What is this piece of CRAP.....!

[Corporate Dog]

Originally posted by milo:

quote:

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I'm guessing the 2D movement was a DESIGN consideration

Yes, of course it was.

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... as opposed to a lack of programming skill or resources, which the first poster seemed to imply. I was on your side with that statement.

However, just providing the player with some kind of pitch control would not be sufficient. Just off the top of my head, the game would also need:

Believe me, I fully understand and appreciate all the other functions that would be needed to bring 3D movement into the game (AI is certainly a very large consideration). I'm not coming into this discussion as a player, but as a programmer myself.

Still, I feel that just producing the game that they produced was half the battle right there.

All that would result in a huge change of emphasis in the way Starfury plays. The game would become less goal-oriented, and more process-oriented. It would also become more difficult, especially for people who have a hard time solving spacial puzzles.

Very true. It WOULD have been a completely different game. That isn't necessarily a bad thing... first person shooters are difficult for me, but that doesn't mean they're poorly designed.

I think some of us were coming from the angle of "Wow. It's Elite with capitol-class ships, a third-person view, and more strategic considerations."

From a super-tactical point of view, yes, that's exactly what it is. You've got a mostly freeform trading game with ship-to-ship combat, and vessel design.

From a tactical viewpoint, that's not what we got at all. Spacial "puzzles" were a key part of Elite, but they aren't quite there in Starfury (or at least not in a 3D environment).

Take a look at 'Star Trek: Bridge Commander'. I think the gameplay could've been improved significantly in that title by streamlining and simplifying all of the combat/control options, and that's sort of what I expected out of Starfury.

In spite of that, I felt that Bridge Commander managed to provide a game with an EXTREMELY strategic/tactical feel in three dimensions. In that game, it FELT like you were piloting a capitol ship.

I've seriously considered building a "Car Wars" mod for Starfury. That's how generic the 2D movement feels to me (and, on the flipside, shows how flexible the modability feature is).

Regards,
Corporate Dog

[PvK]

Has there yet been a space combat computer game with 3D movement and an emphasis on maneuver tactics, which had a good usable interface which allows one to easily understand the positions and movements of the ships?

The best that I can think of is the Independence War series, which is very good at what it does, but still can get bewildering to try to see and understand what is going on if there are several ships in different directions.

Unless someone does know of a very good example of a 3D tactical interface, it seems to me that 2D space games remain a very reasonable design decision, if you want to be able to have several ships involved in a combat, and still be able to easily see what maneuvers are occurring.

Even with the 2D movement, I think it's actually somewhat difficult to tell what's going on around one's ship in Star Fury, because of the sideways views, the speed of play, and the lack of automated alerts warning of attacks and other approaching objects. Zoomed-out top-down view is best for situational awareness, except then you can't see distant objects.

With 3D movement... it'd probably be a much different sort of game, which Independence War already does rather well. An RTS-like interface with elevation lines might be a way to get a more tactical interface, although either would be challenging to present in a way that had the same ease of play as a 2D system.

Although people have widely different tastes, the first post on this thread surprises me somewhat, unless it's a troll post. Why would an SE4 fan want or expect a 3D game with eye candy comparable to something it took Microsoft Games what, four years (?) and literally millions of dollars, to polish (and which has extremely lame tactical gameplay, from all intelligent accounts I've read)?

Certainly SF is a lot prettier than SE4, and it has far more potential for tactical interestingness, especially with modding, than Freelancer.

However I'm not entirely surprised - everyone has different tastes, and a lot of game enjoyment comes from the imagination, and pretty 3D graphics do engage the imagination, at least until a player figures out the game (or lack thereof) behind the graphics.

PvK

[ColdSteel]

I think a lot of people are completely missing what kind of game genre Starfury fits into.

Starfury is basically Diablo in space. It's, at heart, a simple space CRPG. It's all about the stuff; getting better ships and equipment, boosting stats, solving quests and becoming the baddest deathdealer in the galaxy. If you don't like very open-ended CRPGs, and instead like traditional space sims, I don't think you'll be that happy with the game.

Starfury is NOT a space sim. I think MM wanted it to be simple to play and not require a joystick or game controller to do so. It does require a bit of dexterity but most of the decisions made in combat are tactical and the results are usually not much dependant on eye-hand coordination. I think this was a good decision based on the number of complaints I've seen about collisions. I don't think anyone who has played any flight based based games is going to be having trouble running into stuff in this game. I sure haven't.

By keeping the flight model very simple, they make the game more accessible to the turn based strategy crowd (read SE4 players). After all, MM wants to apply this engine to SE5.

I think it is a good engine. The graphics are quite good for a company with the resources that MM has to work with. I commend them. I think it's great fun.

The moddability of the game is staggering. While the stock campaigns and game framework may be fairly vanilla, and there isn't a whole lot of depth there yet, I expect that to change. It's as if MM has built a very customizable framework for a whole game universe and sketched in just the highpoints. What happens next is up to the modders. Personally, I expect some fantastic mods once everyone figures out how to go about it.

The one thing that I wish MM had done was to provide more information on the mod specs. Lack of information will not deter the diehard SE4 modders in the slightest, but it will slow down the newcomers quite a bit until some examples or tutorials are posted.

Overall, I really like this game and hope that MM continues to flesh it out. I hope they don't just consider this an experiement for SE5 and abandon it as a game. Frankly, right now I'm having more fun with Starfury than I did with SE4.

My 2 cents,

-ColdSteel

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by ColdSteel:
I think a lot of people are completely missing what kind of game genre Starfury fits into.

Starfury is basically Diablo in space. It's, at heart, a simple space CRPG. It's all about the stuff; getting better ships and equipment, boosting stats, solving quests and becoming the baddest deathdealer in the galaxy. If you don't like very open-ended CRPGs, and instead like traditional space sims, I don't think you'll be that happy with the game.

... snip ...

My 2 cents,

-ColdSteel

Heh... you should have seen the comments in the beta forum about the 'magic potions' for recharging your shields and armor. Many people considered that a bit too free 'recycling' of code from DO. They have been toned down somewhat, but you can see they are still present. You can just click on emergency shield/armor/hull components and 'magically' regain damage.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Corporate Dog:

I've seriously considered building a "Car Wars" mod for Starfury. That's how generic the 2D movement feels to me (and, on the flipside, shows how flexible the modability feature is).

Regards,
Corporate Dog

How about a Submarine mod? I suggested this to MM during the beta process. If he could add 'levels' (not completely 'free form' 3D, just 'flight levels') to the movement system that would be 3D enough for a quite workable and fun Submarine game of some sort. You could change 'depths' or 'levels' with a special command key.

I do agree that the shield/armor system would need some adjustment for a multi-level combat model, though. Hmm... might be very difficult.

[jpowell]

I played the demo, and decided not to buy the game.

- Judging from the demo, the game isn't very stable. My system is far above the minimums, but it crashed every session.
- The ship you start with is a destroyer, but the game mechanics were that of a fighter. I never felt I was in charge of a crew and substantial vessel. Larger ships were somewhat better, but the game didn't simulate the experience of captaining a capital ship.
- Size relationships were way off. Planets looked like beach balls, even close up. Other than the distance "gauge", you couldn't tell how close you were to a celestial body until you impacted.
- There are much better tactical space games on the market. You want tactics, great graphics, modability and 3D movement? Try any of the Homeworld games.

Don't get me wrong, I have spent hundreds of hours with SEIV. I love 4X games, and have been playing them since Reach for the Stars on the C64. But the relationship between SEIV and SESF is tenuous at best. One game is graphically simple but with gameplay as deep as the Grand Canyon. The other is graphically simple and...well, plays simply too.

Every artist has his genius and his limitations. Picasso never wrote a symphony; Beethoven never produced a still life. MM should stick to 4X games; that is his genius.

[Mehrunes]

Originally posted by jpowell:
- There are much better tactical space games on the market. You want tactics, great graphics, modability and 3D movement? Try any of the Homeworld games.

Homeworld is an RTS, you have no direct control over anything. If you want to compare apples to something that's less orange-like than homeworld than perhaps I-War 2 would be a good example, however it emphasizes combat more and the options for modifying your ship (or getting new ones) are much more limited.

[PvK]

The thing I couldn't stand about Homeworld was the RTS aspect. Gee, shall I pay attention to recon and combat, OR shall I mine an asteroid field and double the size of my fleet in the next five-to-ten minutes? Argh. There were a couple of play modes without the RTS resource/research aspect, but they weren't really the main mode of play. Some pretty spectacular (to look at, anyway) combat, but also weak on some details like damage to ships (all-or-nothing generic damage effects).

PvK

[ October 12, 2003, 20:46: Message edited by: PvK ]

[jpowell]

SESF is supposed to be real-time, and representative of the real world. It is pretty clear from many of the Posts that the game's lack-luster graphics and arcade physics limit many players' suspension of disbelief. Whatever you may feel about Homeworld or Independence War, or STBC, these games do a better job of presenting "the real world" and involving the player in a way that SESF doesn't. SESF's "modability" begs the question: the game doesn't provide the expected experience "out of the box".

MM's low-budget limitations don't excuse (or explain) SESF's weaknesses. SEIV is the premier 4X game on the market despite its thrifty origins. This is because the depth and replayability of the game are unsurpassed. MM simply missed the boat with SESF.

This is not to say that SESF is a wasted effort. MM's forte is 4X strategic gaming. The SESF engine (appropriately tweaked) would make an interesting tactical battle module for SEV.

[Suicide Junkie]

SESF is supposed to be real-time, and representative of the real world

That's just wrong.
It is supposed to be a "continuous-time" (we are talking sublight space travel between planets) game, and representative of the SE universe.