Jumpgate getting a facelift

[Venkman]

You may or not have seen this already.

NetDevil Announces Jumpgate Evolution (at Gamasutra too).

If you ever played JG, you gotta check out the screenshots from that first link. It's no Eve, but it's no longer X-Wing vs Tie Fighter either. Coupled with the other improvements they're trying to make, I'm definitely interested in checking back with it again.

Last time I was there I felt the flight mechanics were just too rudimentary. But I've always felt they had the right ingredients for a good space-simy game. Maybe Evolution will be them pulling that off.

[Mrbloodworth]

Reeeeeaaaalllllyyyyyyy?

[slog]

I'm hopefull, but they only have 8 people working on it.

[LC]

How are these people still in business?

[Venkman]

Maybe in large part due to this.

[Lanei]

Last time I was there I felt the flight mechanics were just too rudimentary.

Not sure what you mean by this.  Its pretty darned close to pure Newtownian motion, with added drag to impose what amounts to a speed limit.    I think they should have left out the drag and made ships start taking damage over a certain velocity instead, but other than that, the next layer of complexity would be to turn on gravity from the stellar objects and make you have to deal with orbital mechanics in order to get near stations and such.

[Engels]

I'd give it a try, but the 10 day trial requires a credit card, and that's yucky.

[Baldrake]

Last time I was there I felt the flight mechanics were just too rudimentary.

Not sure what you mean by this.  Its pretty darned close to pure Newtownian motion, with added drag to impose what amounts to a speed limit.    I think they should have left out the drag and made ships start taking damage over a certain velocity instead, but other than that, the next layer of complexity would be to turn on gravity from the stellar objects and make you have to deal with orbital mechanics in order to get near stations and such.

My recollection is that you're both correct. For example, to land in a space station, you had to flip your ship ass over tit and fly in backwards as the only way of braking. Way too fiddly for my taste.

But I may be remembering wrong.

[Mrbloodworth]

Last time I was there I felt the flight mechanics were just too rudimentary.

Not sure what you mean by this.  Its pretty darned close to pure Newtownian motion, with added drag to impose what amounts to a speed limit.    I think they should have left out the drag and made ships start taking damage over a certain velocity instead, but other than that, the next layer of complexity would be to turn on gravity from the stellar objects and make you have to deal with orbital mechanics in order to get near stations and such.

My recollection is that you're both correct. For example, to land in a space station, you had to flip your ship ass over tit and fly in backwards as the only way of braking. Way too fiddly for my taste.

But I may be remembering wrong.

Your right, if you mean by basic, Realistic, and you mean by less fiddling, Atmospheric flight IN SPACE. Then, yes?

Its Basic.................Reality (almost)

[Venkman]

So I could be wrong, because I keep mixing what I remember from Jumpgate with my memory of Vendetta Online. But it seemed to me that there was no reason to use a joystick in the game, at least not insofar as there was a reason to do so in Freespace 2.

That's my baseline for space sims. I want a semi-complex flight mechanic including Newtonian physics, because flying in space is a hell of a lot more complex than just running some avatar around on the ground. I want rotating shield zones, variable-fire-mode weapons, different equipment modules, sub-system targeting, missiles, big ass lasers, ships the size of small cities, a Eve-like economy with semi-predictable PvP (not "controlled", I prefer Eve's system actualy), and a place I can call my own. In space.  And it needs to be an MMO because I couldn't give a rat's ass about some RPG NPC economy.

So, Freespace 2 MMO or SWG: JTL without the ground game.

Unrealistic, but that's what I want.

I didn't feel that in Jumpgate (or maybe not in Vendetta Online). If I ever do feel it in JG then I will be there.

I'll be checking out the new version once I get back from vacation.

[Alkiera]

So I could be wrong, because I keep mixing what I remember from Jumpgate with my memory of Vendetta Online. But it seemed to me that there was no reason to use a joystick in the game, at least not insofar as there was a reason to do so in Freespace 2.

You could fly using a mouse, but it was painful.  Much easier to do with a joystick.  I used a joystick, some of my friends were mousers, and I could do things with my ship that they could not easily do.  The primary difference between EVE and JG to me, is that JG is more of a fighter-pilot type game, whereas EVE combat is more ST Enterprise captain... "Lay in a course for Svirfneblin IV, Warp 2.  Upon arriving, park us in a standard orbit."  JG is more like an aerial dogfight, EVE is more like a wet-navy fight.  This is in part because JG's guns are mostly 'dumb', they do not lock on, and they shoot straight forward.
[/quote]

That's my baseline for space sims. I want a semi-complex flight mechanic including Newtonian physics, because flying in space is a hell of a lot more complex than just running some avatar around on the ground. I want rotating shield zones, variable-fire-mode weapons, different equipment modules, sub-system targeting, missiles, big ass lasers, ships the size of small cities, a Eve-like economy with semi-predictable PvP (not "controlled", I prefer Eve's system actualy), and a place I can call my own. In space.  And it needs to be an MMO because I couldn't give a rat's ass about some RPG NPC economy.

JG, last I recall, had a fairly decent equipment system, including the ability to use equipment from other factions; getting it was another matter.  Each faction specialized in different sciences, and a given piece of equipment involved trade-offs...  X-Wing like power management was an issue, in that your engines took different amounts of power to fly different speeds (due to space-drag) and you often couldn't maintain a full fire rate while flying full speed, due to the capacitor recharge rate being affected by the lack of free power from the power plant.  Especially if you used energy weapons, which were a serious power-draw.  There were missiles, but they weren't very 'bright' so you wanted to line them up pretty well for best effectiveness, rather like an EVE rocket.

I don't recall what kind of player-related stuff there was, there may have been the ability for guilds to own territory out in the middle area, which was kinda based on DAoC's RvR setup.  Imagine if Eve just had 1.0 space, 0.6, and 0.0.  In 0.6 you could 'claim' space for your faction by flying through markers, but to do so you had to be flagged PvP+.  If not flagged, 0.6 acted a lot like 1.0.  In 0.0 space there were no consequences for kills.  The economy was somewhat EVE-like except production of items was done by NPCs on stations; if they ran out of the stuff to make MegaX Booster Engines, no one could by them.  Some people flew HUGE freighters of crap around (and made a tidy profit at it) to keep various stations in the stuff they needed.  And as they did this, the buy/sell prices of those goods would change.  There were tracking tools built to see what the values of goods were in different locations (outside the game, sadly) that would even let you say, 'Show me the things I can take from one system to another in less than 5 hops, sorted by profit per unit volume'.  And get a list of suggested runs.  And this was actually good for the economy, as the prices indicated demand for those materials; the problem was that generally only short runs got done, except by the owners of the giant cargo tows.  To read descriptions, flying those was a serious PITA; people complained about docking in the fairly agile newbie ships and low-end fighters... the cargo tow, when full (and the mass of your inventory DID change your ships mass for all calculations) had the approximate handling of a planet.  You had to plan your docking run from way back at the jumpgate into the system, just due to the time it takes to accelerate, and then decelerate, that much mass.

So, Freespace 2 MMO or SWG: JTL without the ground game.

Unrealistic, but that's what I want.

I didn't feel that in Jumpgate (or maybe not in Vendetta Online). If I ever do feel it in JG then I will be there.

I'll be checking out the new version once I get back from vacation.

JG doesn't have sub-system targeting (it has no real targeting, you point your ship and pull the trigger), or that stuff you said about shields or variable-fire-modes on weapons.  It does have a lot of that other stuff, though; or rather, did when I last played 5-6 years ago.

--
Alkiera

[SnakeCharmer]

So yeah...

After reading what Akkori just wrote, this could be something I'm interested in. 

Are you confined to your ship?  Can you walk around?  Or is it EvE+fighterpilotfeel?

[Alkiera]

So yeah...

After reading what Akkori just wrote, this could be something I'm interested in. 

Are you confined to your ship?  Can you walk around?  Or is it EvE+fighterpilotfeel?

No avatars at all, that I recall.  It's basically Eve with a more flight-sim like control scheme.  Sortof.

--
Alkiera

[Blackguard]

I was checking out their site the other day to see if they'd mentioned anything further about Auto Assault (which, by the way, it looks like they are not buying the rights to from NCsoft) and noticed the bit about the Jumpgate face lift. It looks pretty darn good in the limited amount of visuals they showed of it, so I signed up for beta. I've wanted to get into a good space game for a good long while now (tried Freelancer again and it was still good, but I played so much of it when it came out I need something else). EVE is something I've truly never been able to get into, despite having tried three times and having clocked a good hundred hours or so in it, so hopefully Jumpgate can do the trick after the face lift.