Space Sims: Dead or Evolving? Thread

I personally best enjoy games that include epic space-fighters, dogfights, vast unexplored sectors of void, captaining large intergalactic battle cruisers, and pursuing challenging open ended careers in large ever changing galaxies. I enjoy Space simulators, and this is my dream of an ideal Space Sim.

Space Simulators in this day are rare, and good ones even more so. X3 Reunion is probably the closest thing to hit the mark so far. With an open ended universe, gorgeous graphics, intensely engaging dogfights, and an excellent and ever-changing economics system X3 makes quite a spectacular game. But due to cumbersome A.I., time consuming game-play, and an overcomplicated underdeveloped interface it comes a ways short of taking the cake.

Despite the unfortunate lack of attention, I find that the genre has huge potential just waiting to be tapped. So far, there hasn't been a game that's really met that potential to it's fullest. So if you're a patriot of Space Sim gaming, What do you think it will take to produce one?

Edited by: Bluedrake

I think it will take a manned mission to Mars. Seriously. Right now the hot topic with the public at large is terrorism, so we have twenty million or so 'realistic' SpecOps/Swat themed games. If the big thing in the public eye is space, then we'll get twenty million or so games that tap into that instead.

As it is Egosoft are in a comfy little niche where they know the space game fans will buy X4 regardless of how messy the controls and UI is, and other gamers probably wouldn't touch it no matter how elegant and user friendly they made it. Thus they don't worry about how truly hideous the controls are or how obnoxious the learning curve is because they know it won't make much of a difference to their ability to stay in business. Get some competition going on and Egosoft will have to sort out those last few flaws in an otherwise brilliant game, or someone else will steal the space-trader-sim crown. (Yes, I know there have been other space games relatively recently, but they haven't been good enough to give Egosoft any reason to worry)

As for Elite 4, I'm not holding my breath. Elite 4 is the Duke Nukem Forever of space games.

We have Freespace 2 open source, and huge amounts of fan missions and mods for it. My Space Combat needs are more than covered by that

in stasis. there's been no significant evolution of the genre in over a decade, there's always been more steps back than steps forward.

games like x3 are a simplified elite with pretty graphics (albeit a good, fun experience for those who like that sort of thing).

we really do need the next ground-breaking successor to elite. truly detailed, limitless galaxies with the ability to fly from the surface of one planet to the surface of another - maybe even flying from the roof of a building in a city on the moon of a planet in a solar system in a galaxy, then travelling to the same in another. HOLY LORD THE SCOPE.

imagine if you could leave the cockpit and walk around the interior of your ship, giving you more of a sense of it as your "home". imagine if you could leave the ship itself and travel around outside. a DAGGERFALL IN SPACE level of scale.

i would really like to make a game like that, it would be my dream game. it has been my dream game for over a decade. the closest coming to it is "infinity: quest for earth", and even that barely scratches the surface.

good riddance to bad developers. sadly, derek smart is still making games - they're the same as the battlecruiser series, just with a different name. don't worry, they're just as crappy.

i want both. i want everything, i want THE GALAXY.

its a space sim so GIVE IT TO ME

NAO

Edited by: frosty-theaussie

yeah well the arena dm style of fps genre isn't quite extinct as a combat space sim genre

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OpenArena - Dave3D - Versus 1997 - XDFort (new!)
modDB DOS Gamer forums

i don't think EA would stick their fingers in it, per say. they'd probably finance one for two or three years, then cancel it, close the studio and assign the employees to work on the next c&c expansion pack or madden or the sims 3 or something.

I agree with Frosty on this one.

I want exactly what Frost wants, open ended gameplay (to a degree anyway) and depth. Both aren't easy to implement well.

I'm also excited about "Infinity" as well. It is a shame that there are limitations to what they are doing (as far as I know). From what I've picked up is that there is no "out of ship" experiences to have, unless I'm mistaken. It would be good, but the rest of the game should easily make up for it.

It's more than just current trends that are against something so open ended. The big problem is giving the player stuff to do without it turning into randomly generated name want you to go and kill random number of random enemy across the whole of the huge play area.

Despite your dismissive opinions about it's depth, I'd say that X3 is actually the closest we have to a solution right now. It still has all the missions that follow the template above, but it also has some totally unscripted moments that just emerge from the dynamic economy. Right now in my X3 game, the area where I have my greatest concentration of factories is being frequently raided by Xenon. That's not in the storyline, and it isn't due to any mission I took on a bulletin board. Despite the complete lack of scripting, it's the most interesting and exciting thing that is going on in the game.

That's the foundation of the sort of system your idea would need, and right now I can't think of anyone pushing that sort of system more than Egosoft are.

I love X3, but It has so many problems that keep me from enjoying it. First, it takes forever to get any semblance of a company working. And at the end of a session I feel like I've wasted a lot of time. The interface is too clunkey, and my expensive trade ships kill themselves too often, which easily sets me back about 5 hours. I wish there was a game like the one frosty was describing, but more engaging and satisfying than X3. Don't get me wrong, X3 can be engaging. But the sheer amount of work and time that you have to pour into it... I'd rather play something more simple and fun. Look at games like Halo and Starcraft, as soon as you start to play its engaging and fun. Its too hard to have a good time on X3 without wasting a lot of time on it. If I play a space sim, I want to feel like I'm ALWAYS doing something interesting and cool. Unless I'm missing something critical, I really want a Space Sim that does just that, and does it well.

Yes, totally agreed on that point. Take Daggerfall, for example. One of my favourite games, no doubt, but due to the release deadline and technological limitations it was unable to fully realise its vision and collapsed into a randomly generated generation randomness general generating mess. What I think a game that trying to replicate Elite's scope needs is a delicate balance between randomly/procedurally generated content and hand-crafted content. For example, say you have thousands of inhabited planets with thousands of cities on each - how do you approach that? Obviously it is unfeasible to individually make every city, and having them all randomly generated would also result in totally forgettable locations. You'd have to, kind of, "teach" the game how to construct a city procedurally, using a seed as a base to the algorithm for this to ensure it is the same each time. So, if you go to the city again, the streets will be the same and the buildings will be in the same place: it won't have just wiped itself and randomly re-generated. So, "these building model parts and textures should go together here, if the planet has this climate then it will need these sorts of structures, if the people are of this political or technological inclination they should have more of this type of thing, etc". This is barely scratching on the surface of my thoughts on the implementation of this type of game, and I don't think it articulates well or in a technically correct way, but I hope it gives you some sort of positive impression.

I also came up with this idea of "story threads" - instead of having one single "campaign" for the player to progress through, several threads of story are written by the game on the fly based on what is happening in the universe. This would really give people the impression that the universe is a living place. For example, say you decide to help a gang of pirates steal something valuable. With the money they earn, they decide to buy more ships, attracting more members and with this new power they go and attack something weaker - say, a colony in the outer systems. They blockade it, which results in less traders reaching the colony and as a result they have less supplies available. This could result in a revolutionary situation potentially brewing and when the player lands on the colony sometime in the future, a "revolution" story thread starts up which they can engage in. When you eventually become involved in it, the game generations key NPC players and all of the things involved with the story. Instead of following a single, linear story, different stories pop up throughout the galaxy based on the conditions these places or people are placed under.

Don't get me wrong, I think X3 is great. It was just that compared to the scope of Elite's universe, you would think after more than a decade we would have a little more progress.

I'm definitely looking forward to next X3 game, although I doubt this PC will run it well.

You need to make it simple without making it stupid. Actually, not so much simple, but intuitive. Players shouldn't be left wondering "how do I do this/what effect is this going to have/what should I be doing next?", nor should they have the answers rammed down their throat with overly streamlined interfaces or gameplay elements.

It's hard to talk about this because whenever I do my imagination wanders and I get too excited to convey the concepts involved. I remember at a party with a couple of friends, they got me started on it and I got really carried away. Thankfully, they're very much into video games too, otherwise my alcohol-fuelled ranting might have made me seem a little strange. I've still got the design document lying around with all of the ideas for it that I've been writing for many, many years now under the very tentative 'codename' of "Space Opera". I doubt it will ever be of much use, but it has become a great little journal.

yeah, I like Elite

and Daggerfall

a lot

I actually think that Space Sim Games should try to simplify a little bit. Usually Games like X3 And 3000 AD try to tackle too much with too little. I really believe that if X3 was a third the size, but had a better, more simple interface and more consistently engaging game-play, It would be much better all around. Sometimes making things simpler can make things more enjoyable, especially when considering tech restraints and other computing obstacles. I don't want a whole universe to explore, but I do want a game world that gets my attention, and makes me feel satisfied at the end of the day. Look at games like Oblivion and Morrowind, Bethesda doesn't create a whole planet for us to explore, but they don't need to! It's perfectly engaging the way it is, and its fun! I think Space Sims should take in a little influence from that.

Edited by: Bluedrake

Well, XvsT was a major failure, and XA puts You off because it forces You to buy an analog controler, as You said, it fails. And even in Xwing, that little oldie You where so good because You used the force ; )

XWA had an awesome story though and the combat was brilliant.

3000AD definately needs a more simplified control scheme, sadly they are simplifying the game itself to adhere to the console demographic now that they are going for a more arcade style of gameplay - the problem with 3000AD is that it never was any good with combat (it was more fun just going around doing what ever the fuck you wanted.. at one stage I had a nice trading company going ) Best thing about 3000AD was the Roleplaying elements - mostly with away missions where if a crew member was injured he could die if he wasn't attended to in time.. Also you'd occasionally get radiation outbreaks on the ship requiring you to lock off a section of the ship . The worst bit was of course those stupid random "someone has stolen your space fighter" - which I usually diverted power away from the launch bay to prevent this.

We definitely do need more games that let you leave your ship and take a walk around for a bit.