Question for New Space sim …..
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Basically why isnt there one?
I have seen a few on the app store and the whole X series, but nothing really good or polished.
Would it not be possible for some middle sized developer to make a “freelancer 2” esqe game for a reasonable price and make a profit?
Basically freelancer but expanded, with a few new features, minor graphic upgrades, enhanced trade options etc etc ….
Thoughts ??
Every week so many crap games are released that i can’t imagine make much money but must cost some to produce. We wouldn’t need a whole collection of games just one or two solid games every 5 years or so! Too much to ask??
Add trade and space to GTA and i would be a super happy guy.
I am tired of trolling the web/youtube/forums every month or so for “Freelancer 2” or “Privateer 3” for the last 8 years and getting nothing.
Someone help me out!
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Well i wouldn’t say the X series isn’t good or polished. It’s a fantastic game with options FL couldn’t implement if it tried. Then there is the new X game called Rebirth due out soon which again looks very promising.
Moving on from that, there simply aren’t really any good ones being made as according to the market, there isn’t a market for them lol. Unless you want to play EVE then not a lot out there.
The other big hope which plenty of people have been waiting for and probably will continue to do so is Elite 4 which let’s face it, probably won’t be made sadly. This list shortens the more i type. Yes we want Freelancer 2 but not on a console as Microsoft intended it to be. Yes we want something similar if not FL2 but nobody is willing to take the risk. Heresy War was a good candidate but seems that’s turned into vapourware along with Elite 4.
Closet you’re going to get with FL is mods atm, plenty of good ones out there i’ve tried, WTS, Underverse, Phoenix, Crossfire, all offer different things and highlight the variations and lengths modders are willing to go to change the original game. Obviously TOW is coming out for Xmas as well so lots of variety just in those i’ve listed. As to a new game of FL or similar, nobody will take the risk.
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I guess i am just ranting or venting frustration.
I have 2 or 3 copies of X games but everytime i load one up i quickly get lost in all the detail. I am not apposed to a game with depth but their are limits
You would think the popularity of Eve would encourage replication or duplication, but please not an MMO. And all those people who played Freelancer and privateer and elite etc etc are still around and have more disposable income now (hopefully/likely) to play such a game.
A question to any who know more than i, what would it cost to make Freelancer today from the ground up? Compared to your average FPS or SIMS game or car game or NHL 43 or ….
I would think this would be a good option for Stardock or Pardox. I don’t need graphical glory, just a solid game with some depth. (And likely no Neutionian physics, never works out well.)
ARrrrrrrrrgggggggggaaaaaaaa!!!
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cost of making a game well, that depends on allot of things really. The biggest cost factor in making any game is the time it takes to make one. If you put a dollar figure on the hours it takes then it quickly becomes very expensive to make games. However, if your an indie game developer or a hobbyist like myself and you want a top grade engine powering the game then you can do it with as little as a few hundred bucks and a ton of time.
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You might want to check out Evochron: Mercenary then. Never tried out by myself, though.
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Well you could always help with this project in development
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There was a game called “Jumpgate Evolution” it was a MMO but apparently made in the spirit of FL.
Sadly however Development has stopped with that. It looked really good. -
JGO wasn’t shaping up very well honestly. No free roaming, no capital ships, and it was developed by NetDevil, far from the best dev around.
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Now you’re talking, but David Braben finds it easier to make console games like Kinactimals or whatever it’s called. He’d sell loads of Elite 4 but i can’t see that happening now. He really needs a good slap as some of us have been waiting for a very long time for this game
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What a shame, to let the Elite series slowly die. But on the other hand it is a job maybe beyond current PC capabilities to make a game like Elite now, with the level of graphics the games have. 100+ million solar systems are too much…wondering how much GBs it could need…I consider Frontier the best space sim ever, I still play it…FFE was somehow not for my taste.
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I’m not so sure about that. The original Elite was only a few kilobytes in size. Look at Oolite (silly name) but otherwise a faithful rendition of Elite on modern platforms, PC and Linux and Mac iirc, not a huge program and yet looks better than Elite ever did, not to mention the dozens of addon mods for it as well. It’s most certainly doable, question is does DB want to do it.
He always said he’d make Elite after finishing his Outsider game. Well that got cancelled so what’s he up to? Only he knows. Even the guys on the Frontier forum have given up with numerous threads asking where is Elite 4 and asking DB to hurry up before all the older players die of old age.
Elite 4 can’t be any more complicated than the X series, graphically it won’t be able to do much better, the main thing here is the gameplay aspect so i doubt it will take up huge amounts of disk space. Fingers crossed but i’m not holding my breath.
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Hahaha, I like that, since the project was only a year into development as of July 28th, don’t think they will be dying of old age (the DB reference).
Anyone is welcome to help speed up the completion of the project and I also just moved the dev log to the public area of the forum….
http://www.galaxyempire.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1011#1011
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@LS
By dying of old age, i meant players waiting for Elite 4. Remember the original came out in 1983 and while Frontier and FFE followed shortly after, there’s been hints and hearsay for over 20 years. even the great man has hinted at it but nobody has heard anything about this project for years. Many will fall before DB pulls his finger out and gets cracking on the coding…
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No space sims in the last 8 years?
Off the top of my head…
DarkStar One
Space Wolves
Space Force: Rogue Universe
Black Prophecy
Dark Horizonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_flight_simulator_games
Is it the “looking for Freelancer 2” issue, or Space sims in general?
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If games like spaceforce had been made with multiplayer we wouldn’t be having this conversation in 2011 in a freelancer community. They missed a huge opportunity when they made what otherwise was a really stunning game.
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LancerSolurus wrote:
Hahaha, I like that, since the project was only a year into development as of July 28th, don’t think they will be dying of old age (the DB reference).Anyone is welcome to help speed up the completion of the project and I also just moved the dev log to the public area of the forum….
http://www.galaxyempire.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1011#1011
That’s good news
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I love FL…hell I play it since 2008 october nearly every day, but FL I think shaped not that much the genre, it is a space shooter in 3D, yea when we look into the past we see some more important games, like the Wing Commander series, the Privateer spinoff, Elite, Freespace, X: Beyond the Frontier or Starlancer (I miss the match speed option from FL so much),on the other hand I think after FL the genre started to stagnate. Darkstar, Space Wolves, Tarr, etc…they look cool, but hmm that is all. They look fancy. End. EVE, ye EVE is old as Freelancer, but it is a hardcore MMORPG with updates since the release it is I think something else…
So my point…everything concerning gameplay was imagined and created since Elite till Freelancer…the rest is just a …-like game with fancy graphics. Maybe one day some fellas will resurrect the genre…maybe.
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Actually, FL entirely changed control schemes. Pre-FL, joysticks with fixed guns were the standard. FL brought mouse controls and free aim guns to the spotlight. I believe most space-sim games since then have used this scheme.
However, the question isn’t really space-sims, it’s persistent multiplayer space-sims with good mod support. FL is the only game that I know of which fits these requirements.
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SF RU: AFAIK there is a MP mode coded by one of the devs in his freetime. Check out and ask around about that one at the official forums.
//Info
http://i1-mac.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Vendetta-Online_3.jpg <- ANyone tried out Vendetta Online?
Vega Strike (Open Source)
For old games, check also Colony Wars series for the PSX out. Of course you can play those at your PC with a PSX emulator, too.
