Chris Roberts, the creator of the WING COMMANDER and STARLANCER/FREELANCER franchises, has announced that he is working on a new space combat game.
The game is hugely ambitious. The project overall is called STAR CITIZEN and works on one of several levels. On one level the game works like FREELANCER or PRIVATEER, with you trading, flying around the universe and upgrading stuff. You can run the game in this mode as a single-player game or on a private server with some friends. You can also play this mode on public servers, where it becomes more like an MMORPG.
If that doesn't appeal, there is a story-driven, single-player campaign. This campaign mode is called SQUADRON 42 and will feature sequential missions. This mode can be played single-player or in co-op with a friend (or possibly several friends). This campaign will be upgraded on a regular basis with new missions and expansions.
As well as space combat and trading, the game will also allow you to walk around in a first-person mode on spaceships and stations (and possibly starports as well).
The game will be PC-only, since it is simply beyond the capabilities of the 360 and the PS3 to even begin being able to handle. However, I would not rule out its eventual appearance on the next-gen machines.
Chris Roberts give an impressive one-hour talk about the game here.
There's a five-minute trailer here.
Apparently all of the game footage was rendered in-engine using an Nvidia 680GT graphics card, which is seriously impressive.
I just found this thread and want to say THANK YOU! I love Cris Robert games! I have been waiting for a good looking space sim to come out since jumpgate evolution died a horrible flaming death.
May this come to fruition.
Very interesting.
I have lots of fond memories blasting cats with lazers in space and am looking forward to this project.
STAR CITIZEN is approaching having raised $25 million in funding via crowdsourcing, which is insane.
The latest video is pretty cool. The video was made with in-game graphics and was rendered in real time. In fact, this is a tech demo they've been sharing with ATI and nVidia to show off their latest cards: the original video was rendered in real time at 4K! That's very cutting-edge (and far, far beyond what the PS4 and XB1 are even remotely capable of).
Apparently the game will run fine on a standard PC with cards starting around the nVidia 450 or equivalent, although I wouldn't expect it to run great with that. I might have to upgrade to at least a 680 before the game comes out (it's not due for about a year, so that's not a problem).
Chris Roberts: destroying PCs since 1990.
Some more info on SQUADRON 42, STAR CITIZEN's single-player-focused space combat companion game.
This game is being developed by Erin Roberts and a dedicated team at Foundry 42, based in Manchester. Whilst his brother Chris Roberts and the main RSI team work on STAR CITIZEN as a whole, Erin and his team will be putting together SQUADRON 42. This will be a more traditional WING COMMANDER-style space combat game with you serving as a pilot in a larger war, doing missions as commanded. Apparently there will be cross-overs with the larger STAR CITIZEN universe, such as possibly 'retiring' from the military (upon completion of the SP storyline) and setting up as a trader or something in the other game.
Interesting stuff. Funding for STAR CITIZEN has now passed $25 million and is closing on $27 million, whereupon one of the main alien races in the games will get a number of player-flyable ships added.
I wandered in and I am hooked, even though I have no idea what Wing Commander is (other than a really bad movie).
I wonder how they will deal with logoff abuse? You know when you are flying your cargo to the factory planet and another player is blasting your freighter apart to steal that same cargo... and you log out to save yourself. Or excuse me... you suddenly lost connection at that vital moment.
I guess we better make absolutely sure we have a good connection before getting into a fight.
I wandered in and I am hooked, even though I have no idea what Wing Commander is (other than a really bad movie).
I wonder how they will deal with logoff abuse? You know when you are flying your cargo to the factory planet and another player is blasting your freighter apart to steal that same cargo... and you log out to save yourself. Or excuse me... you suddenly lost connection at that vital moment.
Most MMOs with meaningful PvP handle this fine already, withe some games introducing a logoff delay outside of "safe" zones, and others (and by "others" I mean EVE) simply leave your ship where it was for others to do with as they wish.
In the MMO part of the game, I think you can only save your ship at stations. If you're midflight and bail in an attempt to cheese a fight, your ship will keep flying until it gets blown up or hits something (there may be some kind of autopilot option so it heads to the nearest station on its own). If you haven't bought in-game insurance, you'll be in trouble. Presumably there'll be some sort of arbritation process if you dropped out because of a power failure or other incident beyond your control.
Might be worth looking on their forums to see if the question has come up before.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/
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Looks interesting. There hasn't been a true space-fighter sim since Freespace 1/2 (which is still amazing even 10+ years later).
Looks interesting. There hasn't been a true space-fighter sim since Freespace 1/2 (which is still amazing even 10+ years later).
And now we get two! Hooray!
Will I need the flight stick? I haven't played any fighter sims before so I don't own one. But if a keyboard and mouse will be too unwieldy then I may need to get one.
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Will I need the flight stick? I haven't played any fighter sims before so I don't own one. But if a keyboard and mouse will be too unwieldy then I may need to get one.
You should be able to play without one, but personally, I can't imagine playing a space combat sim without a flight stick. The controls are much more intuitive and responsive, and the feel of the stick helps me keep orientation of my surroundings.
In a few of the trailers (or maybe in the want the podcast I dont remember) its showed several of the testers playing with Xbox 360 controllers. So I am assuming that we can use a game pad.
Ohhh good idea Ruick. A game pad would be a far more reusable purchase than a flight stick.
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Looks interesting. There hasn't been a true space-fighter sim since Freespace 1/2 (which is still amazing even 10+ years later).
STARLANCER, X-WING ALLIANCE, I-WAR 2 and TACHYON: THE FRINGE all came out after FREESPACE 2, and the first two (at least) were very good. There's also the X series and FREELANCER, although the space combat in both was iffy (and it's not the main focus of either game, which is trading).
FREESPACE 2 was the last truly great, truly brilliant space combat sim though.
Yeah, the moment Sathanas came in and tore through the biggest ship terran/vasudan alliance had? Chilled me.
The second one?
Not sure we need to spoilerise something that came out 14 years ago, but then 99% of gamers have never played it and absolutely should do :)
I still thought the first Freespace had the much better plot than the second - which is not a knock on the second game, because the first game was impossibly good. The Terran-Vasudan War to start, the first appearances of the Shivans, the race to save the Avenger prototype, and later the counteroffensive. The loss of the Galatea. The turnaround, then the appearance of the Lucifer (which still gives me chills). Every 3-4 years I dig out the original game to play it again.
I don't think any game has ever hit me has hard as that game did when I lost the Galatea (except perhaps AC5 and the loss of Chopper - man did I make the Yuk's regret that one).
I'd pay ridiculous sums of money to have those games remade with a new engine that could support larger force sizes for each battle, because that was the only weakness (and even then they did a pretty good job covering it up).
Bering a Star Wars fan, I was always partial to the X-Wing series myself, but I am still looking forward to this game and have preordered it through their website.
Now that EA owns Star Wars video games we will never get a decent X-Wing game again anyway.
I never got that far in the series. X-Wing was great, TIE Fighter was beyond brilliant, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was... I don't know, there was something off about it and it didn't really have the charm of the older games. And X-Wing Alliance felt too gimicky, for lack of a better word. It's been a long time, so I don't remember exactly what put me off the last two games.
And by then it was the year 2000 and LucasArts was busy self-destructing. (Force Commander was the beginning of the End, I tell ya!)
Lucas never produced anything for me as good as Star Wars Rebellion. That game was amazing. I wish I could make it run on Windows 7.
Lucas never produced anything for me as good as Star Wars Rebellion. That game was amazing. I wish I could make it run on Windows 7.
o.O
I... I don't know what to say.
To me, Force Commander and SW: Rebellion marked the end of the 'LucasArts Era.'
Lucas never produced anything for me as good as Star Wars Rebellion. That game was amazing. I wish I could make it run on Windows 7.
I loved Rebellion, but the game was far from perfect. Great premise, flawed execution.
Buy it from GoG. I think they have it. And it runs on 7.
I wish they did.
Haven't played a space flight SIM as good as tie fighter wars since.
Jump to Lightspeed in SWG was fun because of the pvp aspect, and very similar engine.
I enjoyed the story of WCIII-IV, but not the actual combat.
Out of curiosity, was I the only one that liked the Wing Commander movie?
This makes me wish I had a computer that could handle that kind of game. (even my stick has been recycled as a prop in the kids room) I reaaaally miss space flight simulators, they were always my favourite.
I have fond memories of Tachyon; not the most in-depth flight simulator but fun, light and humorous story.
I still thought the first Freespace had the much better plot than the second - which is not a knock on the second game, because the first game was impossibly good. The Terran-Vasudan War to start, the first appearances of the Shivans, the race to save the Avenger prototype, and later the counteroffensive. The loss of the Galatea. The turnaround, then the appearance of the Lucifer (which still gives me chills). Every 3-4 years I dig out the original game to play it again.
I don't think any game has ever hit me has hard as that game did when I lost the Galatea (except perhaps AC5 and the loss of Chopper - man did I make the Yuk's regret that one).
I'd pay ridiculous sums of money to have those games remade with a new engine that could support larger force sizes for each battle, because that was the only weakness (and even then they did a pretty good job covering it up).
One of my "if I win the lottery fantasy" is to buy the rights to remake the games, do a sequel, make a movie and à Tv show "à la" clone Wars. That and starcraft...
Man do I need to start gaming again, I feel old school when I hear of Mass Effect and I have no idea what the story's about but I CAN recall almost everything cutscenes from both freespace.
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To me, Force Commander and SW: Rebellion marked the end of the 'LucasArts Era.'
REPUBLIC COMMANDO was pretty good, to be fair. GALACTIC BATTLEGROUNDS was also 'okay', in a "This looks like a mod for AGE OF EMPIRES II" kind of way.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC 1 and 2 were also great, but of course they were only released by LucasArts. The actual programming was done by BioWare and Obsidian.
In a similar vein, JEDI OUTCAST and JEDI ACADEMY were both really good, but again developed by an outsider company (Raven, in those cases).
Out of curiosity, was I the only one that liked the Wing Commander movie?
I enjoyed it in the "it's so bad it's good" kind of way. It actually didn't seem to have much space dogfighting, which is weird as that's the main point of the thing. And changing all the ship designs from the game seemed a complete waste of time. And the Kilrathi looked rubbish. And Freddie Prinz Jnr. was terrible.
Some of the other actors were pretty good. Jurgen Prochnow is great in everything he's in. They did waste David Suchet though.
I still thought the first Freespace had the much better plot than the second - which is not a knock on the second game, because the first game was impossibly good. The Terran-Vasudan War to start, the first appearances of the Shivans, the race to save the Avenger prototype, and later the counteroffensive. The loss of the Galatea. The turnaround, then the appearance of the Lucifer (which still gives me chills). Every 3-4 years I dig out the original game to play it again.
I can respect that, but for me the second game trumps it. The original is very much THE HOBBIT to the second game's LORD OF THE RINGS (and plenty of people prefer THE HOBBIT). The second game is bigger, the story is more epic and far more full of twists and turns and the gut-punches are much harder:
I have fond memories of Tachyon; not the most in-depth flight simulator but fun, light and humorous story.
And the main character being voiced by Bruce Campbell :)
Bruce Campbell makes everying better (even SPIDER-MAN 3, very briefly).
REPUBLIC COMMANDO was pretty good, to be fair. GALACTIC BATTLEGROUNDS was also 'okay', in a "This looks like a mod for AGE OF EMPIRES II" kind of way.
Oh, I didn't want to suggest that LucasArts never produced (or published) a good game after the year 2000. It's just that up through the 90s, for me, roughly everything they did was fantastic and a definite must-buy. This changed (again, for me) as the 90s drew to a close. Which was, as I recall, also about the time where LucasArts decided they wanted out of the PC game market. They never quite managed that, but everything they did after that seemed kinda half-hearted.
Of "modern" Star Wars games, I really liked Republic Commando (hey, a game without jedi, how refreshing!). Obviously, the KotORs were great, but I don't really think of those as LucasArts games.
I was really looking forward to 1313. *sadface*
So anyone else been keeping up with this? Any other backers here?
So anyone else been keeping up with this? Any other backers here?
I'm not a backer, but I would consider this game to be vapourware by now. You'd probably be better of playing Elite: Dangerous.
That's pretty far from the truth, but thanks.
I didn't mean to suggest I was not following the game's development...I could have phrased that better, I guess. Thanks, though Krensky.
Was just wondering if anyone else here was as well.
An hour of SQUADRON 42's gameplay.
It's still pretty far from release and I'm not sure that putting the FPS bits in the single-player game is a good idea (although it does explain the massive delay to it), but it looks very, very impressive from a technical viewpoint.
However, I am recalling all those space sims which just had a "click to go to briefing," "click to go to hanger deck" and "click to go to space and blow up stuff" button. They may not have looked as good as spending 20 minutes walking through your space battleship and having a leisurely chat with Actual Ser Davos Seaworth, but they cut to the chase a little quicker.