Elite: Dangerous

The sum they are asking is not small, but I'm dying to see what will come out of the project if it succeeds. They haven't got very much real footage there yet as the project is mammoth-size, but it's all coming along.

As for the astronomy part, they're aiming to model the Milky Way as accurately as possible where real data is available, and then add the sci-fi elements to the mix in a way and scale that nobody has done before.

Maybe I should steal a few thousand euros to get a Planet Hell or space station Jack Luminous in the game?

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Originally posted by Väinämöinen:

to get a Planet Hell or space station Jack Luminous in the game?

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it looks exactly like X2 from Egosoft... same music too.

http://www.egosoft.com/games/x2/info_en.php

The X series were actually inspired by the previous Elite games (1984, 1993 and a buggy 1995 game that the publisher released on the market way before it was finished). Elite is basically an X series game expanded to a full galaxy with no boundaries - you don't fly inside invisible small cubes, your engine and fuel are the only things that determine how far and which direction you can go, you can actually land on planets (no wallpaper space there...) and moons, the galaxy is modelled according to real data so it's possible to fly to any of the systems in the constellations you see in the night sky. And they will be full of cities, space stations and secret places to search for

You aren't forced to do anything in the game, instead you choose what to do next. Buy goods, sell them, earn some profit to equip your ship or even buy a new one...or go mining asteroids, start bounty-hunting, or become a space pirate (arr). And everything you do has an effect on how the game world reacts to you. Shoot at a stranger without warning, and you will be hunted by the police unless you could do that undetected. Kill a pirate and you will receive both a bounty and honour - unless you happen to be in a system controlled by pirates. Take large amounts of expensive luxuries to a deprived system and the prices will start going down (this is what the X series does). Agree to be an escort fighter for a convoy of traders - and choose whether to honour that agreement or to blast the ships to pieces to collect their cargo for free. And so on and so on.

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I'll stick to Starflight running on my emulator.

best fucking space game ever, still haven't played anything that came close.

looks like it may be worth a look at the past elite games first. But shit man you gotta be able to land on the planets like starflight succeeded in doing, along with mining them and exploring ancient ruins ect.

23 years ago I had a shitty non-functional cracked copy of the Amiga version of Starflight 1 and obviously missed all the fun. Now I know what to do in the small hours today, thanks for the recommendation!

The old Elites look pretty simple by today's standards and while planetary landings were introduced in Frontier aka Elite II, you could only land on the surface to visit small cities or to admire the low-polygon view

The new Elite aims to fix that, they're planning to include zillions of systems that have both procedurally generated and hand-crafted content (specific places, missions, flora & fauna, terrain types) which you can even explore on foot. This is the general direction they're planning to take (video from Space Engine, another very cool program in development...):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aah4uWaqcwE

That is if Elite: Dangerous gets funded of course, but things are looking promising!

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I had the game originally on the Sega Genesis not long after that console's debut, must have been 1990/1991 if I recall. I didn't have a PC back then but in a few short years I was building my own. I think the graphics were alot better on the Genesis version as I have tried a few roms from places like abandonware net and torrent sites. You may have a better soundtrack too along with graphics if you install Kega Fusion (one of the best emulators) Kega emulator even lets you use the old style pad controllers which they do sale that look exactly like the original ones but with a COM port interface on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXrzOho_T2o

it took me something like a little over a year to complete Starflight for genesis, part 2 was never ported to console systems I don't think. Ahh the age before the internet and strategy guides and cheat books... I am quite certain I have all my original notes and maps all hand drawn up in the attic, along with the Genesis system and my collection of cartridges.

There were two more games I found even to be a little more in depth than Starflight and they were for Genesis also. They were Might & Magic 2 "Gates to Another World, and Might & Magic 3 Isles of Terra. This series took off quite well later but still none in that series seems to even come close as II & III

so much of these older games I were "upstairs"... (in the imagination) and alot closer to reading a book somehow although it was all graphical. It is quite hard to explain the places they took me, and still do, whenever I fire up the emulator.