Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ack-Ack on February 09, 2009, 08:34:56 PM
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Stumbled across this write up in VoodooExtreme (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/44633/Random-Pimpage-Evochron-Legends) about a space sim being developed by an independent studio named Star Wraith 3D Games.
It's a freeform space combat sim that supposedly allows you to do pretty much anything you want. This is the description from their website.
What is Evochron Legends?
- Evochron Legends is the sequel to Evochron Renegades with a lot of design aspects heavily influenced by player feedback and requests. It is a first person 3D space combat, trader, and mercenary simulation designed for 'lone-wolf' survival gameplay. You can make diverse buying, fighting, and travelling decisions in a large universe without the hesitation of turn-based gameplay or the reduced immersion of an overhead/outside view. You are literally in the action with a consistent first person viewpoint and can make virtually all gameplay decisions directly from the cockpit.
The main goal of the game's design is to provide the only freeform space-sim that lets you buy, trade, negotiate, bribe, spy, race, transport, mine, explore, recruit, design your ship, and protect in an open, seamless universe (without loading screens or sudden environment flipping) also without system 'walls', 'rooms', or required jump/warp gates. Freedom, interaction, and gameplay choices are the priorities of the game's design. Fly where you want, when you want, and complete a wide variety of activities to advance in the game and make your fortune.
Evochron Legends offers many unique space combat, environment, and gameplay elements including a real-time dynamic changing economy (with realistically revolving inventories and specialized industries), seamless planetary descents and other environment transitions, multi-level threat system, commodity/item/equipment trading, ship-to-ship trading in all gameplay modes, diverse control support (Mouse, Keyboard, AND Joystick control options), unrestricted open space jump drive travel and navigation system, realistic Newtonian physics, fuel resource management, per ship bribing, in-cockpit inventory and trade management, gravity effects, AI based trade negotiating, and more.
You can read more about the game from their FAQ (http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/faq.htm).
They also just released a free demo and you can download it from their website (http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/index.htm). I think the the demo is limited to 90 minutes but you can uninstall it and reinstall it to play it again.
Downloading the demo now to check it out. If it's any good, I'll post about it.
ack-ack
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I downloaded arvoch conflict a couple years ago. It's fun game, and reminded me of colony wars from playstation 1. I still have it on my hard drive, but haven't played in a while.
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Don't bother. It's one better Ack- Ack
www.eve-online.com
All you'll ever need. It pwnz EVOCHRON LEGENDS in every way possible. :salute
Comes with a 14-day free trial so you have 14 days to yay or nae it.
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I've tried Eve Online, no interest in basically what amounts to an economic simulation with graphics. I'm more interested in the flying sort of space sims, like the old Tie Fighter series and Wing Commander. That's why I am eagerly awaiting Jumpgate Evolution.
ack-ack
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How is the flight physics in this game? I am still waiting for the "AH in space" kind of space sim - with more realistic physics than all games to date. In all those games, spaceships feel like mobile turrets. You rotate left, right, up, down and can move in the direction you are pointing at. No real inertia, angular momentum or impact and the sounds are usually horrible.
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That's why I am eagerly awaiting Jumpgate Evolution.
I flew the original Jumpgate and I'm also looking forward to Evolution.
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I've tried Eve Online, no interest in basically what amounts to an economic simulation with graphics. I'm more interested in the flying sort of space sims, like the old Tie Fighter series and Wing Commander. That's why I am eagerly awaiting Jumpgate Evolution.
ack-ack
Not sure if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan, but here's a little sim some dudes made based on the Freespace engine...
Its called Beyond the Red Line.. There is a growing online community of players online..
This absolutely destroys and BSG game predecessors...
http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demo.html (http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demo.html)
Here's a small video of the game if you'd like to check it out before downloading.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRn8RCgIgM&feature=channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRn8RCgIgM&feature=channel)
Oh yeah, it's free...
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Not sure if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan, but here's a little sim some dudes made based on the Freespace engine...
Its called Beyond the Red Line.. There is a growing online community of players online..
This absolutely destroys and BSG game predecessors...
http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demo.html (http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demo.html)
Here's a small video of the game if you'd like to check it out before downloading.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRn8RCgIgM&feature=channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRn8RCgIgM&feature=channel)
Oh yeah, it's free...
If its the same one I tried a couple years ago, I wasn't impressed. Wasn't it modded off of Freespace or something? Whatever it was, the GUI menu setup was written by a chimp.
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How is the flight physics in this game? I am still waiting for the "AH in space" kind of space sim - with more realistic physics than all games to date. In all those games, spaceships feel like mobile turrets. You rotate left, right, up, down and can move in the direction you are pointing at. No real inertia, angular momentum or impact and the sounds are usually horrible.
There is only 1 space game with realistic newtonian physics. It's literally called "Space Combat", it's freeware, written by the guy who made X-Planes 9. It's not a developed game at all, frankly, it kind of sucks, but it's the only realistic physics out there in space where you can have guns.
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How is the flight physics in this game? I am still waiting for the "AH in space" kind of space sim - with more realistic physics than all games to date. In all those games, spaceships feel like mobile turrets. You rotate left, right, up, down and can move in the direction you are pointing at. No real inertia, angular momentum or impact and the sounds are usually horrible.
I hope the sounds in space are non-existent. Otherwise we'll have to go back to the drawing board on the whole science of physics.
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If its the same one I tried a couple years ago, I wasn't impressed. Wasn't it modded off of Freespace or something? Whatever it was, the GUI menu setup was written by a chimp.
Yes, I agree that when it was first released a few years ago I was not impressed either..
I revisited it recently and there have been some significant updates.. The online community is pretty good too...
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I hope the sounds in space are non-existent. Otherwise we'll have to go back to the drawing board on the whole science of physics.
There are sounds in space... kinda. You'll hear stuff in your own ship. You'll hear stuff ping off the side. Al Shepard's book is pretty interesting.
You just wouldn't hear somebody else doing something like.. oh say, shooting at you :)
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Not sure if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan, but here's a little sim some dudes made based on the Freespace engine...
Its called Beyond the Red Line.. There is a growing online community of players online..
This absolutely destroys and BSG game predecessors...
http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demo.html (http://www.beyondtheredline.net/demo.html)
Here's a small video of the game if you'd like to check it out before downloading.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRn8RCgIgM&feature=channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRn8RCgIgM&feature=channel)
Oh yeah, it's free...
Yeah, big BSG fan. Was keeping my eye on this game awhile ago but lost track of it. Glad there is a demo out, downloading it now. Thanks.
ack-ack
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How is the flight physics in this game? I am still waiting for the "AH in space" kind of space sim - with more realistic physics than all games to date. In all those games, spaceships feel like mobile turrets. You rotate left, right, up, down and can move in the direction you are pointing at. No real inertia, angular momentum or impact and the sounds are usually horrible.
Actually, I'm quite surprised at the depth of the flight model. Not saying the physics is 100% accurate but then the same can be said about AH and it's a step above the usual flight physics seen in most space sims.
The graphics are pretty good for a game that's only something like 45 megs and if you adjust your video card to max settings (I've got it set to 8x AA and 16x AF) it looks even better. Controls take are okay, you can use either mouse and/or keyboard and joystick. If you're using a CH stick with throttle and pedals, you'll need to create a profile in Control Manager and combine all the controllers into one device, otherwise the game won't see each controller. I recommend remapping some of the most commonly used keys like the roll and thrust vectoring. They're spread out and hard to use if you're playing with mouse/keyboard or joystick/keyboard. Control set up is pretty simple, so it's easy to configure the controllers and remap keys.
Considering that this came from an indie studio with low development costs, it's surprising that this is actually a pretty good space flight sim. On top of the fact that it's a virtual open world sand box space sim that allows you to do pretty much what you want is a very big bonus. I ended up buying it but I would recommend trying the demo first before making up your mind.
Oh, if you've got a low end system, it should run the game fine. If you can run AH, you can run this game and probably get better frame rates.
ack-ack
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I hope the sounds in space are non-existent. Otherwise we'll have to go back to the drawing board on the whole science of physics.
There is sound in your cockpit. You will hear vibrations in the hull, so engines and weapons can make A sound. Gas and particles hitting the hull will produce sounds, so you will hear an "explosion" when the debris and gas hit you. A rocket launched from your ship will be heard through the gas wash hitting the hull. These are the sounds I'd like to hear in such a game.
Anyway, saw the youtube movie. Looks nice enough to download and try.
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I loaded it last night and thought it was good. Will be trying the multi player tonight.
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Just found out from reading the forums that Star Wraith 3D is only made up of one person.
ack-ack
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I downloaded it, it's pretty fun/cool, but you can't kill jack with the lazer guns I learned :(
I like it though :aok
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I downloaded it, it's pretty fun/cool, but you can't kill jack with the lazer guns I learned :(
I like it though :aok
You start off with enough to get some small upgrades and should be able to pick up an additional weapon. After that you should be able to take some of the station contracts for miners and blow up asteroids for some quick cash.
ack-ack
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You start off with enough to get some small upgrades and should be able to pick up an additional weapon. After that you should be able to take some of the station contracts for miners and blow up asteroids for some quick cash.
ack-ack
Is there like a manual? I still got like 85 minutes of the demo.
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Is there like a manual? I still got like 85 minutes of the demo.
There are the training tutorials that don't take time away from the demo and I also believe there is a link in the main menu that will bring up the manual on their website. Or you can just go to their website and get the manual.
ack-ack
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Ack-Ack, would I be able to play the game well enough with only being able to use one arm, I mean is there alot of things you need to do like using the keyboard, and joystick at the same time, or would I be fine?
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The game does allow you to play with just the keyboard but you would have to remap the keys to make them more convenient for you.
The default keyboard layout isn't set up very well and it will really make the layout more convenient to remap the keys. I'm playing right now with mouse and keyboard and remapped the controls I use the most to the WASD layout. W and S for up/down vector thrusters (default map for these keys is velocity controls, so you may want to keep them as that), and A and D for rolls. I've also mapped my side (strafe) vectoring controls to Q and E. I also have a G15 keyboard and have used those macro keys to program my radar and targeting commands to it so I have all my main controls within easy reach of my left hand while flight maneuvering is done with the mouse and my scroll wheel for my thrust and mouse buttons for weapons.
ack-ack
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I've tried Eve Online, no interest in basically what amounts to an economic simulation with graphics. I'm more interested in the flying sort of space sims, like the old Tie Fighter series and Wing Commander. That's why I am eagerly awaiting Jumpgate Evolution.
ack-ack
Um....I hate to say this, but you're doing it wrong. I bet you didn't even get out of empire space did you?