MMOs are different for seveal reasons. Why ? MMOs charge monthly fees: meaning... it would be detrimental if the game had a definite "ending", because if a player could finish it, they naturally would be inclined to "quit" and stop paying monthly fees... and the tragedy of MMO design really is rooted in that attempt to make an "endless game".
How do you design "endless content" ? A campaign that "never" ends ? Well... you would need content that players want to repeat. So far so good... so ideally you would create content that was so much fun, that people would want to do it multiple times.... right. Then some developpers found out it doesn't really matter whether people had "fun"... as long as you gave them "goals" to "work for". And that, pretty much, was the beginning of the end.
That is the basic idea... in later titles and especially a certain very popular one... the idea got perfected by making the early game incredibly accessible and easy to start out, while slowly but steadily increasing the amount of work it takes to reach the next milestone, the next reward... until you finally arrive at max level and are stuck "raiding" every single night with a couple of dozen other people who mindlessly repeat the same dungeon literally dozen of times until everyone has their "gear".... which is required to start the same thing all over again in the next dungeon... a common notion at this point that you may hear from players is that they "have invested way too much time in their character to quit now ... (despite having long stopped to actually have fun lol ;)"
... from a purely financial perspective, considering "content cost" vs. "how long it keeps players busy" ... it's of course brilliant. It also happens to be what i would consider a perversion to the concept of "gaming".
Traditional games are enjoyable because of the gameplay and/or story the offer; while items anddifferent weapons may be present in a lot of games... the motive to constantly improve your items/weapons to infinity, certainly is not. In MMOs on the other hand... it's the very opposite. Becoming more powerful is the one real purpouse in the game, with storyline and gameplay being a secondary concern, if any at all.
If you designed Freespace around just basic weapons, it would still be a very enjoyable game - little difference even lol (Heck, in some campaigns like Sync you only had basic weapons throughout the whole campaign ;) LOL).
If you took the items out of an MMO... you would have a revolt on the forums with players demanding to put them back and threathing to "quit" (i.e. stop paying) the second you took them out. ;)
I don't know how to make it any clearer... but the foundation of most MMOs is really pretty much what i would consider the antithesis of tradtional gaming:
Instead of playing to intrinsically enjoy what you are doing... you are "enticed" to "work" for extrinsic rewards.
When you look at teaching methodology in pedagogics you may come across the notion that if you just get pupils to "work hard" for a project, they will automatically be proud of it afterwards, simply by virtue of having worked hard for it. It's a positive reinforcement cycle: Work - Reward - Feeling Good ... Willingness to work hard increases to feel good again.
While the goal of pedagogy is education... the goal of MMOs is nothing other than to make money... and abusing this reinforcement cycle the way companies did with MMOs is not just going way beyond anything that would be possible in other fields... it's pretty much also a perversion of what "entertainment" is supposed to be... or rather, it's pretty much replacing "entertainment" with "conditioning".
It certainly is not an "evolution" of the medium that is gaming... if anything it's quite malicious "exploitation".
-
I guess a cycle of addiction would would explain why developers don't even bother trying to make MMOs any better. Why bother making a better game if your players are going to keep playing even if it is badly designed?
However, I don't think MMOs should be all about a continuous addiction because that would be severe case of underachievement for the genre.
MMOs have the potential to do so much more and yet developers are just too obsessed with their money-making cycles of grind to realize that.
There is an MMO currently in development called Love that doesn't rely on a continuous repeating of tasks, but actually tries to create "endless content" through procedural generation algorithms that generate goals and alter the landscape based on the past actions of the players on a given server.
It's being developed by Eskil Steenberg, who amazingly enough is pretty much making the game all by himself. He even programmed most of the tools he's using to make the game, he has made several of his tools available for download. (not surprisingly, many of the said tools focus on speeding up several aspects of game design through procedural generation)
Love's pipeline is built around Verse, a network protocol (also developed by Eskil Steenberg) that allows models, animations, and other graphical assets to be edited in game in real time while the game is running and allows all changes to be seen by all players without requiring them to download new files seperately and restarting their games. This is what allows both the game's AI and the players to edit landscapes and other aspects of the game without interrupting gameplay.
http://www.quelsolaar.com/
http://news.quelsolaar.com/#comments38
What should be the driving force that keeps your player playing the game? A story? Wining? Cake? How about something you can be sure that every gamer likes; a game. Want to make a popular game? Here is the secret: make two. I may even make three. The reason people put up with collecting 30 scorpion tails, is because they are not really playing the scorpion killing game, they are playing the improve my stats game. People who play pokemon are not really playing a game where they are fighting it out with other pokemon trainers they are actually trying to catch them all. Even when you are playing the crappy 360 game you may actually play the Achievements game. Being able to not just decide how you do something in a game but also come up with the reasons why and make your own decision to do it, is far more powerful then hearing some female radio voice direct your to some "really important" button you need to press for some reason.
Perhaps people spend too much time making good games and too little time motivating them. This is vary hard to design because it can often mean you need to punish your players. You don't like that you are thrown out of the game when you die in counter strike, but it means you will motivate you to take your survival very seriously and heighten the tension. There is a "Diablofication" trend in the game industry right now, and while games like Diablo manages to motivate its players through loot, I think there are other ways to do it that are more interesting.
I have been working lately to create a system for self explanatory missions, by building infrastructure in to my cities. The idea is that rather then having someone explain to you what you need to do you should be able to scope it out your self and then come up with a plan. These things need to be very clear so that you can easily read the environment, but still complex enough so that you need to think. In a normal "hand made" level there is usually only one solution to a problem because the game designers want you to see all their work they have put in. If you find a way to skip the boss and go right to the next level that is a bug. In a game where the content is generated, no work is lost if the player manages to skip the end boss, and there is nothing wrong if the player can do that every now and then because it is empowering the players own creativity. However if the player always can skip the boss something is wrong. An other issue with multiple solutions is that people stop thinking and start just trying random things. In Love there is the concept of power relays that are used to power various things. A player could assume that any power relay used by the enemy is useful to the enemy in some way and therefor go about destroying them all just to be sure. This brute force approach will mean that players will never try to understand their enemy, and they will never plot anything out before hand. If they don't understand why they are doing it they are not motivated to do it.
To give you an idea of what the infrastructure system does here are a few examples: There are various power sources in the game that all have their different behaviour, wind power doesn't provide power during morning and dusk as the wind dies down, power stations can be destroyed with gun fire and reactors explode if you lead power in to them. The different power sources can be used to power various things like defence turrets, rockets and artillery, but also of manufacturing stations that provide various power ups, so if you want the enemy to stop healing them self's you may want to look in to cutting power to the health regeneration manufacturer. Another thing that you can power is a force field generator that creates a bubble you can shoot out of, but not in to. One interesting feature of the force field is that power sources don't work inside them, so by cutting power to a force field you may inadvertently power on something else. Equally you can turn on a force field in order to take out a power generator. If you find the coordinates of a teleporter (something you can do using the binoculars) you can teleport to it, but often they are mined, or under the watchful eye of a defence turret. Bombs, artillery and turrets are all controlled over radio, so by using a chaff you can temporally take them out.
All this stuff is in the game right now, its a bit rudimentary and I'm busy working on polishing it all up for GDC. Once this is done the only thing left is reworking the AI to give the cities their own intelligence so that they can not only defend themselves but also attack the players settlements. Then I guess we will have to find out if it all works. Sorry if the updates are few, but I'm hard at work, and as it turns out, one man development is slow. Not collecting 30 scorpion tails slow, not making two games slow, but close.
So I guess there is a spark of hope in the sea of piss that is the MMO industry.
-
I want to point out that spacesim games are dying because the developers try too hard to make stunning graphics instead of gameplay that isn't mind-numbingly boring.
The fundamental reason games aren't good as they were back in the days of say, FS2, is because games couldn't rely on graphics to sell. Bluntly put, everyone had dismal graphics, so everything hinged on the gameplay. Now people will just buy anything that's shiny and then complain that it isn't fun. What needs to happen is that really good graphics must become universally accessible by anyone to remove their importance, and then games will be forced to rely on gameplay once again to prove their dominance.
(It's more complicated then that, because you have to blunt the effect of artwork as well to keep that from taking over the big importance factor, but you get the point)
-
So I guess there is a spark of hope in the sea of piss that is the MMO industry.
It's certainly a quite unusual concept.
As far as sparks of hopes go however... the MMO industry is full of them.
So far there were only 2 kinds of MMO - "sparks" that i know of however: The ones that turn out to be crap once they are released and the ones that never do get released lol.
So bear with me, but i ll take any "sparks of hope" with a "grain of salt" ;)
-
As far as sparks of hopes go however... the MMO industry is full of them.
So far there were only 2 kinds of MMO - "sparks" that i know of however: The ones that turn out to be crap once they are released and the ones that never do get released lol.
Or something like Myst Online: Uru Live (http://www.mystonline.com), which was released and canceled twice by two different publishers, yet will hopefully see continued life in the not-too-distant future as a community-driven open-source project. There are still sparks of originality around, if you know where to look. ;)
As for space sims specifically, I think that any number of factors could be blamed for their decline, not least of which would be the overarching decline in PC gaming for a variety of reasons. Sadly, the fact that FS2 sold comparatively poorly despite such glowing critical acclaim probably didn't help matters.
-
What was your other name?
Freespace2pilot. I imagine the post history is terribly embarrassing.
-
So I guess there is a spark of hope in the sea of piss that is the MMO industry.
It's certainly a quite unusual concept.
As far as sparks of hopes go however... the MMO industry is full of them.
So far there were only 2 kinds of MMO - "sparks" that i know of however: The ones that turn out to be crap once they are released and the ones that never do get released lol.
So bear with me, but i ll take any "sparks of hope" with a "grain of salt" ;)
True, its hard to be optimistic with so many potentially good game seemingly shooting themselves in the foot.
Still, I would prefer to see them try and fail rather than not try at all.
I would like to see an "Austin Meyer" come in and single handedly take on the big guys and cause us to re-think the MMO genre, and Eskil seems like a good candidate to fill the role.
(if you don't know who Austin Meyer is then go do some research on a certain flight sim called X-Plane)
I think we may see the space sim genre make a bit of a comeback, especially considering there are at least three or four space MMOs currently in the works. Again, I don't like MMOs, but they could bring some attention back to the genre.
-
...Nearly all of the current MMOs consist of taking the rulesets of smaller games, applying them on a scale they simply were not intended for, and trying to cover up the holes and gaps that result by throwing money at them...
I wonder if this is why NetDevil & Codemasters unexpectedly (to me) decided to split Jumpgate Evolution into lots of relatively small servers. At fist, part of me was really disappointed to hear this, as there's something very "real" about there only being one universe. Whether or not you use the game socially to its fullest in that respect in EVE, and go traveling for hours to meet up "physically" with someone you met on a forum, the point is that one could, and that's kind of cool in the back of my mind. But maybe with JGE they're trying to, in part, create a scaled environment & avoid some of the folly that Paul's talking about.
The addiction sating that Mikes mentioned is very true regarding reward systems, but then the prospect of also, potentially showing off the spoils of ones efforts to either a boiling throng or just the occasional, very random passerby, in game -- a realm of thousands of others, really solidifies its "value" to me, sometimes more than achieving goals around NPCs or even select few online mates who've networked into a temporary bubble together. Please note the "sometimes" in that statement ;)
Much of the bashing of JGE development on the space MMO forums seems to come from either players of the Classic release who heard their favorite ship, engine, weapon, etc. got nerfed or some other change from the original they're too entrenched in to like, or just non-space sim folks with gripes like, "You mean my ship won't have turrets?" (what, do they want to control them with other joysticks or just automate them and call it ADAM because it has a stick to play with) or, "They're not lasers that travel at the speed of light and I'll have to actually estimate distances, velocities, etc.?"
As far as the game actually ever coming out, I'm pretty sure it will at this point. I'm hearing anecdotes from impartial 3rd parties checking in on the project and sitting down to it indicating it's a largely matter of routine bug cleanup at this point without anything serious.
There's also Taikodom with English text (beta?). I haven't played it much but I already don't like how the graphics get all cheesy on the space station when you're up close, no matter the settings. If I was absolutely obsessed with playing an MMO where you aim with your reticle, so far for me it would be that one, since at least the graphics far surpass the antiquated classic version of Jumpgate, overall
-
I bought Spaceforce: Rogue Universe in the hope it may be ok.
Boy, I was wrong, I believe it has now earned the nickname Spacefarce.
-
I bought Spaceforce: Rogue Universe in the hope it may be ok.
Boy, I was wrong, I believe it has now earned the nickname Spacefarce.
Ugh yeah... welcome to the club.
-
EVE Online is middle management that just happens to occur in space.
ROTFWPMSL......... :lol: :lol:
-
Dark Prophecy is looking pretty sharp, though that seems to be all that these games have going for them
-
Hi,
@Mikes,
full agree. But thats how the most games work, not only MMOs ^^
Even the first console games back in the 80s gave you a bigger gun after harder bosses until the final level ;)
I have to absolutely disagree with that i'm afraid.
MMOs are different for seveal reasons. Why ? MMOs charge monthly fees: meaning... it would be detrimental if the game had a definite "ending", because if a player could finish it, they naturally would be inclined to "quit" and stop paying monthly fees...
Yes ... off course ... but take the comparison between a single show in the cinema and the pay-tv stuff.
And while game development is getting more and more expensive and the sales are going backwards the "single show" method isn't paying off right now ...
...Then some developpers found out it doesn't really matter whether people had "fun"... as long as you gave them "goals" to "work for". And that, pretty much, was the beginning of the end.
That is the basic idea... in later titles and especially a certain very popular one... the idea got perfected by making the early game incredibly accessible and easy to start out, while slowly but steadily increasing the amount of work it takes to reach the next milestone, the next reward... until you finally arrive at max level and are stuck "raiding" every single night with a couple of dozen other people who mindlessly repeat the same dungeon literally dozen of times until everyone has their "gear".... which is required to start the same thing all over again in the next dungeon... a common notion at this point that you may hear from players is that they "have invested way too much time in their character to quit now ... (despite having long stopped to actually have fun lol ;)"
... from a purely financial perspective, considering "content cost" vs. "how long it keeps players busy" ... it's of course brilliant. It also happens to be what i would consider a perversion to the concept of "gaming".
No, they are not :p
Take Diablo 1&2 for example. You can play them offline, you can walk trough every dungeon until there is nothing left. The only thing left to do is to play it over and over again to master nightmare difficulty and higher dungeons levels ...
Or look at Counter-Strike ... this game have no Story at all .. .still people play it over years .. even with such an outdated graphic.
But - don't get me wrong. I think i'm getting your point and i can also partially agree. But not everything with an continuous gameplay is automatically = evil ;)
Surely WoW could have be design some other way, it should be by now and it is going to be. I'm currently not playing it right now and i never was a "hardcore gamer", i have now a 6 months break so far and i haven't seen the content of the first expansion at all, so this was my one year break. While this time there was really very little improvement for game design, but currently there is coming lot of different stuff (arena, mini games, and some other stuff apart the raid content).
Blizzard is trying what can be done to make sure their developers have something to eat - and the gaming community something to have some fun with it.
If we would talk about EA i wouldn't doubt a single second about their evil intentions ^^
Traditional games are enjoyable because of the gameplay and/or story the offer; while items anddifferent weapons may be present in a lot of games... the motive to constantly improve your items/weapons to infinity, certainly is not. In MMOs on the other hand... it's the very opposite. Becoming more powerful is the one real purpouse in the game, with storyline and gameplay being a secondary concern, if any at all.
i know some people which like to chat all day long ...
I think you have a too focused sight on this MMO stuff, there is definitely more then only farming 24/7.
Certainly there are people who aren't doing anything else, i would never doubt that. But that are the same people who played counterstrike 24/7 or quake in earlier days. Those people have real problems with their lives, this has nothing to do with the game itself.
The basic game design of a MMO is of course something that can be played over and over again. It have to be. There is some story part in it, but you simply can't entertain the player to infinity with new content. That would be much worser than only farming new items.
If a MMO should cost monthly or not is an other question, which should everyone answer for them self.
I'm happy that Blizzard had such amazing luck with their game, this gave them the opportunity to develop games like Starcraft2 and Diablo3 at the same time at a high quality level.
When i'm looking at EA ... i get nightmares what it would be like if they dominate the game market.
But i'm getting quite offtopic right now, sry ;)
-
Take Diablo 1&2 for example. You can play them offline, you can walk trough every dungeon until there is nothing left. The only thing left to do is to play it over and over again to master nightmare difficulty and higher dungeons levels ...
Or look at Counter-Strike ... this game have no Story at all .. .still people play it over years .. even with such an outdated graphic.
Big difference, those games actually require player skill.
Most MMORPG's do not. Just require more time investments.
-
This thread belongs in the general Gaming section at this point.
The thing about MMOs is that is their basic financial model of monthly fees means that the gameplay is always going to be more grind-intensive than other types of games. The developer has an obvious incentive to design the gameplay so that it should reward time commitment over any kind of skills.
-
The fundamental reason games aren't good as they were back in the days of say, FS2, is because games couldn't rely on graphics to sell. Bluntly put, everyone had dismal graphics, so everything hinged on the gameplay. Now people will just buy anything that's shiny and then complain that it isn't fun. What needs to happen is that really good graphics must become universally accessible by anyone to remove their importance, and then games will be forced to rely on gameplay once again to prove their dominance.
Not true; you're only able to say that because of A) rosy memories of the past, and B) you're comparing old games to the graphical powerhouses of today. Back then, games were STILL sold on graphics; one of Freespace 2's oft-touted features was it's amazing (for the time) graphics, especially it's display of nebulae. Same with Half Life and Unreal Tournament and all those old games.
Honestly, I think one of the reasons the space sim genre is dead is because, in a small way, the FSOpen community unwittingly killed it. Why would I go out and buy a new space game that is in all probability quite ****ty, when I can stay home and download a ton of new content for free?
Also, most space games these days are trying to be too much for too many people; you don't see a game like Freespace anymore, where it's just bang bang the bad guy's dead, next misson; no, almost every space game that comes out tries to have an expansive universe, free world trading, RPG elements, atmospheric transitions - and in every area, all of them fall flat because none was refined enough to actually be any FUN. Freespace 2 wasn't new or original - it just took the best of the genre and refined it to what was then perfection.
-
The genre was already dead long before FS2_Open came along.
I will agree that FS2_Open may have played some small part in keeping it dead though.
-
wasn't new or original - it just took the best of the genre and refined it to what was then perfection.
I would argue that such a statement is oversimplifying a lot...
Freespace 2 especially did innovate quite radically in several areas... aside from being utterly groundbreaking visually and technologically (for its time)....
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring a storyline that so elaborately pointed out the trappings of hubris and overconfidence as FS2 did.
I don't recall another spaceshooter that combined a large degree of the tactical depth - which granted, could already be found in Tie-Fighter - with such powerful immersiveness as FS2.
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring such an overpowering atmosphere of melancholy and hoplessness.... EVER.
Reducing the genre, or even just Freespace to "bang bang next mission" is really incredibly short sighted. And seriously ? The reason why I can not enjoy more modern games like X3 or its likes is for this very reason. They offer very little "real" well designed content. While i can see the merits of a sandbox game... all the elaborate sandboxes that we were presented with and especially the X series, with their trading opportunities and RPG elements really fall flat when you start looking for tactical depth, mission design, storyline, atmosphere or in several cases even basic combat gameplay et cetera.
If someone asks me why the space genre "could be considered dead"... then from my perspective there really is no other answer except that there wasn't a single game released after the glorydays of Freespace, Wing Commander or X-Wing/Tie-Fighter or even I-War that was even remotely matching up as far as gameplay, atmosphere and story goes. (Freelancer maybe... might be considered to match up storywise, but gameplaywise it was quite far removed from what we could consider "classic" space-sim combat gameplay). You have to keep in mind,... the "real classics" of the genre didn't just offer a very unique gameplay experience (that simply isn't there anymore in any newer game), they also carved out their niche with very unqiue and very elaborately crafted stories. X-Wing/Tie-Fighter of course had the Star-Wars bonus, Wing Commander still is the king of "story presentation" in a game even to date... there is no single modern game that even remotely can match the effort that went into Wing Commanders "presentation" back in the day... (and no, especially not CnC... it may also have life-actors... but when compared to the all around powerful integration and sheer amount that Wing Commander offered it is quite pathetic really lol) and FS2 did what WC did with its presentation through sheer atmosphere.
So yeah... it kinda is as simple as that... spacesims are dead because all the newer games really sucked in comparison. Chris Roberts was visionary... Volition was Visionary.... the people that made I-War were visionary and created such an elaborate universe as well .... and well Lucasarts had the good old Star-Trek bonus... but today we simply don't have visionaries that build whole universes with a passion and tell a story within them.... what we have today is a bunch of professionals trying to make a quick buck off whatever they think can occopuy the masses... and as shown with MMOs, it doesn't necessarily have to be fun either, s long as it keeps people busy.
Freespace wasn't so cool "just because you blew stuff up"...
Wing Commander certainly wasn't so cool "just because you "bang bang" killed some cats"...
No.. what the "old classics"... like Freespace, Wing Commander, I-War and (even tho it came with a "stock universe) X-Wing/Tie Fighter had in common was that you could really see and feel the love and passion that had gone into making them what they are... and that includes gameplay, immersion, storyline as well as attention to detail and an elaborate universe to give the action some context and meaning that goes way beyond simplistic and in my opinion frankly quite ignorant reductions like "bang bang next mission".
They don't make games like that anymore.
-
It's also a question of perception, it's like trying to drive a car with only a windscreen with current technology, it's fine as long as you are on an open road, but 3D oriented combat, such as takes place in the air or in space, really requires 3D spatial awareness, so all those dreams of skimming along the surface of a vast destroyer, hotly in pursuit of an enemy fighter that is doing the same, ducking under outcroppings, etc, is very difficult when you can't really get a feel of the size of your ship, we've all 'bounced' because we mis-interpreted distances and sizes in FS2, though, to be honest, shadowing, if implemented, will do a great deal to help this situation.
That's why there's so much debate about FOV in FS2, because, I think, people are trying to compensate for that problem. The ideal way to play a Space Sim is in something like a Hemispherical, or even Spherical imaging environment, where you can glance around at will and take stock of your environment.
That's why a lot of Space-based games now take the 'Above and Behind' approach, rather than the 'in-cockpit' one, maybe advances in the ability to place you 'inside' the game will help encourage more development in this area.
-
It's also a question of perception, it's like trying to drive a car with only a windscreen with current technology, it's fine as long as you are on an open road, but 3D oriented combat, such as takes place in the air or in space, really requires 3D spatial awareness, so all those dreams of skimming along the surface of a vast destroyer, hotly in pursuit of an enemy fighter that is doing the same, ducking under outcroppings, etc, is very difficult when you can't really get a feel of the size of your ship, we've all 'bounced' because we mis-interpreted distances and sizes in FS2, though, to be honest, shadowing, if implemented, will do a great deal to help this situation.
That's why there's so much debate about FOV in FS2, because, I think, people are trying to compensate for that problem. The ideal way to play a Space Sim is in something like a Hemispherical, or even Spherical imaging environment, where you can glance around at will and take stock of your environment.
That's why a lot of Space-based games now take the 'Above and Behind' approach, rather than the 'in-cockpit' one, maybe advances in the ability to place you 'inside' the game will help encourage more development in this area.
That's a quite unique viewpoint... but i can't say that anything you say there really has had any impact (pun;) ) on me LOL.
If anything then i prefer the 1st person perspective due greater immersiveness... i.e. a feeling of being "in the thick of things" instead of just being an observer.
I know the AI flies into capital ships for entirely different reasons... but seriously... i don't recall ever noticing any of the problems you write about there, not back in the day as i was literally running the trench in X-Wing, flying close passes on Shivan capitals or flying through Carriers landing decks in Wing Commander... nor in recent memmory either and certainly not while running the Hades/Saturn trenches in ST:Reborn or PI, nor the station tunnel run in PI... nor any of the close countless close encounters with Shivans or other capital ships either. Quite the contrary... if anything i find the 1st person makes it quite easy and convenient to perfectly time actions like the close in bomb drop and last second evasion during bombing runs LOL.
So.. eh in short... what the heck are you talking about again ?;)
And what about the countless first person shooters that get released nowadays ? Seriously... i believe... if anything, 3rd person is a way to show off a nice player character/ship model. Or i'd think that kinda was the idea as i first saw the technique in the original Tomb Raider anyways ;) lol.
-
Freespace 2 compensates for this by having very slow top speeds, slower than a moderately powerful car, and in X-Wing, you'll find you are nowhere near as close to stuff as you think you are because of the Field of View, you aren't actually skimming anything, they just use a very narrow view angle, so you think you are approaching walls sooner than you actually are.
Bear in mind that the Scorpion goes at the 'breakneck' speed of 252km/h or, about 150 mph. That's slower than a fair percentage of cars in Need for Speed. Can you imagine trying to fly something that does, say Mach 1, around 1224 Mph, near a ship in Freespace?
-
wasn't new or original - it just took the best of the genre and refined it to what was then perfection.
I would argue that such a statement is oversimplifying a lot...
I suspect UT is talking about the technical details when he says best of the genre. They really did do that. And the SCP have added most of the ones they missed since then.
-
Yikes, Exploding Topic with Great Walls of Text. :eek:
---------------
MMORPGs as they currently are resemble jobs, not games. The only way to make them fun is to move away from the current 'click-and-wait' system (see: grind) and move toward original DnD style gameplay mechanics. I.e., free-roaming world(s) (see: climb skill), actual quests, the ability to freaking kill anything (with consequences, of course), DMs, faster leveling, PERMA-DEATH.
-----
I disagree with the notion that FSO killed or helped to kill the Space Sim genre. The simple fact of the matter is that there hasn't been a single real innovation in the gameplay mechanics since Descent. Combine this with the poor quality of storylines and dialogue that seems to pervade the entire gaming industry, and you end up getting the exact same thing in worse condition (quality-wise) with every rendition.
-
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring a storyline that so elaborately pointed out the trappings of hubris and overconfidence as FS2 did.
I don't recall another spaceshooter that combined a large degree of the tactical depth - which granted, could already be found in Tie-Fighter - with such powerful immersiveness as FS2.
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring such an overpowering atmosphere of melancholy and hoplessness.... EVER.
None of these are "innovations," and most are just opinion based - there were a ton of games before Freespace that tried to do these and succeeded in one way or another. Freespace wasn't the first to try a good story, Freespace wasn't the first to have command over your wingmen...when it came out it didn't tout an awesome new feature like controlling capital ships or inter-system jumps. It was just a good game, a simple game in many respects, that took everything that came before it and refined it to a T.
I disagree with the notion that FSO killed or helped to kill the Space Sim genre. The simple fact of the matter is that there hasn't been a single real innovation in the gameplay mechanics since Descent. Combine this with the poor quality of storylines and dialogue that seems to pervade the entire gaming industry, and you end up getting the exact same thing in worse condition (quality-wise) with every rendition.
Well the poor quality of new games does have a big effect, but are you telling me you've never walked into a game store and looked at a space game, but went "Naw...I don't have $50 and I can just download something like that for Freespace"? I know I have. Look at all the "OMG NEW SPACE GAME COMING OUT TRYING TO BEAT FREESPACE" threads around here whenever a new game comes out - it just can't be helped.
-
Bear in mind that the Scorpion goes at the 'breakneck' speed of 252km/h or, about 150 mph. That's slower than a fair percentage of cars in Need for Speed. Can you imagine trying to fly something that does, say Mach 1, around 1224 Mph, near a ship in Freespace?
I thought the speed indicator showed speed in meters/second. Each unit of distance = one meter. During a constant speed flight, the numbers tick down at the same rate as the speed, per second.
Using the Scorpion example, 252 m/s * 60 seconds * 60 minutes = 907200 m/h / 1000 meters per kilometer = 907.2 km/h.
That seems to fit, to me, at least.
EDIT: shortened to make more sense.
-
Scotty is indeed correct, the speed is in meters per second, not km/hr.
-
I was going by the wiki:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/SF_Scorpion
Just checked ships.tbl, even the Manticore only does 87, where did the 200+ value come from?
-
[...], but are you telling me you've never walked into a game store and looked at a space game, but went "Naw...I don't have $50 and I can just download something like that for Freespace"? I know I have.
I never spend more than $25.00 on commercial games, anymore. I might have gone over that price... six times in the past. But every time I was disappointed, which led to my prior mentioned limit. Besides, I always decide based on demos or video footage of actual gameplay, nowadays. You just can't trust any of the advertisements.
As for choosing FS2 over a new space sim.... I suppose if it was gameplay that I was looking for in space sims, then it would be a different story. But I play them for the story. And nothing, nothing has topped FS2 (in the sci-fi genre) in the past nine years. I think it was the dialogue that won me over, the most.
-
Ok, just put a Ulysses in mission, even on full Afterburners it does 115m/s, which is :
115 * 60 = 6900 Metres per minute = 6.9 km/minute
6.9 * 60 = 414 Km per hour or (414 * 0.61) = 252.54 Mph
In other words, very roughly 1/3 of Mach1, and that's only while AB's last, other than that it does a sedate 252 Km/h or around 157 Mph or about 1/5 of Mach 1.
-
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring a storyline that so elaborately pointed out the trappings of hubris and overconfidence as FS2 did.
I don't recall another spaceshooter that combined a large degree of the tactical depth - which granted, could already be found in Tie-Fighter - with such powerful immersiveness as FS2.
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring such an overpowering atmosphere of melancholy and hoplessness.... EVER.
None of these are "innovations," and most are just opinion based - there were a ton of games before Freespace that tried to do these and succeeded in one way or another. Freespace wasn't the first to try a good story, Freespace wasn't the first to have command over your wingmen...when it came out it didn't tout an awesome new feature like controlling capital ships or inter-system jumps. It was just a good game, a simple game in many respects, that took everything that came before it and refined it to a T.
If that is your opinion, then i might as well point out in turn, that it is just that: another opinion.
... and i would further argue that with such a limited viewpoint you are essentially missing a large part, if not the very essense, of what can make games so unique and worth playing.
You might as well state that "literature" is kinda unoriginal because really... it's hardly the first time someone printed letters on white paper or released a book with a "good story".
And reducing innovation in gameplay to a mere feature list ala "command over wingmen - check; controlling capital ships - check" is just as bad... as it pretty much completely disregards the actual experience the player gets presented with.
If you apply your argumentation to Freespace Campaigns like "Transcend" you would necessarily have to conclude that it was nothing special as it just "told another story" and offered only limited gameplay compared to the FS2 main campaign... and of course, you would also completely miss the point of what makes it such an unique experience.
It's just such a shallow viewpoint to take and really doesn't do the subjects you are talking about any justice - not in my opinion anyways. ;)
-
what made both FS games great are
1) Great immersive story, well told
2) Smooth game play
3) Amazing graphics for the day
-
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring a storyline that so elaborately pointed out the trappings of hubris and overconfidence as FS2 did.
I don't recall another spaceshooter that combined a large degree of the tactical depth - which granted, could already be found in Tie-Fighter - with such powerful immersiveness as FS2.
I don't recall a spaceshooter featuring such an overpowering atmosphere of melancholy and hoplessness.... EVER.
None of these are "innovations," and most are just opinion based - there were a ton of games before Freespace that tried to do these and succeeded in one way or another. Freespace wasn't the first to try a good story, Freespace wasn't the first to have command over your wingmen...when it came out it didn't tout an awesome new feature like controlling capital ships or inter-system jumps. It was just a good game, a simple game in many respects, that took everything that came before it and refined it to a T.
If that is your opinion, then i might as well point out in turn, that it is just that: another opinion.
... and i would further argue that with such a limited viewpoint you are essentially missing a large part, if not the very essense, of what can make games so unique and worth playing.
You might as well state that "literature" is kinda unoriginal because really... it's hardly the first time someone printed letters on white paper or released a book with a "good story".
And reducing innovation in gameplay to a mere feature list ala "command over wingmen - check; controlling capital ships - check" is just as bad... as it pretty much completely disregards the actual experience the player gets presented with.
If you apply your argumentation to Freespace Campaigns like "Transcend" you would necessarily have to conclude that it was nothing special as it just "told another story" and offered only limited gameplay compared to the FS2 main campaign... and of course, you would also completely miss the point of what makes it such an unique experience.
It's just such a shallow viewpoint to take and really doesn't do the subjects you are talking about any justice - not in my opinion anyways. ;)
Mikes, sorry, but you're missing the point; stop being wrapped up in the epic ness and beauty and rose-tinted glasses of Freespace and read what I'm saying, please? I'm saying that even though Freespace did all these great things, it wasn't astoundingly innovative; name one feature that Freespace had that no other game had tried before. Don't say it had an amazing story with amazing depth, no, that's just a good story - name one technical feature that the game did that another one never did before it.
-
Ok, just put a Ulysses in mission, even on full Afterburners it does 115m/s, which is :
115 * 60 = 6900 Metres per minute = 6.9 km/minute
6.9 * 60 = 414 Km per hour or (414 * 0.61) = 252.54 Mph
In other words, very roughly 1/3 of Mach1, and that's only while AB's last, other than that it does a sedate 252 Km/h or around 157 Mph or about 1/5 of Mach 1.
bah, I can do 500,000 metres per second in I-war easy i could maybe get upto 0.8 lightspeed
-
It's a problem when you are trying to slow down to engage an enemy. Freespace and I-War shouldn't be compared IMHO, flight model and gameplay are just too different. Besides, going to 500k meters per second isn't that easy, Adv. Patcom from I-War II had about 28g of acceleration.
-
Space Simulators are dead because they require intelligence and it's in short supply.
I tried open source "Vega Strike" though it sucks really hard :(
/me is waiting for Elite on PPC ^^
-
Mikes, sorry, but you're missing the point; stop being wrapped up in the epic ness and beauty and rose-tinted glasses of Freespace and read what I'm saying, please? I'm saying that even though Freespace did all these great things, it wasn't astoundingly innovative; name one feature that Freespace had that no other game had tried before. Don't say it had an amazing story with amazing depth, no, that's just a good story - name one technical feature that the game did that another one never did before it.
I believe i did explain my viewpoint and why i disagree with your position twice now.
You claim that "Freespace just perfected" the genre... but that's not entirely true. If you had taken Wing Commander and "perfected" it... or taken "X-Wing" and perfected it... you would have gotten something entirely different than Freespace and certainly not anything that "felt" like Freespace did (also see posts above)... it also wouldn't explain why Wing Commander still reigns supreme in Presentation and Tie-Fighter arguably featured some of the best mission design ever up to even today... and that is one reason why i find it arbitrarily reductionistic to exclude an analysis of how atmosphere, immersiveness and the elements of the storyline mesh with the actual gaming experience the player gets presented with.
As said above you really couldn't take a traditional Freespace campaign and arrive at "Transcend" without quite some deal of innovation either, yet this kind of innovation naturally won't even be on your radar if you limit your thinking to some kind of "feature list". In short, sadly having to repeat myself: Your definition of "innovation" is way too narrow to do the subject any justice in my opinion and that issue really isn't limited to just Freespace, but rather concerns of how one looks at gaming in general and coincidentially this is also why sorta "calling me a Freespace fanboi" there is really not doing my argument any kind of justice either, so for the sake of keeping the discussion civil, please don't arbitrarily try to reduce it down to that either LOL ;)
-
I'm still endeavouring to get game arts to port project sylpheed to the PC. Knowing that the 10.000 votes bar has been breached :nod: negociations are still continuing (they are talking about this with square). However, should you wish to continue adding your votes, this would still help, especially as that petition is probed directly by game arts director I. Fukada.
On a side note, please remember upcomming projects like heresy war. :nod:
-
I remember people here saying that Wing Commander: Prophecy had many similarities with FreeSpace. Of course I haven't played it, so I can't say much about it.
-
Prophecy is nowhere as good as fs2
-
Prophecy is nowhere as good as fs2
As far as the series go, it depends a bit of how you look at it i think.
Gameplaywise Freespace 2 especially beats any of the Wing Commander fair and square in my eyes.
But Wing Commander, especially 3 and 4 are still the undisputed kings of "presentation" with their huge amount of video sequences featuring real actors.
They also "feel" quite different... Wing Commander mostly being a "classic" space-opera where the good guys always win in the end, while Freespace 1/2 were quite a bit darker and mysterious.
But i don't really think it matters that much which game is "better"... it's not that easy to give a definite answer with either game having it's strenghts in quite different areas either... and for any fan of the genre it's propably a crime to miss any of the Freespace, Wing-Commander, X-Wing/Tie-Fighter and even I-War games anyways. ;)
As far as Prophecy specifically goes however, i would be inclined to agree, while it's still sort of a "must" for fans of the genre, it outright sucked once you compare it to either the previous Wing Commanders or to the Freespace series lol.
-
but are you telling me you've never walked into a game store and looked at a space game, but went "Naw...I don't have $50 and I can just download something like that for Freespace"? I know I have.
I disagree completely..... not strongly but certainly completely.
I just bought a Sci Fi flight sim called Dark Star one..... and I also am looking to buy Independence War 2 ... both of these titles I would never have noticed if it wasn't for the SCP in particular after all of these years simms have been off the road map, if it wasn't for SCP I wouldn't have revisited FreeSpace but once visited I realise how old the series is and it got me looking for new Simms to play in the hopes of looking for a diamond in the rough.
Freelancer 2 died because Freelancer 1 sucked was so homogenised.
I used to be a huge Mechwarrior fan.... huge but man when MS gets their claws into something ..... they ruined it in a hurry by pushing it onto Xbox and even the pc variants... MS lost the edge that Mechwarriors 3's audio and graphics had......... the MS versions had notable improvements in the way weapons distribution was handled and Mercenaries improved some weapons balance but they lost it with the graphics...... all of it was fixable but then MS put it to rest instead of letting someone else walk with it for a while.
-
I just bought a Sci Fi flight sim called Dark Star one..... and I also am looking to buy Independence War 2 ... both of these titles I would never have noticed if it wasn't for the SCP in particular after all of these years simms have been off the road map, if it wasn't for SCP I wouldn't have revisited FreeSpace but once visited I realise how old the series is and it got me looking for new Simms to play in the hopes of looking for a diamond in the rough.
Darkstar One so got my hopes up... before its release lol ;) As a word of warning... don't expect too much other than somewhat flashy graphics.
I-War 2 on the other hand was most excellent, even tho it doesn't quite reach the brilliance of the first installment as far as gameplay and story go and propably has a bit dated graphics by now too.
-
FPS, racing games and horror related junk.
Those game genres suck.
-
Watch the trolling, Mobius.
-
Trolling? Those genres aren't great and they're also (somewhat) responsible for the death of space and flight sims.
Space and flight sims are my favorite game genres. I really dislike how stupid racing, FPS and horror games attract a lot of attention. The success of those genres marks the death of other genres.
-
Now that's a rather more fair statement.
-
Only the few dream big beyond the stars. :)
-
Ok, just put a Ulysses in mission, even on full Afterburners it does 115m/s, which is :
115 * 60 = 6900 Metres per minute = 6.9 km/minute
6.9 * 60 = 414 Km per hour or (414 * 0.61) = 252.54 Mph
In other words, very roughly 1/3 of Mach1, and that's only while AB's last, other than that it does a sedate 252 Km/h or around 157 Mph or about 1/5 of Mach 1.
bah, I can do 500,000 metres per second in I-war easy i could maybe get upto 0.8 lightspeed
You know, once upon a time I would have used a discussion like this to shamelessly promote my Velocity Mod (http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.168). Good memories... :D
What can I say? I couldn't resist the temptation for nostalgia's sake :D
-
Space games in general are not dead at all. I have found out it is the opposite that there is plenty of indie and commercial products being worked on nevermind all of the community projects and mods. I have been scouring the net and talking with developers and it is actually looking up for the space genre. I have been posting plenty of new games and mods on my site.
Like always if people know of any games/projects that I haven't got around to post something on or put into my link area please let me know and will get something documented. I know there has been a few new 4x, rts and rpg style space games being worked on.
-D1-
-
Please note that most indie and mods are based on popular genres, such as FPS games. Modding is a spread phenomenon that affects most, if not all, game genres. The fact that mods and indie games keep space sims alive doesn't necessarily mean that the genre is surviving at full strength.
-
But its better to be on life-support than six feet under.
-
You know, on the other hand if someone did a GOOD SPACE SIM now it would be wanted... though the last good space sim was damn FS2 and let's get over with this. HAWX suck.
-
Please note that most indie and mods are based on popular genres, such as FPS games. Modding is a spread phenomenon that affects most, if not all, game genres. The fact that mods and indie games keep space sims alive doesn't necessarily mean that the genre is surviving at full strength.
Yet you will be hard pressed to find community based projects that improve a game so radically, extensively and diligently, and for over about a decade now, as Freespace SCP did.
Not saying that there aren't any,... but seeing such a strong project based in the space-sim genre actually does tell us quite a bit about its lasting appeal.
-
You know, on the other hand if someone did a GOOD SPACE SIM now it would be wanted... though the last good space sim was damn FS2 and let's get over with this. HAWX suck.
Oh god I know oh god. What a waste of 3.92gb bandwidth oh god. I couldn't believe it when I took on five SU-27's with an already damaged fighter and did not get hit once. I'm not even a good pilot, the AI is just beyond ****. And what's with carrying ten thousand homing rockets on the hardest mode? I had more missiles than my plan had volume. Are we to believe in 2012 that figher planes have miniature missile-building factories in them?
And the cockpit views. I grabbed myself a MiG because I wanted the feel of the enclosed cockpit, I press my upwards hatswitch and where did the support strut go?. No matter how the cockpit is built, the canopy is still perfectly open top left and right.
Ridiculous. Another blight on Tom Clancy's name - he must have signed the wrong contract that they're sticking his name on all this adstoj.
-
sorry to bring an old post back but i guess this is a major event
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/
-
And here I thought that moving the unnecessary necro to the correct thread would help things a bit.
Protip: You should actually check whether the other topics in the forum cover the same thing, especially if they're at the top of the list.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84931.0