Oh man, this brings back memories. Loved this game, Maelstrom, and the Escape Velocity series of games which augmented this style of gameplay with an open world. So much fun. I pine for games that don’t need half and hour of cutscenes and a tutorial to learn to play.
itishappy 21 hours ago [-]
Might I recommend Star Sector? There's a lot of Escape Velocity copycats out there, but Star Sector feels more like the natural evolution of EV:Nova or as I recently described it: "It's EV:Nova where you sell crack." It's really good, and it leans into the scale a lot more than the Escape Velocity series. You command a fleet, later a faction, and your actions have interesting consequences! For example, you can blockade a planet by killing enough traders, and this affects prices throughout the galaxy! Also the mod scene popped off and hasn't stopped.
The only counterargument I can make is that the developers refuse to put it on Steam until it's ready so you need to use some sketchy 90s era payment site to buy a copy. Or just grab a key from the forums.
I love that they want to recreate it, as I spent quite some time with the original when I was younger.
However, right now it doesn't seem to run that well. I'm getting estimated framerates of around 5 fps on a M3 Macbook Pro, making it essentially unplayable.
I don't see any other comments about the performance - am I the only one?
The sealiesoftware implementation is I believe a 68k emulator - and since many AfterDark modules back then did direct frame buffer access, the number of toolbox traps that would need to be implemented could well be quite small.
JKCalhoun 2 days ago [-]
Ben also wrote Solarian II [1], one of the first color shareware games for the Macintosh. Also, early game with digitized sounds (and then suddenly everyone would be also doing them).
https://macintoshgarden.org/games/hemiroids
The only counterargument I can make is that the developers refuse to put it on Steam until it's ready so you need to use some sketchy 90s era payment site to buy a copy. Or just grab a key from the forums.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/
https://endless-sky.github.io
However, right now it doesn't seem to run that well. I'm getting estimated framerates of around 5 fps on a M3 Macbook Pro, making it essentially unplayable.
I don't see any other comments about the performance - am I the only one?
http://www.sticksoftware.com/
The sealiesoftware implementation is I believe a 68k emulator - and since many AfterDark modules back then did direct frame buffer access, the number of toolbox traps that would need to be implemented could well be quite small.
[1] http://www.sticksoftware.com/archive/Solarian.html