cheers chips, i havent been by there site for a while, ahh well, i hear David braben has setteled his dispute and is back on the case with something new, i cant exactly remember where i saw it, but if i see a link i will post it, (for those that dont know, braben wrote Elite, dont know what elite is? Click here there should be some info there, but without elite, there would be no fl)

re joysticks, you cant beat a anolog for that rotational docking, lol, but i guess its what you get used to, i found the mouse tricky to start with after spending months in the x-universe, but after fl, going to play x2, it was a nightmare getting back into it.

just played the demo of serious sam 2,, looking good. (humour of duke nukem, but more action)

www.kokrull.com home of ** uk server **


Edited by - git on 10/1/2005 2:55:49 AM

Edited by - git on 10/1/2005 2:56:56 AM

I haven't ever found sales figures for FL sadly, but I do know that X2 has over 120,000 registered users on the egosoft site.

More importantly, the genre isn't dying at all (personally) - as Eve still continues to be successful. I think it beat WoW for the most online players at any one time (past 16,000 not long ago), although this is most likely affected by another 2 week free trial. Mind you, for a persistent online world, you must keep advertising, because otherwise the player base is only going to decrease.

I will be checking out Eve again shortly, as soon as I know I have enough spare time to do it justice (you really need alot of time to get going, its another slow starter).....they keep on expanding Eve, tweaking and fiddling with the game to make it better. If only they didn't charge so much, I would probabily subscribe - at least for 3 months!
http://www.eve-online.com/
They also have a video that I suggest (if you have broadband) you check out. Its 119Mb (smaller version for 30Mb available, but I suggest 119 - only takes 20mins to DL) and its well worth it. The gameplay (from what I remember from playing it 2 years ago) is slow, but I loved the galaxy, the manufacturing ideas, the skills (although it was so fustrating that to get anywhere would take alot of basic skills - which took alot of time, most likely most of your free trial to do!). The mining was better than X2's, the systems were much nicer - the scale was alot nicer, the atmosphere was nicer (loved the travel too). It has 5000 systems or so, and I really enjoyed playing it (although i got very fustrated at the time it took to mine - sadly I should have tried other things apart from mining! Doh!). Your skills continue to develop whislt offline and not playing, simply because it is a persistent universe.
To DL the video - right click the orange name and click "Save target as"
Eve Videos

I think FL's storyline was excellent IMO, the msot engaging one I have played in a game for certain - but I am not a game connisseur like some, and certainly haven't played as diverse amount of games as most! A major advantage for players in FL's favour was that its fairly quick to start. Within a few hours, your well on your way. With X2 and Eve, its more like a few days...... which may be a factor in why space sims tend to be more "slow burners" when it comes to sales performance (eve has been out for about 26 months or so, and keeps breaking its player records now...!).
Eve Screenshot 1
Eve Screenshot 2
Eve Screenshot 3

I would start a new thread on Eve - to keep any discussion about the solo games seperate (so as to not get confusing) - and Eve deserves its own topic, its blazing the trail for Space sims to get noticed (as is X2/X3 - but Eve currently has 70,000 montly subscribers, which is ALOT!) but unfortunately I haven't played Eve for some time, and therefore cannot really comment on the game indepth. If anyone else can/plays it etc, then please feel free to make the thread for it!

Edited by - Chips on 10/1/2005 4:10:15 AM

Edited by - Chips on 10/1/2005 4:13:14 AM

Edited by - Chips on 10/1/2005 10:56:34 AM

Ah go on Chips. You know you want to. You'll make thread. Go on.

I think it's very unfair of you all to torment Esky about X2 and X3 - he can't even play Privateer on his 386 yet.

386? what new stuff does it run? did it run fl?

I remember trying to run Doom on a 386...had enough time to have a coffee,shower,smoke,have another coffee before it loaded up!lol
Didn't like X2..but this looks promising,still waiting on F.E.A.R though

-edit- that ok now FF

Edited by - DS9Phoenix on 10/2/2005 2:58:11 AM

smoke another coffee? O_o

well,

After reading the posts by Chips and others I was reminded of a rumour about FL2 going subsciption based as is Eve.. apparently Microsoft are rumoured to be building one based on Freelancer1 but pay-to-play.. similar to Eve.. an 'evolving' universe.. after all 17,000 players cant be wrong .. can they?

Would Fl'ers go this way?

Harrier

I think that if MS builds a MMO, I will skip it. I think that they and Egosoft have totally missed out on the fact that... like Total Annihilation... FL is still selling copies almost exclusively because it has a mod scene that's alive and kicking.

Dunno why it hasn't occured to MS that if they simply gave FL's sourcecode a revamp, supporting more modern rendering techniques, open-sourced animations, and an opened-up ALE system... and got rid of all of the inconsistant/buggy/weird/kludged things that make it harder to mod than it could be, and pretty much just re-released the same old game with gentle improvements to make it more flexible for modders and a more varied experience for players... that the mod community would keep slow-but-steady sales going for years and years to come. My current development project is going to take us about as close as we're ever going to get, I think, to what can be done without having the source code at hand, but I'm still not nearly satisfied(and yes, I'm being egotistical for a moment, please forgive me but what I just got done is sooo kewl )... because in the end, even after gutting large portions of the INIs, I'm still being blocked by areas of the engine that I must work around, because the flaws are hard-coded

The Alchemy game engine was a brilliant, robust and error-proof engine in many ways, and almost perfect for modders- almost, but not quite. With very minor changes, it could support a lot of very interesting game designs, from first-person shooters to driving games. Really.

If I had the source and a small budget, I'd basically just update the engine... and then make a single-player campaign using the same easy-to-use tools I'd give to modders. DA/MS, post-release, really stumbled by not realising that they, like VaLvE, had released a game engine that was very interesting to modders... FL missed out on having an equivalent to CS, and that was mainly because it was virtually abandoned post-release. Somebody way up the food chain then compounded their error by failing to come back and see what we've been doing here

As for the money side of things... again, somebody was short-sighted. I don't think it even matters whether FL paid its dev. costs now. I am sure that the bean-counters and/or some exec. at MS who got burned are a major reason why this title hasn't gotten boosted like it deserves. I mean... this game has name-recognition and a very broad audience. A FL2 that was basically just a cleaned up FL1 with better modding support and minor feature upgrades would attract a very large crowd- imagine the excitement of "early screenshots show how Freeworlds 2.0 will look in the brand-new Alchemy2 engine", etc., etc.

FL just needs minor fixes to become more modern and more modder-friendly. Not a huge overhaul. The NN_Voices code needs to be eliminated, going to single-file access like the rest of the sound code, for example. The rendering engine needs to support some basic shaders, bumpmaps and shadows, and better dynamic lights. The animations should be based off of the Gmax file format, so that modders can use it right away. And the physics engine requires some minor features added, such as gravity and a few new types of object interaction that would allow designers to make fully-interactive planets. The SUR format needs to be re-defined to allow for detection cubes instead of detection spheres, so that objects can hinder spawning and steering behaviors less readily. All of this is pretty minor stuff, folks. The rendering engine upgrades are all old hat, at this point - DX8 stuff that's easy to find sourcecode for. And the rest of it's pretty minor- we're still talking static animations, no convoluted FPS muscular-sim stuff.

I think a MMO, if it's really being built, is a complete waste of money. Why? Because I won't buy it, that's why. I don't like MMOs. And I know that there is a very large percentage of people who, every time I put out a mod, check to see if it is SP or MP-only ... and that is a very big part of their decision on whether to bother.

So... MS, if your people still read our maunderings... please... get a clue before it's too late. Give me a million dollars for a dev. budget, and FL's sourcecode and tools, and I'll make your money back and make modders and players around the world very, very happy

An MMO of Freelancer....

An interesting proposition, however, (me being broke the first reason) I will not be interested in such an endevour, and Argh has a point, that the sales of Freelancer keep going up due to the mod scene, making it more a 'sleeper hit' than the big 'bang and bust' video games that are out there, where all that is involved is an sp campaign and that's it. No chance of modification, no multiplayer, and the game sells massively and then dies, relegated to a bargain bin. Every time I see Freelancer on the shelves, it's still around the 30-50 AUD mark. I am yet to even see it in a bargain bin, even though I barely see it anywhere.

There are games which are the pinnicale of their genre, Argh mentioned Total Annihilation, an RTS only rivalled by Starcraft in my opinion, (C&C has nothing on TA) but sadly Freelancer, due to MS's inflexibility with modders, the awkward rendering engine, and the lack of support for modern rendering tech, is really not the pinnicle of the space sim.

I'm yet to see the true pinnicle of the space sim, but I never played any of the Wing Commander series, and only played X-Wing when I was younger. X2 is to complex for a lot of players, and while Freelancer makes up on this, there really is a lacking in graphics and realism in the game. There are very few 'perfect' games, I have listed the ones that I feel are 'perfect' in other threads, so I won't go into those here.

In the games industry, there are usually two versions of the same thing, and in the recent rise of street racing games, there are two that stand out as the major contenders:

Midnight Club 1, 2 & 3DUB - Open city racing, arcade feel, but with adequate challenges and now a decent customisation section, (and the ability to tune muscle cars) MC3 is a true challenger to the more commercially exploited,

Need For Speed Underground 1 & 2 - Closed city tracks, more accurate physics and crisper graphics. Marred by the lack of open city racing, but has other features that seem to redeem it.

If you were to combine the positives of these two games together you would get a damn good street racer, but no one ever will.

The same happens in every other genre of game, theres something wrong, but it also happens in movies, in music, in all other forms of creative expression.

Argh seems to be on the money with the idea of 'revamping' Freelancer, but then comes the question of where the story will go. And whether a small FPS or 3PS area will be implimented, or even an RPG style of control when the main character is on board a station or planet, to increase the immersion.

If MS does make a MMOG, I just pray that it will be like Guild War: one off pay, free afterwards. That would be awsome. So until then, I might have to look into Eve. Or maybe not.

-:-
You Wanna Revolution?

Well, if they fix up the controls and stop forcing people to register on their website in order to download patches, I'll consider it .

i would pay to play an official MMO of FL if it was very hard on cheaters, updated the engine like Argh says, brought in some of the best mod elements (plain old Fl wouldnt cut it) and had an improved ranking system with a persitent universe and realistic economy. and the combat would need to be harder. but I wouldn't automatically dismiss the idea at all at all.

You have to register to post on any website, Egosoft make it so that you have to prove you legally own the game before you can download offical patches (by using your registration key) - the downloads include fixes and no cd patches, so of course they don't want to make it simple for people to have illegal copies - makes sense! I don't see the problem with that personally, and support the idea. If you won't play a game because you have to register on a site, then its your loss....

As for controls, its easy enough once you get used to it. Many people have preconceptions about controls, what they should be, and are unwilling to accept differing methods. So X2 is a bit more complex, but then again - it has soooo much stuff to do that it was bound to be fairly complex. As long as you put the time in on learning shortcuts, you won't notice within a week because you'll be hotkeying around like a legend. I personally think the only way better would have been to make it like FL's - a point and click interface. Not too good when flying
If you haven't played it yet though, you are basing it off other peoples ideas and reports. The ships handling controls are the same as FL (mouse, some keys), its the menus people dislike, but with those shortcuts... no problem. Of course, X3 should be addressing this fact quite heavily, it was one of the major things they worked upon - the interface. I look forward to seeing it, but I never really found the old one that bad


Eve certainly deserves a look when it has free trials, their graphics look fantastic, take a peek at that video! The gameplay was interesting, just slow to start, but definately absorbing.

Coming to FL's defence, it's old, and when released - the graphics looked great. They tried to keep it on playable old platforms (so 16mb cards had no issue at all) due to how many people probabily still had 16Mb cards, but I just don't see what incentive their is for a games company to assign people to work on updating graphics abilities for a game for "free".
If they did what Argh said and sold it as FL2 - everyone would be going nutts about it, not in a nice way - but ranting about how cheap and a rip off it is. If they did it for free, then it would cost them money to update graphics for a game that doesn't make them money (unless the sales are fresh printed, then surely they are selling off old pre-printed stock only!). If there was going to be an MMO, then I would expect it to be massively updated, and overhauled drastically. Infact, the universe, ships and factions would be all that survived. Control, economy, AI, options, variety, co-ordinated play and more would have to be vastly improved to make any impact upon Eve and X3, otherwise it would be a limp fish.
Maybe the Ubisoft version will catch MS's attention if it sells well for a "classic's collection" game.

Edited by - Mike G on 10/2/2005 4:08:09 AM

I really have to say that X3 and FL's audience's really aren't the same. They overlap, to some extent, but... they're not really the same.

X3, much like X2, is meant to appeal to everybody who bought the Battlecruiser series, and then struggled with the darn thing, trying to wring some fun out of the buggy mess.

It's a technocrat's game, really. I mean, look at the lengthy descriptions posted here about X2- people are talking about it mainly in guns-and-butter terms. The whole game is about money, really- money is power. Nobody talks about flying or combat tactics. Because, in the end, they're not very important. You can probably control a vast empire without ever firing a shot, at least directly.

Such game has little appeal to me. I want to blow things up and have a good time. I want to feel like I'm in a movie, not in another version of the cubicle where I earn my keep. I don't want an Empire of Many. I want an Empire of One. I don't want to be Stalin- I want to be Conan. It's a very important distinction- these two games look similar, but they're not. The quibbles about controls aren't minor, either- FL's controls are crisp, arcade-like, and responsive. The physics are deliberately unrealistic, even cartoony. And it works, because FL's main audience wants an experience involving a rush.

As for whether or not FL would sell with "minor" revamps... yeah, I think so. The "minor" stuff I referred to is on the code side, and would allow for very major changes on the content side. If MS gave me that million dollars, most of it would get spent on the content side of the production. Because, on the content side, I would have to agree that the game would need a major facelift. Things like the Stations, especially, look rather poor by comparision with X3.

But... as the next version of Toolkit Mod will show... the FL engine is capable of far better graphical quality than people give it credit for. Polycount is not a problem- really, it's not. Texture size is not a problem- I've tested 4096/4096 DDS textures, and with a modern video card, it's still just fine. I dunno about going to the next square, but that's mainly because I haven't tested it... and based on screens from X3, they're using 4096 at max, anyhow.

The only things lacking from FL, really... are a few minor graphics engine enhancements... and all of the file formats that we still can't touch. Things like graduated glowmaps via alpha-channel. True-to-point specularity. Bumpmaps. Shadows. These aren't some gee-whiz thing that nobody's ever pioneered... and they're about the only things seperating FL from X3.

Sure, it'd be nice if FL had a "better economic sim", which one of the areas that seems to be a major comment with people who've played both. But, in the end, I think that FL's core audience would be much more pleased if Missions were a lot more interesting, and perhaps had specific, MP-specific variants for multiple people to engage in. And in this area, I didn't find X2 to be all that impressive, really. They had very long, boring sweeps through empty space doing missions that seemed to make very little sense. that was about when I just gave up on the whole game- I'd been playing for 2 hours, hadn't gotten into any fun fights... had recieved almost zero meaningful hand-holding to get me involved in the storyline, and found the interface got in my way. So I tried a Mission, hoping things would get exciting, and found out that it basically consisted of using my hyper-drive-whatsit to go from abstract point to abstract point, whereupon, assuming I did it right, I'd get paid. Whoo hoo... not.

So... um... I guess I'd have to hope that X3 was more like FL, and less like X2. I sincerely doubt it, though, because Egosoft knows very well that its audience is different, and wants more of what they were buying last time- only better-looking. Those of us who thought Freespace II had one of the finest single-player experiences ever made... who really enjoyed the Wing Commander series, except for the awful Privateer II... who played X-Wing... who found Battlecruiser wasn't worth bothering with even after we got it working... we're just not the same people. I dunno... maybe I'm just a minority of one here. But I don't think so. People mod FL, in large part, because they can share a personal concept of high adventure with other people. Most of the X2 mods seem to deal with economics... or fixing the issues of control that the developers didn't get around to. It's two different worlds. Here, if you released a mod that mainly altered the FL "economy", it would be greeted with yawns... think about it.