Question for New Space sim …..

Interesting, but I have a few problems with it.

1. It’s Unity. Unity’s fine for small games, but I’ve yet to see a larger game go through with it. Performance and scalability are an issue with it.

2. Starlight Inception got through already. I doubt two similar games will get the same kind of coverage, and Sean Pollman is perhaps even more of an unknown quantity.

3. 60k is a VERY small amount. Something’s going to have to take a hit because of that.

4. Many game developers talked about a multiplayer update post-release, but I’ve never heard of one actually doing it.

I’ll keep a tab on it for sure (any space sim is good!), but I won’t back it until I hear more about it.

Fair criticism. It took some prodding from me to get the details I was looking for out of the dev, but he gave them, and I liked them. I also liked what I experienced in the shipyard, how various ships handle and, of course, building them. With the exception of games from well-knowns and knowns, plunking down money on Kickstarter projects will probably always be something of a risk.

While it wasn’t really my kind of space sim, I was actually a backer of Starlight Inception until I saw how poorly the campaign was run. It made me uneasy, so I backed out. That and watching people irrationally throwing hundreds of dollars at a $15 game just to see it made. I think Kickstarter can turn into a weird obsession for people, which has a flip side of tending to help push unlikely projects over their funding goals at the last minute. I do think there’s room for more than just one project in the genre. For instance, there’s Drifter, which is 2.5D with the deeper features of a space trade game, and it’s doing quite well. There’s also Skyjacker. Being purely combat, it’s not my bag, but it’s not doing poorly, either.

At the end of the day, I’m not expecting the world from Kinetic Void, just a solid space sim that delivers on the promises it made, with the hope that comes from an indie developer that intends on supporting its game with free content updates. What can I say? I’m a sucker for the Minecraft model.

Seems to be a lot of these types of game coming out for tablets and xbox arcade these days. Small Dev teams are unlikely to deliver anything special though I doubt, unless they intend taking half a lifetime getting there.

This isn’t one of those games, as it’s just Windows/OSX, but I do know what you mean.

As for whether small teams can create something special, Markus Persson certainly accomplished a lot all by his lonesome.

As for me, I’m incredibly weary of an industry that would turn Syndicate into a lackluster FPS, and of an FPS-hungry player base that makes publishers think this kind of thing is a good idea. I’m tired of the proliferation of generic high fantasy in every RPG, and of MMOs in general. Big publishers/developers just aren’t doing it for me anymore.

There seems to be a revival on Kickstarter and other indie platforms of games that harken back to the 90s/early 2000s, and I think that, by necessity, this is where the next great sandbox space sim is going to come from, simply because large publishers consider it a long-dead genre.

Minecraft is a terrible example really. It’s a game with a brilliant core idea, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Thing is, space sims are not especially unique ideas. They’re all fairly run-of-the-mill, with few innovations. The execution will have to be much, much superior for it to stand out from the crowd.

Most indie titles work because they’re either unique or slick. From what I’ve seen, neither Kinetic Void nor Starlight Inception fit any of those criteria. They harken to an age past where space sims were popular, but they don’t really bring much new to the table; iteration over revolution and all that. I’m just afraid they’ll bank a lot on nostalgia and forget to actually make their game better than their forefathers.

A better example of a brilliant core idea with poor execution is Infiniminer. Minecraft re-executed Infiniminer in a more compelling way, and has done a number of things exceedingly well. I personally wish the tech tree was expanded in Bettter Than Wolves-fashion instead of nose-diving into enchanting and potions, but with the widespread availability of mods, it’s hard to complain.

I do, however, see your point, and I agree that comparisons between a well established genre and a previously nonexistent one are probably somewhat worthless. However, I do believe that Minecraft’s influence can be seen in certain aspects of Kinetic Void, namely rich procedural generation, as well as the deep interconnection between resource collection, processing, and utilization, especially as a means of advancing through a tech tree and being able to creatively build better ships. It’s that kind of symbiosis of various play options that I’m excited about.

I’m with you on Starlight Inception. It seems like a straight rehash of Wing Commander/Freespace, a story on rails with combat missions; the pitch actually made it pretty clear that this was the case. I don’t agree on Kinetic Void. While it may not stand out from the genre as much 0x10c, it does aim to do a number of innovative things, or at least collect a lot of novelty and put it into one place. A procedurally generated galaxy and factions, along with module-based ship design in five vessel classes opening up very different avenues of play–that’s enough innovation to impress me. When you add in mining, manufacturing, and economy, you’ve essentially got a game that allows the player to create a mobile micro-empire.

The trouble I see is not whether the game is bringing something new to the table. It’s the question of whether it will deliver something solid and compelling to the genre, like Freelancer or Independence War 2, or break apart on launch, like Battlecruiser 3000AD. The other question, of course, is whether or not it will get funded at all. I’m willing to drop 10 bucks on the mere possibility that it will be decent. For that amount of money, I’m happy enough just to help fund someone’s taking a stab at making a game I’d like to play, because there’s a pretty good chance it wouldn’t happen any other way.

Then it comes back to my original point: this is a very ambitious design doc from an unknown person to do with a mere 60k$. SOMETHING, somewhere, will have to take the hit from this low funding. It’s essentially saying he can only do it alone and has to do it in a year. That’s a lot to ask, and I fear that graphics especially will suffer as a result.

It might sound shallow, but visuals sell and immerse. Part of the reason many games, especially space sims, are remembered, is because they were almost always cutting edge with graphics. Wing Commander. X-Wing versus TIE fighter. Freespace 2. They were all at the forefront. This game will need to fight against established games like FS2Open and X: Rebirth, as well as Starlight, all with a tiny tiny team.

As I said, I wish the guy luck, but I have too many doubts to back this.

Oh also, I’ll merely point out that procedurally generated galaxies and procedurally generated lands are not the same at all, both in terms of complexity and possibilities. The former ends up feeling extremely generic extremely fast. You can’t replace an artist’s and a designer’s touch with machine code, not yet.

And your original point stands as a good one. It’s not just him, though; the team is comprised of three people. However, that’s still three guys, six months, $60,000, and a very ambitious project, especially for a genre that seems to have both a high and occasionally catastrophic failure rate.

That doesn’t sound shallow. I do think what I’ve seen of the playable shipyard is fairly pretty, but I’ve been trying to convince the guy to be more dazzling in the visuals department–some kind of concept art, poster art, or serious in-game eye candy, since, well, first impressions and all. Beyond that, you’re right. The game needs to look good, or it will leave exploration and ship building pretty flavorless. I believe they plan to add some rudimentary play to the shipyard in the next few days, so it’ll be interesting (for me) to see what that’s like.

As for procedural generation, that’s a great point. I think Battlecruiser had some form of this, and I’m not sure it did much of anything to make it a fun game. I think the developer of Drifter is approaching this problem by having handcrafted core systems, with procedural generation for the rest of the galaxy.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation. I respect hesitancy about this and any Kickstarter/alpha funding project. I’ve quietly backed away from far more projects than the handful I’ve given money to. I guess we’ll find out in the next year or so how successful this model is at producing worthwhile games.

I haven’t seen anyone mention TAIKODOM, I only played it for a few hours but from what I’ve seen it’s very much like FL, only drawback is that it’s in Brasilian, so the constant jumping between the game & google translate just to understand the mission briefing spoiled it for me.

It sounds like a US beta is coming this summer. I could definitely get into something with the scope of EVE and more hands-on feel of Freelancer, et al., especially for free.