Whats Starshatter and also what is Omnitrends?
Eamonmca I wanted to post a reply but my computer crashed and my brother the computer expert took his sweet loving time fixing it. I'll post a bigger reply to your comments latter. Regards.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Starshatter is a space sim written by a member of the boards, milod. He's writing the entire game by himself, and so far it's pretty incredible. You can go from space to planet and back again without passing through a loading screen, you can control groups of cruisers and fighters, and much other cool stuff.
Firstly with regards to eamonmca post I don't think its a impossible game but they ate a few things that I believe could be done to make the task easier.
Firstly the player character should be a junior commandering officer this would reduce the AI tree difficulty especially with regards to large numbers of ships.
Secondly I question that escorts would be in titled automatically to fighter cover after all they are the screening force.
Thirdly most space combat games are heavily scripted hence the need to create a seperate AI programme for your senior commander seems redundant. If most missions wont scripted it would be almost impossible to tell a story and put together a string of missions that flow naturally one to another.
More to post but its late so I'll post later.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Matthew [/i]
[B]Thirdly most space combat games are heavily scripted hence the need to create a seperate AI programme for your senior commander seems redundant. If most missions wont scripted it would be almost impossible to tell a story and put together a string of missions that flow naturally one to another.[/B][/QUOTE]
That turns out not to be entirely true. Certainly, that was the design intent of B5:ITF - to create a non-linear, non-scripted game with a dynamic campaign that also told a story. It is a great deal of work to build something like this. Possibly more work even than the B5 development team realized. (I know I don't get much sleep any more.)
The nature of the missions and the story do have to change. You can't tell the Wing Commander story very well in this type of setting, for example. Wing Commander and most of its clones tell stories of personal heroics in the face of overwhelming numbers of really stupid enemies. A dynamic campaign is much better suited to telling more true-to-life stories of give and take on a broader scale. The "story" of a real war is just a backdrop to the personal efforts of the individual soldiers and pilots.
Personally, I think this is a good thing. I think Wing Commander focused too heavily on story at the expense of rich gameplay. It is possible to create a space combat simulation that explores more avenues of player motivated activity without following the "play a mission, watch a movie" formula.
At the same time, I harbor no illusions about the financial viability of such a game. It's been a long time since space simulations were considered a going concern by mainstream gamers.
MAN ITF would STILL be a revolutionary game TODAY, I've yet to see a game that has pulled off a dynamic universe, with everything from dogfighting to capships, non-linear plot...
I think it would be more accurate to say that ITF would be [i]innovative[/i] rather than revolutionary. I recall a time when it seemed that every new space sim claimed it was going to have a dynamic campaign built on a persistent world simulation. Practically all of those games were canceled before completion. Had ITF managed to escape the scythe, I doubt it would have sparked a revolution in the genre. Building a game like this is expensive and risky, and the sales numbers aren't there anymore to justify it.
It does make for a fun game, though.
[URL=http://www.starshatter.com/betaform.htm]Starshatter Beta Test Signup Form[/URL]
Comments
Eamonmca I wanted to post a reply but my computer crashed and my brother the computer expert took his sweet loving time fixing it. I'll post a bigger reply to your comments latter. Regards.
Firstly the player character should be a junior commandering officer this would reduce the AI tree difficulty especially with regards to large numbers of ships.
Secondly I question that escorts would be in titled automatically to fighter cover after all they are the screening force.
Thirdly most space combat games are heavily scripted hence the need to create a seperate AI programme for your senior commander seems redundant. If most missions wont scripted it would be almost impossible to tell a story and put together a string of missions that flow naturally one to another.
More to post but its late so I'll post later.
[B]Thirdly most space combat games are heavily scripted hence the need to create a seperate AI programme for your senior commander seems redundant. If most missions wont scripted it would be almost impossible to tell a story and put together a string of missions that flow naturally one to another.[/B][/QUOTE]
That turns out not to be entirely true. Certainly, that was the design intent of B5:ITF - to create a non-linear, non-scripted game with a dynamic campaign that also told a story. It is a great deal of work to build something like this. Possibly more work even than the B5 development team realized. (I know I don't get much sleep any more.)
The nature of the missions and the story do have to change. You can't tell the Wing Commander story very well in this type of setting, for example. Wing Commander and most of its clones tell stories of personal heroics in the face of overwhelming numbers of really stupid enemies. A dynamic campaign is much better suited to telling more true-to-life stories of give and take on a broader scale. The "story" of a real war is just a backdrop to the personal efforts of the individual soldiers and pilots.
Personally, I think this is a good thing. I think Wing Commander focused too heavily on story at the expense of rich gameplay. It is possible to create a space combat simulation that explores more avenues of player motivated activity without following the "play a mission, watch a movie" formula.
At the same time, I harbor no illusions about the financial viability of such a game. It's been a long time since space simulations were considered a going concern by mainstream gamers.
I managed to forget about the capship ability...
MAN ITF would STILL be a revolutionary game TODAY, I've yet to see a game that has pulled off a dynamic universe, with everything from dogfighting to capships, non-linear plot...
GAH!
It does make for a fun game, though.
[URL=http://www.starshatter.com/betaform.htm]Starshatter Beta Test Signup Form[/URL]
[B]It does make for a fun game, though.
[URL=http://www.starshatter.com/betaform.htm]Starshatter Beta Test Signup Form[/URL] [/B][/QUOTE]
Hey Milod!
:)
Nice clean looking web site by the way!
:D