I'm willing to bet that the systems in the retail version will have more in them. The demo is big enough already without adding more textures and meshes into it. If they're not, I'm sure some of the people here will be able to decode the files and add more stuff to them

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

I've checked out several forums where there were people having the full game, and I must say that I am worried. According to some of these people the various systems are not different from what the demo shows, meaning boring, empty systems. I worship Freelancer for the possibility to explore. DS1 doesn't seem to have this possibility.

Some more questions;
- If you are in a system, you usually see surrounding planets from neighbouring systems. Is this correct?
There is the possibility to fly to them, but there's nothing there. It would be nice to actually fly into another system, inside a cluster.
- Pirates seem to spawn at a fixed point. Whenever I was flying somewhere far away from the tradestation these pirates would spawn to even around 60 units away from me and still go into pursuit!That's just silly.
- Why are the missions from the terminal usually to be done in a neighbouring system? This seems highly illogical since you'd think that there would be jobs for the system that you're in. It is also annoying to teleport back and forth, having steep loading times too.

I think it will be fun to finish the story in this game once, but I doubt many people will be playing after the story has been completed.
And with multiplayer missing as well, DS1 is simply missing too much. Ascaron added a lot of things that I would have loved to see in Freelancer, but forgot some of the most important things.

As I said before, Freelancer spoiled me.

The systems all have a basic setup. At coordinates 0,0,0 you will have the trade station. -10,0,0 will have the jumpgate. Everything else is situated in a 10-40km radius of the central point.

AI etc. are spawed within this area. outside this area you will find, empty space. Because space is large and empty, we made it large and... uhm emtpy

You cannot fly from one system to another by directly flying in one direction because the distance between these systems is too great. That is what the hyperdrive is for.

MP is still on our minds and we have a few ideas, but we have to wait on the market impact to follow up on it. Time will tell on that front.

Missions are placed in neighbouring systems out of fear of espionage from corperations, seeking to protect their own interests. These terminals, that are publically available show missions depending on the security rating of certain freelancers. Kayron Jarvis, due to his connections to various military and corperate organisations has access to this information. To stop hackers and other people who wish to eliminate such tasks from their destination systems, the AI job randomization software uses a number of factors to isolate a job and provide a person with adequate clearence to first configure his ship for the task before entering the destination system. This has the tactical advantage of surprise and also allows for Kayron time to mentally prepare for the task ahead. Were it to be in the same system, chances are that the Darkstar One could come under direct attack and suffer heavy damage before even being able to respond to the threat.

Well, whatever story you make around it, I really doubt that DS1 will have even half of the fun that Freelancer had, due to lack of exploration. I feel claustrophobic in DS1, and that is a bad thing for a space game.

What might have been a better idea is linking the systems in every cluster, and also have systems that aren't reachable through jumping, since they'd be lacking a hypergate?
I don't want to be offensive but right now this game feels a bit cheap the way it is now. A fair bit of loading time for warping between tiny zones, and everything spawns around the main object of a system, the tradestation.

Ofcourse space is empty, I know, but in a game it shouldn't have to be. People like eye-candy and exploring. Exploring is time consuming and makes most people play for hours on end.

Yes it "might" have been a better idea, but it was not the idea our lead designer wanted.

he wanted a game that was fun, quickly accessible, console compatible, easy to learn, hard to master, fast and easy to understand and interesting for the general public.

With this system he managed to hit all those points. With your idea, yes it would have been interesting but it would not have hit any of those points above, therefore decrease the audience (as the X-series is really complicated and so is FS when it comes to navigation) and therefore concentrate on the "hardcore" space game players which, with all due respect, is not exactly that big anymore.

In order to actually get new people interested in the genre, things need to be kept simple, fun and fast.

Edited by - Eerazor on 7/6/2006 7:20:26 AM

I know that the military telling you to drop your cargo isn't a bug. But it has to be tweaked, because right now it feels like the game "cheats". For one, they spawn right on top of you when you enter the system, so you have no chance to get away or position yourself favourably. Second, and this may be hardware specific since some people are getting it and others aren't, but ever since I bought the x-100 cargo computer upgrade EVERY TIME in EVERY SYSTEM after over 20 trials, the corrupt Military decide to take my cargo. Even in Galatic Union Systems. So trade is pretty much impossible, I made one cargo run before I upgraded my cargo computer and pirates showed up to take it instead, which they did, so I only had the 20T in my cargo hold left after the battle.

So definately check the code for when they take your cargo, it's probably just for ppl using the X-100 cargo computer.

The randomization in the demo is not as large as it is in the release version because the missions available in the demo represent about 10% of the missions available.

Because the random code generates a randomness number based on the available missions, that random basically becomes 100% certainty.

The release does not have this...

That’s good to hear. I've started a new game and have been a very successful merchant/smuggler so far; however I have purposefully NOT upgraded my cargo computer. As a result I've only been asked to drop my cargo by corrupt military guys twice out of 20 runs, as opposed to 100% of the time WITH an x-100 cargo computer. I still think that some1 added an extra 0 when they were coding the encounter probability for that particular ship component.

I really enjoy the random events, it makes the game far less mundane, and I don't feel like I'm grinding to earn cash since even if I try to do the same thing over and over no two times are the same.

One question, when I take on the pirate gangs I get a significant drop in my frame rate down to a barely playable level. This doesn't happen anywhere else in the game for me. I'm wondering how intensive the CPU usage is for their AI? Or is it just all the beautiful 3D rocks slowing down my vid card? It actually just over heated and my game crashed, which is why I'm writing this while I wait for it to cool down. I'm running everything on high detail at full res tho, so it's kinda my fault

People who think Freelancer looked better than this game obviously are using outdated equipment. Where FL had smoke and mirrors (especially with debris fields) this game has a much more realistic rendering system. And with AA turned on those stations look great!

Oh another question: How high is the number of artifacts required to upgrade the ship going to go? I mean, ok 500 is a lot, but if I need to collect like 20 to go from level 8 to 9 that’s going to sap a lot of the fun out of looking for them. I think 5 which are needed for your next level at the end of the demo is already getting a little high.

And a little secret for anyone who's actually read this far: You get an artifact for liberating the pirate Ta system! Which is totally awesome.

From what I've seen the total number in the game is ~100. Don't know how many are required between levels tho...

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

@Eerazor;
A game doesn't have to be hardcore when it has more stuff to explore. (Hey, that rhymes!)
What I am afraid of is that this game will be too focused on fighting, and that exploration is not present at all. (Jumping to another similar looking system doesn't count as exploration in my book.)

No offense to you, but I am a bit disappointed. Freelancer will remain number one for me:
Easy to use (like DS1)
Quick action (like DS1, only in FL ships do not just spawn at one point, it's plain silly that pirates hunt me down when they're 60 units away, could be the demo, dunno)
Lots to explore (unlike DS1, I want to fly around, exploring, not jump around and instantly have the system I end up in fully explored).

I hope other people will like it though, because I want to see a Darkstar Two.
Will keep hoping that someday someone will make the perfect spacegame.
And multiplayer is a -must-! The main reason why Freelancer still lives is probably because there's a multiplayer option.

By the way, I'll probably buy it though, since I DO like that ship upgrading thing, something that Freelancer totally lacked, and I am curious where this upgrading will lead to.

There you go, no need to get only criticism from me.

Hello again Erazor, you really got my hopes up there you know?
I'm really dissapointed with this you know.

So lets go through what went wrong one step at a time.

Step One - Visuals

The visuals are... less than acceptable. Yes, I know they are detailed, I know they're very scalable with (here you did well) little loss in overall quality.
But they are for the love of **** waaay too cartoony. You're not Pixar. You are here to make a space-game. Not the next animated hit. Space is only cartoony if it has Marvin the martian in it. Why does everything 3D has to be cartoony? Why? Even movie effects... I'm not going to name any company in particular, do you hear me ILM? The animatics are like the ingame visuals with a few prerender exclusive effects thrown ontop. Reminds me of Battle Engine: Aquila.

Step Two - Sound

Yeah, your soundtrack is horrible! Good thing, doesn't waste good music on a boring game.
I swear! That laser effect is ripped straight from the Justice gun! As is some of the space-faring music! I swear, it's right out of kusari! Also in general your sounds are cartoony too. Heck, even the voice acting come off un-serious. You cant tell any story however much you try without proper voice acting. Hopefully the german version is better.

Step Three - Gameplay

This is where I thought the game would be saved from utter fail. But no. The game suffers from the X-syndrome: Just too darn boring!
First off there's the random missions, like Freelancer they seem to lack diversity. Perhaps it's because it's just a Demo. But it seems boring.
Also a few elements of the game feels like they're pulled straight out of X2/3. Dont touch that game with anything! It's boring. I can see the following elements that are similar to or from the X-series and really shouldn't have been taken out of their context:

Planets lack of use - they're there to be there. You can go there, but that would be utterly useless.

Time acceleration. Most obviously taken, and one of the more boring aspects, I feel like I'm missing something and that the same amount of time has passed anyways. It's not helping.

General mission selection, it seems dead and forced. And have the same feel as that of X, BORING!

Universe design, make one system, copy and paste all over the universe and apply different but similar skins. It also feels like you're boxed in, with a big univers around you. It should feel like you are inside the big universe rather than the box. And where is those nebulae you spoke of? The little there is definetly doesn't "Look" anything. It browns the world around you when you enter it and else is totally invisible, wow, what a beatiful and compelling space-cloud. Not. But then maybe it's because it's a Demo.

Part Four - Story

Not that there's much of that in the Demo, but what little there is seems like a wierd mish-mash of various done-to-horrible-and-painful-death elements.
No novelty, and if it was any good in the first place it's bogged down by the cartoonyness of the game and bad storytelling. I'm not hooked at all, compared to FL that hooked me from the first second.

Now I cant remember all the other things I wanted to complain about... fek. Always when I write something as long as this I forget half the stuff I wanted in, and it turns out less than desireable.

Anyways, you're either horrible at making space games or horrible at making Demos.

_________________________
"But then something happened, something
wich no-one could have Ever imagined... They, arrived."

"Anyways, you're either horrible at making space games or horrible at making Demos."

I wouldn't say that they're completely horrible. I think the game will be entertaining, but it will not come close to Freelancer at all. I wonder if Ascaron discussed the development of DS1 with gamers to get tips and things like that.

DS1 is also hyped I'm afraid. What Gamespot said, "DS1 is Freelancer done right", someone should spank them for saying that. Now a lot of people will be buying this game with this in mind, while it simply is a lie.

By the way, a quote I found from Eerazor on this forum:
"Yes it will be better than Freelancer and not just in terms of graphics..."
Eerazor, I do think that you should leave it to the gamers to decide if it is better or not. I do think a lot of people will feel cheatened.

You (Eerazor) also mentioned that the systems will have more stuff in them in the full version than there is now in the demo. And I've read from several forums from players who play the full version that this just isn't the case.



Edited by - gotcha! on 7/8/2006 3:21:50 AM

Some of these reviews should be a shame. You go into it expecting it to be like your favorite game, rather than taking it for itself. I like both freelancer and freespace, but I didn't go in to freelancer expecting it to be like freespace. Both are differnt, but good. So that said, why not go into DS1 the same way,