The Glade 4.0
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So I ran across an interesting game called Black Prophecy
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Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:23 am ]
Post subject:  So I ran across an interesting game called Black Prophecy
I've been fighting off space/flight sim cravings of late. A year or two ago, when I was diving back into Crimson Skies, I replaced my dead flightstick (with a Thrustmaster T.1600M, if you're curious; it's pretty shocking how drastically the variety and selection has shrunk in the past decade or so) of old to play the PC Crimson Skies game.

Recently, though, I've been getting some yearnings for the good old days. As a little background, some of my formative gaming years (Jr/Sr High, for the most part) were spent in sordid love affairs with flight sims. I cut my teeth on my favorite flight sim of all time (and this might just be the nostalgia/newness to the genre talking, but I suspect it probably would hold up), Knights of the Sky. After that, I played a heck of a lot of Commanche, X-Wing, TIE Fighter (best Lucasarts space sim ever, lack of multiplayer be damned), XvT, X-Wing Alliance, every Wing Commander game in the series, Privateer, and Freelancer. I never could get Starlancer to run on any of the PCs I owned within a reasonable window of its release, much to my disappointment (as Freelancer was the casual mouse-friendly game of the pair, which didn't interest me much).

So when I say I've been craving some old-school space sims, well... I miss interesting stories as backdrop for compelling dogfighting combat that is fast paced but a little twitch-forgiving and really adept at making you feel like a hotshot. Rock, Paper, Shotgun's "Gaming Made Me" article for Crimson Skies really captures the essence of what I found I loved about the space sims of my heyday, and it's a well-written piece that's worth looking up. But to summarize, it praised Crimson Skies for infusing the experience with a "lubrication of panic" that would grease the cogs of the experience and turn it into something compelling, gripping, and ultimately very special. The key, the author recognizes, is to instill the sensation that things are about to slip out of control and go really bad for you, while allowing and enabling you to pull off some move that you're absolutely positive would look dynamite on the big screen and makes you feel like an ace, allowing you to turn the tables and smoke a couple bad guys to even the odds again. That sensation is something that the few games to emerge, critically, from the paucity of offerings the dwindling flight genre has been able to provide have just not been able to capture for me in recent memory. X, X2, X3, Freespace, Jumpgate.. these things just didn't offer that kind of experience for me.

Oddly enough, Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed came the closest I've been since, well, probably Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom. It was truly a shame it was just an expansion pack to a game I couldn't bring myself to continue playing, and that continuing to play the rest of the game was pretty necessary, to some degree or another, to keep your starship in repair and advance, since JTL wasn't a self-sufficient game in its own right.

But now, I've come across a game that looks promising. I've played around with it for a handful of hours this weekend, and once I made a few keymapping option discoveries to smooth out my flightstick play experience (the mouse flight looks to be decent, though I never prefer it) so that I'm not spending half my time wrestling with the UI (there are a couple critical things to help reduce the amount of switching between cursor-based button UI elements and actually flying; joysticks and cursors have never been friends, IMO), I was having a lot of fun. It's called Black Prophecy, and it's a starfighter-centric Space MMO currently in Open Beta in the US as of last Friday. It's an interesting approach to MMO, in that it features open world unscripted content AND heavily scripted missions that essentially feel like single player game content (but can be engaged in with a team).

To elaborate, there are two methods of seeking out context and purpose for your forays into space. You can either look up and take missions from a station's Mission Board (which has a very Privateer/Freelancer feel to it, in that they're also games that have a big component of self-determination when it comes to what missions you select) and be whisked away to an instanced mission that is scripted in the way pretty much any of the games I mentioned above would be (engage this group of fighters, then inspect these cargo containers, when you find the one you're looking for, another squadron of fighters jump in on cue, etc.), OR you can talk to contacts to get MMO-style quests (kill 20 Jad Baran, collect 10 dropped loot, etc) and zip off to open world sectors that can have players who aren't grouped with you jump in and out on their own tasks and errands, with NPCs and objectives spawning in periodically on an unscripted basis. When you're taking the MMO-style approach, though, you can often find multiple tasks that will take you to the same region(s) of space, allowing you to work on multiple missions at once in the course of completing others, unlike the scripted ones which, since they take you directly to an instance specifically built to contain a single mission, don't allow for the overlap.

I was having occasional minor lag issues; nothing game-killing, just every 10-15 minutes I might notice an "oops, he just jumped out of my crosshairs" moment. The game is graphically satisfying in much the same way the X series was; when you put some processing power into rendering nebulae effects and asteroids with lens flares and the like, space is a pretty place, and the ship models were relatively detailed with a good sense of art direction behind them. True to form for any good space sim, your ship is upgradeable, and the upgrade parts will actually visually alter your own ship's model. If you replace one of your two engines, your ship is now visibly asymmetrical if you take a good look at it (granted, this is probably more for your viewing pleasure than your enemies', simply due to ranges and them having better things to do than admire your ship, like shoot you). Likewise for different cockpits, wings, weapons, etc. The game's got a crafting system, though I'm still figuring it out. I can tell it allows for modifying and repairing ship components in addition to straight-out upgrading to different modular components, but I'm not exactly sure how it works yet.

It appears as if there will be the opportunity for PvP play, as they're clearly setting up two player factions (but, in an interesting design choice, you don't choose your faction right away), one of technocratic cyborgs and the other of feudal-esque gene splicers, both self-enhancing human in origin. The flight model is pretty good; it hearkens back to some of my favorite games in a good way. The weapons are varied and have good feels to them; I've already settled on a few favorites that seem to "fit" me well.

The MMO-style contact NPCs are voiced for all their mission briefing/conversation stuff, though you can read along/ahead and cut their spoken lines short if you want. There are also a few cutscenes, mostly as news bulletins (had a rather Privateer feel for me in that regard).

The game is set to be Free to Play upon launch, using the Freemium model where they'll offer a microtransaction shop. So far, the only reference to shop-bought stuff I've seen has been items to allow you to extend the daily crafting bonus (there appears to be a system where you're given a number of concentration points a day, and some activities use up concentration. If you've got >0 concentration, your crafted stuff gets bonuses to it over the normal recipe; it appears to be a throttle, of sorts, to crafting output; the microtransaction shop will allegedly sell items to replenish concentration once or twice a day).

So, if any of this sounds fun, hop over to the site I linked earlier and give the ~5gig download a whirl. Let me know if you do, I'm open to giving some teamplay a shot.
Author:  Elmarnieh [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 5:44 am ]
Post subject: 
Hrmmm interesting...might give it a whirl sometime this week if I remember.
Author:  Numbuk [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: So I ran across an interesting game called Black Prophec
I am going to have to seriously give this game a look. I have been jonesing pretty badly for some classic dogfighting action and have been ranting that the new Star Wars MMO won't have it, RPG whiners be damned.

So is it kind of like Eve Online, but far less boring?

I may have to find out if my Logitech wingman(?) still works... or if it even works with Windows 7. I think the last time it saw use was 2003 or so.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:13 am ]
Post subject: 
It's not at all like EVE online. Eve online doesn't really involve you actively flying in dogfights, to my (admittedly) limited knowledge of it. It's more like throwing on autopilot with basic commands and managing weapon systems. I'm not even positive that you can use a joystick with EVE at all. It's anything but a dogfighting flight sim in the traditional sense of the genre. EVE also is very much an RPG at heart, with skills and stats and whatnot. There is character advancement in Black Prophecy, but all skills do is gate equipment selection (so you need an Energy skill of 3 or higher to install a laser cannon with a rating of 3, etc.), so it's more about tweaking your playstyle than influencing random number generators like an RPG would. If EVE is an RPG in that regard, Black Prophecy is firmly grounded as an action game.

My previous joystick was a Logitech Wingman Extreme. I had to pronounce it dead due to lack of serial port on my current gaming rig. Not sure if there are drivers for current OSes, because of that.

Anyways, for the first time in my computing career, I didn't like the reviews I was consistently seeing regarding the quality of a Logitech input peripheral. (It doesn't help that Logitech's only making one model of flight stick now, and thus doesn't have a range of price points to build to, I imagine) Thus, I went with the Thrustmaster (Saitek's still making sticks, too, but I've always considered them to feel a little finicky and twitchy).
Author:  Numbuk [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: So I ran across an interesting game called Black Prophec
By "like Eve online" I meant "Very pretty visuals in space, and space being big." Yes, Eve online is very much a point and click navigation.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:39 am ]
Post subject: 
Oh. Yes to very pretty visuals. I'll defer on the "space is big" judgment, since I don't have EVE experience to compare it to.
Author:  Numbuk [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: So I ran across an interesting game called Black Prophec
Well, I would doubt it would be as big as Eve. Eve is massive. But according to the wiki it's not as harsh as eve. Players keep their stuff on death, and the only penalty is a stacking 15% debuff to some of the ship's systems... which disappears after 5 minutes.

I am definitely interested in this game and will have to try it out.
Author:  Ulfynn [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:24 pm ]
Post subject: 
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll give it a look since I've been wanting something like this for years.
Author:  Lonedar [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 3:28 pm ]
Post subject: 
Frackin' aye! I'm in (as time allows).
Author:  Ranelagh [ Mon Jun 13, 2011 6:39 pm ]
Post subject: 
I'll be looking into this as well.
Author:  Lonedar [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:08 am ]
Post subject: 
Either they stopped allowing US client downloads, or the page is effed up.

/sadface

EDIT - figgered out a way to get it
Author:  Numbuk [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re:
Lonedar wrote:
Either they stopped allowing US client downloads, or the page is effed up.

/sadface

EDIT - figgered out a way to get it



My friend had this problem. It was related to Internet Exploder. Had him switch to a different browser and it worked fine.
Author:  Lonedar [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Re:
Numbuk wrote:
Lonedar wrote:
Either they stopped allowing US client downloads, or the page is effed up.

/sadface

EDIT - figgered out a way to get it



My friend had this problem. It was related to Internet Exploder. Had him switch to a different browser and it worked fine.


I looked at the source and found the url of the download. For whatever reason, the European download page looked fine.

/shrug
Author:  Aizle [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:02 pm ]
Post subject: 
While poking around at this and other things, I stumbled across this.

http://forum.enb-emulator.com/

Earth & Beyond is alive and well apparently.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 7:44 pm ]
Post subject: 
Made it out of the prologue (takes you to ~ level 6, introduces the factions and universe, etc. At the end, you join either the Tyi or the Genides. After completing it, you get to skip the prologue if you wish on future characters, and go straight to level 6 with either faction.), took me about 6 hours, but I wasn't rushing it and ended up goofing up on a mission or two and having to repeat them, plus 3 repeats of missions that bugged out on me (at least one of which was my fault).

The prologue sets up an interesting story. I'm looking forward to finding out how it progresses and the answers to a few of the questions/secrets it raises.

Once you choose factions, open sectors are open PvP zones. This led to some good fights, a couple one-sided ones (but after you realize there's a guy twice your level in the sector, it's not hard to just leave), and a couple moments of "can't you just let me finish this PvE objective without making me tangle with you!?" So, business as usual for open PvP.

I will say that even fighting other players, I wasn't having any issues with latency or smoothness, which pleased me. It probably helped my pleased sensation that I gave at least as good as I got.

Started up a second character to fiddle around with different builds. The brief chatter/advice I've picked up on so far has recommended not splitting your focus when it comes to weapons (pick either energy, mechanical, or explosive and pursue them exclusively). I've also seen a lot of people warning new folks off shields; I'm not sure how I feel about that. Building my second character did give me a chance to evaluate the other side of the argument; and yes, shields are heavy as hell and will thus make you handle like a barge, whereas wing-tanking (wings are where you pick up a very significant portion of your durability if you spec into hull, and are also the component that conveys resists) keeps you much lighter and able to stay agile.

As I said, though, I'm not sold on the advice as a hard and fast rule. I was able to keep things in my sights adequately with my shield build, despite being almost a full 50% heavier than my non-shield build. Mechanical weapons are definitely painful, and explosives just chew it right up, but there's plenty of energy weapons in the game, too, and I literally could ignore energy weapons beating on me for some time. I can certainly see why conventional wisdom holds wing tanking and mech weapons at an advantage for now; but I'm willing to play a slight disadvantage against the wager that there will be a balancing pass at some point in the future to equalize things some more. It's good to go into such a wager knowing the score, as it were, though, hence my sharing it here.
Author:  Ranelagh [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 7:48 pm ]
Post subject: 
I managed to get into the game last night finally. I am in the prologue, trying to decide whether to invert my mouse - no updated joystick for me - and fiddling with the sensitivity.

Which faction did you pick at 6 Kaffis?
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Tue Jun 14, 2011 8:05 pm ]
Post subject: 
Picked Genide. Then made a Tyi, as well.

I really feel you on the invert mouse or no question. It's kind of funny, actually -- I invert Y for any mouselook camera, ever. It dates back to playing Descent when there wasn't a joystick around. However, when Freespace rolled around (and didn't support joystick very well, IIRC), and any mouse-flight game since, it hasn't been that clear-cut at all, and I vacillate back and forth without ever being really comfortable with either.

So when I'm not flying, it's easy -- I invert it because that's how I was used to flying. But now, when I'm flying, I don't always invert it. Lol.
Author:  Lonedar [ Fri Jun 17, 2011 11:14 am ]
Post subject: 
Is there a way to loot without going into "mouse mode?" I hates that.
Author:  Ranelagh [ Fri Jun 17, 2011 12:06 pm ]
Post subject: 
I haven't found it. I hit R and then click loot all, then bang the space bar.
Author:  Talya [ Fri Jun 17, 2011 12:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
Oooh. I may have to try this.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Fri Jun 17, 2011 1:02 pm ]
Post subject: 
There are keymapping options near the bottom of the list for "loot" and "loot all."

Loot loots your target. Loot All loots the closest wreck within range, from what I can tell.

I fly stick, so I couldn't tell you what the default keyboard mappings are.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:47 am ]
Post subject: 
Anybody up for trying some teaming today?
Author:  Ranelagh [ Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:30 am ]
Post subject: 
I haven't quite got out of the prologue yet and while I'd love to try teaming up, i) I'd embarrass myself for sure and ii) my schedule today is nuked until later on.
If you're still up tonight there's a chance.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:44 pm ]
Post subject: 
Tonight'll work fine. I still need to see if I can fit mowing the lawn in before rain today, and was going to go see Green Lantern, too.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:54 pm ]
Post subject: 
This does sound cool, but I've recently gotten into EVE, ironically.. and wow! What the hell have I been doing for the past 8 years or so not playing this! So cool!

My only complaint so far is that the space is largely wasted because it has the same hideous appreciation for scale that every other sci fi franchise aside from Honor Harrington has, but.. I can deal.
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