Melancholic, tranquil space MMO techdemo

[Orgasm]

Infinity: The Quest for Earth
15 min of content (adj) chill (noun).

Additional soundtrack for different mood:
The Stooges - We Will Fall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wIuwzOK-EU

Video
http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=1589&pk=13910

 

[Destroid]

Is the codex cutterjohn the same as the infinity cutterjohn?

 

[LazyD]

I liked the look of the tech demo a lot.

Looks like it has potential.

 

[Havoc]

If you're going to be able to land on planets... then I'm sold.

 

[Black_Willow]

The demo was strangely mesmerizing.

 

[denizsi]

I didn't know they were still on track with development. Good for them.

Procedural generation on astro-belt was poor, though.

And that sure is a tiny planet. Smaller than Pluto. So small it couldn't possibly retain an atmosphere. Come to think of it, as cool as sandbox transition between space and planet in a game is, it's impractical from a game play perspective due to the time it should take to enter and leave a planet, otherwise, keeping the distance from space to exosphere to the ground level short for the sake of gameplay practicality is not much different than interior/exterior cells in Oblivion (in the way that exterior shells are always significantly smaller than interior cells and if were resized to match the interior cell, would cause a lot of fuck ups).

 

[Jack]

It looks amazing.

Too bad about the MMO part.

 

[Turisas]

Come to think of it, as cool as sandbox transition between space and planet in a game is, it's impractical from a game play perspective due to the time it should take to enter and leave a planet, otherwise, keeping the distance from space to exosphere to the ground level short for the sake of gameplay practicality is not much different than interior/exterior cells in Oblivion (in the way that exterior shells are always significantly smaller than interior cells and if were resized to match the interior cell, would cause a lot of fuck ups).

Yeah, tho I guess they could cheat a bit and have the ships slow down significantly when going through the atmosphere. After the initial wow factor wears off, having such a skewed sense of scope would just be annoying when the game's biggest selling point is its unprecedented scale.

 

[Orgasm]

Shame that the game will never be finished.

I would like to see a metropolis planet with all the trade space ships going in and out. Fleets standing by. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. =)

 

[Boyarpunk]

Me like-y. Lots. :shock:

 

[DraQ]

Come to think of it, as cool as sandbox transition between space and planet in a game is, it's impractical from a game play perspective due to the time it should take to enter and leave a planet.

You can always implement time compression and miraculously solve all the pacing problems plaguing your spacesim, without having to sacrifice anything. You can even add strictly Newtonian intrasystem flight with no adverse side effects whatsoever, despite the in-game length of such trip. Indeed, it can greatly enhance the feeling of being in space, which is, you know, the whole point of basing the game in space, rather than some fantasy world.

Oh. An MMO can't into time compression? Carry on then.

After the initial wow factor wears off, having such a skewed sense of scope would just be annoying when the game's biggest selling point is its unprecedented scale.

It would. A sim is not an abstracted-away RPG. While I would like as much of this abstraction as possible to be removed from cRPGs, it's hard to get angry at Morrowind for scale disparities if a whole sub-continent sized island is squeezed into several km^2. In a sim, this would be a fucking crime.

 

[The Barbarian]

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. =)

Congratulations, brave soul. With this well placed Blade Runner reference, you have wormed your way into the Barbarian's heart.

 

[Zed]

I like the look of this. Will probably never get to play it though.

 

[DraQ]

I like the look of this. Will probably never get to play it though.

Hopefully E4 will come out, be an SP game, and in the vein of its two last prequels.

 

[Data4]

I missed this thread, but just now discovered the videos on my own. Holy fuck! I don't care that the planet is small-- populate a star cluster with hundreds of them, along with the old SWG freedom to create cities, and include a robust platform for trading, alliances, and other EVE-like features, and I'm sold. Add in an avatar component a la Walking on Stations, and I'll sub for life.

 

[Data4]

Here's an earlier test render of a city with various ships flying around and a large ship hovering. If this type of scene will be common in the game, I'll fucking buy stock in the company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsVzwX-t ... re=related

And this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exRm0LwN ... re=related

 

[poocolator]

Video
http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=1589&pk=13910

That's one small planet.

 

[dbx]

Come to think of it, as cool as sandbox transition between space and planet in a game is, it's impractical from a game play perspective due to the time it should take to enter and leave a planet, otherwise, keeping the distance from space to exosphere to the ground level short for the sake of gameplay practicality is not much different than interior/exterior cells in Oblivion (in the way that exterior shells are always significantly smaller than interior cells and if were resized to match the interior cell, would cause a lot of fuck ups).

Not really. Ground-to-orbit in a Space Shuttle takes less than 10 min. De-orbiting takes a bit more, but only because it's un-powered.

 

[Data4]

Come to think of it, as cool as sandbox transition between space and planet in a game is, it's impractical from a game play perspective due to the time it should take to enter and leave a planet, otherwise, keeping the distance from space to exosphere to the ground level short for the sake of gameplay practicality is not much different than interior/exterior cells in Oblivion (in the way that exterior shells are always significantly smaller than interior cells and if were resized to match the interior cell, would cause a lot of fuck ups).

Not really. Ground-to-orbit in a Space Shuttle takes less than 10 min. De-orbiting takes a bit more, but only because it's un-powered.

Here's a cockpit view of a shuttle launch from liftoff to weightlessness. Liftoff is at about 03:35. There are two cuts in the video, so I'm not sure how much was cut out, but they mention a flight time of 6 minutes after the first cut. They kill the engines and are weightless at 10:20. It's awesome how quiet and smooth the cockpit gets at high mach. They announce Mach 25 right before killing the engines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwfsFtpA ... re=related

Now, translate that to a higher tech ship that goes faster and an orbital time of 1-3 minutes is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Norfleet]

It's awesome how quiet and smooth the cockpit gets at high mach. They announce Mach 25 right before killing the engines.

It's quiet and smooth because at that altitude there is practically no atmosphere to carry sound or create turbulence in.

 

[Tails]

I like the look of this. Will probably never get to play it though.

Hopefully E4 will come out, be an SP game, and in the vein of its two last prequels.

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 - I have some doubts about that.

 

[denizsi]

Come to think of it, as cool as sandbox transition between space and planet in a game is, it's impractical from a game play perspective due to the time it should take to enter and leave a planet, otherwise, keeping the distance from space to exosphere to the ground level short for the sake of gameplay practicality is not much different than interior/exterior cells in Oblivion (in the way that exterior shells are always significantly smaller than interior cells and if were resized to match the interior cell, would cause a lot of fuck ups).

Not really. Ground-to-orbit in a Space Shuttle takes less than 10 min. De-orbiting takes a bit more, but only because it's un-powered.

Here's a cockpit view of a shuttle launch from liftoff to weightlessness. Liftoff is at about 03:35. There are two cuts in the video, so I'm not sure how much was cut out, but they mention a flight time of 6 minutes after the first cut. They kill the engines and are weightless at 10:20. It's awesome how quiet and smooth the cockpit gets at high mach. They announce Mach 25 right before killing the engines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwfsFtpA ... re=related

Now, translate that to a higher tech ship that goes faster and an orbital time of 1-3 minutes is perfectly reasonable.

Mmmmm, that puts things into perspective for me. Thanks.

Still, imagine being teleported to the actual planet geometry at some point during your descent in the atmosphere and travelling great distances on the planet that takes a long time. Will they try to keep the space geometry of the planet reasonably big to comfort to the actual in-game size of the planet so you don't just go around the planet geometry in space in a minute?

But then again, that might be solved with some "hyper drive" thingamajig or something similar to alter speed the closer you get to a planet, I guess.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yes, they claim that planets will stay big and that your maximum air velocity will be around Mach1 for game-engine reasons. That means that to get swiftly on the other side of the planet, players will enter low-space orbit, fly in near-vacuum and then de-orbit.

This looks so frigging awesome I'm leaking cum into my pants. I just really, really, really hope that they don't chicken out at the last minute and ditch Newtonian physics and realistic distances.

In any case, they plan for EVE but without skills - everything is based on player skill and actions.

 

[DraQ]

Now, translate that to a higher tech ship that goes faster and an orbital time of 1-3 minutes is perfectly reasonable.

Pretty much. Now reaching some higher orbit, like stationary?

I remember that surface-to-station took over 10 minutes in Frontier on autopilot without time compression, and in Frontier I had luxury of flying a ship capable of 20G on main thruster, 7G on retros (autopilot doesn't flip to decelerate) and with virtually unlimited deltav.

Yes, they claim that planets will stay big and that your maximum air velocity will be around Mach1 for game-engine reasons.

Bwuh? Frontier didn't have such limitation and its engine did just fine - on 286. Same with its sequel.

It was actually fun to hurtle some 10-15k km/h (as much as engines could squeeze out against the air resistance) at low altitude over the poor landscape that did nothing to deserve such treatment.
In fact, my favourite tactics for doing photo runs on airless planets and moons in the sequel was low level approach at 20-30k km/h relative to the surface with thrusters off and velocity preventing me from losing altitude. The defenders usually had no chance of intercepting me after they took off from the base I intended to take photos of - when they managed to intercept me and match velocities, it was all long over and I was far enough from the surface again for hyperdrive to work.

This looks so frigging awesome I'm leaking cum into my pants. I just really, really, really hope that they don't chicken out at the last minute and ditch Newtonian physics and realistic distances.

Well, they certainly won't have realistic physics used to cross those realistic distances even within single system.

Lack of time compression in an MMO ensures this.