You Know.. This Is What I Want :) Sace Combat Sims


skeezix

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Permit me to be selfish just this once ;)

Theres a lot of good mobile games, and games that just happen to be good mobile. But for a week now I've sort of had this big jonesing for something that therre used to be a few of.. but I haven't seen in ages.

I want a new Wing Commander.

PSP would be good, and gp2x would be good, though I doubt theres a good open source engine like this anywhere.. or is there? If anyone knows, point me/us that direction.. we need a port! :)

ie: Wing Commander was the kick off years ago, but the various Lucas Tie-Fighter/X-Wing type games, and FreeSpace .. even maybe HomeWorld though that was more an RTS. Begs a Battlestar Galactica treatment :)

ex: Pilot a small nimble fighter through space, in various solo or team-play (bot/wifi-human?) missions, from shotoing down other fighters, dodging drones, taking on capital ships and space stations -- I want to fly down the side of a giant vessel, picking off weapons or shield generators, until putting enough holes into iot forces it to crash to a nearby planet. Give us the Star Wars trench run.

I'm so jonesing over this but I doubt theres any mobile game like this .. and not enough enough console based things. Is this genre dead?

Any open source games like this, to be brought over?

/me hungers

Damnit, maybe I'll work on my DOS emu to have VGA-640 support and run goddamn Wing Commander. Theres also some ST games that did it, badly, too .. some Psyclapse/Psygnosis game ... hmm..

Hell, what consoles had simialr games to this? As above, we already know the PC scene has a few "space combat sims", but what consoles/computers did it too?

Anything coming for PSP, NDS?

jeff
 
Have you seen the X-wing clone for the DS, its very good. I agree we need a space game and we also need a good 3d racing game. Anybody know of any freeware source code?
 
PlayStation had the Colony Wars games, which were great fun.
 
skeezix posted on Dec 16 2005 at 11:52 AM said:
Hell, what consoles had simialr games to this? As above, we already know the PC scene has a few "space combat sims", but what consoles/computers did it too?

Anything coming for PSP, NDS?

jeff

The PSX had Wing Commander 3, and I want to say the SNES may have had the original wing commander. I also had a Video demo of Wing Commander 4 for the PSX but I dont think it was ever made. Colony Wars is simular to the games you described but would require the PSX emu to run much better than it currently does. :(

I too would love to see games like these on the GP2X heres hoping
 
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There is Wing Commander Prophecy (Part 5 of the series I think?) for GBA, which has pretty good 3D graphics for a GBA game and the controls are somewhat unusual, but you get used to...

Maybe you wanna check it out since you can play GBA games on the DS. Maybe you even have a Flashcard ^^
 
First, Wing Commander 4 has been released for the PSX

Second, i think Starfox will get a game on the DS, but currently there's nothing on a release list.

It would also be great to have an descent port.


btw where can i get the x-wind clone or did you mean Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith?
 
skeezix posted on Dec 16 2005 at 04:52 PM said:
Permit me to be selfish just this once ;)

Theres a lot of good mobile games, and games that just happen to be good mobile. But for a week now I've sort of had this big jonesing for something that therre used to be a few of.. but I haven't seen in ages.

I want a new Wing Commander.

PSP would be good, and gp2x would be good, though I doubt theres a good open source engine like this anywhere.. or is there? If anyone knows, point me/us that direction.. we need a port! :)

ie: Wing Commander was the kick off years ago, but the various Lucas Tie-Fighter/X-Wing type games, and FreeSpace .. even maybe HomeWorld though that was more an RTS. Begs a Battlestar Galactica treatment :)

ex: Pilot a small nimble fighter through space, in various solo or team-play (bot/wifi-human?) missions, from shotoing down other fighters, dodging drones, taking on capital ships and space stations -- I want to fly down the side of a giant vessel, picking off weapons or shield generators, until putting enough holes into iot forces it to crash to a nearby planet. Give us the Star Wars trench run.

I'm so jonesing over this but I doubt theres any mobile game like this .. and not enough enough console based things. Is this genre dead?

Any open source games like this, to be brought over?

/me hungers

Damnit, maybe I'll work on my DOS emu to have VGA-640 support and run goddamn Wing Commander. Theres also some ST games that did it, badly, too .. some Psyclapse/Psygnosis game ... hmm..

Hell, what consoles had simialr games to this? As above, we already know the PC scene has a few "space combat sims", but what consoles/computers did it too?

Anything coming for PSP, NDS?

jeff


How about that newer Elite game that came out on the PC? I know there was a half done alpha on the GP32. Maybe you or someone could port it to the GP2X. It isn't exactly what you are talking about but may be close enough to scratch the itch.
 
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Elite 1 & 2 were great, but the best game I remember was Starglider II. This would look great on the Gp2x. I'm sure all these came out on the Amiga & ST, so once we have the relevant emulator, bob's your uncle :D .
 
skeezix posted on Dec 16 2005 at 08:18 PM said:
StarGlider II on the ST will be available soon as my unit shows up :)

Should be any day now :p

jeff


Jeff you're a star :D
 
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Interesting.. turns out there are some fan-remakes out there.. check this out:

http://priv.solsector.net/

Open source, multi-platform. Depends on a 3d card however. Will have to keep looking for others.. I'd love to find a software rendered one for Linux .. that'd be a port to do :)

jeff
 
skeezix posted on Dec 16 2005 at 08:14 PM said:
Interesting.. turns out there are some fan-remakes out there.. check this out:

http://priv.solsector.net/

Open source, multi-platform. Depends on a 3d card however. Will have to keep looking for others.. I'd love to find a software rendered one for Linux .. that'd be a port to do :)

jeff


Greate!!!

must have been 10 years since I last played privateer.

thanx for the link.

(Guess I´m a spacesim fan... bought my first computer a c64 becuse I read about Elite in a computer magazine (the first computer mag. I ever bought) and Elite became the first game I bought. Since then I´v been hooked on spacesims.)
 
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Oh.. rough..

Our first computer-thing was a Vic-20 -- I wanted something else (I forget.. Coleco?) and my father picked up the vic-20 .. saying "you'll have to create your own games instead of playing them" -- I credit him for kicking it all off for me :) (maybe it was cheaper, or made the sales guy more money.. but anyway :) I think Vic Avenger or Kosmic Cruncher was our first game.

The Atari ST was next, as we couldn't justify the cost of the Amiga when the ST looked so sweet; we brought it up with The Pawn -- one of the best text adventures ever made :)

jeff
 
Was Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDonald in Wing Commander 3 or 4?

Also with the PSX emu for GP2X, Colony Wars or G-Police would be a good bet when the emu gets going.
 
G-Police is a helo-game, no?

There was... Blast Radius for PSX. But I doubt action-packed space-shooters will work on PS2X...

Tie Fighter would be grand... What kind of machine did it require? 486 or so... Doubtfull.

Then there was the Amiga version of Wing Commander...
 
lizard808uk posted on Dec 16 2005 at 03:29 PM said:
Was Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDonald in Wing Commander 3 or 4?

Also with the PSX emu for GP2X, Colony Wars or G-Police would be a good bet when the emu gets going.

That was 3, but I think Mark Hamill returned for Wing Commander 4.
 
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Iirc, there's a fair few unfinished elite-esque engines, although they tend to be less combat orientated than WC was (Elite: trade with a bit of combat, WC: classy combat with a lot of story).

Wonder if the non-rendering bit of the vegastrike engine would be remotely scaleable, though. I know it's got quite a punch for a free engine, from what I remember (been following it for a few years, and thought it looked better than impressive when I first came across it), but it is kind of aimed at high-end machines. I imagine it'd be a big project to actually reduce it significantly enough that it ran without 3D accelleration of any sort :(.

Other projects of interest might be Epiar which seems to be semi-strategy and top-down space fighting and trade, as opposed to 3D-ness, but might stand a tearing out of OpenGL-esque code and replacing with bitmaps better than a real 3D one. Spacetrader PalmOS again seems more strategic than a combat game, but has the advantage of being at a stable release stage, and already ported to PalmOS, which implies whilst it might be a bit of work to bring over, it would probably not have hany issues with needing hefty 3D accelleration that we don't have available. Apart from the fact that its MMO, DirectX, and probably very incomplete, Free Allegiance might be worth considering, simply because it has software modes, and seems to require a PII 266MHz machine to run, rather than anything more. Which means conceivably, if the DirectX code could be replaced with SDL code, it might run. Whether AI could also be added sufficiently to make it a usable game, I don't know.

Looking through sourceforge, pretty much everything either requires OpenGL, or is strategy-based, rather than combat oriented. I suppose you could make a pseudo-space combat game using one of the not-quite-3D engines like, e.g., Yeti, by which I mean you essentially move a starfield around to create an appearance of 3D on a single level plane - so whenever you move, the other ships move too and thus stay on a level with you, at least if they were close. I doubt such a game would ever feel like a space-combat game, though - and of course, Yeti would have to be brought over to the 2x.

Or alternatively, take one of the various old elite-esque clones, then rip out the trading bit, and put in a lot more story between scripted combat missions. Could work with Elite:TNK, except, of course, for the fact that it's hard to find the code for that anywhere these days because someone CnDed it iirc :(.
 
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