Be Excellent To Each Other

WARNING: CONTAINS A LOT OF RAMBLING NONSENSE.

Am I alone in getting some sense of excitement and intrigue from exploring unknown worlds, but in a game? Solar systems named with Greek letters and numbers after them? I hope I'm not.

My affliction first hit when I was about 7. My school had a copy of Project Space Station for the numerous C64s they'd bought. It was brilliant - you planned the entire (then 'Freedom') Space Station program: you recruited astronauts and scientists, planned a budget, designed a station, bought equipment and set out a launch schedule. You then got to fly the shuttle into space to deliver the bits, use a EVA pod to assemble the parts into a working station, and then land the shuttle safely to load more parts. You then got to set up research programs, launch satellites, clear debris and slowly make money and expand your station. All done in lovely crude 8-bit graphics and sound.

When I got the PC version from a computer fair a year or two later, my life began to revolve around my little space program. Half an hour in the morning, come home for lunch and another 20 minutes, and then hours in the evening and on weekends. The compulsive nature of running my station aside, the crude graphics still gave a great feeling of being out in the cold awfulness of space when you were out in the EVA pod, attaching solar panels and collecting space debris (deb-riss, as my friend Chris called it).

My next close encounter was with Star Control 2. While the original had offered a degree of exploration, Star Control 2 offered DOZENS of star systems. Each was unique, and had believable arrangements (the outer planets were either tiny planetoids or huge gas giants, while the inner planets got hotter, more mineral rich and more dangerous as you moved in) to boot. You cruised through these dozens of systems (quite likely only seeing a fraction of them during the game), sending down a little lander to mine ore, subdue the local wildlife and explore. With the eerie music as each planet span on the scanner screen against the blackness of space, I really felt millions of miles from home, in orbit about an unknown world.

This, naturally, made Frontier: L33t 2 all the more astonishing to me. Blorping out of David Braben shortly after Star Control 2 (though, living in Canada, nobody had heard of it, and I didn't get to play it until 1998 when I moved to the UK), this provided all of the above and more. Vast amounts of planets, loads of exploring, and a real sense of just how insignificant my little Adder ship was as it blasted off from a spaceport and ascended to airport, the ground shrinking away beneath me. Visiting all the weird and (mostly in text form and my imagination, alas) wondeful worlds occupied me for weeks.

Playing Arse Effect (I still haven't forgiven its stupid bugs, though I have played it all day and am finally past where I was when I got screwed over) has just rekindled this spark for me as I hared along the surface of the Moon, firing my rover's jets to hop over rocks as the Earth hangs overhead. Wisely, no music is being played - just a white noise howl (undoubtedly of my machinery) and the atmosphere is palpable. I haven't felt this much like I was on the surface of another planet since the very first level of Battlezone where you were essentially free to blast around on the vast lunar landscape in any vehicle you wished until you decided to start the mission proper. Being able to get out and walk around (as in Battlezone) only makes it better. Granted, none of the other planets so far have yet captured the sense of place as the barren Moon (and I know they'll all be rocky planets in varying colours).

So, any else out there share this bizarre fondness for astronomy?

Frontier: Elite 2 holds the (dubious) honour of being the game I have played the most throughout my entire life, and is one I still play religiously to this very day. I never get bored just going to different star systems, even though there isn't anything of note in most of them.

Millennium 2.2 on the Amiga stole many an hour from me.

I don't think I ever managed to "get into" its sequel though. Deuteros? Something like that. Thinking back, I think part of the problem was I was skint and had a cracked copy that wasn't properly cracked and would cause frequent Guru Meditations before getting very far.

Yup, I always loved exploring space in games too. Frontier (sorry) did it for me, with the starting on the planet, leaving and then finding yourself after a couple of jumps on an entirely new planet and loads more to visit. Sure, they were mostly identical - but it was vast!

There was an old Amiga PD Star Trek game that I can't remember the name of or where it came from, where you controlled the bridge and transporter room and could take off in the shuttle and crash it. That was fun, and spacey.

And Freespace 2 and X Wing: Alliance always gave me a buzz. But they weren't explorey. Funnily enough, X: Frontier and its sequals never did it for me. The recent Battlestar Galactica Freespace 2 standalone mod is pretty impressive and spacey realist with semi-newtonian physics.

The best game for fun and exploration was Space Rangers 2 though, which I had to sell as it was TOO addictive. Oops!

So am I the only person who thinks that Frontier is a big, bug-ridden load of horseshit? Because it is. No, it is.

You are not alone. Arf.

I lurved Frontier for that very reason, and the bits in Mass Effect seem paltry and insignificant in comparison. A tiny, tiny amount of planet to rove around? Gettafuckouttahere. I can't begin to fathom how that game is "deep" in any way after Frontier.

I remember being completely captivated by Echelon on the Speccy. You had a huge chunk of planet to explore, lots of buildings and stuff to fly around, space pirates to fight and objects to collect so you could decipher a code to work out the whereabouts of the pirate base. I never managed to compete it, it was just too time consuming a task, but I spent hours just flying around, mapping the landscape and looking for those elusive flashing specks of debris that would get me another precious piece of the code.
I was even able to work out what all the keys did, since the clots at US Gold simply threw a copy of the original C64 manual into the package instead of designing one specifically for the Speccy.

Nope. I loved Elite, but hated Frontier.

Combat in Frontier is incredibly dull, too.

Loved games a la Freespace though. I guess I like exploring space and shooting stuff in it.

When I walked in to our local LAN centre and the owner said "Hey, Sheep! Come over here and look at this! You've LOVE this!" and thrust a boxed copy of EvE Online in to my hands, I nearly peed.

However the LAN centre went bust, the Corp broke up, and BeeX Bezzies are too lazy to play it. It's fairly dull without your mates, really.

Oh Gosh I loved Frontier despite it being a buggy mess. Probably lead to me doing my PhD actually.

That C64 game sounds awesome. Me wanna play it!

I might enjoy screwing around in EVE with a few chums. But I'd sooner sand my kneecaps again than give away money for an MOMMPORGMPGMOPG.

Even the free ones are deathly dull.

I also hate Frontier.

On a tangent, try any of the Mercenary games. Especially Damocles.

http://mercenarysite.free.fr/mercframes.htm

cross post from yakyak

remember buying it, Frontier, in november 93, one of the first things i ever ordered from the uk (in pre internet days and being under 18, so no credit card this was rather exciting.. getting home from school, cycling fast to the post office to get there before it closed.

I bought it after it getting 97% from cu amiga, and while waiting for the order to arrive it got a 65% (75% a1200) rating from amiga power, the magazine i trusted most; I was confused APs main point was tht it was more like work. This was ofcourse pre-animal crossing, pre-world of warcraft, so we didn't know yet what people would do for virtual cash (other criticism was that you could not make a decision on where to go in a reward/investment , but that was nonsense as it was rather easy, as you got numbers on how far ewvery star was).. I played for quite a bit, in the end for me it was an 86% or so game, the promise of adventures was great, although it wasn't sensi or swiv for me

and i was horrible in docking with Elite (miggy version)

Anyone tried Noctis? Haven't used it for a while but I remember it being pretty good.

I would just like to say "Space Rangers 2".

Space Rangers 2.

Now we may proceed.

Funnily enough I was introduced to these sort of games at school too - we had a network of Acorn Archimedes computers and since the school would let us play around with the computers after school some nights, a few of us had games to play on them. So whilst I would dedicate a fair amount of time to Lemmings and Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, Elite would be the one that I would play the most. I wasn't very good at it back then, but I'd never played anything before quite like it. When my Dad eventually bought me an Amiga one Christmas, Frontier was one of the first games I bought for it and I practically dedicated my life to it at the time.

I've tried the 'X' games and found them to be incredibly dull - in fact, only the Wing Commander: Privateer games have ever done much to replicate the brilliance of Elite in my mind. I do however still occasionally play the third Elite game, Frontier: First Encounters, which you may remember really was a buggy load of horseshit on release, by David Braben's own admission. However, if you all try hunting down JJFFE, a conversion of F:FE for 32-bit Windows systems, you'll find that the author has done a lot to clear up some of the bugs and there's a fantastic game in there. The missions that revolve around the newspaper stories alone elevate it above Frontier and it's also possible in this version to acquire the Argent's Quest and Thargoid ships (you were meant to in the original release but bugs prevented the necessary missions from working). Although the Thargoid ship is so utterly, ridiculously powerful it does kind of render the game pointless.

I don't have a solid eough net connection for it anymore.

GTC's in dollars are still cheapish though.

I miss it.

Mostly the explosions.

Don't miss the laggy fleet 0.0 stuff though as it was boring. Best thing ever in Eve was probably jumping a battleship and a battle cruiser in a belt with a couple of cloaked recons and a dictor in lowsec and Ewaring both of them to death.

Yeah. That.

Has anyone tried the 'X' Series, I have the third one 'Reunion'. It is along the lines of these, but there is fewer planets to explore, but loads of soalr systems, and space stations and stuff. But better than that, it is fully customisable (if you are ace*), so people have expanded the basic ships included, so you can get all the Star Wars ships, modify scripts and all sorts of things, while building up your empire. It is pretty cheap also, and significantly, the combat it pretty good also.


*not me.

I hated X2, but really liked X3 - particularly the massive trading empire thing.

Dimrill, Arse Effect has only reminded me of these things - it hasn't surpassed them.

Frontier was marvellous, especially the light sourcing (good grief, in 1993?) which meant sometimes a space station glowed a sinister red from the nearby red supergiant. It was also greatly superior to the American effort, Privateer, while had great production values while you were on the ground (gloriously fully rendered spaceports, populated by the same six people no matter where you were, including one unfortunate bloke who had to put on a different coloured wig depending on which shop or bar you went into - still, the buxom Merc's Guild bimbo was nice) the actual space bit was tedious empty space until you reached the next glowing sphere that marked the jump point to another system. Then some rubbish combat (unless you hit the 'nice reply' button extremely quickly over and over and over, which would turn practically everyone - Kilrathi included - into your best mates) and simplistic trading and upgrading (only five ships!)

I don't like First Encounters. The ships are all ugly, the textures on the planets and such horrendous, and the new control panel is almost impossible to make out, never mind the hideous backgrounds of the 'interior' of your ship.

Yeah Frontier was great bugs and all. I had an Imperial Courier and used to set off for the far reaches of space in it, usually to some anarchy ridden planet, and flog drugs and slaves to the populace. I also did some mining, that taught me to fly under manual instead of autopilot. The manual flying bit put me off of the original Elite but Frontier I loved.

I was introduced to Elite on my mate's brand new BBC B Micro.

That blew my mind totally at the time. I then bought the Speccy version about 18 months or so later. I think it was the only Spectrum game I ever paid 15 quid for. Bloody lenslok. Later, I got a cheap, used Beeb, so I played the disk version on there to death, too. One of the things I could never understand was why the Speccy version, which had a better framerate in generall -- the Beeb version flickered a lot -- didn't has as good explosions as the BBC version, instead it had some red flash ball thing...

Still, it was worth it. Definitely got my money's worth there.

I remember playing the Amiga version a bit but it just never really grabbed me in the same way. Plus, it was far too garishly colored. I remember trying something called "Federation of Free Traders", but never really got along with it. I don't remember why now, though.

Since then, there's not been much that I liked in the same vein. I tried the first "X" game and found it was hard and dragged my computer at the time to its knees. The rest that I played in the 3D vein was mostly combat oriented. There's been surprisingly little of that kind of thing on the new consoles, thinking about it... I guess it doesn't sell all that well or something.

Because it took foever to find an alien craft willing to trade with you, and even then you'd just use the chatbot to swear, rather than find things to trade.

[Me] - Fuck.
[It] - On my planet we do not speak of such things.

That is why your species is becoming extinct!

Does it eliminate the tedious space-jousting combat? Because if not: NO SALE. If I wanted realistic space physics I'd, um, uh, OHFUCKIT I can't think of anything funny. I DON'T WANT REALISTIC SPACE PHYSICS IN MY GAMES. Unless it's blobby blood floating about like in Dead Space, in which case YES PLEASE.



And also because, if my experience is anything to go by, it crashed if you so much as looked at it the wrong way. Still, at least I got the budget release which only cost me a fiver -- unlike sodding Frontier.

Amusingly, those who don't want "realistic space physics" during Combat in Frontier basically just need to switch their Engines to Engines Off and use the retro thrusters to control the ship. It cuts out a lot of the "slingshot" phenomenon that used to happen.

Oh man, why couldn't someone have told me that 15 years ago?

Okay, so what else can I whinge about? Oh yeah, the copy protection. That was fucking annoying. Come back Lenslok, all is forgiven!

From what I remember, by the time I found someone to fight, I was going so fast that stopping would take several weeks, so going engines off etc. wouldn't have helped. Or am I missing something?

Thinking about it more, I remember playing it for ages despite hating the combat, but eventually lost interest due to the bugs and the fact that it had zillions of systems that were all pretty much the same. I never got around to trying anything after Frontier for a variety of reasons.

I'd rather sacrifice realism to playability. That said, I loved the realistic physics that the TV show of Bablyon 5 (at least in the early years... I know in either the last season or the post show movies, the production company changed the supplier of the CGI work and the new people went with "flies like a plane" style space combat scenes...

Ah, I remember that now. It just was nothing like Elites was, and more importantly, to me the combat just wasn't much fun. I did like being able to buy turrents and stuff though.

I saw an interview with David Braben recently on Gamespot where he pointed out that Elite IV is in the planning stages of development, due to go into full-scale production once The Outsider has been released. In my dreams, Elite IV will keep the realistic universe of Frontier and First Encounters, but forego the physics for combat along the lines the original Elite, or better yet Colony Wars. Also, it would be nice if travel without an autopilot was made a realistic prospect, since surely only a maths genuis with the patience of a saint could do it in Frontier?

It's not as fun as the original Elite, no question. But most people who criticised Frontier's combat only ever used Manual engines or even autopilot(!) so they just saw a series of slingshot after slingshot.

I really rather like Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. The semi-realistic physics is actually quite fun. Zipping along, turning the ship sideways to get your forward weapons in line with the ship you're going past, and giving them a massive broadside. Woot! And then stealing their cargo.

I enjoyed the tactical side of EvE's combat and stuff.


The trading part was also something of sheer awesomeness and really rather tricky to turn a profit in at times.

mining was boring as hell, though. Griefing miners was funner.

I installed X3 again last night in honour of this thread. Now I've just got to get the bastard to work

I gave up on X2 after about 10 minutes.

X2 is shit. X3 is brillo pads.

Shredded Wheat?

What's the difference, then?

Bigger, lovelier. Less quest dependant, more ships, more trading.

Dude, you're wasted in IT. You should apply for a job with one of the Future mags.

I never did the gate camping thing (LIES - I did it a few times). most of the time I was running solo in low security space or with one or two others in fastish moving ships looking for lunch and then running away after ganking the unwary, or using a ship to bait another into attacking it, and then hitting it.

I found that a lot more fun.

But I do agree with you on the major time and dual account issues. I had Mali A as my main character and two others, that sat in a station and bought and sold items (one was also my 'bring me new ships and stuff gopher as well). So I was never short of money, just careful with the ships I had. I flew a battleship twice as it didn't fit in with the style of play I liked.

This all intrigues me, as I too thought X2 was shit. I might have to give X3 a go then.

I found that switching off your engines (in Frontier) just seemed to increase the risk of the attacker colliding with you. It was damned annoying when you had fought through six pirates and the seventh is in a tiny, impossible to hit airfighter and finally the odds of NOT colliding run out, and he slams into you... either completely knackering your ship, or worse, killing you instantly.

It also seemed like 90% of the ships sold in the Frontier universe were sold to pirates, as you saw far, far more of them than you did other, more peaceful pilots. And, naturally, you had to run a gauntlet of six pirates to deliver goods vital to this system's economy... but accidentally click your mouse and fire a harmless laser shot into space when you're near the space station, and a swarm of police vipers comes out of nowhere to blast the hell out of you.

Hmmm. Actually, that's rather like the real cops being too busy nobbling you for putting plastic wrap into your recycling bin, while across the road a granny is being stabbed by drunken 14 year olds.