The Final Frontier

Recently, I stumbled upon Naev via one of the forums I frequent. It's basic features are things I do very much like: 1) Space exploration and trade? Check. 2) Realistic Physics (on a 2d plane)? Check. 3) Open source? Check.

I played it for a few hours and I suck at it. It made me long for a more accessible and immerging experience. So I opted for the good old Darkstar One. I chose it over X3 this time, because I always get put down by the huge micromanagement neccessary later in game. I still love it, but I missed out on DSO back then, and I thought now was the perfect time to fill this gap.

It has a few quite nice touches like customizing your ship to your tastes, a better story than the X series and it feels a tad less generic. Stil, there are some quirks, like only having your one ship, dispite all the customizability, and it's impossible to run on Vista without some illegal measures, especially since the developers download server for all the patches and fixes doesn't exist anymore.

Playing this space opera, it made me wonder. Why did the genre die out, except for open source and fan made games, like Vega Strike or various releases for the Freespace 2 Source Code Project? Back in my time, those kind of games were bets selling titles, and especially Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series was pushing videogames forward in general, with their 3D technologies requiring the newest hardware to run, and hollywood like story telling.

Just imagine the beauty of space with todays technology, both graphically and physically. Instead of rendering a detailed world, all the processing power could be used to render vast armadas and highly detailed ships.

But it made me also wonder why all the space games still use the very ancient hitpoint mechanic. Thinking of Il2 especially, as the space dogfights play similar to WW2 dogfights, I imagine that a realistic damage system would be awesome.

You wouldn't just shoot your enemy to zero HP, but you'd have to hit vital parts to down him. The ships would have to have all those components and subsystems inside them so you could hit and damage or destroy them, with realistic effects.

Of course, realism in space games can only go that far to be annoying. While newtonian physics might work, having no sounds seems dull (well, no sounds as long as there are no particles effecting your ship... I guess you would "hear" an explosion IRL if particles hit your ship.. and you'd still hear all your own systems and weapons). Also realistic speeds wouldn't really work. Ships speeding at several thousands miles per hour would just speed past each other, eradicating the beloved dogfights.

Well, if any game developer is interested, just contact me, I'm full of great ideas for a game I'd like to play. Honestly!