Distant Worlds - 4x Space game (Real Time)

[wanderer27]

Does anyone have any experience with this?:

http://www.codeforce.co.nz/


Looks like it just came out 3/25/2010.
I hadn't even heard of it before.

 

[Chapbass]

Interesting...any thoughts?

 

[Matthiasa]

Vast galaxies are made to order: up to 1400 star systems, with up to 50,000 planets, moons and asteroids. Galaxies are so deep, fun and immersive that you won’t want to finish the game... Build, expand and improve your empire endlessly.

Sounds like it would take forever.

Would have to see gameplay and maybe tech tree to decide.

 

[lupi]

I think there was a brief mention of it in last months pcgamer. Was mostl about how many units and stuff you could have at once.

 

[wanderer27]

Just thought I'd give an update on this in case anyone's curious.

I spent some time hanging around the Distant World forums over the weekend and I was really surprised at what I saw there.
Very positive with hardly any b*tching, and even that was pretty minor.

There have been three pretty good size Patches to the game already - mainly bug fixes, but a bit of game tweaking as well.
Another Patch is supposed to come out early next week. This is one sounds like it is mainly addressing gameplay - new features, balancing, and tweaks.
Sounds like there are plans for another to maybe address some requests and add even more features.

In short, it seems the Developer is really supportive and open to suggestions and are working to make the game even more of what the community is requesting.


Yeah, I ended up buying it.
For the extra $10 I got a hardcopy (to be delivered) in addition to the digital download.
The only DRM is a serial number - yeah, imagine that . . .

So far I'm really liking the game. Still a lot to learn, but it's pretty decent from what I'm seeing.

 

[Chapbass]

Awesome! keep us updated please! I'm very interested in this.

 

[wanderer27]

Awesome! keep us updated please! I'm very interested in this.

You can check out their forums here:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=782


I'm really impressed at how involved the developer is . . . seems to be an Indie trait that I'm all in favor of

BTW, the 1400 Star, 50,000 Planets is not a required game size. You can select from 100 Stars (not sure how many Planets) up to 1400 Star Systems. I think there are seven settings (may be wrong).

Automation of tasks actually seems to work well (unlike MOO3) and does what it should.
Multiple levels of automation and different areas of automation as well.

Quite a bit of game setup options - even how far your rivals start out if you want (quite a surprise).

It's RTS with Pause, but even the RTS speed is adjustable on the fly - I'm currently running at .25 speed while I'm trying to figure everything out (it may go lower I haven't checked).

 

[Chapbass]

Just from your description, almost sounds like hearts of iron...but in space...

as a side note, check out hearts of iron (especially HOI2), if you havent yet.

 

[BurnItDwn]

This sounds like a damn good game!!!



That said ...

I've been playing X3 Reunion with XTM .... it is gonna be keeping me busy for a LONG time ....


so, it'll be approx 2012 or 2013 by the time I'm looking for a new game ... hah ... and My friends have pretty much convinced me to play Just Cause 2 next ....

So I probably won't get this until after Civ 5 comes out

 

[wanderer27]

I'm not sure I've heard of Hearts of Iron . . . sounds to be a Medieval game ? I may look into that sometime.


I meant to add that there's a bit of a story theme/thread so far to the game as well, more than just the "back drop" story of MOO3 - this actually seems to have some progression.
The story elements so far remind me a bit of how StarFlight worked (no Headquarters though).
Come to think of it, there are some Technology discoveries that have been introduced this way as well.

Two Reviews so far that I'm aware of:

Out of Eight (whoever they are) gave it 8 of 8 :
http://www.outofeight.info/2010/04/distant-worlds-review.html

Eurogamer DK gave it 9/10:
Original:
http://www.eurogamer.dk/articles/distant-worlds-anmeldelse
Translated:
http://translate.google.com/transla...rticles/distant-worlds-anmeldelse&sl=da&tl=en


Well, I'm off to check it out some more . . . .

 

[zinfamous]

It says MMO-like. is it actually MMO, or online? I imagine with some "50,000 galaxies" it would have to be, right?

looks damn solid, but also extremely daunting in my aging condition.

just don't have the time to dedicate to colossal time sinks like this, let alone the constant shuffling of menus and detail after detail after detail.

 

[zinfamous]

Ah, that first review says no multiplayer...

this might destroy me...if I am further convinced to try it out.

:hmm:

 

[zinfamous]

dang, this sounds really fun. reminds me of a game I was enjoying back ~97 (not sure how old it was by then, no more than 2 years, though), where you go from planet to planet, build a base on each one, mine minerals, improve your empire, fight battles--mostly on planet, I think. i don't remember space battle...

I keep thinking it was Pax Imperia, but that ain't it. Galactic something something?...but not Empires.

 

[Nintendesert]

Imperium Galactica, and Imperium Galactica II I believe. Pax Imperium was great as well.

 

[shortylickens]

Shit, I meant to look into this when the thread first started. I keep forgetting.
Damn, and I've got assloads of homework, studying, and a job interview on Friday.
FUCK! I'm helping the VFW on Saturday.
AND......
I'm going into the mountains on Sunday night.

DAMN YOU LIFE! HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY VIDEO GAME TIME FROM ME!!!!

 

[paperfist]

I'm not sure I've heard of Hearts of Iron . . . sounds to be a Medieval game ? I may look into that sometime.

Hearts of Iron is an epic WWII political, military, economic mastery of a game. Very deep and for me very hard to grasp, it's the kind of game that will engage your mind

http://www.heartsofirongame.com/

----

If this Distant Worlds is single player I'd like to know how the AI is.

 

[zinfamous]

well, screw me and all...went ahead and downloaded it. I couldn't resist the lovable Kiwi scamp narrating the video demos on the main site.

anyhoo, manual reads like Civ in space, so sounds pretty good. damn thing keeps locking up 3 menus into tutorial, though (yellow or black lines down the screen = vid poop)...fuck, this is what I hate about PCs for gaming. too much BS to jump through, most of the time. beta yeah...whatever. the patch is Beta, right? I mean, the GAME isn't beta? I paid $40, shouldn't be beta....

Off to update vid drivers, I guess. (5850). didn't see this issue on the forums, so will have to noodle with it myself.

 

[Chapbass]

Hearts of Iron is an epic WWII political, military, economic mastery of a game. Very deep and for me very hard to grasp, it's the kind of game that will engage your mind

http://www.heartsofirongame.com/

This. Awesome game, and if you need some help through the beginning, id be more than willing to help you out with a tutorial


And now I just realized I'm inadvertently thread crapping, so I'm going to stop now. PM me if you're interested.

Regarding Distant Worlds, still haven't been able to check it out, and at 40 bucks its a little tough for me right now to cough that up (yay debt!), but I'm very intrigued.... is there any word on if multiplayer is coming?

 

[SunnyD]

Looks like a decent hybrid between Sins of a Solar Empire and GalCiv. Hmm...

 

[zinfamous]

was able to play a bit last night, after (hopefully) getting vid card issues settled. I went straight into the game, as it was previously crashing at the tutorial. So diving in without a tutorial, I don't really know what was going on.

There's definitely a shit-ton of automation, which seems to be default. I essentially had 15 colonies and a fleet or two without doing anything besides agreeing to what my advisors suggest--including invading a few pirate colonies. I didn't even delve into any of the menus. Maybe the speed was set way too fast for learning the game, so I'll fiddle with it some more.

It's not a visual powerhouse by any means, but I don't care about that. Also not very familiar with space strategy games, so I need to get used to the scrolling mechanics and ship movement. But from the "galactopedia" technology tree, races, colony and fleet structure--it really does play like Civ in space. Almost a clone, in a way.

It's not turn-based, but it is set up as a static galaxy-size super map, shrunken down to local systems and planets. SO it is set up as a game-by-game strategy simulation. I was thinking that MMo with factions (Eve?) would be a good direction for this, but it obviously isn't designed for it.

Multiplayer would be great, though. I haven't read much on the forums, fwiw.

 

[zinfamous]

Imperium Galactica, and Imperium Galactica II I believe. Pax Imperium was great as well.

That's it! Every few years this comes to mind, and I try to figure out what that game was. finally a name!

anyway, played a bit more of Distant Worlds. a few creeping crashes after a recent load, but other than that, running fine (I think that with the recent update, there are still memory issues)--no vid issues after updating catalyst.

I've brought the speed down to 0.25, the slowest...and things still seem to be going too fast for me, lol. I try to get a ship to go explore an abandoned ship, move a fleet from being attacked, and all these damn advisor windows keep popping up at once, from fringe colonies.

It's very detailed, and I'm fairly certain that I'll get into this once I find my niche, but it is rather daunting for me starting out. I don't play these type of space colony games, so I suppose I'm not familiar with common mechanics.

I do have a few issues with controls--left and right click seem a little buggy--or simply not optimized. I suppose I want a right click with unit selection to default to "move" command. The tutorial tells me this is what happens, but I'm not getting that in gameplay, 100% of the time, at least.
:\

 

[BurnItDwn]

That's it! Every few years this comes to mind, and I try to figure out what that game was. finally a name!

anyway, played a bit more of Distant Worlds. a few creeping crashes after a recent load, but other than that, running fine (I think that with the recent update, there are still memory issues)--no vid issues after updating catalyst.

I've brought the speed down to 0.25, the slowest...and things still seem to be going too fast for me, lol. I try to get a ship to go explore an abandoned ship, move a fleet from being attacked, and all these damn advisor windows keep popping up at once, from fringe colonies.

It's very detailed, and I'm fairly certain that I'll get into this once I find my niche, but it is rather daunting for me starting out. I don't play these type of space colony games, so I suppose I'm not familiar with common mechanics.

I do have a few issues with controls--left and right click seem a little buggy--or simply not optimized. I suppose I want a right click with unit selection to default to "move" command. The tutorial tells me this is what happens, but I'm not getting that in gameplay, 100% of the time, at least.
:\

It sounds really quite awesome. Your description sounds a lot like the X series of games... maybe I'll be trying this one out before I get bored of x3 ... as I dunno if I will ever truly get bored of X3

 

[Nintendesert]

I wish the interface on X3 was a bit more forgiving and intuitive. I loved X Beyond the Frontier. Amazingly fun. X-2 was great too. I just wasn't able to really get into X3, I wanted to though, beautiful game and I even bought the Terran expansion, but couldn't really put the hours into it. Hell, I couldn't even really start it up.

I buy from them just to support them making more games, because the potential for that to be multiplayer is huge.


Not to get too off topic, but I fear I am, Imperium Galactica II was amazing. I loved invading a planet or having one of mine invaded and it had defense systems up. They showed up as targetting reticules on the planet and you could literally see the energy blast coming up out of the atmosphere and hitting ships from the planetary defense guns.

Tons of fights flying around and waves of ships going at it.

I hope we as a PC industry never get too hollywoodized that we don't have a market for good small developers to take chances on good ideas.

I need to check out Distant Worlds when I get a chance.

 

[wanderer27]

That's it! Every few years this comes to mind, and I try to figure out what that game was. finally a name!

anyway, played a bit more of Distant Worlds. a few creeping crashes after a recent load, but other than that, running fine (I think that with the recent update, there are still memory issues)--no vid issues after updating catalyst.

I've brought the speed down to 0.25, the slowest...and things still seem to be going too fast for me, lol. I try to get a ship to go explore an abandoned ship, move a fleet from being attacked, and all these damn advisor windows keep popping up at once, from fringe colonies.

It's very detailed, and I'm fairly certain that I'll get into this once I find my niche, but it is rather daunting for me starting out. I don't play these type of space colony games, so I suppose I'm not familiar with common mechanics.

I do have a few issues with controls--left and right click seem a little buggy--or simply not optimized. I suppose I want a right click with unit selection to default to "move" command. The tutorial tells me this is what happens, but I'm not getting that in gameplay, 100% of the time, at least.
:\

I haven't had any crash issues at all so far (knock on wood), and I've played it for several hours at a time.

I did have some initial issues getting it to run, but that what a .net installation issue and they have a tool to fix that.

You mentioned something about lines on your screen earlier. If this happened in game, then it wasn't a video error, that's how they implement the "fog of war" - diagonal lines.

It sounds like you may be doing what I started out doing - going through the initial Tutorial and then continuing from there.
Don't do it. I got buried in alarms & alerts doing that as well - too much when you're trying to learn what the heck is going on.

What I did was started a new game - 100 Stars, Research on slowest, Pirates off, and so on (everything turned way down). I also picked only two other AI (Random).

Quite a bit calmer, still a lot of info and it can still get crazy when a war kicks off though.

Really liking it so far and still a lot to figure out.

 

[Maximilian]

I wish the interface on X3 was a bit more forgiving and intuitive. I loved X Beyond the Frontier. Amazingly fun. X-2 was great too. I just wasn't able to really get into X3, I wanted to though, beautiful game and I even bought the Terran expansion, but couldn't really put the hours into it. Hell, I couldn't even really start it up.

I buy from them just to support them making more games, because the potential for that to be multiplayer is huge.


Not to get too off topic, but I fear I am, Imperium Galactica II was amazing. I loved invading a planet or having one of mine invaded and it had defense systems up. They showed up as targetting reticules on the planet and you could literally see the energy blast coming up out of the atmosphere and hitting ships from the planetary defense guns.

Tons of fights flying around and waves of ships going at it.

I hope we as a PC industry never get too hollywoodized that we don't have a market for good small developers to take chances on good ideas.

I need to check out Distant Worlds when I get a chance.

Imperium galactica II was amazing! Nothing else that came along was any good until sins came out and even then that missed colonies/ground combat.

I remember playing it online onetime where i had my massive fleet of iberion? battleships with destructor rays wiped out by some pussy shinari with his ship manipulator crap, he used my own battleships to destroy eachother. But the game was great up until that point lol :thumbsup: