Spayce Shotters: Is the genre back?

[VF5SS]

Joystick, not mouse. And I would have to manually undo that after every game.

Well then I guess you got... first world problems

Last time I check that's just like one check box in the game controller tab.

Gotta be a power user :3

[Alyeska]

Joystick, not mouse. And I would have to manually undo that after every game.

Well then I guess you got... first world problems

Last time I check that's just like one check box in the game controller tab.

Gotta be a power user :3

So faulty coding in the game that doesn't hold settings is my fault. Right.

[Molyneux]

Say what you like about the genre, but I really miss X-Wing Alliance.

[Stark]

Shouldn't have lost the disks, then.

If we look at old shooters and the dead ends and mistakes they made before they evolved into the modern shooter, what parallels can we draw to space shooters and the evolution they didn't survive?

Old shooters would often try to add complexity in ways that didn't work - for instance, arcade or fiddly inventory controls, a primitive approach to weapon balance, the infamous 'puzzle' nature of level design. These days, a game with 9 different weapons, 6 of which are gimmick weapons with 'crazy' effects or 'outrageous' animations, would be considered a throwback. Using hard brackets to cycle inventories on consumables or keys is obviously no good.

So look at games like X-wing. We can compare the obtuse inventory to either target selection or power management. Weapon balance is obviously comparable to ship or fighter design, where space shooters to this day generally revolve around one-note, heavily class-based designs rather than subtle graduations, and suffer the same problem of older shooters in that many of these specific and limited designs are nearly useless in play. Puzzle map design is simply a walking method of mission scripting; if you have to fly to the enemy freighter and escort the transport, this is just ticking a bullet point to open a spacedoor and let the spawns in.

I think the space flight games need to take on the refinements that shooters adopted, and for similar benefits.

[CaptHawkeye]

Actually, I really feel like shooters are anomaly in the popularity of video games right now. Their success as of the last 10 years can't really be contributed to industry trend I think as much as sheer, dumb, luck and aggressive marketing.

One idea I had for the difference in how people view shooters vs. space sims is complexity. I've met CoD fans who were actually driven off by what they perceived as complexity. I'm seriously talking about people who can't fly a plane in Ace Combat for more than a minute without crashing it. I've seen this happen, a lot.

Gun games seem easier to handle because they're just extensions of a person, a human body. I think when you toss people into vehicles, they lose a sense of connection with how their interacting with the enviornment because, well, most people would just make shitty pilots. You could ask why GTA is so popular than for its cars and driving, but realize that cars are something many people deal with everyday. They grasp the concept of movement on a 4 wheeled vehicle in 2 dimensions here. Mostly...

Throw in a 3rd dimension, no matter how much you water down and simply interacting with it, your average person at best doesn't grasp it very well or at least *as* well as they could with a game based on a 2D plane. Learning curve? Effort? Fuck that, imma go play Counter Strike.

As a pilot myself, i've sort of realized something in my training. It is *immediately* beyond the capability of many people to so much as interact with a 3D space. I mean, there's a reason we only hand Pilot's Licenses to people who show us they won't kill themselves flying to an airport 20min away. Result? Since space sims are flight games that rely on flight around a 3 dimensional space, they exude an aura of complexity and intimidation to the average consumer. Bear in mind, this is only *one* reason I think space sims went the way of the Dodo.

[Stark]

I don't think the image of unrewarding complexity is really helped by he actual unnecessary complexity. The best part about space games in particular is the setting should give designers all kinds of tools to manage any complexities, but they don't. I'd argue it's because of the unspoken belief that more real/complex = better, which is either missing the point or flying in the face of the evolution of other genres, regardless of how much you don't like them.

HAWX has the most interesting UI tools. That should tell you something, especially when anime has been doing it for a lifetime.

[Julhelm]

One huge problem that hampers the whole space/air shooter genre is the consistently crap combat as a result of really really lazy AI programming. Where FPS games have consistently made AI that behaves more lifelike, games like HAWX and Ace Combat still have enemies that really do not do anything other than turning turning turning. In HAWX you had a help function to overcome this, but this was removed in HAWX 2 and the combat was 10x more tedious as a result.

[VF5SS]

So faulty coding in the game that doesn't hold settings is my fault. Right.

Did I say it was your fault? I said you could fix it

PC gamers should know by now that they have to work harder to deal with the most mundane problems.

If I have an issue with a game not recognizing my controller, I just use Xpadder. It's quick, easy, and arranging the buttons in a smiley face is fun.

I've been mulling over what Hawk-san and Stark have been saying about complexity. The robot game genre has had much success in stamping out the overheating tyranny of the previous generation with regards to basic interfaces and control schemes. Of course lacking any competition or restraint, the backend complexity ramped the fuck up, but that's a story for another time.

In my mind, moving in three dimensions with fear or consequence of smashing into the ground is one of the more basic experiences one can have with a game. While the GTA has the advantage of having the mundane a part of the game experience, I know those games will tutorial the shit outta players when the extra stuff gets put in.

If Eagle One Harrier Attack can make flying a VTOL fairly easy and intuitive, I think the space genre has hope.

Of course since the ubiquitous popularity of space operatic stuff has gone away, I don't we can expect any X-Wing type revival game to have the same huge reception like back in the late 90's but these days distribution has gotten so easy you don't need a million unit seller to feed your cats at the end of the day.

[Alan Bolte]

A lot of what you guys are describing as a better sort of space shooter sounds like Shattered Horizon, which I would like to see redone with better weapons and controls.

[VF5SS]

I checked out a video of Shattered Horizon. Does it play any better than Heavy Gear 2's terrible zero g sections?

You needed three arms for that.

[Anacronian]

Derail
Starshatter has gone free source and can be downloaded Here you just need to register to download

Vid of the game
¨
End Derail.

[MKSheppard]

You might say that, but remember that you're a sim guy. You don't mind an objective like 'fly to point 15km away'.

That was more popular in the X-Wing/TIE/Alliance series; spend a few minutes flying towards newly arrived ships or objects in a frantic attempt to beat the dumb mission clock.

Wing Commander from the start had autonav, which let you fly rapidly from point to point (with the exception of damn autonav points in asteroid fields).

Point taken with the sameness of missions -- there's only so many fighter sweeps or capital ship attacks you can do, or containers to inspect before you go crazy.

[MKSheppard]

Yeah, raising the barrier to entry by requiring specific skills is a great way to revitalise a genre. :V

I-War actually had an auto-manouver function which I used for most of my manouvering, and you could toggle it off for when you wanted to get up to speed, and then spin around and shoot at your pursuers.

[Stark]

That is what I imagine most people did (along with auto thrust management limit you to 1kh/s) which means you made a game Newtonian and scared people off and the let them turn it off. Iwar could EASILY have been more accessible.

[MKSheppard]

I think the space flight games need to take on the refinements that shooters adopted, and for similar benefits.

One way this could be done is by making it truly 'class based'.

WC1 had a small aspect of this -- if you did really well, you could be promoted out of a shitty squadron flying light fighters into the heavy fighter squadron; whereas I think in WCP, you got the option of staying in fighters or going into a bomber squadron.

That might be a way to cater to both those who want simplicity and those who want some complexity in their games (radar sims ahoyhoy), by splitting it into a fighter and a bomber track.

[Stark]

Yeah the idea that classes are different play styles rather than tiered quality is something the genre needs.

[MKSheppard]

Something like this?

Light Fighter: 1 man for the idiot twitchers who like turn and burning and don't like listening to others. These are the assholes in Red Orchestra who want to be the only person in a tank, and won't go anywhere if someone else is manning the turret.

Heavy Fighter-Bomber: 2 man, you now have to deal with a co-pilot who can do all the RADARSimming stuff, and maybe man a turret. For the guys who like co-op driving around a tank.

I'm not quite sure if it's worth it to add a third class (Bomber); as it would just mean adding dedicated turret gunners, and that kind of playstyle wouldn't appeal to everyone.

[Stark]

How about breaking it down by access to abilities?

So you have your units that have long range weapons/sensors, your units that carry deployables or buffs, your units that have utilities like tractor beams or whatever, etc. Some guy has a repair thing, some guy has a splash-damage thing, some guy has a radar, whatever. It'd depend on if you want 'multi balance' where everyone can contribute in a group, or 'solo balance' where there are different ways to play that are equally rewarding.