Hazeron Starship - A seamless space sandbox universe

[Casual Hero]

What the heck?
I had no idea this came out. I remember stumbling across Shores of Hazeron as a kid because I was interested in finding Gravity Well, a shareware game I played when I was really young. I guess it was made by the same guy? Hazeron looked amazing to me, but there was no way I would've convinced my parents to spend money on a subscription for some janky online game.
I looked it up again last year and was sad to see that it didn't exist anymore.

I think I am going to buy this.

 

[asfasdf]

I had no idea this came out. I remember stumbling across Shores of Hazeron as a kid

So, last year?

 

[NwNgger]

I think a big danger with games that are as big as this is the large amount of empty space with fuck all to do. That'd be fine if there was reactivity. Which was obviously provided by the MMO version. Does this game have any real reactivity from the AI beyond rudimentary combat? Empires reacting to you, big wars between AI empires, that sort of thing? Building your own space empire is all well and good but if others don't react to it meaningfully what's the point?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

plenty of people made "dyson sphere program" a success, even, or perhaps especially, when the game was just a sandbox with no opposition.

 

[GaelicVigil]

I think a big danger with games that are as big as this is the large amount of empty space with fuck all to do. That'd be fine if there was reactivity. Which was obviously provided by the MMO version. Does this game have any real reactivity from the AI beyond rudimentary combat? Empires reacting to you, big wars between AI empires, that sort of thing? Building your own space empire is all well and good but if others don't react to it meaningfully what's the point?

AI Empires are very rudimentary at the moment. The multiplayer has also been removed. However the programmer has stated recently that those two features are his top development priority. Everyone is requesting them. Best we can do now is support the game and cross our fingers that he has the momentum to put them in the game soon.

 

[asfasdf]

It is just one developer and guy is older than crispy, not holding my breath.

 

[GaelicVigil]

It is just one developer and guy is older than crispy, not holding my breath.

He is being pretty active right now. He's already pushed out a few bug fix updates, and he said he's making progress on the AI empires feature:
http://hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2998

"This update also contains the beginning of the AI emperor. The code is disabled so none will spawn at this time. At some point they will awaken.

AI empires are not the pirate empires. They start with an avatar who spawns into the game and starts building an empire, just like another player. The only real difference is the AI emperor does not respawn when killed. Like a player, their constructions will remain after the emperor is gone."

 

[Mortmal]

my eyes! MY FUCKING EYES!

Getting off topic here, but I'm curious why some people get so bothered by bad graphics. Is it an age thing? My two Millenial younger brothers are the same way. I grew up on Ultima 1 and Elite and Wizardry 1 so none of that really bothers me at all. In fact, I think modern graphics look awful to me, they remove all imagination. I remember coming home from school every day and spending hours playing games on this machine and having great fun.

Hazeron looks pretty great to me graphically, and mechanically it blows all of the modern space games out of the water like Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, X4, and No Man's Sky.

It's a generational thing. I guess you were there from the beginning too and saw the gradual improvement, from Elite to Elite 2, rudimentary graphics, yet something absolutely awesome in their time. I spent dozens of hours on something like that. Games were more scarce; you had to get them in the shop, and it was an event in itself. How to blame the youth nowadays? They have access to everything instantly, the latest production in 3D with hundreds of millions of budgets, and that for barely a few euros if you are patient and wait a year. How would they possibly spend 30 euros on something looking like this.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

you're all retarded. i'm older than dirt, i wasted my childhood on elite, i clocked *millennia* of in-game time in elite 2, from time to time i still play zangband, and this is objectively, undeniably, the 9/11 of the terrorist attacks to eyesight. stop sucking each other's cock and accept the truth.

 

[Vic]

I've spent my childhood staring into this thing before I got my PS1 and I still think Hazeron looks like dogshit

Spoiler

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I've spent my childhood staring into this thing before I got my PS1 and I still think Hazeron looks like dogshit

Spoiler

Has there been scientifically proven connection between retardation and having one of those as kid?

 

[Vic]

I've spent my childhood staring into this thing before I got my PS1 and I still think Hazeron looks like dogshit

Spoiler

Has there been scientifically proven connection between retardation and having one of those as kid?

there has been a recent study indicating that children who have spent a significant amount of time playing it developed a condition in later years called huge dick.

 

[asfasdf]

meh, on a scale of prosper to 10, I would say hazeron is a 4 or so, there are worse things around

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

there are worse things around

say that to his face.

SAY IT!

 

[Vic]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Yep, those are graphics made by someone who's used to working with CAD or similar.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dude, i'm so bad with faces i can't even describe MY ugly mug if my life depended on it, and i can draw better man-ape-gone-wrong... things.

 

[Modron]

dude, i'm so bad with faces i can't even describe MY ugly mug if my life depended on it, and i can draw better man-ape-gone-wrong... things.

I look forward to seeing your prosperian artworks.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i followed common sense and stopped when i was 9.

 

[Mortmal]

Yes, the 3D character models are surely something, with the worse offender being the humanoid ones. But then everything else is okay and doing the job. We have to put this in perspective; he worked on it for like 20 years and gave everything for free until now. So it's only one guy as a hobby, giving it for free, and running the servers at his expenses. The guy deserves full respect, and I have a greater margin of tolerance there. It would be a lot better with new models, of course, but once in the game, you won't bother so much with graphics and can happily stroll in the streets of your hand-made cities, looking in the horizon to see the curve of the ringworld. Then, every dots on sky lead to a true star with exoplanets with full orbit and gravity.

 

[GaelicVigil]

I objectively think Hazeron's graphics are better than any other modern space game, including No Man's Sky, Starfield, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, X4, etc because none of the images have true spatial existence. They all exist inside instanced set pieces. All of those games have planets or systems locked behind loading screens.

In other words, all of those games are like beautiful paintings, locked inside a frame. None of that is impressive to me at all on a technical level. Starfield being the worst offender. I don't fucking care that you have 1000 beautifully rendered systems if all of it is just made up of instanced rooms with invisible walls. I don't care if Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky have billions of stars if all of those stars are just an illusion behind a "warp animation".

Those modern games to me are the equivalent of opening up 3D studio and making a beautiful scene and calling it a video game by comparison to Hazeron.

So I don't see graphics in terms of polygons or shaders or parallex or specular lighting or bloom. I see it on a sliding scale of viable interconnected simulation. Those modern games completely fail in this regard compared to Hazeron Starship. Those modern games are sitting insdie elaborate Hollywood sets or theme park fun houses, while Hazeron exists inside a holodeck simulation. Give me the latter any day.

I think people who can tolerate these modern set piece video games are also the kind of bread and circus blue pill people who enjoy the illusions inside Plato's Cave. But I grew up a long time ago from that silliness. I see through the illusion and it bores me.

 

[GaelicVigil]

I've spent my childhood staring into this thing before I got my PS1 and I still think Hazeron looks like dogshit

Spoiler

Has there been scientifically proven connection between retardation and having one of those as kid?

He was the guy, IIRC, who was in love with Starfield. Couldn't stop posting about it. I think there's something to it.

PS1 and GameBoy fan. Yikes. I wouldn't go around bragging about that.

 

[Vic]

and now you're the guy in love with this game, so don't throw stones sitting in a glasshouse, you're just as retarded as me

 

[NwNgger]

I objectively think Hazeron's graphics are better than any other modern space game, including No Man's Sky, Starfield, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, X4, etc because none of the images have true spatial existence. They all exist inside instanced set pieces. All of those games have planets or systems locked behind loading screens.

In other words, all of those games are like beautiful paintings, locked inside a frame. None of that is impressive to me at all on a technical level. Starfield being the worst offender. I don't fucking care that you have 1000 beautifully rendered systems if all of it is just made up of instanced rooms with invisible walls. I don't care if Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky have billions of stars if all of those stars are just an illusion behind a "warp animation".

Those modern games to me are the equivalent of opening up 3D studio and making a beautiful scene and calling it a video game by comparison to Hazeron.

So I don't see graphics in terms of polygons or shaders or parallex or specular lighting or bloom. I see it on a sliding scale of viable interconnected simulation. Those modern games completely fail in this regard compared to Hazeron Starship. Those modern games are sitting insdie elaborate Hollywood sets or theme park fun houses, while Hazeron exists inside a holodeck simulation. Give me the latter any day.

I think people who can tolerate these modern set piece video games are also the kind of bread and circus blue pill people who enjoy the illusions inside Plato's Cave. But I grew up a long time ago from that silliness. I see through the illusion and it bores me.

This is so delusional that it makes Lilura's rants look sane.

Can we get past this idea that something being free means it's immune to criticism? The artstyle is atrocious. Regardless of this game being free or not. Elite 2 looked like dogshit even for the time. There are games from the DOS and Micro Computer eras that hold up very well visually. This is not a DOS era early 3D game. Compare it to something like Rodina which is also a solo dev open galaxy space sim. That game has very basic but still decent visuals. There are no excuses for dogshit visuals. It doesn't have to look high fidelity. But it does have to not pain my eyes and brain to look at.

 

[Mortmal]

I objectively think Hazeron's graphics are better than any other modern space game, including No Man's Sky, Starfield, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, X4, etc because none of the images have true spatial existence. They all exist inside instanced set pieces. All of those games have planets or systems locked behind loading screens.

In other words, all of those games are like beautiful paintings, locked inside a frame. None of that is impressive to me at all on a technical level. Starfield being the worst offender. I don't fucking care that you have 1000 beautifully rendered systems if all of it is just made up of instanced rooms with invisible walls. I don't care if Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky have billions of stars if all of those stars are just an illusion behind a "warp animation".

Those modern games to me are the equivalent of opening up 3D studio and making a beautiful scene and calling it a video game by comparison to Hazeron.

So I don't see graphics in terms of polygons or shaders or parallex or specular lighting or bloom. I see it on a sliding scale of viable interconnected simulation. Those modern games completely fail in this regard compared to Hazeron Starship. Those modern games are sitting insdie elaborate Hollywood sets or theme park fun houses, while Hazeron exists inside a holodeck simulation. Give me the latter any day.

I think people who can tolerate these modern set piece video games are also the kind of bread and circus blue pill people who enjoy the illusions inside Plato's Cave. But I grew up a long time ago from that silliness. I see through the illusion and it bores me.

This is so delusional that it makes Lilura's rants look sane.

Can we get past this idea that something being free means it's immune to criticism? The artstyle is atrocious. Regardless of this game being free or not. Elite 2 looked like dogshit even for the time. There are games from the DOS and Micro Computer eras that hold up very well visually. This is not a DOS era early 3D game. Compare it to something like Rodina which is also a solo dev open galaxy space sim. That game has very basic but still decent visuals. There are no excuses for dogshit visuals. It doesn't have to look high fidelity. But it does have to not pain my eyes and brain to look at.

No one said you were not allowed to criticize; it's just, after seeing stuff like Starfield with an average art style and dogshit gameplay, with a huge budget, you can rationalize a little bit and consider trying the game with deep gameplay and a dogshit art style. It could be better to try and enjoy something that exists, as no one else is going to do it. The only option is to lament and wait for things that will never happen. Elite Dangerous was super promising but ended up super static and with the depth of a puddle. Star Citizen is not out yet, and it won't offer the same freedom either, even if it's still better than Elite Dangerous. By the way, Elite 2's 3D graphics were not bad for their time; it's just that we had gorgeous 2D games making much better use of the Amiga's capabilities, as 3D wasn't its strong point.