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Limited Edition Terminus For Order
A reader writes "Read over at GA-Source that the space sim game Terminus is finally about to start shipping and that they are taking 100 pre-orders for limited edition signed copies of the game. If you never heard of Terminus, check out GA's preview of the game here. It's got a load of cool features like real Newtonian physics and a persistent online universe and real good AI to boot! I've never been a big sim fan but this is one game I'm definitely gonna check into. "
This many be slightly off-topic, but...
Wasn't there a Doctor Who story called Terminus? It was a Fifth Doctor story, and the TARDIS somehow got joined to a spaceship that was at the centre of the universe. I remember seeing it as a kid.
As soon as I read "Terminus" and "space," this is what I thought of.
I'm posting this as Anonymous Coward because I'm not sure how it will be received. So, if you like this, don't moderate it up too far. All those karma points will just go to /dev/null.
There's no conspiracy here - I just think it's a cool game.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
It's Newtonian physics, not Einsteinian. You'll percieve time as moving at the same rate no matter what speed you're going at - unlike the real world. I suppose this opens the doors for a lot of FTL too... (just go real fast - nothin' special ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
| BOSE? Lol! Last thing I expected in this forum
;) )
| was a BOSE advocate.
I'm not too surprised at anything I read on Slashdot these days. However, even a Bose system is likely to sound better than the "multimedia" crap - and that includes some systems that come with what is billed as a subwoofer - that is put out for use with computers these days. (This is also why so many people think MP3s they download over the net sound as good as CDs...
-- Rick
As if it isn't hard enough to get a limited edition of a game, let alone when it gets slashdotted with only 100 copies of something.
bah.
.allen
I don't mean to offend or provocate, but there simply isn't much that is original in this game. Perhaps the AI is better than I can imagine from reading the review, or maybe the review is just badly written, but ... I see so much hype about "newtonian physics", "dynamic economy" and "cool HUD" that it makes me wonder whether there is anything interesting in that game at all, because those things certainly aren't. I hope the gameplay is good.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
The graphics of "Terminus" look nice, although it seems to be yet another uninspiring space shooter.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Where is this info? I couldn't find any info on the Mac release.
I have a feeling this game is gonna cost me another point on the GPA
/ZL
While you may be correct about the graphics.. comparing the sound quality is stupid! Your computer or dreamcast don't play sound worth a damn... just like you said... 4 speakers and a sub play your sound. If I am not mistaken there have been video games made for consoles that take advantage of surround sound. And I can bet you that the sound quality of a BOSE surround system will put your 5 speaker system hooked up to your SB live to shame... so please leave speakers out of the equation.
"Sunday April 23
Terminus Limited Edition
As of 6:45 PM PST, the limit of one hundred people has been reached. I came home from work at 5:30 to find my inbox flooded with emails. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to send me their information and pre-order.
I will format the list and send it over to VV within the week. Like Karthik said in the forum, once they have the list they will email the confirmation. For those of you who didn't make it by 6:45 PM PST, go ahead and send it to me anyway. I say this because when VV compares the list to the pre-orders at their store, there may be some inconsistencies. Some people may have not ordered at all. So don't give up just yet."
- http://www.stationterminus.com/current/
Now, that was a game that someone should build a 3d, multiplayer version of!!! If you never played it, you REALLY missed out. Even though it was an EGA game with PC speaker sound. IT rocked!! AND, strangly enough, I still play it at times. It was very cool.
This game was produced by Future Magic and released through Electronic Arts a very long time ago (back in 1988).
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Sig Return: 204 No Content
darn...don't know if I can stand another gpa point drop! ;)
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Sig Return: 204 No Content
Well, let's say your ship can thrust at 10gs. Furthermore, let's say it has unlimited fuel.
It would still take you a month to get up to light speed. That would be really boring, and you would run out of fuel LONG before.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Oddly enough, the requirements seem to be pretty low...
http://www.stationterminus.com/ lists the hw requirements as a P200 with 32 megs of ram, and sw as linux or win9x or macos. Of course, that's probably like Doom on a 386/20.
Jim
There have been no less than two PhD dissertations based on writing a Netrek robot. The netrek server newbie.psychosis.net has bunch of robots that keep game at a full 16 players. When a human comes in, one of the bots leaves. They are in "suck mode", so they fight much more poorly than they could, to give new players a chance to kill them.
When Doom first came out, it was pure shareware. You could not buy it in stores, you could only order it through the mail. It didn't do too bad. And I don't remember Id Software having a big marketing budget at the time either.
The only difference between then and now is that now, more people are 'online' and are more likely to be exposed to something like this through word of mouth.
If it really is good, and if they release a good demo, in a timely fashion, it will do well.
but why stop there? Relativistic physics beckons: 4) As the speed of the craft approaches the speed of light it contracts along the direction of motion and time slows down.
Yes, that is how it is typically done in games. It's fast, it's simple, and nobody really cares about accurate collision resolution for good game-play. I just wanted to point out that simulating Newtonian physics doesn't necessarily imply a trivial set of rules.
In fact, even in two dimensions it's quite non-trivial if done with a signicant amount of accuracy.
I haven't actually read the linked page so this may well be what you meant by 'continuous physics' anyway, but what would be cool is a persistent space game where you can get in your ship, point it towards the next star system, accelerate to like 50% of light speed, and then logoff and come back to the game in 24 hours when you're just entering the star system. :)
Hmm. Funny you should say that. I remember a tiny little game company that everyone said would fail because THEY didnt have hardly any marketing. This tiny little company called Cavedog going up against giants like Blizzard, Westwood, and EA. Especialy in a market that was already full. Funny thing was, Total Annihilation took off without a ton of hype. History does repeat itself.
And people expect when they want to move to something in a higher orbit they should accelerate toward it or in the same direction as their present orbit...
Or if you drop Beowulf in the game, he will fall in a realistic manner?
Could this finally be what Elite 2 et al. were supposed to be?
It's even got the elite radar thing.
I must buy this ASAP
Somewhere on their site, they claimed the realism was adjustable to `arcade style'. Perhaps they've thought about the learning curve and let people work their way up.
Is there an accelerated time scale to this game? Because, it's been a while since I took the physics AP, but otherwise won't this game be incredibly boring to play considering the time involved in space travel? Today, Mars is 352*10^11 meters from earth (According to Microsoft Space Simulator, sorry ). So, starting at zero velocity... x=.5*10g*t^2... considering you've gotta start decellerating halfway through your trip... It'll take about 10 days to make the all important Mars-Earth trip.
independence war sucks. its controls are too difficult to use and its VERY awkward to even try to shoot at something (download the demo for IW1 and IW2 and see for yourself). the defining element in the success or failure of these games is the controls..if they can be customised nicely the game will succeed..otherwise it'll just piss people off.
now that I think of it, there was a 1996 game called Subspace (nothing like terminus) that implemted all of those.
(snip) The url for that Mac game is:http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/ev/
Man, I'd love it if Escape Velocity and it's "sequel" Escape Velocity Override were ported to an OS that'd run on my Intel hardware. I liked EV so much I gladly registered it (shareware). The folks at Ambrosia Software do a great job. If you've got an older Mac or a Mac laptop sitting around, grab this - along with a copy of Bungie's Marathon series :)
Hemos-
So, if you personally had to choose, what would be your favorite game overall?
~~Delphinios~~
There is a popular Mac game named Escape Velocity that does all that (missions with timeframe, depending on factions, trading, thrust needed to change trajectories, etc.), except it's in 2D and not 3D.
It is a lot of fun!
The url for that Mac game is:
http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/ev/
I have played a few games that have touted their realism. What I have found is that the more buttons and effects you have to worry about the harder it is to pick up and play.
Take the Playstation game Wipeout. I have played many racing games in my life, but Wipeout is by far the best. What makes it different from the more realistic racing sims is the fact that you don't need the brake in the beginning levels while getting all of the nifty graphic effects of the later stages and most of the speed. In other words, the game was fun while I was building skill.
The problem with video games is that you have fewer options than you would ever have in real life. In a real baseball game you have the option to stand anywhere you want in the batter's box, swing as hard as you want, even drop your shoulder a hair when you see a juicy fastball to uppercut the ball out of the park with nothing more than minute adjustments, but if you want to include it in a game, you have to find a separate input device for each small feature.
My prediction is that this space sim will have so many features that it will be rendered unweildly to all but the most experienced gamers, and even they will have a learning curve that will bore them for a while
there is an ``inverse realism slider''
cunningly mislabeled "volume"? I had a printer driver like that for my old mac. It had a "do not fuck up" checkbox that had to be selected, but it was labeled something weird, like "download fonts once", or something equally hard to guess.
Oh man, I would be so there if...
:)
:)
1) I wasn't married.
2) I didn't have kids.
and thus
3) Had the time to work the 70-80 hours per week you've been putting in.
Honours B. Sc. in Math, minors in Physics and Comp Sci, three years coding experience out of university and drooling to work on a game like this. Oh, and ran a B5 mailing list for the region with over 500 people on it...
I considered sumbitting a resume after the slashdot story, but the 70 hours a week would kill me.
Oh well. In another life, perhaps...
http://terminus.gamestats.com/information/game/
According to the linked preview page, the preview was posted in January 1, 1999. The scheduled release date is quoted as May 1999. What's up with that?
-M
Any chance for a FreeBSD version? Please? :)
A native version is always perferred, but I wonder if this can be run under Linux emulation.
Thank you for possibility.
;-)
Hehehehehe. Mmmm, I've played Netrek in hockey mode before... mostly straight bronco, 'tho, and occasionally chaos. 'specially Borg-enabled chaos.
Oh my, did I hate SC-oggers...
Looks like they won't have cloaking, 'tho. That should make it MUCH more difficult to ogg. On the other hand, since there's momentum, maybe not -- if you can hit a high-enough velocity before they take out your engines/steering systems so you end up getting just as close. Or if there are ways to hide, like areas where radar doesn't work...
(Anybody ever write, say, a fully-automated OggBot? Getting one to figure out when to abort, and how to intercept w/o eating a string of torps might be something wicked.)
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
4. Things make noise when they explode.
--
The shareholder is always right.
Even though the Bell experiments prove that the quantum world experiences either nonlocality or nonseparability (most probably the latter, which doesn't allow superluminal signaling), there has been much analysis of the possibility to send signals over entangled particles, and so far there is no way to send any information across them. The best we've been able to do is quantum cryptography, but that requires a second (sub-lumnial) communication channel.
:)
Either way, they said that Terminus uses Newtonian Physics which means none of this is relevent
-------------
The following sentence is true.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
From the review:
Descent Freespace and Descent 3 look to be nice additions to the genre, but they're all in the same series.
Freespace and Decent have absolutely nothing to do with each other, beside the Decent name (which they dropped for Freespace 2). Nothing. Nada. The world used for the Frespace games has a completely different plotline from Decent (assuming Decent has a plot, I never figured it out what it might be).
Also, I must point at that while the screenshots look good, they're not great. I would rate Freespace 2 as looking significantly "slicker", especially the computer controls (of course this can be "explained" by the fact that Terminus is set in 2200, while Freespace is set in >2300, IIRC). However, the realism introduced (radiation killing the pilot, etc) is pretty cool, and the Newtonian physics is nice, the one thing I don't like about Freespace2 is the very silly physics. So I'll probably buy it after it's been marked down in the $30 range.
hehe.. no problem. I remember that freshman year though.. do i get an advance copy ? heh --jay
I don't know about that. When newton first introduced his gravitational theory one of the big detractions was that it didn't predict the orbit of mercury properly. Mercury is too close to the sun so it has relativistic effects caused by the sun's mass. If you take the solar system as a whole, mercury orbit is very different from earth orbit and a pure newtonian model would not take those changes into account.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Terminus will ship with Linux (x86), Windows and Mac binaries in the box. (see Station Terminus)
Yes, the developers have said as much:
"What has inspired you for the game? Books, movies, etc? Which ones and why?"
"As far as previous games that have influenced us: Elite, Starflight, and Sentinel Worlds. We're all sci-fi buffs, and most recently Babylon 5 has become a favorite with us. Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a total B5 nut. I think the common thread with these influences is that these creative works weren't afraid to take chances and try something new. They also have very well written, compelling, and immersive storylines that really capture your imagination. We're hoping that Terminus will do the same."
As for the music, it is indeed very reminiscent of B5. Note that the game will ship with a seperate audio CD containing the music (that's every game, not just the limited edition).
May I point out that half-life has been out for PC for well over a year and is just now coming out for dreamcast? I don't want to wait a year to play a game on a console even if it does have better graphics and sound, and I doubt if it really does. And can you use mods with dreamcast half life? Somehow I doubt it. The only reason I still play that game is cause of Counter Strike. I don't think I could do that with a Dreamcast.
I'll make a guess that friction isn't implemented. After all how many times does a big, fat, explosives filled space ship hit another big, fat and explosives filled space ship and servive?
Like LIS, the movie?
_sig_ is away
Yes, those guys like Babylon 5. For a while, all their internal computers were named after B5 characters. Also, since it is true Newtonian physics, in order for the ships to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, they have been scaled up to (at minimum) 1 km in size. This is for even your tiny fighter. Bet they don't say that on the box...
My, I've always wanted my very own Limited Edition Terminus Est sword. That thing hauled ass!
No, no, not how fast you have to go in order to get outta this wretched planet's atmosphere, this game from Ambrosia Software. It's pretty cool. Seems like this game is what has been begged for a thousand times on the BBS at escape-velocity.com, a 3-D EV. Unfortunately, EV is only for the Mac, but if you want to get sheepshaver (or have it) then check it out!
"There is no spoon."
You mean "turn, and your ship keeps going in the same velocity (speed + direction) it was going before you turned"? Heck, even fsckin' Asteroids had that. Nevertheless, the best strategy for Asteroids was _not_ to use the thrust key (or the reverse thrust key on some clones).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Free publicity on slashdot can't hurt it's chances of success. When was the last time Allegiance had a slashdot headlide?
Didn't that old game asteroids do this?
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
OK, so they have a "real newtonian physics model" in the game. Which is real impressive sounding until you realize that they conveniently set the game in zero gravity space where the most complicated motion calculation is moving the object straight ahead!
The trick is, with a realistic Newtonian engine, if you let the puck go it'll keep right on going until someone or something stops it.
Am I the only one who is not impressed by this total bullshit? How hard is it to program an object to maintain a constant direction? When someone comes out with a game, based on earth, that can calculate sophisticated trajectories of variable mass objects, according to Newton's laws, I will be impressed. Until then, don't distract me with your misleading hype.
----(o)----
As a general rule, physicists do not apply the Theory of Relativity to speeds lower than 10% of the speed of light, because its results, and the Newtonian results are almost indistinguishable.
/. ;)
Assuming no large gravity sources, in special relativity, there is the gamma-factor which is
1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2). When v == 0, the gamma-factor is 1. When v == 10% of speed of light, the gamma factor is 1.005037815... as you can see they are still very close. Now 10% speed of light is 30,000,000 meters/sec or 67,033,440 miles/hour (approx). I couldn't find any info on velocities (although I didn't look _that_ hard), so I assume that to keep you from sitting around at your keyboard for ages (30-40 minutes Earth to Mars at 10% speed of light) while travelling, time will be sped up by the simulation... or else some new form of propulsion will be 'invented' that gets you to high speeds w/o the relativistic effects. Also, for those interested, the gamma-factor is the proportional factor for measured times,lengths, and masses (t' = gamma*t, L' = gamma*L, M = gamma*M'). There will be distortions (length contraction mostly) due to these factors and some others, but none will involve the bending of light, that is part of the theory of general relativity, and that is hardly applicable here except perhaps near the surface of the sun... not likely you'll be travelling there and last long enough to notice:) I personally wouldn't mind seeing a relativistic simulation... having to take into account the fact that everyone will measure events to happen at different coordinates in space and time should spice up communications quite a bit... and the visual effects could be quite cool.
As for the name Terminus, when I first saw the promotions I thought 'Foundation!'... while glancing through the review, I noticed it mentions the ability to fashion many permutations from the initial plotlines and simulate what will happen... 'psychohistory' anyone?
(if you don't know what this is (doubtful, here anyway) check out Isaac Asimov's Foundation books.. if you can break away from
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
Wow! can you imagine a beowuld cluster of these things? that would be COOL!
Netrek's homepage is here, not here.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
First, I don't want just wimpy Newtonian physics -- a good game better offer Einsteinian physics! Time dilation, relativistic length contraction, the works.
More seriously, I'm just rereading the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and I wonder if the name "Terminus" comes from the homeworld of the Foundation itself in those books.
--Sam L-L
I've got to say wait a few months for the pc graphics companies to release their next gen cards, which will wipe the floor with the dreamcast, and i'm sorry, but the dreamcast does not have better sound than my Sb live with 4 speakers and a sub.
That's the problem with consoles, they come out with the current top of the line graphics chips and then 6 months later they get left in the dust as companies produce better chips which you can then slot into your PC.
As far as terminus goes, if it is all that the reviewer says it is, it may be the game of my dreams. I've been waiting my whole life for a game where i could design a ship from scratch and then fly it around the solar system. I've been teased a couple of times (10th planet, the Babylon 5 space sim) but this one looks like it'll actually make it.
I guess Newton didn't know that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum, huh?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
EV is one of my favorite games, also Escape Velocity Override.
If terminus is really a 3-D EV, I think I'd better get linux or windows and play.
uEVO-RPG: www.oxy-soft.com/uevo
EV, you keep going after you stop pressing thrust. Unfortunately, it is only 2-D, not realistic.
There is no spoon- that's why I have to eat with a fork!
Starskita
!
Starskita
!
the subject says it all
Starskita
!
Errr... Who's it signed by?
It's true that consoles are catching up to the power of PCs, but the PC still has every console beat on Internet Multiplayer. Nothing beats a good game of Quake with a T1 or Cable Modem :)
Subspace/Asteroids has explored newtonian physics dogfighting quite a bit. Its plenty fun
Actually, it was marketed in the print mags and got a lot of hype from the media.
IIRC, it was even being sold in my supermarket on the shareware rack, along with Wolfenstein.
Soldier(R)
Soldier(R)
Never. The benefit would be marginal. For Terminus, though, I think this is significant.
Soldier(R)
Soldier(R)
Nice graphics, multiple roles, multi-platform, decent physics, customisable ships, missions, trading... The list goes on.
If this puppy lives up to its billing, I've just found a great way of wasting a few months.
We were working on Terminus right about the time Independence War was being developed as well. It looked like they were thinking the same thing. I had a lot of interesting chats with the developers at Particle Systems about Terminus vs. I-War. With I-War, they went a different way than us, focusing more on capital ship combat, and more tactical-type stuff. Terminus focuses mostly on fighter-style combat.
You're right that we didn't worry about friction effects and such. However, we do have a highly accurate collision detection engine, which results in realistic damage scenarios. (The type of damage to your ship depends upon the location of weapon hits, etc...)
I can tell you how great the game is, but you probably won't believe me. But I will say that it is unlike any other game in many ways, and is worth a look.
My Freakin Blog
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You've pretty much hit it on the head with the rotating particles bit. This gives us the majority of the feel of space flight, without an enormous CPU expense. (Our enormous CPU expense is AI!)
Planetary gravitation is not modelled, becuase at the speeds we're talking, you would never know the difference. Again, traded off to AI for CPU time.
As for building ships, you will need to choose one of our 8 basic hulls, which you can then customize by installing numerous components. Rest assured, you can build a ship you're happy with.
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Thanks, Jay.
My Freakin Blog
The entire development team are B5 fans. A lot of us were pretty disappointed when the B5 game never came to fruition, but I think B5 fans will enjoy Terminus quite a bit. Don't even talk to me about the nebulae, though. Those were not my idea... :)
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We had to suspend realism a bit, because after all, it's a game!
However, there is an ``inverse realism slider'' for the audio, if you wish to use it.
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'Cause if they do, it aint Newtonian.
The sound-development crew for this game should have an easy time of it!
**>>BELCH
It's a 3D version of netrek! Any of the old unix gurus out there know what I'm talking about - I wonder ogging people will become popular in this game..
I hear the guys at the Galileo Project: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sjoh0780/ have been working on something similar for sometime, using neat continuous physics. It'd be great if they could get it up and people could add their own ships etc. Flend [apologies about repeat post, forgot password]
I have no idea about the friction stuff, but as for the collision modelling, here's how it works:
Basically, each ship model has a bunch of collision spheres in it. If a sphere from one ship overlaps a sphere from another ship, collision. Not the most accurate, but it'll work.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The premise of the game is that space colonization is going well, and then an expedition finds an alien artifact orbiting Jupiter (or something like that). The technology they find there allows them to construct gates that let you zap from one to the other instantly. The downside is that you have to get to your destination through normal means before you can build a gate there and zap through, so no easy travel to other stars, but it lets you get around the solar system more easily.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
As was discussed a little bit ago with the MMOGs realistic dynamicism would be cool. For any type of role playing game a dynamic realistic world would be a pretty fun place to run about in, dynamics and arbitary DM choices are what made AD&D fun to play more than one time. I'd like to see VV license their world engine to some RPG designers.
On the matter of physics (ha ha I made funny), I really like that someone has FINALLY learned about intertia and such. I wonder though if they are going to calculate for rigid bodies or if they are going to just deal with a bunch of particles that have virtual links to rigid parts. It would be pretty cool to see someone fly out of control if you nailed them with a missle. I think even if this game flops the technology inside it could still make these guys some money. As seen with HALO and Soldier of Fortune, game developers are trying for a bit more realism with their engines. It's fun sometimes to rocketjump over a guy's head and turn about in mid-air but it is also pretty fun to shoot out someone's fuel tank and watch them drift out of the solar system.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Newtonian physics work fine in Mercury's orbit, the only difference there is the gravitation of the Sun has relativistic effects on shape of space in the region which causes funny things to happen with light et al.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
To communicate in such a way means that I need to find a true particle pair, considering all of the particles in this solar system originated in another part of the universe it would be pretty difficult to find such a pair. I know of the thought experiment though, it'd be cool if it worked. Imagine DX'ing all the way to M100....
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
BSD scales like crap? Shit dude, tell those guys who used FreeBSD on the Matrix not to pull those shinanigans again!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So, does this mean that players who are travelling very fast will perceive time as moving slower than players who are at rest? Of course this isn't possible.. to address this situation, the manufacturers are including mind-altering drugs which will affect players' perceptions of time.
That's funny. Two years ago, everyone was telling me that the consoles were dead and PCs were the new gaming scene. The reasoning was that PCs could do online gaming and had a more powerfull interface (keyboard, mouse, AND joystick/controller if you wanted).
Today, I think the PC still has a lot more potential than a console. PCs are almost always connected to the net, where consoles might be. PCs have much better graphics capabilities; regardless of your 3D accelerator, a monitor just kicks a TV in pixel count. Finally, for the games I play (real-time strategy), a keyboard is a must. Try imagining Starcraft with a console controller.... *shudder* All of my unit building and selection is via the keyboard because it is fast.
Finally, don't kid yourself. Developers have very little control over what platforms a game is developed for. Game companies have much more control, but the ultimate power comes from the gamers themselves. If the majority of gamers want a particular platform, you can bet that is where the companies will be, grabbing all the market they can.
Basically, the speed of light is around 300,000,000 meters per second. The acceleration of one gee of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared (call it 10). So to get up to 0.9 C, accelerate at 10 M/sec^2 until you get to 270,000,000 M/sec.
Do the math, and this takes 27,000,000 seconds, which is 312.5 days.
Now, assuming that you are running this on Windows, your universe will CRASH before you get relativistic effects ;^>
--The basis of all love is respect
Newtonian physics are great and all, but going at the speeds these things are going, wouldn't you have to toss in some relativity, or some fudge factor or something? I mean, blast off in some direction in your hottest ship and things start LOOKING different (cubes start getting concave, etc., becuase of the bending of light) as you get closer to the speed of light. Or does this only apply to speeds really close to the speed of light that are not possible in this game?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
None of these features are particularly new in space simulations.
Independence War, as a prime example, used very newtonian physics. You could easily fly past an enemy ship in a fraction of a second, the flip around and shoot while flying backwards, and other such points. Lateral, etc, thrusters were available as well. Plus, the damage model was complex (if your thrusters were hit, for example, you really couldn't turn in those directions. It's a lot of fun to be spinning helplessly in space, waiting for your repair crews to finish, while the enemy ships are streaking toward you). Also, Allegiance, which just came out, has similar lateral thrust (not to mention Descent)
Trading has been around since Elite (I think, never played it) and more recently Privateer and probably other games.
Of course, a full online trading community, like tradewards, hasn't yet been done in a graphical format, and not all these features have been combined in one game before. And it seems they are making things more detailed than in previous games of this type. So, it could be very cool.
Just watched the demo avi, listened to the music....
Has anyone else noticed a distinct B5 influence? The stations look similar (not so much the theory as the shape, their rather bulbous.) The music sounds like Tangerine Dream/Christopher Franke. Plus there seem to be nebulae everywhere, one of B5 tricks for producing adequate lighting...
I'm drooling now,...
Considering everything that is relevant to this game involves large masses and velocities that are well below .7 times the speed of light, its not necessary to use relativistic calculations to achieve a better then .1% error. Which hardly seems significant in a video game
:-)
As far as quantum mechanics goes, one of Bohr's fundemental principles stated essentially that large systems modelled using quantum theory essentially appear the same as a classical (read "Newtonian") result. So again, its not necessary to make calculations based on quantum mechanics.
Yes I realize that this post was probably a joke anyway. But I guess I just don't have a sense of humor
Spyky
Of course, tactics that work for most sims won't work here, because of the newtonian physics. Those who are attached to those tactics may be put off.
Anyway, I thought it was a great game, though a game that demanded so thought, rather than a "just wade in and shoot 'em" attitude.
The cake is a pie
* Hardware/software requirements?
If you follow the links to the developer's site, they don't seem to mention requirements anywhere -- or any technical info whatsoever. For all I know, all their nifty screenshots might only work on, say, 3Dfx hardware, and owners of other stuff might get hosed. Or, maybe they've been considerate enough to support just about every 3D accelerator out there *and* provide a software-renderer for those who don't have supported cards. I can't seem to find out.
Memory? Space? Number of CDs (or DVDs if they use them)? How about server load -- if a server has 8 AI players and 8 human chaps, will a decent PII/PIII/Athlon do, or will we find ourselves wishing for a quad-Xeon with FDDI, 2GB of RAM, and nobody playing directly on that machine?
The concept *sounds* cool. If they really pulled off such distinct behaviors, then that's very very impressive. But it might be nice to know whether it's going to be playable in a given setup, first...
* So an e-mail has to be sent to one address first... and the online store doesn't appear to tell you how many slots are left, before you actually select 'order' ? Um. I'm curious about how many e-mails are going to be sent to that address -- quite possibly WAY more than 100...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Its kinda weird, hearing about Terminus now in the news. I remember when chuck was working on it three years ago and telling us how the AI was doing retarded things, and how some of his schemes sucked, and the like. Its kinda another geek success story to see that come along.
A good friend of mine used to be chuck's suitemate at WPI... so its been really awesome to see how this game has come along from in the gleam in chuck's sleepless eye to something that is actually going to do REALLY well.
I caught up with him a few months ago, at which point he was complaining about the ports.. hehe.. its been a long hard process, and i wish them all luck. And hopefully ill get an advance copy =).. please!
--jay
I wish I could find out some specifics about the engine. Some current things I'm wondering are.... Is it full rigid body dynamics in 3D or are the ships simply particles with some extras to determine rotation, etc.? Do they mind that newtonian physics doesn't work in some parts of the solar system, i.e. near mercury's orbit? Do they include gravity effects of planetary bodies and the sun? If the whole solar system is a battle ground, do they mind that such flight speeds would render Newtonian physics invalid as well?
Also, does the moment of inertia, etc. of the ship change when parts are shot off? Are we to assume that the ships use some sort of acceleration compensator to make them survivable? Otherwise we would see autonomous combat craft that would simply kick the crap out of the human piloted ships.
Lastly and m ost importantly, can I build a Starfury or a Gunstar with the fighter creator?
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
God, I know! Everytime I'm playing one of these so-called "sims" and it neglects to take into account the spin of my electron torpedo phase modulator, it totally ruins the effect.
Sounds more like a 3d version of subspace, which is my all time fave action game.
http://www.subspacehq.com/
My Freakin Blog
I hope that they aren't going for Wing Commander-eque gameplay with this -- because real spaceflight physics SUCK for dogfighting. There was a game called Mantis that came out not too long after Wing Commander that used 'real' physics, and it turned every fight into a jousting match. You found the guy, he found you, you charged at each other guns-ablaze, and then shot off in opposite directions, counter thrusting to attempt another pass. Forget 'getting on somone's tail', it ain't gonna happen. Lining up a ship for docking is difficult enough, never mind maintaining position with respect to a guy that is trying to get away.
Atmospheric flight performance is much more fun for dogfights. And besides, you can always rationalize it. The Star Wars (novels, anyway) universe refers to 'ethereal' rudders and ailerons. Same principles as atmospheric flight, but your flaps are pressing against some as-yet-undiscovered-to-us medium, instead of air.
While the article doesnt really go into much depth on how detailed their modelling scheme is, I suspect you are right. If all they are talking about is Newtonian motion for flying around, that's not too difficult.
:)
However, if they are including three dimensional collisions with friction and correct collision detection, it's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I worked on writing such simulations for a couple years at a university, so I know at least a bit about it.
Frictional collisions in three dimensions are actually a bit tricky to get correct. More difficult is correct and efficient collision detection; you need to know as precisely as possible where the two bodies collide so that you can calculate accurate surface normals to compute accurate frictional forces. The hip thing in collision detection at the time was to use three dimensional voronoi diagrams to minimize collision checks. Calculating voronoi diagrams is a non-trivial excersize, but at least they can be precomputed.
Dunno what the hip thing is these days in collision detection. The work I did was about 3 years ago.
Of course, this sort of accuracy probably isnt necessary for a game, so they probably aren't really worried about this stuff.
Anyway, as in most areas of computer science, the answer is "it depends"
It makes a huge difference in gameplay. You can't just turn on a dime, at least not when going at a reasonable speed. But as others have noted, you can spin around and fire at someone chasing you without losing speed.
The cake is a pie
I'm certainly waiting for the day when all movement is generated according to strict laws of physics, but until I get a 3Ghz AMD Asskickaron in my computer, I think that I'll trade smooth gameplay and lower load for that fraction of a fraction of a difference.
Got Rhinos?
Station Terminus, the main fansite for the game. Read the latest news post here on how to actually get the limited edition, it's not enought to just pre-order it from the store! (you need to send in an email).
a bunch of screenshots at LinuxGames.
ATFW's Terminus databank entry, lots of info. There's some *really* good MP3 tracks from the game there as well.
I pre-ordered my copy last week and I'm already on the first 100 list, can't wait to play it!
Also, what isn't mentioned in the writeup or in the (rather old) preview that was linked to is that this game will ship with binaries for Windows, Linux (x86) and Macintosh in the box.
Some of the main features are a newtonian physics engine, lots of ship customization features, a half dynamic, half scripted campaign mode that can be played in both single and multiplayer; three different careers to choose from,...
I was demo'd this game by some of the creators at the Linuxworld Conference and Expo in NYC back in early February. While the graphics and whatnot didn't "blow me away", the theory of gameplay did.
.. pardon me if I don't know how to word this .. thrusters that allowed lateral up/down and left/right movement WHILE travelling forward. Don't like how you're approaching the dock at that port? Fine. Fire the thrusters, and get centered properly.
It seems to almost take the old Tradewars 2002 theories and turn them in to a graphical game. There are ports, and trading to be done. Certain ports have better selling prices on certain objects, others higher buying prices.
In the game, time has a meaning. If you sit around and do nothing, you're missing out on what's happening elsewhere in the universe. If you are a certain faction, missions are offered to you and you are given a timeframe to appear "on site" and accept them. Succeed and be paid. Fail, and lose political status.
I also remember there being a true "up/down" feature. He explained that certain ships have
All in all, I walked away looking forward to giving it a try. The story seemed VERY deep, and the demo guys mentioned a trule "online community" where you can work together, compete, etc.
I've been a reviewer of PC games for a magazine for a while, and have been playing them for about 12 years. And I have to conclude that it will fail.
No matter how good a game is, they need marketing. To have marketing, you need a publisher who is going to buy adds in the major mags and secure you shelf space at EB, Best Buy, etc.
Think about Microsoft. While you may not think much of the products, you have to admire their masterful marketing ability. There are probably situations where better products were *totally ignored* because their developers ignored marketing while Microsoft made it priority one.
Besides, this game is probably not as good as MS Research's Allegiance (very similar). But I'll mention it to the editor and see if we can get it reviewed.
Soldier(R)
Soldier(R)