Lucasarts teases X-Wing/Tie Fighter

Switchbreak wrote:
JoeBedurndurn wrote:

It sounds like a good idea, but it doesn't really fit our culture's schema of how space combat is supposed to look.

Unless you count Battlestar Galactica.

Uhh...

That's bog standard Space Opera aka WW2 fighters in space. Occasionally one of them will forget what inertia is and do a 180 and then immediately flip his velocity vector.

Also... Newton doesn't have jump drives.

Babylon-5 fighter combat. Cutting forward thrust, spinning, firing behind you. That sort of Newtonian physics flight model. Sadly I don't recall any game that does it properly. Piling on Delta-V by constantly thrusting would lead to some amusing problems, people inadvertently flying off away from the fight, trying to revector and return. Sounds like fun to me.

If you think about it, you'd probably want a turret or something on your space ship so you could shoot at things you weren't directly pointing at. If you can do it, you definitely would like to give the bad guy a face full of laser, because it's damn hard to dodge things that travel at the speed of light. You should probably also have the turret controlled by some kind of AI, because I know the public schools of the future won't be stressing 3D ballistics and target prediction.

So now whoever you're fighting is going to need to get close enough so that his weapon can kill you while constantly adjusting his velocity vector so that your inhumanly aimed laser doesn't explode him. That sounds absolutely vomit inducing and probably not very fun.

JoeBedurndurn wrote:

If you're really stuck with Newton, then every attacker is probably starting his battle accelerating madly away from his opponent to cut his velocity down to something he might actually be able to fight at instead of his interplanetary cruising speed.

More like: every attacker lets his automated combat systems handle the fight, because the speeds and distances involved render a human pilot irrelevant.

I think that removing a top speed limit, even though realistic, pretty much destroys the possibility of a fun game. I like Elycion's idea: real physics plus a maximum speed would be a lot of fun. You'd basically have to learn how to pilot all over again!

JoeBedurndurn wrote:

If you think about it, you'd probably want a turret or something on your space ship so you could shoot at things you weren't directly pointing at. If you can do it, you definitely would like to give the bad guy a face full of laser, because it's damn hard to dodge things that travel at the speed of light. You should probably also have the turret controlled by some kind of AI, because I know the public schools of the future won't be stressing 3D ballistics and target prediction.

So now whoever you're fighting is going to need to get close enough so that his weapon can kill you while constantly adjusting his velocity vector so that your inhumanly aimed laser doesn't explode him. That sounds absolutely vomit inducing and probably not very fun.

I think you just described IWAR. Mmm... time to install IWAR 2 and get the force feedback joystick out.

JoeBedurndurn wrote:

That's bog standard Space Opera aka WW2 fighters in space. Occasionally one of them will forget what inertia is and do a 180 and then immediately flip his velocity vector.

Also... Newton doesn't have jump drives.

I can't watch videos at work, so I don't know what that shows, but one of the things I liked about the first season of BSG is that they avoided all of that. I don't know if they abandoned it later since I never did watch more of that show, but the combat that I saw very noticeably had all the fighters using retrorockets to decelerate and changing orientation without altering their direction of travel in violation of inertia. It stood out because it was a big departure from the space opera standards.

And don't go hating on FTL travel, that's one of those things that will never be realistic but will always be necessary for sci-fi.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

How could you make a playable game with full newtonian physics? It'd be almost impossible for 2 ships travelling at mind-boggling speeds in the vastness of space to ever hit each other.

I think that some realism has to be sacrificed for playability. We are already making concessions about FTL travel and photon lasers and magic shields and whatnot.

Are ya'll just talking about inertia? If so, that'd make for some pretty difficult to control twitch gameplay. You'd have to make the combat less visceral and have what amounts to aim-assist to get that to work, imo.

But hey, I'd give it a try.

If it is another game that eschews the dogfighting and instead has you push buttons to engage in combat a la' EVE then...well...I'd rather just play EVE.

As others have already pointed out, I-War did a pretty good job of building a game around Newtonian physics.

Two ships fighting at mind-boggling speeds can fight just fine, as long as they're near each other and have similar vectors. Pilots that are trying to kill each other are going to naturally remain in proximity to each other, especially if there's some stationary asset that needs protecting or destroying. This tends to keep speeds manageable.

The HUD added lines to the display to give you a feel for your velocity vector, and the weapons console gave you an external wirefram view of your shup with trailing "ladders" on targets so you could see what they were doing. There was also an assisted mode for firing the particle cannon that took into account relative velocity vectors.

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f6/Iwar2.jpg)

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Iwar_mislattack.jpg)

As for making combat visceral, you were piloting a corvette, and often had to deal with multiple fighters that had less mass and inertia. It certainly wasn't hands-off like EVE.

Reaper81 wrote:

Don't f*ck it up, Lucasarts.

This is really all I have to say on the matter too.

There is absolutely no reason for them not to make a new game. As said, they'd be great on consoles.

I think I might even be OK with a Clone Wars setting as long as it's more X-Wing/TIE Fighter and less Rebel Assault.

I'd be OK with the Wing Commander flight model--mostly WW II in space, but hit a particular button and let you keep going the way you were, but whip your nose/weapons around to shoot at what might be following you. Also, IIRC Wing Commander had that cool fire avoidance mechanic whereby you were able to sort of automatically barrel roll while flying away from baddies. Essentially it was like strafing, but describing a spiral around your vector of travel, with your head always pointed toward the line of your vector. Worked really well when flying away from angry capital ship turrets. Why hasn't a space sim done that since?

LtWarhound wrote:

Babylon-5 fighter combat. Cutting forward thrust, spinning, firing behind you. That sort of Newtonian physics flight model. Sadly I don't recall any game that does it properly. Piling on Delta-V by constantly thrusting would lead to some amusing problems, people inadvertently flying off away from the fight, trying to revector and return. Sounds like fun to me.

Jumpgate did a pretty good job of this, though I-War sounds like it did a better job (never played it). Unfortunatley from what I have read, Jumpgate Evolution has dropped that aspect to make it more accessible.

Elycion wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I have no idea what else encompasses "realistic" "flight models and overall tactics" for space, though. I would actually like to hear more on this. What's missing?

Newtonian physics is the primary thing missing from pretty much every space flight game. I can't really recall a game since the Wing Commander days that didn't just treat spaceflight as if the rules of atmospheric flight applied. I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that Jumpgate Evolution continues the trend of using atmospheric flight models for the spaceships.

Old computer game by the name of Mantis did the spacefighter sim very well. Also I can not remember the name of the game but there was a mmorpg game that came out that did it as well. Instead of rocketing around like an airplane, you have to rotate your craft and do bursts of thrust to move your ship around.

FlamingPeasant wrote:
LtWarhound wrote:

Babylon-5 fighter combat. Cutting forward thrust, spinning, firing behind you. That sort of Newtonian physics flight model. Sadly I don't recall any game that does it properly. Piling on Delta-V by constantly thrusting would lead to some amusing problems, people inadvertently flying off away from the fight, trying to revector and return. Sounds like fun to me.

Jumpgate did a pretty good job of this, though I-War sounds like it did a better job (never played it). Unfortunatley from what I have read, Jumpgate Evolution has dropped that aspect to make it more accessible.

When was it dropped? I stopped reading about JE a few months ago because the damn beta was delayed. Last I heard the Newtonian physics was available for people who wanted to use it (i.e. experienced players).

One problem with XvT is that it requires an extremely precise joystick to play well. It's designed, top to bottom, for the big, full-throw desktop joysticks that not very many people have anymore. It plays like complete sh*t with thumbsticks. I know -- I just tried. It's an exercise in frustration.

I'm not sure how they can simultaneously support the inaccurate thumbsticks and also get the pinpoint targeting required -- you have to hit VERY small targets, often just a couple pixels wide, and you have to flow in smoothly from one side, zap off a laser burst at exactly the correct time, and then keep turning through it so the TIE on your tail doesn't burn through your shields.

It may be doable, but they could really screw the pooch -- and judging from how bad their replacement Monkey 1 UI was, they don't exactly have top-drawer talent working at LucasArts anymore.

Independence War, btw, was REALLY fun. I didn't enjoy the sequel as much, but IndWar 1 kicked ass.

IndWar, by the way, also got me thinking about what real space combat would be like.

I suspect it will be more like submarines than battleships -- space is very large, individual ships can be very small, and even a tiny amount of thrust adds up very quickly. Fixed facilities are going to be floating targets to pretty much anyone out there -- get a small ship with a few torpedoes, launch at three weeks out, and the little bitty ion drives on their tail will steadily acclerate them for three weeks, or three months, or however long you want -- until the purely kinetic projectile blows through the target at a substantial fraction of light speed.

Real space combat may consist primarily of silently throwing rocks from the darkness.

Malor wrote:

IndWar, by the way, also got me thinking about what real space combat would be like.

I suspect it will be more like submarines than battleships -- space is very large, individual ships can be very small, and even a tiny amount of thrust adds up very quickly. Fixed facilities are going to be floating targets to pretty much anyone out there -- get a small ship with a few torpedoes, launch at three weeks out, and the little bitty ion drives on their tail will steadily acclerate them for three weeks, or three months, or however long you want -- until the purely kinetic projectile blows through the target at a substantial fraction of light speed.

Real space combat may consist primarily of silently throwing rocks from the darkness.

The Warstrider books had a seemingly realistic take on space combat. It was all inertial manuevering, tele-operated missiles, and gigawatt lasers. No force shields, only armor and laser dispersion clouds. Well worth reading overall.

Malor wrote:

Fixed facilities are going to be floating targets to pretty much anyone out there

Actually you are making the mistake of attaching your frame of reference to the fixed target. If the ships are moving fast compared to the station then it is equally correct to say that the station is the one moving quickly.

An example where this is easy to see is a station in orbit around Earth being attacked by ships from Mars. As the ships approach Earth and shoot by it on their orbit around the sun then the question as to which side shot by which side is really kind of meaningless. If they slow down to actually rendezvous with the station then their differing speeds doesn't matter anymore.

The difference to fixed facilities, of course, is their inability to dodge incoming particles. That's probably exactly what you meant and I'm being way too pedantic, but I'm an aerospace engineer, so hopefully I'm excused :).

Actually you are making the mistake of attaching your frame of reference to the fixed target. If the ships are moving fast compared to the station then it is equally correct to say that the station is the one moving quickly.

True, but irrelevant. The thing about enemy stations isn't that they're fast or slow compared to you, it's that they're absolutely predictable. So you can lob in a missile from half the solar system away, let it gain speed for most of the trip on a tiny ion drive, and then coast for the last million miles or so completely 'dark'. For bonus points, you can have it explode into grapeshot shortly before impact. Boom, dead station, as a few hundred pounds of lead rip through it at several million miles an hour.

Remember, force is mass times velocity squared. Regular atmopheric bullets are at around 1500 feet per second, or about a thousand miles an hour. Getting orbital rounds to a million miles an hour shouldn't be that difficult, which means that each pellet would have a million times as destructive potential as an earthly bullet. Bullet-size would probably be too small -- not enough of the force would be transmitted to the receiver -- but make the rounds the size of, say, cannonballs, and just one hitting an orbital facility would make a really, REALLY big explosion. For bonus points, throw a hundred.

Wouldn't work on enemy ships, since they're not predictable, but orbital facilities? Easy stuff. Objects in low orbits will be harder to hit, since you'll be essentially trying to shoot someone that's crossing your path at high speed, but it's not like human beings doing that -- the orbital math, she is precise. Low orbits are less predictable because of atmospheric drag, but the attacker can probably watch and fine-tune up until a day or so before impact.

The thought occurs that you'd probably have to fine-tune the speed of your rounds to be stopped by your target, so that it absorbs maximum damage from your strike. If it's TOO fast, it would punch through. I'm thinking of meteor strikes -- all it would take is one big rock at orbital speeds to wipe out most cities. But in that case, it's hitting the earth, so it WILL stop, and all of the kinetic force will be transmitted.

Against a relatively thin-skinned target like a space station, you'd probably not be able to throw objects as fast as I was first thinking and have them do full damage. They'd probably need to be slower, and probably would need to tumble, or explode, for best results.

Dear God,

Please don't let LucasArts screw the pooch on this one.

Thanks, your pal,

Poor Old Lu

LtWarhound wrote:

Babylon-5 fighter combat. Cutting forward thrust, spinning, firing behind you. That sort of Newtonian physics flight model. Sadly I don't recall any game that does it properly. Piling on Delta-V by constantly thrusting would lead to some amusing problems, people inadvertently flying off away from the fight, trying to revector and return. Sounds like fun to me.

You might want to look at Babylon 5: I've Found Her. I haven't played it in a long time (its a few years old), but they did have the option of switching between Newtonian Physics a more arcade-type physics, if I remember correctly. There was also a B5 TC from the Freespace 2 engine, but I don't think it changed the physics. It was a good game, though.

Poor Old Lu wrote:

Dear God,

Please don't let LucasArts screw the pooch Indiana Jones on this one.

Thanks, your pal,

Poor Old Lu

Fixed, because that's the image using the words "Lucas" and "screw" in the same sentence conjure up these days.

Rat Boy wrote:
Poor Old Lu wrote:

Dear God,

Please don't let LucasArts screw the pooch Indiana Jones on this one.

Thanks, your pal,

Poor Old Lu

Fixed, because that's the image using the words "Lucas" and "screw" in the same sentence conjure up these days.

Professor Henry Jones: ...Junior.
Indiana Jones: I like "Indiana."
Professor Henry Jones: We named the *dog* Indiana.
Marcus Brody: May we go home now, please?
Sallah: The dog?
[starts laughing]
Sallah: You are named after the dog? HA HA HA...!
Indiana Jones: I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog.

I played TIE95 about a year ago with DosBOX and the game actually holds up really well. I'd buy just a straight port though I hope they redo the artwork of the briefing/debriefing screens.

Other ongoing space combat sims I don't think anyone has mentioned yet are Evochron Legends and Evochron Renegades. I haven't played either, so I don't know what the difference is, but there you go.

As for "realism" in a space combat game, you can browse the Atomic Rockets site (or skip right to the Space War sections) and have your every thought and dream about a "realistic" space game squashed under the mighty and terrible hammer of un-fun physics.

Gravey wrote:

Other ongoing space combat sims I don't think anyone has mentioned yet are Evochron Legends and Evochron Renegades. I haven't played either, so I don't know what the difference is, but there you go.

As for "realism" in a space combat game, you can browse the Atomic Rockets site (or skip right to the Space War sections) and have your every thought and dream about a "realistic" space game squashed under the mighty and terrible hammer of un-fun physics.

I've tried to mention the Evochron series whenever someone is looking for a space sim, so I'm glad to see another reference to it here Legends and Renegades are more along the lines of the Privateer style space sims than pure combat. There isn't much of a difference mechanically between the games, just that Legends is the newest game. They seem to iterate the series with a new title.

They have a good trial that offers quite a bit, except for the multiplayer.

Darth Nader wrote:

You might want to look at Babylon 5: I've Found Her. I haven't played it in a long time (its a few years old), but they did have the option of switching between Newtonian Physics a more arcade-type physics, if I remember correctly. There was also a B5 TC from the Freespace 2 engine, but I don't think it changed the physics. It was a good game, though.

Aww....the entire time I've been reading this thread up to this point I was thinking of linking to this, but you had to ruin it for me by posting about IFH first!

I never made it too far in IFH, but I was fascinated by what I had played. It's also been a few years for me, but I recall being hopelessly lost in hyperspace when I quit.

Gravey wrote:

Other ongoing space combat sims I don't think anyone has mentioned yet are Evochron Legends and Evochron Renegades. I haven't played either, so I don't know what the difference is, but there you go.

We have an Evochron thread with a link to a Penny-Arcade forum thread that lists a lot of space shooters, several with true inertial flight systems, usually toggle-able, like the Evochron games.

I would love to see an X-wing game that is:
a) HD and pushing the hardware
b) mostly the same old gameplay
c) for XBLA/PSN
d) around $15/20 like BF1943
e) refined analog controls

d3p0 wrote:

I would love to see an X-wing game that is:
a) HD and pushing the hardware
b) mostly the same old gameplay
c) for XBLA/PSN
d) around $15/20 like BF1943
e) refined analog controls

I'll take 2, please.