[Charismatic]

Freespace3 *sigh* Someone needs to apply to work for\@ Volution (Sp?). Anyone live near it?

[Turnsky]

Freespace3 *sigh* Someone needs to apply to work for\@ Volution (Sp?). Anyone live near it?

freespace 3 is an improbability, however, a spiritual successor to the freespace francise, may not be such a long shot, i think that's the best we can hope to get out of Volition for the moment. We'll see what THQ lets them do for the moment, and if they let Voltion play with PC's, as well.

[nulb0ard]

I see three reasons for the lack of space sims:
1. Space is mostly empty. Nowadays games MUST contain graphical splendour beyond compare and as space is mostly just blackness with some tiny white spots and a few bitmap-planets here and there, it's not enough for modern gamers.
2. No Messiah-title. By Messiah-title I mean an uber-popular game like Halo or Half Life 2 that raises the entire genre to spotlight. And where there is demand, there the game developers will go. Right now FPS-games are in the spotlight and probably will remain there for many years to come, with the power of Halo-, Battlefield- and Half Life-series. A Messiah-game usually reaches it's position by introducing not only stunning graphics, but whole new ideas (like HL2's physical engine or Battlefield 2's wide combat arenas, combat roles and many tactical features).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but when it comes to space sims, coming up with Whole New Ideas is hard. I mean, everything that can be invented, has been invented. Surely the graphics can be improved and all that, but new revolutionary ideas like the ability to toss around bricks and whatnot (HL2) aren't really possible in space sims.
3. The lack of joysticks. The decline of space/flight-simulators has also made joystick a rarity. Of my friends only a few own a joystick. My own stick is really old Logitech Wingman Extreme 3D, bought in the year one before two and I had actually forgotten it's existence, until my bro found it a few months ago (thank God, otherwise I'd still be playing FS2 with my trackball-mouse <.<). There are even gamers who don't even know what a joystick is.
Sorry for possibly confusing grammar, English isn't my mother tongue. I hope I made my point clear.

[Fineus]

I'd like to comment on those points - not because I disagree but because I feel like it;

1.
That's mostly true - although it's quite a shame because there's some vast room for creativity there. By definition space-sims are going to contain two things: space and space ships. Both can be vast in scale and utterly jaw-dropping in detail and splendour. Where Half Life 2 can be acclaimed for having incredible facial structures and ragdoll physics - a space sim should be able to be acclaimed for having vast planets, suns, comets and other celestial bodies of huge variety.... not to mention starships of utterly huge scale. Star Wars isn't the only entity out there that should be able to feature a 7KM long space ship. This is science fiction we're talking about - there's no good reason not to see some dyson spheres.

2.
I agree that currently there's nothing to stand up for the space-sim genre and say "I am the definition of all that is good and popular about this genre". There used to be games that held this honor... X-Wing and Tie Fighter, Wing Commander, FreeSpace. FreeLancer tried to pull it off but simply wasn't good enough. X3 has the graphics but not the gameplay.

3.
Again I agree. FPSs and RTS games are probably the most accessable games out there as you have all the controllers already and you're presumably used to using them. That said - there's no good reason why space-sims can't run well with a simple mouse/keyboard combo. Heck... FreeSpace is perfectly playable with that hardware.

[StratComm]

I see three reasons for the lack of space sims:
1. Space is mostly empty. Nowadays games MUST contain graphical splendour beyond compare and as space is mostly just blackness with some tiny white spots and a few bitmap-planets here and there, it's not enough for modern gamers.
2. No Messiah-title. By Messiah-title I mean an uber-popular game like Halo or Half Life 2 that raises the entire genre to spotlight. And where there is demand, there the game developers will go. Right now FPS-games are in the spotlight and probably will remain there for many years to come, with the power of Halo-, Battlefield- and Half Life-series. A Messiah-game usually reaches it's position by introducing not only stunning graphics, but whole new ideas (like HL2's physical engine or Battlefield 2's wide combat arenas, combat roles and many tactical features).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but when it comes to space sims, coming up with Whole New Ideas is hard. I mean, everything that can be invented, has been invented. Surely the graphics can be improved and all that, but new revolutionary ideas like the ability to toss around bricks and whatnot (HL2) aren't really possible in space sims.
3. The lack of joysticks. The decline of space/flight-simulators has also made joystick a rarity. Of my friends only a few own a joystick. My own stick is really old Logitech Wingman Extreme 3D, bought in the year one before two and I had actually forgotten it's existence, until my bro found it a few months ago (thank God, otherwise I'd still be playing FS2 with my trackball-mouse <.<). There are even gamers who don't even know what a joystick is.
Sorry for possibly confusing grammar, English isn't my mother tongue. I hope I made my point clear.

Trouble is, none of those is particularly restricted to a FPS.  1 is somewhat irrelivant, as beauty is what you make it.  Homeworld2's backgrounds are a far cry from empty, and while not realistic by any stretch of the imagination, space can certainly be made to look "cool".  2 is a matter of marketing, generally, and says more about what's the industry trend than what gamers actually want.  Plus, none of the "new ideas" are actually all that new; HL2's physics is just attempting to mimic reality a little better and the gravity gun is a cheap substitute for actually being able to pick something up and move it around with your hands without breaking out of the "walking gun" mentality.  The physics code is more robust and all, but that's got nothing to do with innovation.  Anything BF2 has going for it is just an extension of what came before.  And Halo has nothing of remotely innovative quality if you boil it down.  3 is an issue but again that's self-fulfilling.  I'd blame the lack of joysticks on the lack of fighter sims, rather than vice versa.

In short, the problem was that fighter sims were killed by a combination of bad marketing (Freespace 2) and bad games (Freelancer - it was marketed as a space fighter game but was really just a shooter in space) and the industry is too stuck in its rut right now to recover.

[Nuke]

one thing freelancer managed to pull off really good was environment. it did a very good job of making space look good. it was also fairly vast and with lots of discoveries to be made. its story, flat gameplay, and short commodities and tech supplys are what killed it. we all know how crappy the story was. at least the put forth the effort to include a story telling capability to the engine (though lacking proper mod support). by flat gameplay i mean that there wasnt much verticality to it. everything was plannar. i guess that makes it easyer for the average joe blow to play but it always annoyed me. as for the short commodities list, by the end of the story youre already at tech level 6 or 7 and the game only goes up to tech level 10. so you could play the game for a couple days after the story was done with but trading games get dull once you own everything. it might have been better if you could purchase some of the larger ships and their weapons. of if there was more tech levels. also another thing that bugged me was that there were no hi tech light ships. meaning you had to buy a heavyer ship to mount higher tech weapons. then the matter of the pirates having the best ships. least they had the balls to be innovative. but i dont consider it a true space sim, rather an attempt to market space games to the fps crowd. i think space simds should be less about aiming and shooting but more about flying. sure combat is exciting, but id rather get the kill because of good flying raher than selecting the right weapon or being in the ship with the tighter turn radius.

[Cyker]

You are very right.

One thing that Freelancer does that *no* other space sim I've played does nearly as well is de-emptify of space.

It was very but pleasantly surprising when I first played it.

See, like most games, you can see the dust-clouds and gas clouds and asteroid fields etc. from far away, and they're just your standard painted graphics.

The big surprise with Freelancer is that as you fly closer, you eventually find yourself INSIDE them, and you're like, "Woah...!". It's very cleverly done and pretty subtle.

It's not like in Freespace, or in fact every other space shooter, where the asteroid field is a firmly deliniated space, and you're either in it or not; In Freelancer it sort of... 'fades in' around you as you travel deeper into it until you're in a sort of Empire-Strikes-Back sort of situation

Freelancer had a lot of atmosphere (haha) in its environment. If the storyline immersion had been as good as TIE Fighter's and the control system sorted out a bit more (Fighters like Freespace 2, Freighters more like Homeworld or MechCommander), it would easily have been one of the best space games in living memory...

[Nuke]

if i could pick the ultimate features for a game id take freelancer's envornment, freespac's story and emersion, and of course my idea of an implementation of newtonian physics that i stated earlyer in the thread.

[Fineus]

As long as you wouldn't stick with Freelancers graphics. The game would've been much much more fun to play if it had gone the route of having "realistic" looking ships... rather than the cartoon style they went with.

[Cyker]

'eh? What do you mean?
Quality-wise, I thought the ships looked alright... the scale was a bit off (If you believe it, the Rhino freighter is only slightly larger than a Perseus!), but aside from that I thought it looked pretty good...!

Or do you mean the design of the ships? I'd agree there, espescially the freighters. Aside from the Rhino and the Dromedary they were all *BUTT UGLY*.
The fighters were okay 'tho. Certainly better than, say, the Ursa




r.e. Newtonian physics: I've decided this would be a BAD thing.
If you want Newtonian physics, pulse-based weapons are a total No No, as is Joystick control and large waves of fighters and bombers.

I played a game a while back, I think it was called Jumpgate or something like that, which was trying to be a Freespace/TIEFighter-style game, but with Newtonian physics.

It sucked.

The ship had two modes - Compensated mode, in which it handled like a classic space-sim fighter with ridiculous amounts of drift, and Free mode which was basically Elite.

In order to Not Die, you needed to play it with the ship in Free mode because in Comp mode, you'd be going too slowly to stand a chance of dodging anything - Inertia means you can't turn on a dime.

So that left Free mode - In this mode, it was like Jousting.

You and your target would speed towards each other trying to hit each other, then fly past at Ludicrous Speed, wait for your 5 light-year breaking distance to be over, then do the same until one of you died. It was tedious, and the crapness was compunded by the fact that 1) Missile range was so limited you had a 0.001s window of opportunity to fire the thing with a chance of hitting at those speeds and 2) Your guns were pulse-based and had sub-C travel times; This meant you had to aim ahead by such a ridiculous amount that a lot of the timew your target wasn't even in your FoV cone!!

The ONLY games *ever* that I have played with Newtonian physics that didn't suck was Elite 2: Frontier and Elite 3:Frontier 2: First Encounters.
They did it right - No fighters, just large ships with decent-range beam lasers, and battles were an occasional thing rather than an All The Bloody Time thing as it is in 99% of space games now...


Newtonian physics games require patience and a lot of tactical play, and are on average a lot less fun that standard WW2-style space shooters, 'tho this is mainly because people keep trying to make NewtPhys games the same way they make WW2-Phys games, which just doesn't work...

[Ghostavo]

r.e. Newtonian physics: I've decided this would be a BAD thing.
If you want Newtonian physics, pulse-based weapons are a total No No, as is Joystick control and large waves of fighters and bombers.

I played a game a while back, I think it was called Jumpgate or something like that, which was trying to be a Freespace/TIEFighter-style game, but with Newtonian physics.

It sucked.

The ship had two modes - Compensated mode, in which it handled like a classic space-sim fighter with ridiculous amounts of drift, and Free mode which was basically Elite.

In order to Not Die, you needed to play it with the ship in Free mode because in Comp mode, you'd be going too slowly to stand a chance of dodging anything - Inertia means you can't turn on a dime.

So that left Free mode - In this mode, it was like Jousting.

You and your target would speed towards each other trying to hit each other, then fly past at Ludicrous Speed, wait for your 5 light-year breaking distance to be over, then do the same until one of you died. It was tedious, and the crapness was compunded by the fact that 1) Missile range was so limited you had a 0.001s window of opportunity to fire the thing with a chance of hitting at those speeds and 2) Your guns were pulse-based and had sub-C travel times; This meant you had to aim ahead by such a ridiculous amount that a lot of the timew your target wasn't even in your FoV cone!!

The ONLY games *ever* that I have played with Newtonian physics that didn't suck was Elite 2: Frontier and Elite 3:Frontier 2: First Encounters.
They did it right - No fighters, just large ships with decent-range beam lasers, and battles were an occasional thing rather than an All The Bloody Time thing as it is in 99% of space games now...


Newtonian physics games require patience and a lot of tactical play, and are on average a lot less fun that standard WW2-style space shooters, 'tho this is mainly because people keep trying to make NewtPhys games the same way they make WW2-Phys games, which just doesn't work...

Play IWar 2, it has Newtonian physics and you'll love it

[karajorma]

Or Warhead, the game that inspired both I-War games. Warhead is pure shooting action, in fighters and doesn't involve any kind of jousting.

[CP5670]

the scale was a bit off

There was this tiny planet somewhere in one of the Bretonia systems that looked pretty funny. I seem to remember that it was about 10 feet wide but could still suck you in.

[Fineus]

'eh? What do you mean?
Quality-wise, I thought the ships looked alright...

Overall the graphics *were* clean and well presented. I just didn't like the comic-book style that they took on. I much prefer the gritty feel of something like I-War2.

[Spectre-7]

Play IWar 2, it has Newtonian physics and you'll love it

Well, I don't know if you will love it...  But you should.

God I love that game.

[Nuke]

i just think the implementation of newtonian in all the games ive played is not quite suffietient. generally speaking realisim does not equate to fun, but that doesnt mean realisim cant be made fun if implemented properly. the way newtoian is implemented in a sim like orbiter is like trying to control a fly-by-wire aircraft with manual flight controls. it can be done, but its very difficult. you need a computer to translate your imputs into outputs that generate the desired motion. essentially an ai acts as a proxie between your flight controls and your ship. it tries its best to figure out a way of do what your demand of it. you say turn left and the ai fires rcs thrusters to rotate you left, gimbals main thrust to increase turning speed fires, lateral thrusters to cancel sideways drift, fire main thrusters to increase forward momentum, kills rotation, and shuts down all thrusters.

[Turnsky]

As long as you wouldn't stick with Freelancers graphics. The game would've been much much more fun to play if it had gone the route of having "realistic" looking ships... rather than the cartoon style they went with.

well, that irritated me to no end, somma the graphical touches, like smoke, etc, were nice, but it felt like it departed too far away from its starlancer roots,
nice and expansive, tho, and the in-engine character cutscenes were pretty good, too. in concept, if nothing else.

one thing that ticked me off royally with freelancer, was the overall scales of the ships, even tho i'm a little spoiled by FS2's scale of things, the capships seemed a little....small, compared to your liberty fighters, etc.

[Nuke]

not to mention the dinky planets and stars

[karajorma]

Well, I don't know if you will love it...  But you should.

God I love that game.

Seriously. Hunt down an Amiga or Atari ST emulator and try Warhead It looks abysmal by todays graphics standards but it was written by one of Particle Systems main coders and the gameplay is just great

[Spectre-7]

Can you recommend any *nix based Atari ST emulators?