Indie Space Sims - post 'em if you find 'em

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Here are the ones I have recently stumbled across

Epochstar - http://www.epochstar.com/
Starscope - http://www.moonpod.com/
Jack of All Trades - http://www.dingogames.com/jack/

Havent really had a chance to play any of them yet...

Starscape (not Starscope) is quite good. Combines fast paced action (very much like old-school sidescroller) with some strategic considerations so that neither gets boring too fast. Gameplay is like following:

You have a mothership from which you launch by yourself in a smaller fighting ship. You are always in a sector, in order to move to another sector you have to dock to your mothership again. You can defeat enemies in the current sector or, if there arent anymore, collect resources from asteroids.

The game is divided in stages: each stage you are in a 'galaxy' which consists of a dozen sectors. Basically, in each stage you have to find the sector where the enemy mothership is and destroy it.

Combined with some research and resource managment this makes for some happy hunting, if one doesn't mind the childish graphics.

Well, the pissaction is mainly distributed under the label "666", but it´s also owned by John Thompson, the sick GGG bastard.
http://shop.openerotik.de/dvd-das-gross ... -4415.html
Dare to click the pic.. it´s really "different".

You forgot to add Beta Blocker to the list.

Also, this MMO might be along the same lines as EVN (supposedly, it's more like Trade Wars 2002). Haven't played it yet.

Does this one count as a space sim?
A massivly multiplayer online space flight game.
It flown under the radar since 2003 and it has never had 100 players back then.

official site:
http://www.jossh.com

a fansite i found:
http://jumpgate.cabspace.com

Nexus - The Jupiter Incident

It's a "Space Tactical Combat Simulation" says the makers of this brilliant game.

http://www.nexusthegame.com/

Not exactly indie, but agreed, Nexus rocks.

Infinity: The Quest For Earth
(in development)


Massively, multiplayer online space trader with hawt ship on planet action.


Open ended gameplay
Procedural galaxy
Seamless Planet take off and landing
Astrophysics

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8426566575107987989
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3744650885934024232

I hope this doesn't endup in the elite-like graveyard. It's been far too long since I've seen planet landing in a space sim. Most new games just have space stations or "docking rings" like freelancer.

Oh, and yes I stoped lurking just to post this.(seeing this part of the forum go unused for so long just made me sad )

This game, No Gravity, was recommended. I haven't really checked it out yet, though.

Wing Commander Privateer Gemini Gold(Vega Strike engine)

Another Privateer mod/tc based on Vega Strike. It's a branch of the Privateer Remake http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/announcements.htm

Privateer Gemini Gold is trying to stay as faithful as possible to the originall Privateer.
FAQ on the differences between the two projects. http://www.priv.solsector.net/faq_d01.htm

Main Page
http://www.priv.solsector.net/news.htm

Escape Velocity - Nova

This forum has been the first plaice that I have been to saying that such a game existed. If it's good enough to use as a standard to compare others with, are there professional reviews to read? (I presume they will be in Macintosh publications, and that the development emphasis for that platform is why it gets almost no notice from the WinTel gaming press.)

My own experience with space sims is limited to some exposure to Star Wars' X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, and even less exposure than that to the Wing Commander games.

Hammerfall, now in version 0.2 It is a demo that you can only play for 60 minutes before having to start a new game(I tried to find a workaround in the .ini files, but couldn't)

Summary : Very original, and very fun! The physics are really cool. You are a noble Abyss-dwelling human who will pilot a whirly-gig(helicopter) that wields a huge sword, mace, or hammer. It's story/mission based although there are times when you get to choose which mission to go on and the setting is in a huge void with floating spires of rocks which humans live in.

To play past the slavers/gladitorial games you have to play in Russian :/

Re: Escape Velocity - Nova

What the hell is a Kiwi doing in south Texas?

Everyone must be from somewhere

I was born there, but my folks were Americans, and we ended up in Texas when I was ten, so I'm more Texas than anything else, that's the deal. Seems like a good enough excuse to me.

There's a big list in its own section, here. The creator of the list doesn't want to add 2D games, though.

Starflight: The Lost Colony - is a reimagining of the original starflight, made by a bunch of guys as a project.

http://starflightgame.com/wordpress/

Unlike most 'projects' this looks like it will be finished, and fairly soon. If you join the forums you can download alpha 8 (soon to be 9), after which they plan to release it as beta.

Vega Strike is a decent open source effort.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/index ... s=1&id=151

Anyone looking for information on running Elite on various formats through emulation, including the old BBC computer or the Archimedes version (which in the following links was declared the best version) can have a look at the post by Lord Rocket here or here (duplicated).

Not really indie space sim for the emulation aspect (although there is the fan-enhanced version and a remake which should qualify), but I'm making an exception as it is useful information. Hopefully anyone searching the forums should be able to find this or the other post easily enough in the future. It may save someone spending ages with the forum search function or Google to hunt it down with just the right terms six months later when they have a vague memory of it.

It's not hard to work around the time limit in the .ini files, at least not in the version I downloaded. This game is truly awesome... fun combat, lots of customization, beautiful artwork... it also uses the game's engine in a number of creative ways (such as the various sports that you play in a tournament).

However, it is def. not a space sim.

There's another list, here, courtesy of Wikipedia. Note that 2D games like EVN (duh!) aren't listed for some reason.

The Starwraith series has some new entries, Arvoch Conflict for purely combat oriented space simming and Evochron Renegades as, apparently a successor to Riftwars, as a general combat/trading/exploration sim.

Side note: Be careful of what you write on their forums, as while they're not as ban happy as Derek Smart (legitimate in his case as he was cyberstalked for years) is with his BC/UC series, they are even more insular and will misconstrue any non-asskissing comments as insulting some how.

Anyways the Starwraith games are nice int hat their system requirements are significantly lower than other "current gen" gen space sims, have a MUCH lower learning curve as a result of reduced feature set, which means that you can go into a game and get done in 10-30m what would entail merely setting up to get something done in other sims.

The graphics remain fairly decent, although they are highly repetitive, and combat falls in between the BC/UC series and the X series, being better than X's while not as good as the BC/UC series. Trading, again falls in between the X and BC/UC series, not being nearly as rich as the X experience, while offering more options as compared to the BC/UC series. As far as ship options and types, both X and BC/UC severely exceed the Starwriath games in terms of options in the number of ships availabel (both X and BC/UC), and the number of ships available/ownable by the player in a game, although X severely trumps BC/UC in this respect as well.

The Starwraith games, specifically, sport MP capability now, although good luck in finding more than 2 players on any server at any given time, not to mention the relative ship capabilities available to you. i.e. n00bs you WILL need to make $$ first to afford a capable ship before realistically playing against other players. This is a nice option, entirely provided for the Dark BASIC application development environment that this series has been developed in.

Bottom line: It's a good game for what it is, even if the developer and fanboys seem to think that it some how can compete with the big boys offering quick access to game play and results.

NOTE: I'll re-iterate here, while they'r e not as ban happy as DS, they are so insular that anything that is NOT asskissing or giving free ideas for gameplay improvements is immediately construed as flame and you WILL immediately be subjected to "counter"-flaming. To their credit they're not banhappy, nor do they (as of now) delete threads in question. Highly unprofessional? Yes. Understandable? No, not AFAIK in this case, so I suggest looking elsewhere for a more friendly environment in which to obtain your space-sim fix.

(The NOTE section refers entirely to my own personal feeling about this "company" and their response to posts. I'll update with further information about the game itself (Evochron Renegades) once I put more time into it, which IS going to wait until I've picked up either a more capable netbook or a full form factor notebook as that is the platform that I purchased this game to run on with all of the above limitations wrt features/system resource requirements/"fun" (although my fun factor has been significantly reduced by the childish responses of the developer and his fanboys on the official site). [EDIT2] Fuck reviewing this fanboy shit, it's a shit ripoff of Elite, and mostly akin to FFE with somewhat updated grafix, well that is updated if you're a real developer otherwise its just shit, so IMO stick with the OpenGL (glffe) versio of Frontier First Encounters rather than shit from Starwraith, as they certainly are ethereal about what makes their game better and are like rabid dogs if they scent ANY sort of "negative" commentary... [/EDIT2=FOAD vice]

[EDIT]
Oh, and here's the link to the thread mentioned above
http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=3567

Let me know if the link dies, as I archived a copy...
[/EDIT]

Had a similar experience over at Elite Games. The fans/devs had the hubris to think that in their collective Russian might they could mash together something that has a passing chance of being recognized as English, and then get all psycho and start deleting posts and threads and issuing "warnings" when you correct them. Apparently, there is also a minimum smiley count that must be met before a thread is considered acceptible. (The topic in question concerned the translation of a mod, so no I didn't just start correcting their grammar for the fun of it. Nor was the idea of correcting grammar my own.)

I would provide a link but the thread was deleted.

It seems the thread died, please put up the archive. I just got interested in Evochron and any fun stuff related to it I'm interested.

Here are the details that lead to the moderator being offended and deleting the thread (in the "Star Wolves" forum at the Elite Games website):

[edit]The thread was concerning a English translation mod, in case I've lost you.[/edit]

The first debacle broke out because I questioned whether an agency could be an "Imperial agency" and "independent" at the same time (it was a news agency featured in the game, which I find to make the discrepency particularly insidious). This seemed contradictory to me - journalistic integrity and all that - but the moderator would have none of it. What was written in the game was canon and could not be changed by a non-team member.

Later, someone suggested that a sentence reading something along the lines of, "'Star wolves', you are citizens of the Empire, [and therefore must abide by the Empire's rules]..." be changed to "'Star wolves', you are the citizens of the Empire, [and therefore must abide by the Empire's rules]." The additional "the" was called an "emphatic 'the'" by the Russian members of the forum.

The example used to justify this change was taken from the UN charter, or something: "We the people of the United Nations determined to..." (emphasis added).

My response (deleted by the moderator) was:

I did not agree with the change; further, I find this particular mistake to be quite common in translations. For instance, another example is the very similar "emphatic 'are'" (or whatever you want to call it) in the classic translation blunder, "All your base are belong to us."

Assuming what Stormcrow really meant was the "emphatic 'the'" in the sentence, "Jose Conseco is the player to watch in the coming season...", I gave the following response (which was also deleted):

The moderator, of course, then threw a fit and deleted the thread. Later, he bragged to another user something along the lines of, ~"Even a Russian did better than he was able to"~, and this user then continued to brag of his "studies in the US." Generally speaking, the forum patrons are currently patting themselves on the back, reasoning that the services of a native Russian speaker are more important than those of a native English speaker when translating from a foreign language to English - and that a room full of Russians is doubleplusgood.