How long have you been playing Elite or other space sims?

[M0rtr3k]

As someone who likes space sims since childhood with titles such as Wing Commander, Privateer 2(I like this,ok?), Oolite and Freelancer. I want to hear your opinions and, if possible, share some stories about your favourite space sims.
Also a question, has anyone played FFED3D? Is it easy to set it up and can I play it on Linux? :S

 

[Strangepork]

As someone who likes space sims since childhood with titles such as Wing Commander, Privateer 2(I like this,ok?), Oolite and Freelancer. I want to hear your opinions and, if possible, share some stories about your favourite space sims.
Also a question, has anyone played FFED3D? Is it easy to set it up and can I play it on Linux? :S

I just play Elite, for a year in the 80's and two and a half this century.

 

[m0rl0ck]

The first space sim i played was the atari space shuttle simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle:_A_Journey_into_Space. Played all the x-wing and tie fighter games, the descent games, freespace2.

I think i played either starlancer or freelancer in there somewhere too and wasnt much impressed by it. Played a couple of the wing commander games and liked them. Also, played (and am actually playing now) the x3 games, the XRM mod is a lot of fun.

Of them all i liked freespace2 the best and it had multi player gameplay that ED will never match, mostly because the engineers killed pvp and multi player for all but those who have the time / the sociopathic motivation to scale the engineers grindwall.

Freespace2 also had a great single player campaign and a mysterious and threatening villain alien race, as well as great sound and music.

ED has a lot to live up to as a space sim and so far imo its failing, mostly because of the engineers fiasco and buggy missions.

Anyway, if you havent played freespace2, check it out. It has been updated and maintained by its community, gog has it iirc. Check to make sure it will run on your hardware, i havent looked at it in a couple of years.

 

[Darth Ender]

I've been playing space sims since WC3 came out and having played so many since that time probably explains why the state of Elite is so depressing to me.

 

[Jarrek2002]

I *loved* Privateer 2, man!

My first ever space sim however was Star Wars X-Wing. Absolute genius for its time! So this would have been somewhere in the early 90's.

 

[Garagiste]

I guess the first thing that could credibly have been called a sim was this:

1983. Never did manage to land it in one piece.

 

[CmdrKull]

I was definitely playing Starglider II in 1988, Elite I think I first bought in 1992. I apparently lived under a rock for a while because I didn't know about Frontier until the late 90s at which time I was playing X Wing and Tie Fighter games. X 1 and X 2 were in the mix after that, then a hiatus from gaming in general that wasn't able to withstand Elite Dangerous, although I played Galaxy On Fire 1 and 2 on my phone during the supposed hiatus... all in all over 20 years where space sims were in the mix. Sometimes they dominated my time (Elite 1) and other times they were just one of many.


Edit: how embarrassing, I said I was playing starglider 2 in '87 when it was released in '88. 88 would be the the first year for me then, and I've double checked the screenshots and it was definitely starglider 2

 

[Minonian]

1989

 

[Privata]

Xwing alliance was my first that I owned.
Then , as I got in my teen years I got tones of the older games Xwing , Elite2+3 , StarLancer and played those instead , during the age of CoD.

Freelancer was the first game to let me down (due to it not being how it was said to be in interviews , but I still liked it)

Then I found X² in a bundle with Earth2140 (because...reasons?) got that , I was blown away by X² and fell in love with it and ended up getting Xbtf and X-tension
Then X3-reunion came out , my PC could not run it. so I went back to X² (not after finishing reunions plot at 11fps lol)

A few years after I had a better PC and played hundreds of thousands of hours of X3-TC and when that came out AP. to the point I could draw you a sector map with all stations across all games.
I kept searching for more , yet I could only find bottom of the barrel.

Then I saw ED and SC. backed both , and now I love ED , hope SC turns out well. (however I am so invested in ED its going to have to be perfect to get my full attention)

Space sims made my childhood , openworld space sims changed my life (gosh that sounds so sad)

 

[Chris G W]

Since the first Elite came out, in fact I couldn't believe this new one was being done, as soon as I found out I became a Alpha Backer.

The first time I had to fly through the letter box of a rotating coriolis station gave me goose bumps and panic that I wouldn't be able to actually ever be able to play this game.
One of the best feeling's i've ever had, this game is really amazing and has kept my attention since the early Alpha.

Gotta go, i've got something in my eye <sniff>.

 

[Stewart_]

Since 1984...

 

[ChrisT]

I guess the first thing that could credibly have been called a sim was this:

https://cpcrulez.fr/GamesAdvert/Space_Shuttle_Simulator.jpg

1983. Never did manage to land it in one piece.

Good to someone else was rocking a Dragon 32

I first saw one at a vegetable fair. Imagine....

Loved that machine. Then the power button broke, and I had to keep it against a wall to keep it on (button at back of machine).

Then Dragon went bust, and wrote, asking for a refund, due to power button issue.

And.....

They sent me a full refund. And that went into a C64, pronto.

fun times

 

[SeaFireliv]

Phew that`s a tough one and I`ll likely show my age here... But the first space game I played was that one with Mark Hamill- Wing Commander. Really liked it, but it was a bit short. Or was it Elite? I can`t even remember which came first now....

But when I look at those games then compare them to today, present day games really haven`t leapt forward the way I would`ve liked, except in graphics\sound. I thought AI would be incredible by now and you`d be able to do everything like have your own home base, extensive dynamic quests and even your own family\girlfriend if you wished. So many things I expected.

Didn`t expect you`d be forcefully stuck to the net even in Single Player.

Still its nice to see the revolving hexagonal space station realised... Only took 30 years.

 

[Faded Glory]

Played Frontier : Elite 2 (FE2) from early 90's to just before this one came out. Not all the time, but probably 5 or 6 outings over the 25 years... Got to Elite in the last one.

This one since beta. probably a bit too much if truth be told.

 

[ChrisT]

I remember first seeing Elite in a TV ad for a shop in Swansea (South Wales branch), called Microstore. Microstore was great. BBC Micro, Dragon 32, C64, Spectrum, Apple games.

It was a treasure trove. Each visit, there was something new. So many platforms to ogle at.

I went over there by bus, from Port Talbot. And they had a BBC Micro on a little table, near the entrance door, playing the intro screen.

Cobra there, flipping and flopping about. I did not have a BBC Micro, they were quite expensive. So I could not actually buy it.

A guy in school had a friend that did though. So we visited him, and he kindly showed it off to us.

I had a C64 at that point, so I had to wait a couple of years for the conversion.

I then played it over the summer hols until I reached Elite. A few Thargon encounters of course. Plus the Trouble with Tribbles escapade.

Star-glider on Amiga was fun. I'm sure there were others.


In Uni, I had an Amiga, and PC games were on the rise. Could not afford a PC though :/

But I used to visit the Virgin Megastore PC dept and PC games looked great. This was around the time of Wing Commander.

Then I left Uni, and got a job. And that year Frontier was released.

Yet again David Braben rocked my world. Loved that game. But it was buggy as heck.

Then I played First Encounters. I still consider it a high water mark in many respects.

Sure Amiga gfx power was much lower than todays PCs. But what they did for the time, is still remarkable.

A year later and I was working for a video game company. Actually making a game

Next skim with Frontier, I was at a 3D Graphics show watching a demo of Autodesks new 3D app, 3D Studio Max. And I noticed David Braben was watching it with a keen eye (nearly fainted )

About 10 years later I had a training company, making DVDs to train people on 3dsmax. I received an order through from Frontier, and the name on the bill was David Braben.

So Im probably one of the few people here that has not only bought products by DB. But also had my products bought in return.

Then, 2012 rolls around, and Frontier wheel out their Kickstarter. And of course, I put the cash down.

And here we are.

 

[DNA-Decay]

1976 Lunar Lander.

Mum worked in the maths dept at a university and they had this thing in a room.
Kind of a seven foot filing cabinet thing, and then there was a terminal with an electric golfball typewriter thing.

The lunar lander program would give you your current height, weight and vertical velocity.
You could choose how much fuel to burn in the next time increment, and it would give you a new height, weight and vertical velocity.

I was just a kid, but I found it pretty compelling - I think it might have have typed your height as a vertical line as well.
I never got the hang of working out how to control my descent, Too fast - crash, too slow run out of fuel - but I found what was perhaps an easter egg that by burning 123 units of fuel every time increment, you could land safely. 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 etc.

A friend had Star Raiders in the early 80s, and I still remember the three rainy weekends where I got to spend some time playing.

I'd forgotten about this great game until DaggerSnake below reminded me.

And then I spent some time with Captain Blood which had this awesome landing sequence like the one in Alien, but it was more like the movie Arrival than a space flight sim.
Very weird, and very French with its amazing language interface.

Fast forward to 2010. And of course the best thing is ORBITER

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ I've even managed to dock with the ISS from launch on full manual.
This is where I got a grounding in Orbital Mechanics.

Then there was a thing that I quite liked called Lunar Flight from a few years maybe 2011:
The Kids were pretty good at this. We watched the Curiosity Mars Landing and then played this game. The kids loved it. Especially after getting all fired up by Bobak Fedowski's mohawk.
[video=youtube;AzFYL7g_K7M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzFYL7g_K7M[/video]

And then in 2012 I saw Star Citizen was having a kick starter and would be released pretty soon, so I had a look, but it was kinda pricey so I decided to wait until it was released. [casual whistling]

I spent a lot of time in the Illushin-2 sim series including Cliffs of Dover. (Hi PanTast)
Got a bit carried away with vintage maps and E6Bs and soviet era stopwatches etc.
Mostly flying the Blenheim Bomber.

Then I got into jets and mostly flew the Su-25 in Flaming Cliffs.
I guess I'm a "steam gauges" kinda guy.

And then I bought into Elite Dangerous in late June 3301.

Kerbal Space Program?
- I know, everybody says I'll love it.
But I haven't actually made anything that I can get out of the hangar. Since I got into Elite, I sit down to game, and my to do list just disappears over the horizon.
What's the team doing? What was I trying to finish? What was my plan for after that?
I've got about another week out in the California Nebula tidying up after the Community Goal. It was lovely to have y'all, but we're out of toilet paper and I can't even begin to tell you what those Aisling CMDRs did to the apartments they were billeted in.

 

[Xious]

Elite - 1985 about a year
E: D - off and on for about 2 years
SC - about 5 months

What other real space sim is there?

 

[BL1P]

First played Elite in 1985, and something called Manic Miner.
Then some time playing Multiplayer games Q2ctf - Tactical OPs - Urban Terror.
I played X2 the threat then X3 reunion, TC and AP. around 2005-2014 - When not playing online games like Operation Flashpoint (2002) through to Arma3 (Now)
Elite Dangerous - According to the forums some time around 05/04/2015.

 

[bladerunner900]

It all started for me after leaving school in 1970, after reading my first sci-fi book. I Robot, by Isaac Asimov. Couldn't get enough of it after that. Space Invaders was my first game, around 1978 I think. Used to go down my local pub after work and play it with mates.

The Acorn Atom was my first computer, but there wasn't much you could do with 2 KB of RAM. Everything changed when I upgraded to a BBC B in 1981 and shortly after, Elite in 1984.

 

[BostromNZ]

First space game was probably Wing Commander III on my brother's PC.

Spent a lot of time playing X-wing which was friggen awesome at the time.

I can't remember which came first but it was a great time for space games.