The First Screenshots Of That New, Linux-Friendly, Unigine-Powered Game

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The First Screenshots Of That New, Linux-Friendly, Unigine-Powered Game

Earlier this month we learned of a new game coming that's powered by Unigine after first the developers were looking to make use of Unreal Engine 4. We've already confirmed there will be a Linux port of this Unigine-powered MMORPG and this week the developers published the first screenshots...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Dual-First-Unigine-Shots

[starshipeleven]

Reminds me a lot of X3 from Egosoft.

[Detructor]

Holy shit this exactly what I always wanted! Please be a successful project...

@starshipelevent I nearly bought X3 once. It was at the last moment that I saw that it was single-player. I just sat there and stared in disbelieve at my screen.

I still can't comprehend why anyone would want to play such a game alone. I mean there are apparently people that love to do that, but I'm really disappointed that X3 is not a MMORPG.

[theriddick]

Not really a fan of subscription based games, and MMORPG tend to suffer from lack of content as it gets watered down to serve out to thousands on the same server. If they have a free period I will probably try it out anyway as it looks nice.

I still can't comprehend why anyone would want to play such a game alone. I mean there are apparently people that love to do that, but I'm really disappointed that X3 is not a MMORPG.

Because people can very often be douchebags on online games like this, plus you gotta deal with the hundreds of 12yearolds forming sentences with nothing but curse words.. That sort of pollution can turn ppl away from online games like this quick fast...

[SystemCrasher]

Strongly reminds me Vendetta Online aka https://www.vendetta-online.com/ which is basically Space-Sim MMORPG like this, though somewhat less featured. World is partitioned to sectors (i.e. sharding), one can't explore planets, just mine some stuff from asteroids. Players can't build bases, only capships (since certain version). Another stupid issue is paid gameplay, so huge world lacks alive players, and NPCs are dumbass. I've only met alive space pirate once (and unlike stupid NPCs that one has been quite an issue XD). Oh, of course this thing works in Linux. Seems they've got a major competitor with really strong technical background . E.g. if their claims are true, huge, transition-less, shard-less world is a serious achievement, any day.

[Detructor]

Because people can very often be douchebags on online games like this, plus you gotta deal with the hundreds of 12yearolds forming sentences with nothing but curse words.. That sort of pollution can turn ppl away from online games like this quick fast...

which is why it's awesome: You get to kill those fucking idiots =)

You know that if you destroy that ship someone on the other side of the world (or in the house next to you) will scream in agony because you just made them accept that they just suck.

In a game done right this comes down to an eternal powertrip.

SystemCrasher I played VO for a few months. The basics are awesome. Especially the flight physics. But everything around that doesn't feel right. For that kind of game I'd expect cockpits, but there are none. The graphics are dated and the entire UI just looks 'old'.

That game would need a complete UI overhaul.

[bokal]

which is why it's awesome: You get to kill those fucking idiots =)

You know that if you destroy that ship someone on the other side of the world (or in the house next to you) will scream in agony because you just made them accept that they just suck.

In a game done right this comes down to an eternal powertrip.

Apparently, theriddick was talking about people like you.

[starshipeleven]

@starshipelevent I nearly bought X3 once. It was at the last moment that I saw that it was single-player. I just sat there and stared in disbelieve at my screen.

A wise choice. The game itself is a kind of slo-mo trainwreck, X2 was very nice, X3 was still OK, X3TC went downhill, the last one got hammered on sales.
Seriously, they had issues about multicoring their engine. In 2012.

And their games are traditionally unplayable for a year or so, while modders workv hard to fix it. Gazz's Turret fix mod was epic, in X3 all capital ships had completely stupid turret placement (done by artists that had no idea of the actual limitation of the turret animations), so they were basically crippled, only 2-3 of 6 guns could bear on any specific target.

Also the MARS (again from Gazz), a turret-and-ship AI control script that actually turns the capital ships into something VERY dangerous, and bugswap missiles like they should have done from day 1 (in vanilla game you could simply shoot a missile and it would not get shot down 80% of the times, missile frigates were massive I WIN buttons)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCew9aS7zGM

I still can't comprehend why anyone would want to play such a game alone. I mean there are apparently people that love to do that, but I'm really disappointed that X3 is not a MMORPG.

Because MMORPGs are chock-full of total idiots.

Also, because MMORPGs tend to become all-encompassing life-sucking monsters where you need to play all your free time to farm shit because the game designers aren't good enough to design decent mechanics, and because the in-game society is shit like the real-life society.

The major feature of X2, X3 and similar was that the game AI script engine was accessible, so the community made ship automation mods that became official and went in the releases or patches.

That way I could just tell a ship to go mine that asteroid, sell the stuff at that fab, and in case of pirates teleport in the next non-pirate sector, and it would do so.

Or just to go and trade for me autonomously.

[starshipeleven]

which is why it's awesome: You get to kill those fucking idiots =)

Good luck killing people with premium shit, or those that drop connection, or whatever safeties, cheaters, bug-users.

I prefer killing idiots in real life, it's easier.

[SystemCrasher]

SystemCrasher I played VO for a few months. The basics are awesome. Especially the flight physics.

Just like me. Yeah, flights on its own are pretty good, physics is funny, especially "native" mode. At least some gamedevs got idea spaceship isn't a plane . And it works okay even on opensource GPU drivers, it has been ok even ~3 years ago. Though one may really want e.g. flight controller to do e.g. PvP anyhow reasonably. I wonder how the hell someone manages to play it on mobile devices. Maybe that's why they made it free to play on these XD.

But everything around that doesn't feel right. For that kind of game I'd expect cockpits, but there are none. The graphics are dated and the entire UI just looks 'old'.

Cockpit reminds some "newer" series of WingCommander, which isn't exactly bad. Though the rest of their UI surely needs more love from devs and neither convenient nor looking good. Graphic depends on quality level and on highest levels is quite okay. Interestingly, engine isn't very picky so it works reasonably even on opensource AMD drivers and even ported to mobile devices.

That game would need a complete UI overhaul.

I would rather ask for more alive players (especially in partitioned world) and much less synthetic economics. Would be very logical if players could land the planets, build their bases and somesuch and then even produce ships on their own, taking raw materials and spending some time, and fighters who lost their ships should either pay plenty of money for new one to those who got few ships in their hangars or wait their own facilities to complete build cheaper ways (or fly "default crap" to "bootstrap" beginners). Not to mention it could be funny if facilities could be improved to degree one could build larger ships and at some point it could probably turn into guild or faction wide complexes, with ability to attack these, so enemy ships production could be actually impaired. At least capships/bases and so on, so faction could eventually lose influence. World of VO is pretty much static, so successful offensive does not leads to real changes in fairly hardcoded world. Gathering resources is artificial and poorly integrated into economy. Most missions are boring and do not lead to world change either. And good luck to find alive pilots, there're no means to e.g. create event so alive pilots could apply and then go and do something together, etc. Sot it seems this kind of game also needs a bit of RTS, economy simulation and dynamic workd. This particular game is interesting by their claims they've managed to do something like this, exactly.