The Video Game That Maps the Galaxy(newyorker.com) |
The Video Game That Maps the Galaxy(newyorker.com) |
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892462
For the upcoming Elite: Dangerous, the maker is drawing as much as possible from current astronomy.
Have you played Frontier (Elite 2) at all? That seems to be what you're after. Much as I loved that game, the combat was awful. It came down to judging when to switch your autopilot on and off, because there was no way you could manually track your enemy as you passed by at 5000kph.
That said, I do believe Elite: Dangerous does allow you to adopt an advanced mode that might be closer to what you are expecting.
Having met David Braben socially, I'm inclined to believe Ian Bell
Here is a quote from their website:
"SpaceEngine - a free space simulation program that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets - all available for exploration. You can land any planet, moon or asteroid and watch alien landscapes and celestial phenomena. You can even pilot starships and atmospheric shuttles."
[1]: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=sirius&sub...
No other space game comes even close to the Elite series for this mix of reality and fiction, and I spent most of the 90's and 2000's to find a worthy Elite successor, but there simply was none.
> Windows 7.x
> Windows 8.x
Is that really the way to launch a successful game these days? No consoles. No tablets. No smartphones.
The game type also makes little sense on tablets and smartphones and the hardware requirement are too high to support them.
Porting to console is time consuming if you are not developing with Unity or equivalent.
Quote from their kickstarter: We have announced a stretch goal for a Mac version of the game. If we reach the stretch goal of £1.4 million through the Kickstarter we will release a Mac version approximately 3 months after the Windows PC release. It was reached.
I guess nowadays releasing physical game media is no longer a requirement, which also makes releasing updates easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv0Tj-UGOtY&t=440
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv0Tj-UGOtY&t=346
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc9o_ldmlVs&t=72
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srlJVE50mCI&list=SP9E1E1F7AA...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK-NMyDaPAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynXwvSqsCek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZe26yZhCoE
Here from Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_WewBEGew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_WewBEGew&t=265
Here some Elite: Dangerous
edit: now that I think about it, I think visual style of the game has a lot to do with it as well.
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#W...
http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/downloads.html
Also get this JJFFE patch if you're gonna try Frontier: First Encounters, also has a Mac version.
http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/files/category/154-jjffe/
The BBS talking face videos from the CD-ROM version can be found here
You mostly get the sort of gravity effects you're describing in the fast-traveling "supercruise" mode, where the proximity of a large mass severely slows you down. The effect is handy for slowing to approach speed close to stations, since they're generally close to a planet or a moon.
Yes, but they're impressive technical achievements - disassembling a DOS game and completely rewriting its rasteriser and I/O subsystem.
Anyway, even if you don't use the D3D or OpenGL versions then JJFFE is well worth using over the originals; it fixes a lot of horrible physics (and texture) bugs, and adds some very useful things like keybindings for manual control of the lateral thrusters.
I think space combat in reality would be 99% dull, 1% mind blowing too fast to react insanity, because the firing windows would be so narrow before just being missiles fired back and forth, with point defences having ages to pick down the enemy munitions.
Realistically speaking. Lasers would lead to mirrored ships. Particle beams would likely lead to the magnetic shields proposed for protection against the solar wind. Explosives will be highly inefficient in a vacuum, so they'd only be implemented like in current bunker busters. So we're talking kinetic impact weapons.
I've given this a lot of thought recently, working on my own hard sci-fi space game :)
I don't think mirrors are a good protection against high powered lasers. I've done some reading around the Internet and the consensus was that even if the mirror is absolutely flawless and perfectly clean, it's only a matter of time before a laser punches through it. The best defense against laser weapons turns out to be bad weather, which is hard to find in outer space. (Fighting inside a nebula might help?)
I think beam weapons will be devastatingly effective, once ships have enough power behind them, leading to battles at extreme ranges (light seconds to light minutes), where evasive manuevers can be somewhat effective.
That's my take on it, from reading various Q&A's on the net and thinking a lot about how space battles would probably really work in the near future. It's great fun to think about.
Maybe some kind of gas or mirrored chaff as a countermeasure?
On the upside it's not an atmospheric flight model in Elite. You can orient yourself freely if you're not thrusting, and indeed 'flying backwards' by getting some thrust going and then doing a 180 so you can fire at the enemy with your forward-facing weapons is a pretty essential tactic.
Using inertia and rotating was the only way to "strafe" along a cap ship, and much more efficient at destroying turrets than your usual back and forth fire-and-forget missile/torpedo/guns-blazing runs typical of post X-Wing/TIE Fighter space operas.
Also you could just turn around and shoot whoever is behind you (except they've got a time advantage since suddenly you're moving on a straight line and by the time you've got them on sight you're dead). An incredibly useful strategy was to just pivot then throw in the after burner for dramatic direction changes in an attempt to outmaneuver your opponent.
I always thought this game landed a good balance between fun and realism, with a suspension-of-disbelief-compatible in-story explanation that you're usually in computer assisted mode that simulates atmospheric flight behavior because otherwise dogfights are humanly impossible to manage.
To be it seems awfully insulting that players wouldn't understand that a ship doesn't necessarily go where it's pointing, which is really what it comes down to.
That said Elite: Dangerous regular flight physics are still Newtonian, even more so than I-War series as it features rigid body dynamics and not a point mass, but the ships have very strong maneuvering thrusters a flight control system computer to counteract the skidding and keep it within a certain speed limit, but you can partially turn it off.
See videos below:
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#W...
You can't say you follow some rules and then break them when you choose to and then say your game is Newtonian. Because then every game having player moving in the world is.
Here are the facts. When turning you keep you velocity, which implies magical thrusters that can change power drastically when needed to do so. But why not use that power all the time and not only when turning? Doesn't make any sense. And there is a maximum speed limit. How does that follow the Newtonian laws?