Spaceflight Sim Dark Horizon Set for Release

Paradox Interactive has just announced the release date(s) of their latest game, Dark Horizon as September 23rd in North America and September 26th in Europe. Offering flight-sim style space combat (with joystick support, even) and many RPG elements like ship customization and weapon creation, this is the first serious attempt at the genre I have seen in a while. Hopefully game studios will realize that there are still many loyal flight-sim fans out there just drooling for a chance to dust off their joysticks and accelerate to attack speed.

Comments

Re:I prefer Elite style games...

[jollyreaper]

Just about the only mission based space combat game I enjoyed was TIE Fighter; I'm still waiting for a decent Elite style game. I know there's X3 but it's just so dull.

The technology is pretty much here now. They nixed true flying in EVE Online because lag would have made it impossible to play. But with a more modest set of goals, a 3D flight sim version of Elite would be great. Provide a single-player game where you can trade, explore, etc, without having the MMO problem of keeping up with the Jonses. Multiplayer element would be for general combat. Just look at the way they did it in GTAIV, multiplay and singleplay are two entirely different experiences but both are tremendous fun.

The thing I remember wanting as a kid was what I always considered to be the impossible game. The way I put it at the time, "I want a space game you can fly around in like TIE Fighter but where you can land and get out of the ship like Doom." The technology is pretty much here now. The engines can handle taking off from a planetary surface and flying out into space. Games from Flashpoint to Halo to Oblivion have shown that frickin' massive worlds can be created on the current hardware and it's only going to get more impressive in time. The only drawback I can think of is that too much detail can clutter the game. The original Master of Orion was a great space empire game. The sequel threw in more detail but those details didn't really add to the game, it just made each turn take longer. There's a huge difference between adding depth versus annoying extraneous crap but it often isn't clear which is which until after it's been added.

I hear Mass Effect was along the lines of "imagine if they took Starflight and made it also more of an RPG and stuff" but there were some holes in the concept that made the game that were hard to overlook. I dunno, did anyone else like it?

I still want a game where I can get in my fighter, take a trip to a space station, explore it, take a jaunt to an alien world, take a stroll on the surface, and have all sorts of fun. The development costs would be huge, of course.

Re:Realistic space sims!

[MrNiceguy_KS]

This got labeled funny, but it reminds me of the only open source space sim I know of, which got obsessed with realism. The devs thought it would be a great idea if 90% of your time was spent accelerating and decelerating between planets, and battles would be most interesting if they were spent 99% of time outside weapon range after flying past your target. No offense to those who worked hard on vega-strike, but it is a stunning example of the horrors of realism in a game.

As much as I have tried to love Vega Strike, I have to agree with you. It's fun for the first few cargo runs, but it gets old really quickly.

It's kinda strange. The Vega Strike project started out as a remake of Privateer, but they left out the freakin' autopilot. The developers say that the left out the autopilot in favor of a "Velocity Multiplier" that means you just fly really fast if you're not near a planet. The way it works in practice is that you sit and wait (and wait...) to get far enough from the planet for it to do any good, zip up to an insane speed, then overshoot your goal and spend a couple more minutes getting turned around and going back.

I realize that the space physics are meant to be realistic - you have to spend the same amount of time decelerating as you did accelerating. But is it really realistic that a space-faring race that has energy shields and FTL travel can't design a freakin' autopilot? A simple "Set the destination, wake me when we're almost there or if we're attacked". Privateer's autopilot worked that way and it was so much nicer.