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Infinity: Quest for Earth
croxis
I am the walrus
in Zocalo v2.0
I found it.
I found the game I've always wanted.
Infinity: [url]http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/[/url]
[URL=http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/infinity_combat_proto.php]Pre-Alpha Multiplayer combat game[/URL]
[URL=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=infinity+quest]Some in-game videos[/URL]
I'm cautiously optimistic about this MMO, as it is not releaced yet, but I'm excited.
The first thing that is interesting is that the developer (the game is being coded by one person) is planning to make money by selling the engine. The MMO will cost money, but might be cheaper than most others.
So this is a combination of the X series with EVE. Some selling points from the website:
[quote]
How does interstellar travel work ? Are there jumpgates ?
Some jumpgates will be available between the main trading routes. However, all the ships can be equiped with an hyper-propulsion system. You can choose your destination on the galaxy map and jump there (providing you have the resources). Jumping will not be instantaneous. It will be very fast to jump to a local system, but jumping to the other side of the galaxy will take from minutes to hours (in real time).
Can I own multiple ships ? A space station ? A city ? A planet... ?
Yes. You will actually be able to acquire any object in the game world. You will be able to hire non-player characters to control your ships and follow your orders. You will be able to move space stations and set the tax rates, acquire some buildings in a city, or if you're getting very rich, a whole planet.
What type of missions will be available ?
The list will be very long; most of the missions will be generated dynamically depending on the system you're in and what you've been doing. Trade, hunt, mine, escort, scientific research, rescue, political, tourism, spy missions, and a lot more. In addition, an in-game interface will be available to propose your own services to the other players, or to non-player characters.
What happens when your ship is destroyed ? Is there perma-death ?
When your ship is destroyed, your physical character will escape in a capsule pod. Perma-death does not exist; however, you will be unable to do anything until you are rescued.
How many solar systems are present in Infinity ?
A lot. Since they are generated procedurally on-the-fly, they cannot easily be counted. But I tried to respect realistic numbers. Expect a galaxy with up to hundreds of billions of worlds. You will not be able to visit them all in your whole lifetime, even if you were to spend only one second per world!
How realistic is the universe ?
I do not like the word "realistic"; I prefer the word "believable", or coherent. I'm primarily doing a game, so i'm not interested in making a realistic game for the sole purpose of being realistic. However, when something realistic is fun, I will use it. In particular, the game universe recreates a wide range of celestial bodies, including many types of suns (sometimes binary or trinary systems), planet types, moons, asteroids, nebulaes, black holes, etc.. with believable orbits (moons orbit their planet, themselves orbiting a sun). Scales are also realistic: you will not find a planet of a few kilometers radius in Infinity. My approach is pretty close to a planetarium software, like Celestia.
Will it be possible to land on planets ?
Yes, this is actually one of the main interests of the game. Expect a lot of missions on planets. However, the game will not feature non-vehicle gameplay like walking with an avatar on planets or inside buildings.
How is the transition between space and ground level done ?
It is completely seamless, with no loading times - actually, what you see from space is really what you see when you land. This is one of the key technologies behind the game engine.
Will there be a Linux port ? A Macintosh port ?
A Linux port might come later after release, if there are enough requests. A Macintosh port is unlikely.
[/quote]
And for those who play EVE, a comparison in the forums:
[quote]Here's the list of main differences i can think of from the top of my head:
1. Twitch based gameplay, meaning that you fully control your ship in real-time in all the directions of space. Except for larger ships, who will have controls closer to those in Eve.
2. Collisions on everything.
3. Immersion; meaning real scales, dimensions and velocities. Planets are truely as large as real ones, and ships extremely small compared to them.
4. Planetary landing with seamless transitions. If you can see something in the sky like a moon, you can get there in real time without seeing a single loading screen.
5. Solar system dynamics. Bodies orbitting around each other, being able to watch a sunset or an eclipse. Planets are not just a fancy background ala X3.
6. Travelling to another system doesn't necessarily involve jump gates. Actually, jump gates are rare and only serve as a way to link distant clusters.
7. A procedural universe - billions of star systems and planets, all unique.
8. No skills, experience or levels.
9. Less waiting time, when you want to mine, or go to a distant system.
10. A living world, with NPCs flying around and living their own life.
11. Being able to affect missions to other players or NPCs.
12. Dynamic storyline. What i mean with "dynamic" is this: in most MMOs, you have a storyline ( sometimes very complex like in Eve ) written by the developers, and missions / quests related to it. However, none of those quests affect or make the storyline progress. Infinity's storyline will be, by many aspects, closer to the one of a single-player game, with some specific player actions "triggering" a progress of the storyline.
13. Owning an empire: multiple spaceships, stations, planets. Setting your own tax/rules for those. Enabling other players or even NPCs to fly your ships. Constructing buildings/factories in cities. Forming corporations, or owning actions into other player's corporations.
14. Multiple players flying in the same ship.
15. Knowledge exchange. Prizes for being the first player to discover some special places / events ( like, analyzing a black hole, or discovering an unknown metal, or a new form of life ).
16. Newtonian physics ( with computer assistance for eacy controlling ).
17. Technology discovery plus patent system ( players have to hire scientists to make new technologies available in game, like a RTS's tech-tree ). I know that Eve has blueprints, but as far as i understand, those are "static". [/quote]
I found the game I've always wanted.
Infinity: [url]http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/[/url]
[URL=http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/infinity_combat_proto.php]Pre-Alpha Multiplayer combat game[/URL]
[URL=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=infinity+quest]Some in-game videos[/URL]
I'm cautiously optimistic about this MMO, as it is not releaced yet, but I'm excited.
The first thing that is interesting is that the developer (the game is being coded by one person) is planning to make money by selling the engine. The MMO will cost money, but might be cheaper than most others.
So this is a combination of the X series with EVE. Some selling points from the website:
[quote]
How does interstellar travel work ? Are there jumpgates ?
Some jumpgates will be available between the main trading routes. However, all the ships can be equiped with an hyper-propulsion system. You can choose your destination on the galaxy map and jump there (providing you have the resources). Jumping will not be instantaneous. It will be very fast to jump to a local system, but jumping to the other side of the galaxy will take from minutes to hours (in real time).
Can I own multiple ships ? A space station ? A city ? A planet... ?
Yes. You will actually be able to acquire any object in the game world. You will be able to hire non-player characters to control your ships and follow your orders. You will be able to move space stations and set the tax rates, acquire some buildings in a city, or if you're getting very rich, a whole planet.
What type of missions will be available ?
The list will be very long; most of the missions will be generated dynamically depending on the system you're in and what you've been doing. Trade, hunt, mine, escort, scientific research, rescue, political, tourism, spy missions, and a lot more. In addition, an in-game interface will be available to propose your own services to the other players, or to non-player characters.
What happens when your ship is destroyed ? Is there perma-death ?
When your ship is destroyed, your physical character will escape in a capsule pod. Perma-death does not exist; however, you will be unable to do anything until you are rescued.
How many solar systems are present in Infinity ?
A lot. Since they are generated procedurally on-the-fly, they cannot easily be counted. But I tried to respect realistic numbers. Expect a galaxy with up to hundreds of billions of worlds. You will not be able to visit them all in your whole lifetime, even if you were to spend only one second per world!
How realistic is the universe ?
I do not like the word "realistic"; I prefer the word "believable", or coherent. I'm primarily doing a game, so i'm not interested in making a realistic game for the sole purpose of being realistic. However, when something realistic is fun, I will use it. In particular, the game universe recreates a wide range of celestial bodies, including many types of suns (sometimes binary or trinary systems), planet types, moons, asteroids, nebulaes, black holes, etc.. with believable orbits (moons orbit their planet, themselves orbiting a sun). Scales are also realistic: you will not find a planet of a few kilometers radius in Infinity. My approach is pretty close to a planetarium software, like Celestia.
Will it be possible to land on planets ?
Yes, this is actually one of the main interests of the game. Expect a lot of missions on planets. However, the game will not feature non-vehicle gameplay like walking with an avatar on planets or inside buildings.
How is the transition between space and ground level done ?
It is completely seamless, with no loading times - actually, what you see from space is really what you see when you land. This is one of the key technologies behind the game engine.
Will there be a Linux port ? A Macintosh port ?
A Linux port might come later after release, if there are enough requests. A Macintosh port is unlikely.
[/quote]
And for those who play EVE, a comparison in the forums:
[quote]Here's the list of main differences i can think of from the top of my head:
1. Twitch based gameplay, meaning that you fully control your ship in real-time in all the directions of space. Except for larger ships, who will have controls closer to those in Eve.
2. Collisions on everything.
3. Immersion; meaning real scales, dimensions and velocities. Planets are truely as large as real ones, and ships extremely small compared to them.
4. Planetary landing with seamless transitions. If you can see something in the sky like a moon, you can get there in real time without seeing a single loading screen.
5. Solar system dynamics. Bodies orbitting around each other, being able to watch a sunset or an eclipse. Planets are not just a fancy background ala X3.
6. Travelling to another system doesn't necessarily involve jump gates. Actually, jump gates are rare and only serve as a way to link distant clusters.
7. A procedural universe - billions of star systems and planets, all unique.
8. No skills, experience or levels.
9. Less waiting time, when you want to mine, or go to a distant system.
10. A living world, with NPCs flying around and living their own life.
11. Being able to affect missions to other players or NPCs.
12. Dynamic storyline. What i mean with "dynamic" is this: in most MMOs, you have a storyline ( sometimes very complex like in Eve ) written by the developers, and missions / quests related to it. However, none of those quests affect or make the storyline progress. Infinity's storyline will be, by many aspects, closer to the one of a single-player game, with some specific player actions "triggering" a progress of the storyline.
13. Owning an empire: multiple spaceships, stations, planets. Setting your own tax/rules for those. Enabling other players or even NPCs to fly your ships. Constructing buildings/factories in cities. Forming corporations, or owning actions into other player's corporations.
14. Multiple players flying in the same ship.
15. Knowledge exchange. Prizes for being the first player to discover some special places / events ( like, analyzing a black hole, or discovering an unknown metal, or a new form of life ).
16. Newtonian physics ( with computer assistance for eacy controlling ).
17. Technology discovery plus patent system ( players have to hire scientists to make new technologies available in game, like a RTS's tech-tree ). I know that Eve has blueprints, but as far as i understand, those are "static". [/quote]
Comments
Oh my!
The reason I ask, it seems to me that after some time, if the galaxy is truely on the scale he indicates, the database required to reproduce the "known" portion of space could get quite large.
Jake
[B]Something I curious about with proceedurally generated solar systems. Are the heavenly bodies static or dynamic then? For example, say I was the first player ever to explore a certain solar system, that paticulars of I am sure would be created on the fly (number of planets, type, etc).[/quote]
I don't think it is created on the fly upon discovery. Everything should be predetermined by the AlGoreRhythms. The game Noctis does the same thing and its several years old. The technology really isn't anything new.
Heavenly bodies are dynamic.
[quote]Would I then be able to return to "known" space, tell another player where and what I discovered, at which point the player could return to that location and find it exactly as I described?[/quote]
Correct. Procedural is not random.
[quote]The reason I ask, it seems to me that after some time, if the galaxy is truely on the scale he indicates, the database required to reproduce the "known" portion of space could get quite large.[/QUOTE]
Nope. Everything is predetermined right from the getgo. Its why the creature files for Spore are so stupidly small and how whole first person shooters can be made in 64 kilobytes.
[B]Nope. Everything is predetermined right from the getgo. Its why the creature files for Spore are so stupidly small and how whole first person shooters can be made in 64 kilobytes. [/B][/QUOTE]
Which is actually irrelevant in this case, as those examples, and all other things like them, only [i]start[/i] small, they get large as you play (in RAM, or saved to disc). While, as Freejack said, the database to store known space won't [i]get[/i] big, it will be big from the start. However, this is all dependent on the level of detail they put into things. If a planet is just a planet with a list of factories, you don't need much database space, but if you detail every single institution on that planet and all the details of those too, you do. The more details he generates using his procedural algorithms, the bigger the database will be.
Fortunately, modern database systems can handle oodles of information with ease.
* CPU speed: Intel Pentium IV 2 Ghz or AMD Athlon 1500+ or equivalent
* RAM size: 512 MB
* Video card: a graphics card supporting pixel shader 2.0 (ATI Radeon 9500+, NVidia Geforce FX+)
* Disk space: at least 2 GB
* Internet connection: 56k modem
* Operating system: Windows 2000 or later
wtf. I cant believe this :D
[B]Which is actually irrelevant in this case, as those examples, and all other things like them, only [i]start[/i] small, they get large as you play (in RAM, or saved to disc). While, as Freejack said, the database to store known space won't [i]get[/i] big, it will be big from the start. However, this is all dependent on the level of detail they put into things. If a planet is just a planet with a list of factories, you don't need much database space, but if you detail every single institution on that planet and all the details of those too, you do. The more details he generates using his procedural algorithms, the bigger the database will be.
Fortunately, modern database systems can handle oodles of information with ease. [/B][/QUOTE]
Here's an example, in the surface to orbital flight sequence video, say I wanted to plant an nice little mountain villa at the base of one of the major mountain structures, say in a specific valley would the surface of the planet be static enought to do so, or is the surface regenerated each time I approach the planet?
If it's the former, that, in my mind, is where the database gets very large. This has to be true to some extent since there are cities and properties on planets.
Jake
I wish that sys reqs' would reflect current technology though, they say its "optimized for dual core systems" but dont say what the minimum dual core spec is, 2ghz is their "minimum" but a core duo running at slower than 2ghz will give you the same performance.
Pet peeve.
Can't wait to give the game a spin.
The entire galaxy in Noctis has thousands of stars and even more thousands of planets (landable) -- all procedural. The galaxy, the planets, the terrain, are all the same every time you load the game, and for every player. Its the same thing here: the terrain you build your villa on will look the same every time for every player and allready in the database. The only thing would be added is what you build and where. The surface is procedural, and static, just like a critter from spore, just like the galaxy from Noctis.
Jake
[B]Ok, I think I understand now, given that all the parameters are the same, the generator should produce exactly the same stucture each time. The only time it would change is when the input parameters are modified, correct?
Jake [/B][/QUOTE]
Yep. Just like procedurals in Lightwave 3D or any other application...
;)