SpaceSimCentral

Why we need Space SimsI think some gamers today just don't want to learn how to play a game with complexity. Although I respect David Wesmann's view, I think he is mistaken that gamers are "incapable", instead it's a choice made by gamers themselves, it's easier to be led by the hand through a game rather than learn proper tactics or work it out for yourself.When I first got Frontier in the early 90s, I was perplexed. How would I ever learn this strange flight model? How the hell would I ever win a dogfight? How the hell would this tiny pulse laser my tiny little ship had, ever do in a fight against bigger, better armed ships with beam lasers?There were no gameplay vids on You Tube, game forums (for what little there were back then) came up short on info. I had to write an actual letter with actual pen and paper to Game Tek to get help! And to my amazement I got several sheets of print outs from Game Tek with hints for the game in the post! After that, I approached the game with a new sense of determination to master the flight model and I am glad I did because all these years later I am still playing it <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />Don't be afraid people, of complexity in games, yes such games take longer to get into, but the reward is that much sweeter once you do. You get a game that will challenge you, not only on how fast you can press a trigger, but on how you move, where you move, what you do with the equipment (or ship) you have to hand.There is an old saying that the biggest guns make the most noise and that's true, but it's also true that the smallest guns can be the most deadly accurate too <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

I don't think there a lot of water in Wessman argument although there may be something to the "people have difficulty navigating a 3D space, and threats come from anywhere" but it seems a bit like Voilition blaming joystick sale for the poor sales of Freespace 2.Lack of any real development in the genre probably had more to do with it being booted into the niche market and away from the mainstream game audience.

Sometimes I think it is a much simpler argument than most, I watch my kids play games on the PS3 and PC and they usually play exclusively on the PS3. Why you might ask, the controller for one and second the games seem easier for them to grasp and work through. When PC's sometimes offer more depth and challenge. Sometimes I do agree with people when they say sim combat/sim games are for smarter people The kids have never even tried to play Mass Effect, FF13, Fallout New Vegas, Red Dead Redeption and a few others because of dedication you have to give these games to beat them. I think we have dumbed down the games for the youth today that they generally shy away from a challenge or failure at not being good at something. I was trying to play Lost Planet 2 with the kids the other day and it does have some very hard spots but you have to use strategy and work as a team and you can do it. Of course we are playing split screen and I can't watch both and give feedback, so I entrust the kids to think for themselves and solve the pattern or use the best cover/weapon depending on the enemy. The kids gave up playing after about 30-40mins of failing the level and they just call the game stupid/lame and have yet to play it again. I really think it is the fact that space/scifi games in general are more challenging and the developers expect a certain player type for the game itself. None of my kids have yet to watch me play a space game and say can I play? Why is that

You can solve some of the problems by giving frames of reference to the player. Scenery, especially that which is in the actual combat arena, such as a big battleship or spacestation help in allowing us to work out up and down, left and right. Even if the brain picks an arbitrary up, at least it then has something to orientate around.Another thing that helps spatial awareness is a map. Here you get the problem of having to map a 3d space onto a 2d square. The best way I saw was actually to just have a flattened birds-eye view 2d map

DarkOne wrote:
I think we have dumbed down the games for the youth today that they generally shy away from a challenge or failure at not being good at something ... The kids gave up playing after about 30-40mins of failing the level and they just call the game stupid/lame and have yet to play it again.
"Dumbing down" a game is simply a "match-making" action between the player and the AI. We can go on complaining as to why (btw, my son also don't like sims ... dissapointed father i am) people don't like them but it's either us or them. If sims were a "point and click" we wouldn't be talking right now. Simulators are a special kind of game for a special kind of people. To them we're "mentally unstable" to us they're "mentally disabled" .
JamesCoote wrote:
Another thing that helps spatial awareness is a map. Here you get the problem of having to map a 3d space onto a 2d square. The best way I saw was actually to just have a flattened birds-eye view 2d map
Actually, a "map" in the traditional sense is not helpful. What is needed is a "situation display" as they call it. That display, along with the direction carets around the monitor, dumbens down the game enough for them to cope because it displays the spatial relation between you and other moving objectives (e.x enemy of friendly ships, bases, ... etc). It's not a "navigational" aid, although it can also be used as one.

Maybe this is a good example of why the genre is unpopular. It may be a situation display, but if you call it a map, people get the idea of a map.

The map problem could one day be easily fixed with 3D gaming. A spherical true 3D "situation display" would be pretty cool.

Are there any space sims (or combat flight sims for that matter) that have two pilots per fighter? Now that would be an interesting challenge

Now that is an interesting suggestion! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> Maybe you should mention it in this thread [url]http://spacesimcentr...[/url] ... =83&t=2878Heliosphere has a working cockpit. Perhaps there could be a second seat usable through a co-op mode?

You can. I'd rather not dump an "oh and by the way, you could also add this really cool feature that utterly changes the game and massively increases development time" on someone :)Actually, having thought about it, if the second pilot is a gunner, and the guns can shoot anywhere, the first pilot is going to get the boring job of simply flying around like crazy to avoid getting shot at whilst the gunner gets all the fun job of blowing stuff up!

JamesCoote wrote:
Actually, having thought about it, if the second pilot is a gunner, and the guns can shoot anywhere, the first pilot is going to get the boring job of simply flying around like crazy to avoid getting shot at whilst the gunner gets all the fun job of blowing stuff up!
Off hand the only couple of games I can think off which have tried some thing with two + crew are games like Artemis http://www.spacesimcentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1430or the Nes version of Elite witch had a two player mode in which one player controlled the ship and other the weapons.

"evan9808" wrote:
Space travel shouldn't be something to sit through so you can play a game, it should be one of the best parts of the game. Hyperspace Is a Scary Place, and it should be fun.[url]http://tvtropes.org/...[/url] ... ScaryPlace
Hi evan9808Welcome to the SSC <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> And your totally correct, space travel should be the main feature in a space sim. The only other game genre I can think of that uses their environments to the full are sub sims like Silent Hunter, Aquanox or (an oldie) Sub War 2050 as in thermal layers or crush depths. Space also has it's share of hazards and other things for a player to exploit to their advantage and space sims should use their environments to the full also <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Geraldine wrote:


evan9808 wrote:
Space travel shouldn't be something to sit through so you can play a game, it should be one of the best parts of the game. Hyperspace Is a Scary Place, and it should be fun.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace
Hi evan9808Welcome to the SSC And your totally correct, space travel should be the main feature in a space sim. The only other game genre I can think of that uses their environments to the full are sub sims like Silent Hunter, Aquanox or (an oldie) Sub War 2050 as in thermal layers or crush depths. Space also has it's share of hazards and other things for a player to exploit to their advantage and space sims should use their environments to the full also
Evan makes some good points. hyperspace travel should be more engaging.And Aquanox, to me, is a space sim...just underwater. wish they would make more games like this.

evan9808 wrote:
I suppose at some point this game I have in my head becomes more like X-plane than Freespace. Is that bad?
Depends on who the game is aimed at, Orbitor and the Xplane are simulations not games I think theirs a very big difference between them and and something like Freespace.Look no further than Babylon5 for a great example of what hyperspace should be like in games.

"PINBACK" wrote:
Look no further than Babylon5 for a great example of what hyperspace should be like in games.
Well, there is this in the download area <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> [url]http://spacesimcentr...[/url] ... -Found_HerInfo here [url]http://ifh.firstones.com/project/faq/[/url]

I don't believe that Space Sim gaming is that unpopular, not with the gaming community anyway. . . I mean look at this place there are hundreds of active members giving feedback to indie devs on their projects. I know this thread was started to bash the mainstream publishers and I have to join in on that given what a certain publisher has done to my beloved JumpGate.Publishers are being told that games with a quick in and out, like FPS games are the road to making money. They're not prepared to invest in an audience over a long term as the return will always diminish over time until there's none at all. We now live in an age where games and the machines we play them on are disposable and easily replaced over a one or two year period. They look at the hardware, that's still moving forward at a rate of knots and think, if we create a game for this platform how long before a newer platform makes the game obsolete ? What does really annoy me about the current games market is this push to create more and more console titles, forgetting the ever faithful PC gamer who once again will get the shitty end of the stick when it comes to releases, simply down to the fact that publishers can charge more for a console title than they can a PC game.Yes I know I'm ranting.The recent failures and closures in the PC market are a pointer to what's to come - Jumpgate - Closed by the publisher after nearly 12 years of being online, no explanation, no remorse and very little communication with the player base.Star Wars Galaxies - Closed by the publisher after 8 years because they don't believe there's room for two Star Wars MMO's in the market place.Black Prophecy - A game that's been hung out to dry by it's own publisher and community, there's so much wrong with game that there's very little chance of it ever being fixed.Jumpgate Evolution - Vapourware thanks to legal wrangles between publishers and disagreements over the game's direction.Star Wars: The Old Republic - Treats the space aspect of this massive franchise as a mini game in a console title, it's utterly pointless and very unrewarding.I'm just frustrated with the state of things.I'd like publishers to think about one simple fact - You can't please all of the people all of the time but you can please some of them all of the time. So give us Space Sim Gamers a break and a game that pleases us and we'll reward you with cash and loyalty. . . .

micmanos wrote:
"Dumbing down" a game is simply a "match-making" action between the player and the AI.
I was thinking about this dumbing down thing, and it reminded me of a vid I saw on Amibay, its not space sim related but makes the point none the less

The question should really be "Why aren't many people interested in space?"One could look at a man trainspotting and wonder why he does it. The man trainspotting would probably post on a trainspotting forum "Why is trainspotting so unpopular?"For whatever reason, space sim gaming-and I'm talking about the exploration type game-is just not appealing to most. Personally I'm proud to be one person to love the hugely time consuming journey across a vast empty place where you know that NO other being has been. But why then?Here's one theory of mine...We(the Ones)dont see it as a "game" as such. We use it to explore our fascination. Go the places we wish we could go. Do the things we wish were real. We like space sims purely because we like the idea of space and everything that goes with it and it makes the fantasy as real as we can get.I stood in the garden on a clear night and looked at the stars and was bewildered. No matter how long I stare out there it never ceases to amaze and humble me. My girlfriend however couldn't care less. She has no interest whatsoever in stars or what they are, or how far away they are, or how long it would take at 3x10^8 metres per second to get there. But thats it. It puzzles me why anyone could not be impressed by the concept of space, but it seems we are in a minority. But Its probably better that way. We are fortunate because the games we do get are created by people with the same interest as us, rather than the big money grabbers who hype a game as much as possible to get sales.You may ask how people lost interest after the success of the Elite era. Well if you think that most games of that time were 2d platformers/scrollers and at best isometric "3D" games, Elite was just unbelievable. One minute you are playing Dizzy and next you're transporting illegal goods to Riedquat hoping your next hyperspace jump doesn't land you in the lap of the Thargoids.

Overlord wrote:
... next you're transporting illegal goods to Riedquat hoping your next hyperspace jump doesn't land you in the lap of the Thargoids. A thoroughly commendable occupation, is that - much joyous immersion ensues!

I know this is an ancient thread so apologies for the mega necro :girlglasses: but I found myself going through it again. The ideas in this thread were amazing, deserved a wee bump and I think, when you look at space sims today, they were not that far off in their predictions. :girlsigh: Its still my hope to see many of these ideas in a space sim one day. Could Elite D, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky or something else finally deliver I wonder.