kane_magus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kane_magus) wrote2023-06-28 10:33 am
kane_magus) wrote2023-06-28 10:33 am
Entry tags:
Starship Simulator
Huh...
Huh... ... ...
Okay... if this turns out to not be an overhyped dogshit waste of time (and that's a very big if), then this has potential to become my new favorite game ever. That said, they started to lose me with the "multiplayer crews" and "customization options" and the like, but if it has good singleplayer content for all the various roles (e.g. it could be interesting to play as a "civilian" on a starship), then I could happily ignore the worthless-to-me multiplayer aspect of it. However, if it "requires" multiplayer in order to be fun, then it can fuck off forever, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not going to start holding my breath over this thing just yet, though. In any case, I just downloaded the demo, so I'll be giving that a try in a bit. Will probably edit this post later, based on that.
(EDIT)
Okay, what tiny bit there is of it so far is pretty neat.
There are two tutorial modules in the demo, only one of which is actually available at the moment. The one that's available is pretty simple. You're instructed to go to the bridge, sit at the scanning console, pick a destination within the solar system (you get to pick, so I chose Pluto, since it's the farthest thing from Earth, where you start), get up and go to the helm, engage the autopilot, and watch the ship go to the destination. Then repeat it again for a destination outside of the solar system (the game makes you pick Alpha Centauri, but you at least get to choose which planet in the system to go to). The ship flew right through Pluto to leave the solar system, to no effect, so that might be something they want to look into fixing for the final game. Either to make the ship explode when it tries to fly through a planet or, preferably, to make the ship not try to fly through a planet. ¬_¬ Then that module ended. At one point, the AI computer character said that at max speed, it would take two weeks real time to go from one side of the galaxy to the other. Which, I mean, that's a long time for a video game, but it certainly has Voyager beat.
I then went back to the main menu and clicked the "Start New Mission" thing. Started me in the same lounge the training module did, so at first I went back to the bridge and plotted a course for Epsilon Eridani, which the autopilot said would take two minutes to reach from Earth. But then I just said fuck it and got up to wander the ship, which is pretty huge, and I'm entirely certain that I didn't go everywhere I could before I quit out of the demo.
In roughly the order I found them:
There was a "Multiplayer" option on the menu, which I clicked just to see what it would do. It brought up a list of open servers, of which there was one available, with apparently two people in it, along with an option to start my own server, though I didn't touch that. Aside from that, I ignored that option entirely, same as I would in the released game. Oh, and there are already posts on the Steam forums complaining about griefers. *weary sigh* It's cute and all that the devs are talking about creating a "brig" or whatever, but this shit just reinforces my aversion to playing multiplayer games at all, ever, including this one.
Aside from all of that, there are apparently plans for a large NPC crew, away missions, all kinds of shit like that. It's basically a Star Trek game in all but name. None of that was in the demo, though, of course. Honestly, I fear that this game may be far too overly ambitious and may come to nothing in the end, or else will be another one of those Peter Molyneux/Sean Murray-esque "promises the moon, delivers a stinky wheel of moldy cheese" type of games. I hope I'm wrong, but... :/
(/EDIT)
Huh... ... ...
Okay... if this turns out to not be an overhyped dogshit waste of time (and that's a very big if), then this has potential to become my new favorite game ever. That said, they started to lose me with the "multiplayer crews" and "customization options" and the like, but if it has good singleplayer content for all the various roles (e.g. it could be interesting to play as a "civilian" on a starship), then I could happily ignore the worthless-to-me multiplayer aspect of it. However, if it "requires" multiplayer in order to be fun, then it can fuck off forever, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not going to start holding my breath over this thing just yet, though. In any case, I just downloaded the demo, so I'll be giving that a try in a bit. Will probably edit this post later, based on that.
(EDIT)
Okay, what tiny bit there is of it so far is pretty neat.
There are two tutorial modules in the demo, only one of which is actually available at the moment. The one that's available is pretty simple. You're instructed to go to the bridge, sit at the scanning console, pick a destination within the solar system (you get to pick, so I chose Pluto, since it's the farthest thing from Earth, where you start), get up and go to the helm, engage the autopilot, and watch the ship go to the destination. Then repeat it again for a destination outside of the solar system (the game makes you pick Alpha Centauri, but you at least get to choose which planet in the system to go to). The ship flew right through Pluto to leave the solar system, to no effect, so that might be something they want to look into fixing for the final game. Either to make the ship explode when it tries to fly through a planet or, preferably, to make the ship not try to fly through a planet. ¬_¬ Then that module ended. At one point, the AI computer character said that at max speed, it would take two weeks real time to go from one side of the galaxy to the other. Which, I mean, that's a long time for a video game, but it certainly has Voyager beat.
I then went back to the main menu and clicked the "Start New Mission" thing. Started me in the same lounge the training module did, so at first I went back to the bridge and plotted a course for Epsilon Eridani, which the autopilot said would take two minutes to reach from Earth. But then I just said fuck it and got up to wander the ship, which is pretty huge, and I'm entirely certain that I didn't go everywhere I could before I quit out of the demo.
In roughly the order I found them:
- On the panel next to what I assume is the Captain's chair, in addition to things like "Yellow Alert" and "Red Alert," there were buttons for things like "Test: Alien Virus" and "Test: Disco Mode," all which made the lights do funny things.
- I went back to the lounge I'd started in, and I noticed that there was a little panel next to the window. One button said "Polarization," but all that did was make everything outside darker and harder to see, basically just window tinting. But the second one was "Scene Projection," which replaced the view outside the window with a crude skybox of scenes like "Autumn Park" or "Snowy Forest" or "Coastal Highlands." It's very simplistic, but way cooler than it has any right to be, honestly, especially for a demo.
- There was a functional piano in the "VIP Lounge" just downstairs from the administration deck, as well as a bar with a bunch of bottles of booze on it. The bottles were just physics objects that you could pick up and then fail to set back down upright.
- In one room off of the hallway connected to the VIP lounge was a mostly empty room with random food objects like doughnuts and watermelons and baguettes laying on the floor. In another similar room was a small tower made of toilet paper and bottles of hand sanitizer.
- While walking around down on the Science Deck, there was a chicken just randomly wandering the corridors.
- There apparently will be an "Oceanography Lab" and a "Linguistics Lab" among others. (Though, at this point, the vast majority of the rooms are empty and completely unlit. The game helpfully gives you a flashlight that you can use to see just how barren and untextured these rooms are right now.)
- I managed to make it to what I assume is the engine room, in which there were actually a few NPCs randomly wandering around, pretending to do basic work (which mostly consisted of "Walking to Role POI," "Performing Role Action," and, occasionally, something like "Failing to Route to POI" or some such, according to the labels that appeared above their heads, though I only saw that last one for half a second or so. I couldn't interact with the NPCs in any way, as far as I could tell.
There was a "Multiplayer" option on the menu, which I clicked just to see what it would do. It brought up a list of open servers, of which there was one available, with apparently two people in it, along with an option to start my own server, though I didn't touch that. Aside from that, I ignored that option entirely, same as I would in the released game. Oh, and there are already posts on the Steam forums complaining about griefers. *weary sigh* It's cute and all that the devs are talking about creating a "brig" or whatever, but this shit just reinforces my aversion to playing multiplayer games at all, ever, including this one.
Aside from all of that, there are apparently plans for a large NPC crew, away missions, all kinds of shit like that. It's basically a Star Trek game in all but name. None of that was in the demo, though, of course. Honestly, I fear that this game may be far too overly ambitious and may come to nothing in the end, or else will be another one of those Peter Molyneux/Sean Murray-esque "promises the moon, delivers a stinky wheel of moldy cheese" type of games. I hope I'm wrong, but... :/
(/EDIT)