I have been dreaming of an intergalactic MMO for years, and years. Something that would allow me to explore countless worlds, and systems, and allow me to land on these planets. This engine would be beautiful for such a thing.

I'm more than tired of "fantasy" MMOs such as WoW or EQ. Hell, I played CoH for three years because it was something different. EVE Online is the closest you could come to great looking interstellar game, but it doesn't allow you to land on planets and walk around and explore.

"...and all I ask is a tall (space)ship and a star to steer her by".

cool.

Just imagine an RTS based off of this. You could have large space battles and ground battles going on at the same time. You could have capital ships launch drop ships that contain ground units. Think Sins of a Solar Empire meets Supreme Commander.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

My 7 year old says the jump from space to land is way too sudden.

There is a space based MMO..Eve Online. It's just missing the ability to land on planets.. It's mainly focused on mining asteroids, dog fights, and forming "corporations" and trying to take over others..

>> ^dag:
My 7 year old says the jump from space to land is way too sudden.


Your 7 year old is so cruel. And at odds with the will of the sift's top 15 list.

lol, dag, I'm going to have to agree with your 7 year old. It's like the atmosphere on this planet is only about 500 feet up. Still very, very cool, though.

Eve Online is actually developing planet side landings in the future, after finishing Ambulation, its iteration for allowing avatars in space stations. Various concept screens and artwork has been released at the last Eve Online conference.

With regards to the Infinity game engine, I think I saw video and screenshot of this nearly two years ago back in 2006 when it was nominated for ModDB's Most Anticipated Game. Back then it was slated as being a year to two years away. The same status it is now.

Not to knock on it, but the amount of features being pushed is overly insane, a twitch based, Newtonian psychics based, planet side landing, galaxy wide MMO. It's just too ambitious, no amount of game logic prediction can allow for twitch based combat in a MMO of this scale, but who knows, we might get pleasantly surprised.

My gob is smacked!

Also, and there may be ways to prove/disprove this, potential for HUGE acceleration between the station->terrafirma transition making it look way too quick?

The reason for transition is game mechanics, who wants to play a game where it takes exceedingly long to land from space to terra firma?

Or it could be a high gravity planet that resulted in a lower altitude atmosphere.

not to mention that saturn looks a little too close. gravity be damned.

>> ^dag:
My 7 year old says the jump from space to land is way too sudden.

I for one am sick of FPS and driving games. I'm waiting for X-Box Walk in the Woods III wherein you, y'know, walk around in the woods and look at trees and stuff.

Nah, I want to play a game where if I get my re-entry angle wrong my vessel burns up.

>> ^Farhad2000:
The reason for transition is game mechanics, who wants to play a game where it takes exceedingly long to land from space to terra firma?
Or it could be a high gravity planet that resulted in a lower altitude atmosphere.

That sounds like some sort of kinky metaphor, schmawy.

What's up with the ringed planet tilting with the screen?

I just want a game where you can steer your own ship, Freelancer style. That's why I never liked EVE.

Maybe I'm a masochist, but that would be amazing. I'd probably have to invest in a few spare keyboards and mice though.

>> ^schmawy:
Nah, I want to play a game where if I get my re-entry angle wrong my vessel burns up.

>> ^Abducted:
I just want a game where you can steer your own ship, Freelancer style. That's why I never liked EVE.


for single-player and lots of time:
Try the X-Universe, current game X3-Reunion

you can have as much ships for you to fly as you are able to capture/earn/build

i think i can see my house from here.

>> ^schmawy:
> Nah, I want to play a game where if I get my re-entry angle wrong my vessel burns up.

>> ^dannym3141:
> That sounds like some sort of kinky metaphor, schmawy.

yeah. i think he's saying he has herpes.


>> ^Abducted:
> What's up with the ringed planet tilting with the screen?

just the perspective changing, due to a 'fisheye' point of view.

in 35mm film cameras, anything shorter than 50mm is a wideangle lens.
but below 20mm, a lens begins to severely distort the center, and is called a fisheye lens.
at about 10mm focal length, the distortion looks like this.

Maybe it's different where you live, but we have that game here. It's free to play and doesn't require any special hardware, either. I try to play twice a month from spring to fall.

>> ^schmawy:
I for one am sick of FPS and driving games. I'm waiting for X-Box Walk in the Woods III wherein you, y'know, walk around in the woods and look at trees and stuff.

I failed many exams thanks to Frontier: Elite 2 (or whatever it was called).

That had newtonian physics, excessively so, manually trying to rendezvous with stations orbiting planets orbiting stars was tricky. Misjudge your accelerated time and you slammed into a planet, or it slammed into you. It made dogfighting a bit crap compared to Elite 1.

You could land at planetary bases, some like the underground moon base in 2001 and all that cool stuff, and I was playing it on a 2Mb Amiga. Its sequel "First Encounters" had even better graphics but was bugged to jiggery.

Someone needs to step up and give us the 2008 space opera that will put the final nail in the coffin that is my social life

From Description: As one of my friends put it, the future is here.

While I do admit it's a cool concept for a game, it's not necessarily that technically complicated. It could have been done a long time ago.

Exactly... I'm sure the engine for Just Cause could easily pull this one off. It has everything (and more) except for the transition to space, which is just another extension on top of what they already have.

Before expecting too much, a mistake I made years ago, read the FAQ on the main site.

Is it possible to walk around your ship or in cities/stations/planets ?

No, this is not planned at the moment. It could add some depth to the gameplay, but would need a lot more resources and in-game content than a small independant team can realistically produce. We prefer to focus on space and planet surfaces and ship-to-ship fights/gameplay. Some vehicles (flying cars, shuttles, etc..) might be added, too.

Will it be possible to land on planets ?

Yes, this is actually one of the main interests of the game. Expect a lot of missions on planets. However, the game will not feature non-vehicle gameplay like walking with an avatar on planets or inside buildings.

So you can "be" a ship or you can "be" a vehicle, basically, and only outdoors. I'm sure it will be nice to look at, but I don't think it offers much new beyond that. There is more dynamic player control, for instance, in Universal Combat (many-ship, many-vehicle, avatar, on space, land, or water, crew and squad control), and seamless planetfall is not new either (Frontier: Elite 2, back in early 90's). I too was hoping this would be "It", but I doubt it more as time goes on.

Not to say it doesnt look pretty - but what really differentiates this from any other game engine? Is it actually handling the rendering different to allow for space/planet transitions?

From what I see it is merely rendering the polygons presented, this doesn't seem to be something that couldn't be constructed in another engine with the appropriate coding for the atmosphere (ready smoke) effect. The planetary rendering wasn't super high quality and even the spacestation did not take my breath away to the level other first engine looks did. Beyond that, but there was a definite lack of physics being involved (which will take its toll on the engines performance).

And anyone who places a gas giant that close to a solid planet... The 7 year old may have been able to better build a planetary system and atmosphere!

Anyway, sorry for being a negative nancy!

Warning: Not to Scale

Aside from that, very pretty. And the concept is definitely a step in the right direction.

what's this game going to be called? "Naptime in Space"?

>> ^schmawy:
Nah, I want to play a game where if I get my re-entry angle wrong my vessel burns up.
>> ^Farhad2000:
The reason for transition is game mechanics, who wants to play a game where it takes exceedingly long to land from space to terra firma?
Or it could be a high gravity planet that resulted in a lower altitude atmosphere.



Actually the re-entry game exists.

http://www.amazon.com/Shuttle-Space-Flight-Simulator-CD-Rom/dp/B000NYH24U

Despite the URL, it's actually on 5-1/4" discs wow.

Then there's the modern expansion pack for MS flight sim: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Shuttle-Expansion-Flight-Simulator/dp/B000ULGWAG

Also, I've posted a video to run in comparison to this one: http://www.videosift.com/video/MS-Flight-Simulator-98-Space-Shuttle-Columbia-landing



Dig 1998 graphics. Wow, it's only been 10 years.

>> ^dag:
My 7 year old says the jump from space to land is way too sudden.


I noticed this as well but you still have to admit this is pretty dang cool

I agree with Dag's seven year old and commend a seven year old for noticing that.

This demo would not have been that impressive if I hadn't seen the spec's at the beginning.

I wonder how far you can go before it get tired and has to load (if ever).

And Raigen: There's always SWG.

yea, the 7 year old is right. There is a ton of atmospheric volume that is missing. Also Brkn is pretty much right, this has been somewhat done allready. Both black and white 1 and 2 provided a smooth contract from small island map view to "heres a blade of grass" view, although not looking quite as good.

The biggest problem now is not an engine capable of doing seemless space to ground, its the content. Procedural calculations for randomly generated hills, vallys, and bodies of water can only give you so much. Cities, buildings, people, and streets to fill up all the land that is generated (in this case..a planet) is a goddly task. And of course then theres the big task.. reason. Why is a building there? Why is this person here? Whats was the intent of this road back when it was built before the others next to it?

Perhaps when maxis actually starts to care again, and bundles a next gen engine like this with a new sim city, we can take a stab at making out own worlds, from space, down to the street level. Sure it will take a while.. but thats the fun in the game!

EVE is quite fun, would be neat if they implemented this technology to be able to land on the planets.

Dreamcast.

That's awesome! I've been following this game for the last three years or so since I saw screenshots posted at gamedev.net but I haven't seen anything about it in a while. It's come a long way. I love the concept and would absolutely play a game like this.

You guys are being way too hard on this thing. Nitpicking about the depth of the atmosphere? wtf Show me any other game or tech demo that works like this. Besides, this is simply a demo at this point. They still have a long way to go. If the atmosphere and planet size was all they had to worry about, the game would be done already. Hell, I'm sure they can change a couple numbers and address all your concerns -- assuming they even care. Like someone else mentioned, it's probably designed that way intentionally.

I wanted to like this but the fish-eye perspective and bizarre camera control really threw me. The camera seems to not move on a steady curve and banks and rolls frequently for no apparent reason. This, combined with the fish eye angle is quite distracting.

With that said, the fractal world quality is pretty cool, although I agree that due to the abruptness of the speed changes it is very hard to get any sense of scale that may exist in the demo.

What I'd love to see is a game that captures the feel of Starflight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight in an MMO. We'll see.