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We talked about this game a few weeks ago on the Diecast. This Errant signal gives a more holistic look look at what the game is and how it works.
Chris uses it as a jumping off point for talking about review scores and the review cycle, and the score he gives at the end is the exact same score I’d give the game.
There the rules are pretty sketchy for what it takes to qualify for “Early Access” on Steam. I don’t know that there can be such a rule in a black-and-white, qualify-or-not sense of things. But in my own sense of what I expect from an alpha, I’d say “more than this”.
Basically what we have here is a really great ship builder and a marginally successful system for test-driving your design.
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This is something I’ve always wanted in a space game. Very few of them seem to wrap their heads around this idea that the ship is the avatar. Instead, somewhere buried on a tab of a dialog I never look at is a picture of my pilot, and that’s supposed to be “me”. But from a gameplay standpoint it’s much more useful to think of “me” as the thing in the middle of the screen: The ship. That’s what I’m looking at. (Assuming the game is third person.) That’s what gets damaged, upgraded, or killed by my actions. That’s the thing I want to name, personalize, and look at in dramatic camera views.
So I dislike the usual system of progression in these games where you upgrade from one fixed design to another. It’s like playing Diablo II and “upgrading” your necromancer into a sorceress, and then later trading her in for a barbarian. It just feels wrong. Maybe ship A has the stats that I really want, but it’s got wings and pointy bits on it that I dislike for aesthetic reasons. Ship B has a form I find appealing, but the stats are geared for (say) mining while I’m more interested in combat. In a genre so focused on freedom, I’ve always found this annoying.
A lot of games focus on letting you amass and command fleets. That’s nice, but rather than commanding a dozen fixed ships I’d much rather fly one really cool one. Even if I’m the only person who thinks it’s cool. I want to command the Enterprise, not the Federation, and I want to explore the galaxy, not run an intergalactic trucking company. But that’s just me.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sandbox Space Sim: Kinetic Void”
Previously, I asked about sandbox space sims. You had a lot of suggestions for me on what’s out there, what’s good, and what’s worth a look at this point in time. I took your advice – or some of it – and for the next few entries I’m going to write about what I played and what I thought about it.
This is a strange genre. Everyone has their own idea about what features really define it. Combat? Asteroid mining? Trade? Exploration? Fleet command? Ship design? Factions and interplanetary politics? Smuggling? Landing on planets? Character growth, leveling, and skill trees? Diplomacy with aliens? Commanding capital ships? Crew management? Piloting fighters? I dunno. No game does all of these, but a sandbox space sim does some subset of them.
We had nothing in this genre for years, and now there are a dozen of them on the horizon. We’re up to our asses in astronavigation at this point, and it’s only going to get worse* as the various early access / kickstarted prototypes grow up and become Actual Games.
* By which I mean “more awesome”.
Obviously one week is not nearly enough time to even begin to scratch the surface of one of these games, much less play a half dozen of them. So these are going to be drive-by reviews, quick looks and first impressions. Also, I’m not an expert on this genre (whatever that means) so if I complain about something then “But all the games do that!” is not a meaningful defense. Actually, that’s probably never a good defense anyway.
Let’s talk about the first of these things I ever played: Starflight.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sandbox Space Sims: Starflight”
So the next-gen consoles are out. Let’s talk about what we can do with all of that processing power without going broke making hyper-realistic graphics.
So that’s the article. Now let’s go on a tangent. At one point in the article I said…
If you’ve got even a mid-range computer with a decent graphics card, then your computer has more processing power than every computer that existed before the year I was born. (1971) That’s including the supercomputers built by world governments and all the computers involved in sending humans to the moon.
How I arrived at this conclusion:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: With Great Power…”
So we’re doing another one of these things. I know this isn’t as fun as a Good Robot update, but hopefully this can keep us amused until the project gets moving again. While working on this, I found an interesting wrinkle that gives us a reason to talk about poly count vs. fill rate and why a full-blown 3D game runs many times faster than a trivial screensaver.
But first let’s talk about what I’ve made…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Screensaver: Plasma”
By strange fortune, I got the Early Access build of a “space sim” on Steam. (Actually, according to Wikipedia this genre is called “Space trading and combat simulator”. I guess that’s more useful than calling all first-person games “shooters”.) I tried it, and like a lot of Early Access games I kind of felt like it went public way too soon. So I tried another, just to compare. It was also pretty half-baked and not in any state to provide entertainment. I might write about them later,
Remember the whole Derek Smart thing? Way back in 1996 Mr. Smart released Battlecruiser 3000AD. It was, as far as I can tell, a one-man effort. He hyped the game with fervor and was famous for his aggressive responses to criticism. (On Usenet. Remember that place?) The game was notoriously rough at launch, but he stuck with it and – according to the internet – made it right in the end. Since then he’s made a habit of giving away his games once they’re done selling, and seems to have done well for himself. He could be compared to people like Peter Molyneux, John Romero, and Phil Fish, but the truth is he’s very much his own thing. He’s mellowed quite a bit since the 90’s. He’s got his own development company now, but I’ll always see him as the original indie.
Anyway.
After seeing everyone heap so much shame on Battlecruiser 3000AD, it’s really odd to see these new sims come along and outright sell their pre-alpha builds. I feel like the internet needs to heap some shame on these projects, or apologize to Derek Smart.
No. That’s not true. I don’t really think we need to unload hate on these new indies. It’s just strange how the industry has changed, and sometimes it’s hard to see how we got from there to here.
For the record, I have’t played a space sim since Freelancer. And I friggin’ hated Freelancer for being shallow, dull, and railroad-y. I’ve heard that people have fixed it up with mods, but I’ve never had the urge to go back. (And now that I think of it, I haven’t seen the disks in years. It’s possible I don’t have the game anymore.)
I don’t know why I have this sudden urge to play a space sim. The last one I liked was the short-lived Earth & Beyond. Before that, I think it was Starflight, way back in 1992 or so. I haven’t spent a lot of time with this genre and I don’t really know what’s good.
Which brings me to the point of this meandering heap of anecdotes: What’s good out there? No need to suggest Eve Online. I admire the game from a distance. I love the drama, intrigue, and unique community structure the game has created. But I wouldn’t enjoy playing the game. I just don’t like PVP, and in Eve PVP is kind of the point.
So, have any space sims you’d really recommend? Have any you want to rage against? I’m most interested in seeing where the genre has gone in the last few years or so.
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Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.
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Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #42: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online, Alien Isolation”
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Grand Theft Auto is a lousy, cheating jerk of a game.
Scenes from Half-Life 2:Episode 2, showing Gordon Freeman being a jerk.
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
T w e n t y S i d e d
