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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. "
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.
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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.
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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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I never get to talk about it, because no one else has ever heard about it. But for a time, Sentinel Worlds ruled my life!
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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]
Go read about it a little bit, then comment on it.
I don't mind criticism, but calling it "yet another uninspring space shooter" is plain ignorance.
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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.
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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.
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You souds like you have a Mac.
Terminus is coming for the Mac. No need to get another OS.
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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
ega? EGA? PC speaker? Luxury!
When I were a lad I played Elite on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in wire frame mode! In fact on many platforms. But the best, world beating ultimate Elite (so far) had to be the Amiga version. At the time nothing could touch the Amiga for 3D action.
Thanks to the submitter for this one: I wasn't aware of Terminus, but I had been looking at Starlancer as my next game. (Diablo II still seems so far away) I'll get Terminus instead, partly because it will work on all my systems. I love multi-platform software.
And if it really IS Tradewars/Elite with real time and physics and a great 3D engine... wow.
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/
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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)
here's an excerpt from this page.
The official U.S. retail launch date is June 8th 2000. We were scheduled to ship in May but the date was pushed back to June. Now before any of you come up with a conspiracy theory on this, here's what happened:
Vatical, our publisher, met with many of the major retailers to introduce Terminus to them. It turned out that the decision makers at some of these retailers, including Electronics Boutique, have known about Terminus and have been following the game's progress for more than a year. And let me tell ya, they were pretty psyched to see it nearing completion.
What happened was, when we finally nailed down a solid timeframe for going gold, the retailers came back to Vatical saying that they needed more time to prepare for the launch. So it was decided that the date be pushed back so we can give it a proper retail launch. It's really thrilling to see some of the retailers getting behind the game!