Apparently they put Ascendancy on iOS a while ago.

[shortylickens]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascendancy_(video_game)

Wish I'd known.

 

[Ashenor]

What is it?

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I had a friend that was hooked on that games 15 years ago.

 

[QuantumPion]

There's also Starbase Orion which is a MOO2 clone (although it is a bit hard to play on a small iphone screen. Too bad they haven't ported it to android...)

 

[shortylickens]

Games like this probably require the iPad.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Why did you link a wiki with nothing in it?

 

[shortylickens]

Why did you link a wiki with nothing in it?

I didnt, the URL thingie on this forum dropped the last parenthesis.

Edit to remove profanity
Shorty, basic cable level of profanity if you please.
Mod PM

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I didnt, the URL thingie on this forum dropped the last parenthesis.

Lol inb4 infraction

edit same as above
mod pm

 

[ControlD]

The cool thing about this Ascendancy release is that the original coders worked on the project and rather than just adding touch controls and calling it a day they have made numerous improvements to the game as well. It was a bit rough in the beginning but it is a very worthwhile purchase now.

I don't understand why there aren't more quality turn based strategy games available for touch devices. The platform is perfect for TBS games but it seems all we get are crappy attempts at RTS or FPS games, which honestly suck terribly with touch controls. I think some of the real classics like Alpha Centauri, Civ 2, Civ 3, Age of Wonders, etc. would be perfect fits.

 

[QuantumPion]

Nah, those games are too complicated and detailed for a mobile strategy game. A great game I've been playing lately, which is just about perfect, is called Rebuild.

If I had the resources I'd love someone to make a simplified version of MOO, MOM, or X-com for mobile.

 

[Mopetar]

Nah, those games are too complicated and detailed for a mobile strategy game.

Some of us like complicated and detailed. Anything less just feels rather dumbed down and boring. I'm not saying that every game needs to be that way. Sometimes you just need something quick and simple to kill five minutes.

 

[Chapbass]

Great game, especially for its time...I remember being very disappointed when i heard *new ascendancy re-release!!!*....for ios... :\

 

[QuantumPion]

Some of us like complicated and detailed. Anything less just feels rather dumbed down and boring. I'm not saying that every game needs to be that way. Sometimes you just need something quick and simple to kill five minutes.

That wasn't my point. Smartphones don't have enough screen real-estate to make those games really playable. You can run MOO in doxbox for android but it is really just a novelty - not playable in any way. Even Civilization Revolutions doesn't work that well to be honest. Go download Starbase Orion for iphone and tell me how playable you think that is.

 

[ControlD]

That wasn't my point. Smartphones don't have enough screen real-estate to make those games really playable. You can run MOO in doxbox for android but it is really just a novelty - not playable in any way. Even Civilization Revolutions doesn't work that well to be honest. Go download Starbase Orion for iphone and tell me how playable you think that is.

That is probably true. I was thinking more in terms of tablet gameplay though. But, I guess most developers are trying to hit both the phone and tablet markets at the same time so we can either get decent phone games or crappy tablet games but rarely both. This is one reason a x86 Windows 8 tablet sounds so appealing to me.

 

[Mopetar]

That wasn't my point. Smartphones don't have enough screen real-estate to make those games really playable.

There's plenty of space, it's just a matter of getting the interface design down. Almost every modern smartphone has a comparable (if not higher) resolution to most displays back when some of these games were first released. These games didn't have a problem displaying necessary information to users with the limited resolutions of yesteryear, so I don't think that's a problem.

The biggest issue is that you need fairly large areas to tap on and some of these games previously relied on relatively small icons that could be clicked with a mouse without too much trouble, but it would be quite difficult to do so with a finger. That just means that it's necessary to overhaul the interface to compensate. Otherwise there's no real issue with being able to display this information.

They're perfectly playable, but developers can't just expect a direct port that was designed for use with a keyboard/mouse to work well on a touchscreen device.