Preview Darkstar Uno pretidbits at Hooked

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Darkstar One

<A href="http://www.hookedgamers.com">Hooked Gamers</a> has <A href="http://www.hookedgamers.com/previews/2006/6/darkstar_one/">a preview</a> of <a href="http://darkstarone.ascaron.com/gb/gb_darkstarone/home/home.php">Darkstar One</a>. It's fairly lengthy, and probably has a few new things but I didn't see much. Anyway, here's a bit of career planning:
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<blockquote>You can try your hand at just about any imaginable trade for a spacefarer. From boring but profitable trading (okay, beating off a trio of pirates can hardly be called boring, but you know what I mean) to escort missions, bounty hunting and pirating, there is always something to do. However, Kayron's chosen path will come with either fame or notoriety. Depending on your course of action, you will find either pirates or the long arm of the law hunting you so you're always going to be both the hunter and the prey at the same time. It is possible to balance your actions so that your reputation stays neutral, but even then there will be enemies trying to find you.</blockquote>
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Hooray! Trading has now been declared <i>boring</i>! There goes another aspect of gaming I enjoy.
<br>
<br>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

[Red Russian]

Trading boring?

What's his problem? Couldn't figure out how to make a simple profit in Patrician III? Well I guess that I should also note that it is an opinion and not exactly "The Law".

 

[Frau Bishop]

Preview? Oh. Already some final reviews around in Germany.

Gamestar.de: 86%
PCGames.de: 84%
game7.de: 90%
gamezone.de: 8,5
gamesmania.de: 85%

Looks nice.. but I really would have preferred a new Patrician.
And the hardware requirements are demanding.
PC MINIMUM (gamestar says..)
2,0 GHz Intel, XP 1.800+ AMD
512 MB RAM
4,3 GB

 

[Dreagon]

Kayron....Keren....Kieren.....Kerron....Kyron.....It's like every D&D nerds second favorite charactor.

 

[bryce777]

Chiron.


Anyway, what was that game with the lateens where you traded around the world? 1492? That was awesome.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Anyway, what was that game with the lateens where you traded around the world? 1492? That was awesome.

You talking about the Anno series? They're called [YEAR NUMBER] A.D. in the U.S., though. Sunflowers mades them, and they're pretty decent little games.

Personally, I don't know why more CRPGs don't impliment trading. There's only a handful that aren't space based that have trading and trade routes like Mount & Blade and Spells of Gold.

 

[Jabbapop]

trading really is boring. especially in games like x3. it's just a matter of going back and forth to places while watching the screen move. whoever thought that's fun should be burned alive. but not before i sink their battleship lolol

 

[Twinfalls]

This site needs more Age of Pirates coverage.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

trading really is boring. especially in games like x3. it's just a matter of going back and forth to places while watching the screen move. whoever thought that's fun should be burned alive. but not before i sink their battleship lolol

Hardwar had the best trading system bar none, IMHO. It was a dynamic system where certain buildings output certain commodities, and you could get several good money hauls from each building before you ate in to their production limits. Then you'd have to move on to another route while waiting for that route to build up.

What made it more interesting was that each ship was solar powered, so ships would recharge themselves at light towers. Pirates would hang around light towers to scan ships to pick their targets. So, if you had a really long haul, big money route.. You might have to weigh the odds of having to recharge in the middle of it which would be a hot spot for pirates to notice you versus lesser money, shorter hauls.

Of course, pirates could also notice you just from flying around them when they had nothing to do. Some hauls could take you through areas of the colony which had higher levels of pirates hanging around than others. Or, you could go longer ways around them through other tunnels between crater colony areas.

Also, trade routes could be easily searched at any given docking bay. That made it great if you were a scavenger type trader. Scavengers would hang around light towers as well, waiting for pirates to attack someone and hopefully get the goods and get away before the pirates got them. Scavengers would also follow around pirate and police ships hoping for looting kills as well.

Yeah, I liked Hardwar a lot. It's probably the only game that deserves the term "Elite Killer".

 

[franc kaos]

The renowned Science Fiction author Claudia Kern , working closely with Daniel Dumont and his team, has written an exhilarating and multifaceted adventure story revolving around the space pilot Kayron Jarvis.

This, at least, is something positive, now if only other games designer hired real authors instead of throwing a cliche ridden hack onto a bling bling engine games might start improving again.

It looks like you get to fly across planetary surfaces too - finally, I always hated seeing these gorgeous planets hanging there, and no way to interact with them.

Plus you get a crew that is part of the plot, and the whole thing sounds like it might be quite RPG ish in nature - with sidequests that start to tie in with the main story line, and area effect 'spells' with a large system to explore.

It's got to be better than X3 at any rate. Let's hope they don't use Starforce (boycotting all games that do as a matter of principle).

And yeah: Hardwar was No1 for me, the world was fully realised and believable, the flight dynamics perfect. (I played Frontier Elite which was a bug ridden mess), tho' I did finally get to play the 16 colour original and got to 'deadly', one rank below elite.

 

[AdrianWerner]

Looks nice.. but I really would have preferred a new Patrician.

Personaly I would have prefered new Port Royale

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

And yeah: Hardwar was No1 for me, the world was fully realised and believable, the flight dynamics perfect. (I played Frontier Elite which was a bug ridden mess), tho' I did finally get to play the 16 colour original and got to 'deadly', one rank below elite.

I tend to agree about the flight dynamics in Hardwar as well. Unlike X3, which basically *required* a joystick to play the game, Hardwar was simple enough to be played with the keyboard and mouse. Of course, the joystick was better, but it's impossible to play the X series games without one in my opinion. The one thing that basically killed X2 for me is the damned flight dynamics and I've heard that complaint from a lot of other people as well.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Any abandonware sites where I can get Hardwar or am I gonna have to go the Ebay route?

 

[LlamaGod]

Trading has always been my favorite thing to do in space sims, infact I don't think enough Sims do it or do them well enough.

The only reason it could be declared boring is if you've only played games with really really simple trading (i.e. space combat sims in disguise).

I just like running cargo across space, figuring out trade routes and economies and all that all while buying myself upgrades and keeping pesky pirates and assholes away from my gear.

Running missions feels boring, to me. If I want to run missions constantly as my main form of income and improvement, i'd just go play an MMORPG or something.

Being a bounty hunter isn't as fun as trading since you're basically doing the same things (beating up pirates and assholes), but doing more sitting on your ass and not much thinking. Just gunning.


Even in Tortuga and Pirates! trade routes were my favorite (but every now an then a Spainish Galleon was pretty tasty, gotta keep them crew members happy).

 

[Frau Bishop]

http://www.fragile-dog.co.uk/HardwarISO/

http://zedo.hardwar.org.uk/gethardwar.htm

But wiki says:
Since 2002, when "The software Refinery" went into voluntary liquidation, Hardwar is no longer officially supported by its creators. During two years the game was no longer improved except for independent player-developers. However since November 2004 one of the member of the original team reappeared and started correcting some of original bugs. The only customer service you'll see is in an online forum dedicated to the game.

Some consider Hardwar to be abandonware, but it is still sold in bargain-bins at some small software stores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardwar

Dunno what legal status is right now. Best legal way would be ebay imo.

 

[Mr. Teatime]

Hardwar was good but not perfect. The world was pretty small - there were only 6 or so areas I believe (the equivalent of sectors). There weren't many side missions at all (in fact I don't think there were any side quests), there were very few ships to buy...
however it still was good. I th ink the main thing that held it back was the size of the world which took the exploration side of the genre out of the game.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

There weren't any side missions that I noticed, but there's big corporations who own smaller enterprises that have certain areas of the game. There's pirates, corrupt police, and so forth. Some pirates have corporate ties, some corporate thugs have police bounties, and so on. Eventually, as you play it, you're going to piss SOMEONE off, and that's when it starts getting interesting. Someone will pick on you or you'll pick on someone, and things will start chain reacting all over the place.

The world is simple enough, but has just enough ties and such to make things so you really won't miss side missions much.

Oh, and you can own hangers and sell stuff from hangers.