[Unknown Target]

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[Unknown Target]

Scotty is indeed correct, the speed is in meters per second, not km/hr.

[Flipside]

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?

[BloodEagle]

[...], 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.

[Flipside]

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.

[Mikes]

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.

[headdie]

what made both FS games great are

1) Great immersive story, well told
2) Smooth game play
3) Amazing graphics for the day

[Unknown Target]

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.

[Davros]

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

[Kszyhu]

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.

[Ziame]

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

* Ziame is waiting for Elite on PPC ^^

[Mikes]

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    

[starlord]

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 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.

[Ghostavo]

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.

[Davros]

Prophecy is nowhere as good as fs2

[Mikes]

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.

[bloated]

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.

[Mikes]

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.

[Mobius]

FPS, racing games and horror related junk.

Those game genres suck.