BioWare's Star Wars MMO To Have Space Combat 122
An anonymous reader writes "Big news for Star Wars fans looking forward to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG — space combat has been confirmed for the game. Players will be able to fly around the galaxy in their own personal starships, avoiding asteroid belts, landing in dangerous territory and battling other vessels. The initial news makes it sound like a cross between Mass Effect's galaxy map and a traditional space fighting game, where players will have to find 'hotspots' on the galaxy map in order to enter a particular zone."
Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also, Rebellion.
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I've often wished for a remake, or at least an upgrade. I too bought a Sidewinder joystick, just for XvT.
The only problem with XvT is that it came out a couple of years too early, bef
Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up!
Why LucasArts never released a modern version of these games is beyond me. Utterly brilliant. Back in the day, I bought an MS Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick primarily for XvT. It used to clunk when you picked up a cargo container. Those were the days...
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Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:5, Informative)
Have you tried Microsoft Allegiance (now open source!)?
http://www.freeallegiance.org/ [freeallegiance.org]
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It's recommend that you check out Eternal Silence (http://www.eternal-silence.net [eternal-silence.net]). It's a hybrid space combat sim/FPS Source mod.
There's also two MMOs coming out specifically in this vein, Jump Gate Evolution [jumpgateevolution.com] and Black Prophecy [blackprophecy.com]. I've signed up for the betas on both and have my fingers crossed.
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Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos is pretty win.
X2: The Threat and X3: The Reunion (and X3: The Terran Conflict) are decent enough too.
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Oops. Make that X-Wing Alliance for the Force Feedback. Played' 'em all, though.
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Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:5, Informative)
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I was a big fan of Star Control (mostly just melee mode, not so much campaign mode), but never got a chance to play Star Control 2.
Bless Toys for Bob and the folks behind Ur-Quan Masters for my being able to play that game so many years later. It's so god damn sweet.
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All 3 of them are considered abandonware at this point, you can (legally) download them here [abandonia.com] if you can handle sprites in this day and age.
The above link might have it too but I found the page a bit garish and figured I'd save others some time.
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Oh man you missed the best one! Star Control 2 was just great, especially if you had a buddy to beat up on.
I only missed it for a while; I've played the shit out of Ur-Quan Masters (see link earlier in thread) which is the legally released source code and assets from SC2 ported to various operating systems. It runs natively on Linux, and has some improvements like anti-aliasing of the sprites.
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Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Me too! I'd love to see this style of space combat come back. That'd be awesome.
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I'd rather see a more believable style of space combat come back.
It doesn't have to be realistic, but believable. I simply can't suspend my belief in inertia, vast distances or vacuum not transmitting sound.
All of the space combat games I've tried lately play like you're underwater, with the vacuum apparently having even more friction than air, and sounds traveling at extremely high speeds.
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I'd rather see a more believable style of space combat come back.
It doesn't have to be realistic, but believable. I simply can't suspend my belief in inertia, vast distances or vacuum not transmitting sound.
You want Vega Strike, or any game based on its engine. they do add a sort of warp drive but even IT only magnifies inertia or reduces mass or something. Regardless, the game that you want already exists and offers persistent multiplayer.
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Babylon 5: "I've found her" had newtonian physics, as did the Independence War games. Frankly, at least for B5, it was just obnoxious. I would expect a real ship to provide computer assistance of some sort to avoid exactly what winds up happening: two ships fly back and forth past each other, as if jousting, with long periods of de/re-acceleration and then a split second of blasting away with hardly any ability to target. It was chaos, and not the good kind. 3D doesn't matter, because unless there are signi
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You played the B5 demo!?! Any chance you could point to a download location?
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Try http://ifhgame.ru/main/campaigns/what-was/danger-and-opportunity [ifhgame.ru] -- it's been a long time since I tried it. Honestly, what I *did* like about the game was the menu graphics! I totally dig the scrappy, nebulous star-map thing. (Similar idea was used for the menu graphics in Homeworld2, some of the intro to Enterprise, and I think the Wing Commander movie had some bits like it ...)
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That wasn't vector.
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You are forgiven. Loving X-Wing, TIE Fighter, or XvT and their gouraud shading absolves you of your sin :D
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Star Wars Gaming (Score:4, Insightful)
Co-op Capital Ships (Score:4, Interesting)
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Be careful what you ask for. Your "etc." could translate to Jar-Jar Binks...
That said, they can't do much worse than their honorable competitor franchise, Star Trek did. Phaserfest is so not what Star Trek is about.
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Be careful what you ask for. Your "etc." could translate to Jar-Jar Binks...
You're misparsing it - he wants to be able to fire:
turbo lasers
missile turrets
repair engines (whatever those are!)
shields (to defend your allies, of course!)
AND
Jar Jar Binks.
I think most fans would welcome the opportunity to jettison him.
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And hopefully fighters with laser cannons that point somewhere else than just dead ahead, and an astromech unit to auto aim it. Gods damn it, this isn't rocket science anymore after doing it for 10,000 years, Star Trek already had this! Or is this against some lets-fight-retarded-in-space treaty?
Re:Co-op Capital Ships (Score:5, Informative)
Or is this against some lets-fight-retarded-in-space treaty?
No, it's the Audiences Find Space Flight Confusing So Lets Act Like It's The Same As Atmospheric Flight -- BUT IN SPAAACE treaty.
The AFSPFCSLALITSAAF--BUTINSPAAACE treaty is responsible for some of the craziest representations of space combat in movies, and by extension video games. Star Trek is not a signatory, but did feel pressured to conform to some of the standards, like ships all keep essentially the same vertical orientation, and turn in slow arcs like naval ships. In recent years upstarts like Battlestar Galactica, termed "rogue fictions" by members of the AFSPFCSLALITSAAF--BUTINSPAAACE Alliance, have completely abandoned these the societal conventions the treaty is based up, in that they have ships that operate based on Newtonian physics in a vacuum, and also don't have laser blasters at all. But they aren't so crazy that they don't have sound in space. That's only for the real extremists like Kubrik or Wedon.
Hm weird where that went. Oh well.
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Since guns have grease, dirty, etc. I believe they were there to m
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Indeed. It's hard to hack a ballistic hunk of metal, or a simple IR aspect-seeker circuit :P
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Since guns have grease, dirty, etc. I believe they were there to make the Viper a somewhat more "realistic" spaceship. But to me, it had the opposite effect, it was just bizarre.
Maybe it has more to do with the fact that energy weapons have intense energy requirements. You have to put more energy in to fire it than is delivered to the target. Bullets are the opposite; they deliver much more energy than it takes to fire them. Barring some major advance in physics that substantially changes our understanding, energy weapons will never become more than 99% efficient. But since you can prepare ammunition ahead of time, it's possible to store substantial amounts of energy in 'em. Indeed
That because real space combat would suck (Score:3, Interesting)
A realistic space combat sim wold be no fun, presuming Newtonian propulsion methods like today. A pilot wouldn't be able to fly the ship well, a computer would do it. You'd tell the computer what you wanted to do, it'd do it. All weapons would be computer controlled, etc.
Hell this is how air combat is now for the most part. Planes fly on auto pilot to where they are going. Radar data is cross decked from AWACS platforms. Missiles are automated, and fired from beyond visual range, and all the pilot does is p
Re:That because real space combat would suck (Score:5, Interesting)
No, a good space game could be both realistic and awesome. It'd just be really, really hard to make.
Look, lets break it down. Purely Newtonian physics is doable. No speedometer, no throttle. WASD for acceleration (plus a couple keys to handle up and down), mouse for pitch and yaw. Turn the mouse to turn your ship, then hold a WASD button to accelerate in the direction specified. Stop accelerating and you fly on whatever trajectory you're on until you accelerate again. Limited delta-v (engines can't fire forever) but you make it so that it regenerates like weapon energy and shields when your engines are idle. Thrust for a player controlled small craft could be measured in 10s of Gs or more, with the pilot's survival in the face of such force handwaved as inertial compensation (a perfectly sensible tech if the setting includes generated gravity). You'd be able to radically change course quickly. Bonus points if the exhaust kills.
This would make landing and other finicky maneuvers tricky, which is why you'd include a good autopilot to handle those. In combat, you wouldn't run the risk of hitting much of anything, at least not if the distances were at all realistic, and the simple notion of pointing yourself toward the enemy and holding W to approach would be easy to understand. More complex maneuvers would be possible, like using side thrusters (A and D) to "jink" out of the way of incoming fire, or turning toward the enemy, hitting S to back up, cutting loose with your guns as you open up the distance.
Realistic distances are manageable without making things too small to see. Objects in the distance are automatically zoomed in for your convenience - a zoomed in representation overlays the ships location in your field of view - since even if your eyeball MK I can't see them, the ship's scopes surely can. Justify this by saying the pilot is actually experiencing spaceflight through something like a VR helmet or direct neural connection, and he/she is in a "virtual cockpit". This can also justify sound in space - the virtual interface is taking advantage of your ears as well as your eyes.
So you can see an object a thousand klicks away as clear as if it were right next door, and close the distance from a relative standstill very fast by pointing your nose at it and holding W. Now all you need are weapons. Make the guns fire in a forward arc, instead of straight ahead, make it such that you pick the target, line your nose up with it, let the guns lock on, and cut loose. Beam weapons could be made realistic, with lasers invisibly covering thousands of kilometers in hundredths of a second, and particle beams for the closer in work. Missiles could be kinetic kill weapons. ECM and ECCM would affect targeting accuracy, as would evasive action. Point defense guns would provide missile defense, and added offense at close range, without having to turn your ship about and bring your big guns to bear.
That would be realistic, at least up to a point. And it would be awesome.
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But I' in agreement that, at least for me, a joystick was what really made the game playable. I had +- pitch and +- yaw on the joystick and all other motion vector controls mapped to my Nostromo N52, talk about freedom of movement!! But there are s
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Freelancer managed mouse+keyboard just fine, and you want your hypothetical control scheme to require as few extraneous peripherals as possible. I know precisely one computer gamer who actually owns a functional joystick - I don't, and neither do a lot of people. And the reason FPS controls are popular is because they work reasonably well for what they do, and work with universally available hardware, hence why I suggested them.
But sure, add joystick support to the game, just don't require a joystick to p
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You'll want to check out the Infinity: Quest for Earth combat prototype. It's free, and it's about all you can see of what the rest of the game will be like eventually.
That game exists (Score:2)
There was a game, back in the dawn of time, that did almost everything you listed. Newtonian physics engine, tiny, invisible ships in the distance highlighted by the heads up display so you knew where they were at, lasers, missles, etc. Probably my favorite space sim of all time, it was called "XF 5700 Mantis Experimental Fighter" from Microplay, came out in 1992.
It was a bitch to get used to, if you wanted to kill a bad guy, you had to think about your velocity and direction, their velocity and direction,
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The "Elite" sequels went that way as well. Much more physically accurate, but much less actual fun.
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Second on the I-War example, and that actually did have a quite a lot of the features I listed in my hypothetical realistic space sim. Tracking weapons in a forward arc, Newtonian physics, realistic interplanetary distances (even if the actual combat was short ranged). Of course I mostly remember the sequel, not sure how much of that was in the first game. It's about as close to the ideal as any commercial space game I've played.
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To me, it would have been better if "slide" mode was permanent (alt key). The idea behind that was that it turned off the vector management system (that was explained to automatically fire thrusters to align your vector to your "front" and to stop the ship when you removed thrust)
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Perma-slide is doable. But to do it, the game needs to lack some other features as well - notably a speedometer and any external cues to velocity (like lines or bits of space junk flying past you). You'd also really want to make the various "fixed" objects like planets move around in their orbits.
What most games don't model is the fact that there is no privileged frame of reference. You can't have a speedometer that doesn't use something external to compare itself to. Aircraft use airspeed measurements,
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Could do some neat stuff like there is a support ship in the fleet that provides navigational/aim data to the fighters, which would allow some cool interplay if that support ship is taken out, you lose your ability for an airspeed reference or any kind of auto aim.
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Honestly? That's your objection, out of everything I wrote?
Okay. You make it so that under the "options" menu, there's a "controls" tab, which lets you do your own keybindings and save them. You know, like every single PC game made in the last decade and a half.
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WASD for acceleration (plus a couple keys to handle up and down), mouse for pitch and yaw
Realistically speaking the most rational interfaces for space ships are a keyboard and pointing device (could be pupil tracking) with which you issue commands, and a joystick for when you need to make manual maneuvers.
Much of what you want is available for free in the game Vega Strike, and it's FoSS so you can add all the functionality you can manage. The game even has enormously long-range weapons, but they don't deliver much power at extreme range. However, EVERYTHING in the game is TOTALLY moddable. Miss
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... but is it fun and complete out-of-the-tarball? If not, I'll pass.
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Much of what you want is available for free in the game Vega Strike
Sure about that? Last time I checked out Vega Strike it was very consciously a Wing Commander: Privateer clone/homage/emulation, and that meant Wing Commander physics: absolute velocities, a 'speed limit', and afterburners. No Newtonian velocity addition at all. A mini-hyperdrive mode added to make navigation across solar systems in seconds somewhat more plausible, but still recognisably WC.
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Sure about that? Last time I checked out Vega Strike it was very consciously a Wing Commander: Privateer clone/homage/emulation, and that meant Wing Commander physics: absolute velocities, a 'speed limit', and afterburners.
Yes, I am sure. For literally years now Vega Strike has had a key which turns off your ship's auto-thrusters, and another key which toggles the relative velocity limit between a limit you'll notice and a limit you won't. Further, it's got keys to change which object your relative velocity is calculated from, for stuff like docking with moving ships (which you can do! and with a little tweaking you can pilot ships to which one can dock!) All these features were likely there when you examined it, and you simp
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Babylon 5 had newtonian physics before Battlestar: Retcon even twinkled. It also had no sound in space; you only heard shots fired and when stuff connected. Or psychic screams from passing shadow vessels, but when you invent powers you get to determine how they behave.
How quickly we forget.
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Everyone knows that psychic screams do not carry across a vacuum...
Thanks.. now I have to watch my Babylon 5 dvds.
Re:Co-op Capital Ships (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with everything but the spacing.
A) Unless you're going to model interior ship combat as well, there's no way to justify that certain people are spaced, some killed outright, taken prisoner, etc.
B) Consider both actual gameplay mechanics and player response. Sure, it may be funny to you, but what happens to the person being spaced? Are they respawned back where they started from? Where they were going? Nearest planet? Does it have differing effects than other methods of character death? Can it be used as a form of griefing?
No, if you're allowing raids on ships, then either have the crew taken prisoner, if it's a guild/clan PvP thing, and then players need to escape, or have them "escape on life pods" and show up on the nearest planet.
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Sure, it may be funny to you, but what happens to the person being spaced?
They're brought back to life by a mysterious organization and from then on have to take orders from Martin Sheen.
$10 says they just rename StarWars Galaxies (Score:2)
to something else by the time this is done.
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But $10 says that it'll be available for $59.99 USD
And this is a new thing? (Score:1)
That sounds an awful lot like the space combat system in Star Wars Galaxies. In fact...it sounds identical. You can take shuttles around, but it's considerably cheaper to use your own starship, fly it around via hyperspace, and land at a planet.
And you can have 'epic space battles', and 'space combat levels' are independant compared to your 'ground combat levels'. *sniff* I was on the edge of qualifying for experimental light cruiser, too.
Yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
How many parsecs will it take me to make my run?
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African or European?
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Considering it's possible that the "Kessel run" is something equivalent to a rally course, there would be much time spent accelerating and decelerating from light speed to make the turns. A good, highly maneuverable ship would be able to make tighter turns at higher speeds, thus reducing the turning radii of the path taken, and taking a shorter track, thereby saving both time and distance. Therefore, the less distance a ship took to make a "run", the better it would be.
If both ships are travelling at ".5 ab
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Considering The sequel to this movie had a ship incapable of FTL travelling from system to system to get repairs...
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If both ships are travelling at ".5 above light speed", then the ship that turns tighter takes less parsecs to make a turn, and thus would arrive at the finish sooner.
Yes, but not necessarily sooner than a ship that actually went faster but couldn't cut corners as well.
Which is why "distance traveled" is a stupid way to measure performance in a race that's about arriving sooner, and a stupid way to brag about how fast one's ship is. If your ship is equally fast as every other ship, but more maneuverable, y
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Your run could be shorter or longer, by distance traveled. The infamous Han Solo quote is somewhat correct when one considers that the Kessel Run was around a cluster of black holes - necessitating greater velocities to take a shorter path, yet still escaping the ship's relative event horizon.
Our own spaceship (Score:5, Funny)
But who's gonna fly it, kid, you?
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Travellin' through hyperspace ain't like dustin' crops, boy. Without precise calculations we could fly right through a Womp Rat or bounce too close to a Sarlacc pit.
Okay, it is exactly like dustin' crops.
EVE Online (Score:4, Funny)
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And yet, millions of people play multiplayer online FPSes every day.
Massively multiplayer hit detection is a solved problem. It doesn't matter that you're shooting at spaceships rather than demomen and heavies.
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You haven't played space combat since the first Descent...admit it.
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Better space game (Score:2)
The dark side is calling (Score:1)
Worked really well in XWvTF multiplayer (Score:2)
Dozens of identical TIE advanceds circling around in one big furball, desparately trying to get on each others' tails for minutes on end. No skill needed. Just lean on the stick and twitch the trigger whenever you see a craft flash past your sights.
No thanks.
Why they didn't tell us sooner. (Score:1)
Allegiance (Score:2)
I'd love to see someone take a look back and learn some lessons from Microsoft's Allegiance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(video_game) [wikipedia.org]
The 3-D space combat and more realistic physics were awesome, and the GUI was very intuitive. It definitely took a joystick to play right, however.
This game was way ahead of its time for 1999 and died way too soon. Curse you Microsoft for killing it!
Necron69
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This game was way ahead of its time for 1999 and died way too soon. Curse you Microsoft for killing it!
But it's still around! Check out Free Allegiance [freeallegiance.org].
Microsoft Research released the source code in 2004 (some kind of shared source license) and a small but determined community of players and developers enjoys and keeps improving the gameplay (the R6 client is currently in beta).
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(the R6 client is currently in beta).
And could use development help if anyone is interested in looking under the hood of a Microsoft creation. 10 years later and still squishing MS bugs, but gameplay is awesome.
jar jar (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:2)
Exactly! (Score:1)
Exactly. Star Wars Galaxies already has a space combat system. Complete with personal fighters, cooperative capital ship fighting, and dodging (and mining) asteroids. It doesn't change the fact that all MMO's are the same. Grindgrindgrindgrindgrind - get a trinket - grindgrindgrindgrindgrind - level up! so that it's easier to grindgrindgrindgrind - get jumped on by some lvl 90 jackass who likes picking on level 20's who wander into pvp areas, so you want revenge and so you grindgrindgrindgrindgrind.
Even the
"traditional space fighting game" (Score:1)
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