We've had another very busy week at Eternal Silence. First of all, we would like to announce that we won the Moddb 2007 Editors Choice Award. I am speaking on behalf of the ES Crew, that we are very proud and honored to accept this award again. Thank you to the whole community who kept us up with their votes and of course a lot of thanks to the editors of Moddb for this award and their kind words.
This week we want to bring to light a little extra info on our space flight system. We've gotten many comments about the ES flight system in our past betas, and Beta 3.0 will mark a pretty big shift in the way it works. We've taken feedback from numerous sources and came up with a system that benefits the gameplay as a whole.
The main complaint we got from a lot of people was that the flight system was just plain too hard. We've done our best to simplify things for everyone. We've taken out the Newtonian toggle and replaced it with a cut engines key, we've also made the ships react much quicker to input and we made them just generally easier to use. In 2.3, pilots spent most of their time flying straight. In 3.0, pilots will fly in squadrons and teamwork will play a much more central role, since the flight is now much simpler.
The cut engines key, which I mentioned before, is simple. It simply shuts off your translational thrusters allowing you to drift in one direction and turn around. Your ship's turn rate is doubled while the engines are cut. This allows pilots to pull of BSG style flips. A skilled pilot can also use it to gain an edge on turning when combined with the boost key.
Another complaint we had about the flight system of previous betas was that the ships felt too much like noclip. We've addressed this by going for an arcade style physics systems where your side thrusters no longer need to compensate during turns. This means we can turn down the accelerations on all our ships and really give them some weight. The new turning style means that turning is easy and unless you use the cut engines key, you are always flying relative to the direction you are facing.
We've had a great response from our testers on this new flight system, and the game is flowing much better in space thanks to it. Many people on the team already have great maneuvers cooked up for use in dogfights.
I'll finish this wordy post off with some nice screenshots of the NGM fleet firing up an interceptor on Cerbera. We will post more action shots as development moves along. This is also your first look at the new HUD in Beta 3.0.
Have a good week
Great! Cannot wait to try 3.0. ;)
Got a video of the new fight physics?
flight system too hard? It was too easy imo O.o
and no newtonian physics anymore? ouch!
Oh trust me on this, I was the biggest supporter of the arcade at first. Than I fell in love with our newtonian mode, so I coudln't decide which one I like more. We finally merged both and the outcome of what we will show off in 3.0 is amazing. It is not arcade-arcade. I am sure you guys will enjoy it!
Videos will come up next. Give us a bunch more weeks.
what the heck do you mean it was too hard? i thought it was quite easy once you tossed in a joystick (just like the good old days of space combat)
It's still very joystick friendly
well I’m still very disappointed with this decision… another arcade space combat game :S
I guess I'll stick to space games with newtonian physics; none atm
its not arcade-ish. test it once it is out. i am sure you will like it.
Yeah I'll probably try it
look sweet
Well sounds interesting, to be honest I have not played since the first public release of this mod. ( To be honest back then I liked the ground combat more than piloting the ships, but with the changes.. )
Keep up the good work.
Yeah, we made a lot of changes.
For those simulation fans, please let me know what you think once 3.0 is out. Message me through this here. I want to know if you guys like the changes!
I stopped playing ES because the ship system sucked.
I'll give it another try now that it's changed.