Tactical FPS

[Red2112]

Outerra Is not even out yet. Who ever has his/her hands on It must have a test demo of sorts, so personally I wont speculate on what It Is, or could be so far. Yes, I agree Shermanator Is another clickbaiter, there will always be content creators like this I am afraid.

[Captain_Colossus]

On 10/28/2022 at 12:33 AM, Red2112 said:

Outerra Is not even out yet. Who ever has his/her hands on It must have a test demo of sorts, so personally I wont speculate on what It Is, or could be so far.

 

 

this thread is full of idle speculation and thoughts on other products- nothing wrong with it in and of itself.

announcements connecting microprose to content or IP to be released often seems to win the benefit of the doubt in many cases, which hasn't won me over as of late. i deliberately quote what someone else has mentioned on this announcement based on publicly available demos of outerra, and it is a rather safe bet that this commentary about outerra not being a combat simulator in its current state isn't based on mere rumor or something of the kind- there is after all publicly available trial versions  and a community base of hands on experience. it seems unlikely to me that a sudden void has been filled in secret without advertisements or leaks for such a massive undertaking for a new game of this scale entering the arma III market

Edited October 29, 2022 by Captain_Colossus

[Red2112]

Outerra / Anteworld tech demo:

https://outerra.com/demo.html

 

This video Is 5 years old...

 

It´s no secrete that Outerra has been around for awhile. The thing Is that all of a sudden people are talking about It like If a new kid was In town because Microprose has released a trailer. I don´t see nothing new In the trailer, and I see nothing new stated from the dev team, so for me there´s nothing to really base my personal opinion about something I really don´t know were It´s going, or even If It´s going to go somewhere.  What Is known, Is that Outerra now has a publisher, Microprose.  Will It compete with ArmA III? That´s something that Shermanator came up with, not me.

 

For all I know, the dev team can drop It´s publisher (Microprose) any time, just like Bluedrake has done with his project Operation: Harsh Doorstop recently.

[Captain_Colossus]

On 10/28/2022 at 10:13 AM, Red2112 said:

 so for me there´s nothing to really base my personal opinion about something I really don´t know were It´s going, or even If It´s going to go somewhere. 

 

of course there is a basis for your personal opinion- you've just mentioned it already in your paragraph on several points. the engine has been around for a while without any indication that there has been any movement at all on a particular game in development. - that's a very good basis for your opinion. no need to sell it short.

 

as we know the outerra development team isn't per se in business to create games, they provide the engine. you need a game developer to use the engine as the basis for a game- which is why video titles like 'outerra- arma III killer?" are either premature or just a kind of clickbait, assuming the video maker is deliberately doing that for views.

 

insofar as microprose is concerned, we had a whole thread with several pages of sketchy behavior insinuating a series of products underway using some form or another of this game engine, by appearances this was all hype and/or an old form of a bait and switch.

 

my own take is: i do not poo poo the outerra engine in itself- to me a planetary render engine is a remarkable achievement. but what to do with it from a business point of view- obviously commercial games are good for the consumer, but something of that scale would be difficult to pull off and concentrate into a focused product. i do not think we will see an arma III like product on a planetary scale any time soon, which would probably be a bit overwhelming for a small game developer- populating the world with continents and cities and air ports and other facilities to scale- that in itself would be a massive project without even getting to the actual game and the game objects and the way they interact with the world and so forth. then this game is supposed to fit on the average user's hard drive.

 

DCS gets away with breaking up the world into specific regions, which has completely filled my hard drive with about a half dozen maps, including the game information. so it might be possible for a game developer to focus on select areas across the globe rather than model the entire earth to make a project doable- but then you don't really need to render the entire planet in that case.

 

i would personally like to see a number of different products which use the outerra engine, but you aren't seeing developers really do this- that right there should tell us something. perhaps too ambitious for a small team developer, the kind that microprose seems to target to develop content for publishing; there really hasn't been any announcements or outlines of anything specific from any developer. lots of noise and suggestion about these things from microprose in the past, but nothing solid with specific goals. i think the medium is the message- if you are not seeing these games appear, then that is the message.

 

 

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by Captain_Colossus

[Apocalypse 31]

1 hour ago, Red2112 said:

For all I know, the dev team can drop It´s publisher (Microprose) any time, just like Bluedrake has done with his project Operation: Harsh Doorstop recently.

 

 

1. This happened?

 

2. I didn't think it was even a real game. Total lack of movement in 2 years of development, plus.... Another pvp shooter that offers nothing more than current games on the market....meh

 

3. The microprose name is a joke at this point. Weirdest "comeback" ever.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Apocalypse 31

[Red2112]

19 hours ago, Apocalypse 31 said:

 

 

1. This happened?

 

2. I didn't think it was even a real game. Total lack of movement in 2 years of development, plus.... Another pvp shooter that offers nothing more than current games on the market....meh

 

3. The microprose name is a joke at this point. Weirdest "comeback" ever.

 

Yes Bluedrake pulled back (going solo)...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

 

As for Outerra...

 

Yeah I guess I did give my opinion saying I could not give my opinion on something that shows no progress for now (grins).  Can they pull something off with this game engine?  Sure, plenty of things. The question Is "how many things", and "will It render".  While rendering the whole globe Is a task on It´s self, and not a easy one to pull off (my hats off to the devs), the question Is will It really work? Because aside from rendering, you then have the simulation(s) calculation(s) to be done aswell which can be a hell of a stress on even today´s hyper PC´s.

 

As Cap. Colossus stated, yes portions of maps (DCS) have been done before (IL-2) with "some" degree of achievement on behalf of the game engine, and the reason why maps are made (loaded) In chunks to relief computing and rendering PC stress, thus I can´t yet see how Outerra will manage a whole earth planet with some kind of fidelity In warfare. Unless It´s a very dumb down  simulation version.  So far that I know, Microsoft with It´s MSFS 2020 has been the only publisher, along with there dev team (Asobo Studio) to successfully model the whole planet with minimal stress (to some degree). With X-Plane 12 (Laminar Research) coming In second place, but both of these simulations only calculate flight models aside from the terrain, so how will Outerra overcome / manage other simulation calculations Is a mystery to me, and that´s without blowing up your PC In the process! 

[Red2112]

As for Microproses comeback the weirdest ever, I am afraid we live In a weird world now Apoc. Everything seems to have done a 360 on us down to earth folks.

[Ssnake]

Being able to render any point of the planet at in a real-time application is "nice", but doesn't mean that a simulation would have to happen everywhere all at once. But if you do, clearly, a level of detail approach is necessary. Outerra comes, I think, with a global 30m grid (?) terrain database which is then filled at the user's point of view with procedurally (fractally) generated pseudo detail. Looks nice, no doubt, but it isn't "real detail".

But what do you do with such an engine?

 

I think it would be best suited for something like Star Citizen (if that was a real game too, rather than a web shop to sell virtual spacecraft for development money that is then spent on creating more virtual spacecraft and render films promising more gameplay, later). The idea of zipping around in your personal interplanetary or interstellar fighter, landing on alien planets, seeking fame and fortune while seducing sultry alien princesses in the process has had an allure since 1930s science fiction pulp magazines, so I guess it's safe to say that it is a winning formula as far as a setting is concerned.

There you could actually make use of it.

 

For pretty much any other form of game, and I've spent some time thinking about it, it looks like a solution in search of a problem.

 

I'm not convinced that the developers of Outerra actually do it for the money, or with a clearly defined commercial goal in mind. Sure, they have to eat like everybody else must, but the engine has been around since when, 2008, according to Wikipedia?

14 years, and still not an actual game in sight (Anteworld was 2012). That's not to say that the engine isn't technologically impressive, but I think the number of game developers that looked at it back then must have been in the hundreds. All whistled through their teeth back then, quite a number of them must have been interested in actually doing something with it and probably would have had the financial potency to actually do so.

 

And yet, no game in the last ten years that actually uses this technological marvel. Ask yourself, why? The absence of games is a significant signal.

 

TitanIM comes closest to an actual application, but the only actual sales that were made between 2014 and 2019, as far as I know, were tactical air controller type simulations where an external flight simulator is used for the pilot and the observer called in the air strike.

Then Calytrix bought it in the attempt to create a VBS competitor (partly, I believe, out of personal spite for some leading figures over at Bohemia; otherwise I'm having a hard time understanding why, when you have a planetary renderer, you'd want to start with a first person shooter application of all possibilities (rather than, say, something like naval, missile, and air related)). Then, apparently, a lot of re-development was necessary; I'll leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to develop a theory as to why Calytrix hasn't released an actual product since their acquisition. Hint: That nothing else has come from is it not for a lack of interest in the military training & simulation community (ask me how I know).

[murkz]

10 hours ago, Ssnake said:

That nothing else has come from is it not for a lack of interest in the military training & simulation community (ask me how I know).

Okay how ? 

[Red2112]

On 10/29/2022 at 10:21 PM, Ssnake said:

 

I think it would be best suited for something like Star Citizen (if that was a real game too, rather than a web shop to sell virtual spacecraft for development money that is then spent on creating more virtual spacecraft and render films promising more gameplay, later). The idea of zipping around in your personal interplanetary or interstellar fighter, landing on alien planets, seeking fame and fortune while seducing sultry alien princesses in the process has had an allure since 1930s science fiction pulp magazines, so I guess it's safe to say that it is a winning formula as far as a setting is concerned.

There you could actually make use of it.

Aside from the alien princesses, which I would not discard due to the fact that It´s online play and some woman (as men) are a bit "alien" haha, but the fact Is that all this can already be done In The Verse (Star Citizen). No creatures on planets at present but everything else Is there. SC has plenty of online gameplay...

 

341,306 players daily:
Star Citizen Server Population

 

I wont go Into Chris Roberts business model with Star Citizen, but he sure as hell makes/made a lot of money with It, I would also add that technically SC Is on a league of It´s own. One really has to try It to see what he has achieved In his "The Verse". Yes the project Is been out since 2013, that´s when I backed It and since then It has had some ups and downs, but has always been Innovating and keeps on doing so.

 

Yes he has made a lot of money,  but has also Innovated In almost all fronts, Including money making! 

[Red2112]

Promising...

 

 

[Red2112]

Spent about 5 hours on It, It´s fun and free. Best to mute the mic/channel If playing as a squad sometimes, you know how kids can be.

 

 

Red

[Red2112]

 

[Apocalypse 31]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268750/Starship_Troopers_Extermination/

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2022 by Apocalypse 31

[Red2112]

15 hours ago, Apocalypse 31 said:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268750/Starship_Troopers_Extermination/

 

 

 

 

If only I could play with Denise Richards 😁

[Red2112]

UE5.1 with Nanite and Lumen. 

 

 

[Red2112]

 

[Red2112]

 

[Red2112]

Mind you It´s In alpha/beta (somewhere there)...

 

 

[Red2112]

 

[Apocalypse 31]

2 hours ago, Red2112 said:

 

I just recently installed and then uninstalled this.

 

I cannot believe that this game has been in development since 2007 with so little to show. It has absolutely no depth. 

 

The AI is awful and seeing a ton of new videos in the last 24 hours, it looks like its still an issue. 

 

 

[Red2112]

7 hours ago, Apocalypse 31 said:

I just recently installed and then uninstalled this.

 

I cannot believe that this game has been in development since 2007 with so little to show. It has absolutely no depth. 

 

The AI is awful and seeing a ton of new videos in the last 24 hours, it looks like its still an issue. 

 

 

It´s like In a slow burner, as In over a candle 😁

 

It looks better though. Not sure If we can do something with the AI (bump it up), I haven´t played It In a long time (years). Not Into playing these games on my own anymore.

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Red2112

[Apocalypse 31]

11 hours ago, Red2112 said:

It´s like In a slow burner, as In over a candle 😁

 

It looks better though. Not sure If we can do something with the AI (bump it up), I haven´t played It In a long time (years). Not Into playing these games on my own anymore.

 

I was planning on using GB as part of a mini operation - to depict infantry fighting on a small objective but had to replace it at the last minute. It's just not ready.

[Los]

It's easy to talk oneself into why every game ever made sucks, if one is predisposed to do so. We take various games for what they can offer our group gaming experiences, and can they provide realistic tactical decision making on the spot and good tactics. With minimal effort, we have had decent multiplayer experiences with ground branch given what it does. The AI was not that big of an issue....However lack of editor, means we couldn't bend the situations  to our will and hence it remains something we check in on every once and a while.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2023 by Los

[Red2112]

Zero Sievert, top down pixel Tarkov/Stalker like.

 

Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782120/ZERO_Sievert/

 

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Red2112