Question for New Space sim …..

JGE is dead, forget about it. And why is there none? I think because this genre is not interesting anymore for the masses.

Hmm anyway for me there is only 1 game I want to see made: Elite 4.

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

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.

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.

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

@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…

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 Horizon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_flight_simulator_games

Is it the “looking for Freelancer 2” issue, or Space sims in general?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

FriendlyFire wrote:
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.

I remember when all the joystick purists bitched and moaned because FL didn’t have it and oh noooo mice made it toooo easyyyyy.

I liked the interface a lot In fact I had problems with X3 because the keyboarding and mousing is different enough in it.

I own a cheap joystick, but I can certainly say I enjoy games generally much more without them.

Except for simulators, obviously.

Anyone played Starshatter? That was great with a joystick.

well i was not gonna comment on this thread, but i find myself strangely drawn to do so, even though i fear i may get blasted :~

anyway, in the past there have been several ‘groups’ lets call them, pop up with full intentions to develop a unofficial sequel to FL. I was part of one of them , helped found it actually, but it went off in a weird direction. Another one, i started. Now it is Not really a dead project, but the problem steams here that it is a absolutely MASSIVE undertaking for a single person. Oh yeah i did a few times have others help out, but their interest suddenly disappeared, or rather, they just disappeared.

Right now it is going through a massive game engine upgrade. I just purchased the latest version of the core engine and it is radically different in allot of areas so will take time.

Weather or not anyone is interested is kinda irrelevant at this particular juncture, and as it stands i have not updated the web site i a very long time.

At times i get quite discouraged because in the end i am doing this alone, and am trying to mimic FL features as close as possible. Which is not exactly straight forward when you have to completely rewrite major parts of the game engine to achieve the end result.

Anyway, not really sure when or if i will get to a release on it, as i have a ton of other projects to attend to. And with cash flow dwindling for me right now i have to go out and do some contract work for a while, which will last for, well however long it lasts i guess.

so if any one is interested and F***&(*&^( SERIOUS feel free to pm me with what area your interested in helping out with. Every position is kinda open from info card writers , scripts (if you can script FL, that does not apply in this case. the scripting language is allot like C#/C++), UI designers, textures artists, ect …, ect …, ect …

but only if your gonna be in it for the long haul. Not to just try and contribute then vanish into the wind or quite after a short stint.

anyway like i said, i will probably get blasted for mentioning it, or get the dreaded ‘moaning’ posts but w/e.

as it always has been, and always will be, the offer is there if there is gonna be enough REAL interest.

cheers all.

DSO could’ve probably used more than one system too….

Yeah, they do look exactly the same don’t they. One trade station, two research stations and a load of rocks over and over again. Maybe that’s why space sims just don’t do that well in general, there’s not much anyone can do different is there.

Probably the reason I never finished Darkstar, it’s just… No fun to explore.

Timmy, I’d say that even X3’s utterly boring systems were a thousand times better than DSO’s. Freelancer’s systems beat both by a few orders of magnitude. They may be a bit dated nowadays, but they’re still very diverse, unique and memorable.

Don’t tell me Tau-37 and Omega-41 aren’t unique.