Requests: On the need of finding something of use

Inspiring Submarine designs with a lot of Steampunk

We need more fancy rides, so I seeked for 3D Meshes for futher implementation into some Simulators and what I had to find was that most things don't even exist in the virtual world. While researching I found out my preferences are somehow unseen or let's say if you ask me, I would reflect a very specific nerd-faction. This means I'll take my opinion and I'm asking in the name of all vehicle related sim players that want to be early adopters, too. Here is some opinion leading for all of us. I hope you agree with me in particular. This list is aimed to bored Modders in search of something special. Thanks in advance!

These are some of the 3D-Meshes or Mods me and others would love to see:

Marine
U-Boat Type XXI (kewl design, hot historical specs)
U-Boat Taifun Class (huge and modern)
Seabreacher X Shark, Dolphin or Orca (fun and innovative)
Sailing Boat Dehler Dehlya 25 (tiny and cute)
Deepflight Black Hawk or Deepflight I or Challenger or Super Falcon Mk II

...

Air
The Jet from the movie G.I. Joe 1 (the non AI two-seater variant)
Synergy Aircraft (a crowd funded futuristic plane)
Mi-24 (a russian helicopter)
He Triebflügel (epic WWII concept aircraft)
He 112 (good looking, good manuevering)
Some Horten Glider Planes (one-wing concepts, needs flight skills)
Wingsuits (YAY, needed)
...

Space
Mars Attacks Flying Saucer (kewl design, epic gadget)
The Flight of the Navigator (unique design, for fantasy purposes)
BSG Rising Star (one of the most beautiful ship designs ever)
A super movable Spacesuit (needed for some)
...

Terrain
Some more very freaky Concept Cars (from real manufacturers).
Some hotter Mech Warrios (more sleek, please).
More different Byclicles or how about some virtual Inline-Skating?
...

Notes
All should have cockpits, except the two last ones. Thanks for developing! Ah and thanks for creating any awesome vehicle design that not got mentioned in here. Keep up the good work! :)

This topic is sheduled to be filled from time to time with whatever I end-up researching while looking for hot mobiles. Soon with pictures and more fancy entries.

Wing Commander Saga – The LOLCATS strike back! Most epic game ever!

A true Hall of Fame entry:
The LOLCATS strike back! The Most epic game ever: Wing Commander Saga!



Cat's are fun: A Cat on the ISS would be the most ever clicked YouTube video I guess.
I don't know how, but cat's somehow appeared in space, they call themselves Kilrathi now.
And they evolved to be lovely monsters. Yep and we and them became equal so watch it, they fly spaceships. BTW: The cute angry cat on the left actually ain't a Kilrah (those look more like tigers).


Oh yeah, so linear story based gameplay can be big fun, entertaining and thrilling. It's about atmosphere and you can feel it even theres no atmosphere in the vast of space. The storyline is like this: A Squadron, Carriers that house you, lot's of cat's everywhere. They call us furless freaks (maybe because we freaked out on funny cat-vids, yeah no doubt). They have CapShips / BigShips and lot's or medium and catsize support crafts. They fight hard but they don't risk too much. They entirely blame your flight skills (at least till right before you finished all campaign missions) + they hit hard.

The seven lifes thing works for cat's even in space, be it as if you need to restart a certain mission or because they can eject their ship just like you could. You pathetic descendant of monkeys! ...that's one of the more gentle things they said to me. Since they really make you want to find arguments (because of their flight skills or what they say) you can enjoy listening to what your taff wing mates have to counter. Fly in groups of 8 or more or do a recon mission with only one wingman. Play all those "I always wanted to" things. De-stabilize the Kilrathi presence at different sectors of space, get them away from any resources, aim for their Carriers and whatever (try damage it part by part, if they let you).

Having a great time:
Do two atmospheric flights, safe people, safe your Carriers. Encounter a loyal Monarchy of cat's following their Kings / independant leaders and say miaow to many high society cat's. A couple of the interesting stories and sceneries know from the various Wing Commander releases await you behind the ingame part where you have to stand them while you and they play hide and seek. This is no old-to-new: It has been made from A-Z for it's pilots. This also means the storyline introduces you the the world of Wing Commander. It's a tribute to Chris Robert's Wing Commander (which many of you might played before as it was the first top seller PC games, had movies and merchandising decades ago). WC Saga is made by fans for fans. Unlike Battlestar Galactica Diaspora – which also is a very epic game based on the FreeSpace2 Engine – Wing Commander Saga feels a bit more comfortable. I recommend flying only with "Glide Mode ON" (adds fun and simulator charecteristics). Meet famous cat's (you will get to know them). Have a little dogfight, the cat's have awesome ships (absolutely). Now they don't just look frightening sweet – unfortunately they are your target's (oh behave, cute cat's) . You will experience stunning briefing sequences, great music, voice-speech and radio-comms. the AI's will become your friends. Even the graphics are not state of the art the visuals have been all over raised to the maximum possible that the FS2 engine can master! If you haven't played it yet, trust me, everybody is saying this is trully thrilling and totally entertaining.

One or two pictures:

Download it here for free – have some fun:
http://wcsaga.com

Notes:
– Play it or never even think of calling it wack (it's Open Source, it was meant for something)
– This ain't a Multiplayer but they're working on such a thing at the moment
– I can't wait till we can pilot the cat's ships ourselves. They're on it, too!


This entry has been written by Simulator Miaow, meet her, she is here on this blog (on the right side), she wants to play a bit and she is a cute non-monster cat. 

Aquanox 2 – A forgotten piece of art

This is worth another entry in the Hall of Fame of great Simulator like games even it was more a Sub-Opera: Aquanox 2 Revelation and The Angel's Tears. A epic liniar story line driven gameplay, personal submarines, Steampunk, the deep sea scenario of a nuked future and hunting forgotten treasures. What else does a Nerd want to play? 

It was a Deepsea Simulator, no doubt! Casual mode could be turned off delivering adjustable and incredibly tricky handling. But lifes a #§%! and the game studio behind it imploded because of lack of interesting and because most people were playing mainstream stuff. It might also be because the selling chain wasn't organized well so non-european people didn't even heard of it.

Neopolis, I can't forget that city near Europe deep down below miles of water. It's like Georgia on my mind. And then there was the latin america deep sea, I met Angelina there, we survived and felt in love but unfornutaly, those others, it's without any words. That asian girl was funny, and that afro dude called Stoney, he is the best. I owned the Drake Industries Carpenter XXL Sub and drove the Salty Dog, what a ugly piece of sub (comparable to today's submarines). Later I managed to dive with an organic stealth batman's sub like ship, uuuhh wow. In the end I found something which created a longterm vision of a "Whatever Hall" without spoiling too much. I'm gonna feature the "Whatever Hall" in some future post related to something I call the "Backup". Meeting lots of Cyberpunk characters I had fun talking to them because beside the mission part there was time to "2D walk across your ship" and since the characters moved from here to there, you had to find 'em. Besides that you could do the basic things, upgrading your subs with some offensive and defensive hardpoints. Besides blowing stuff up with several types of weapons you could raise your cargo space, add turrent command software, power generators, armor plating, Buzzer flares, noise reduction, speed boosters, a fixer and so on. The level design was for it's time beyond imagination with lots of vegetation, deep sea vulcanos, thrilling ambients, ancient cities and epic places to park at. The game engine was made by massive development. The all over look and feel including the design was epic and well done like a movie. This game is still in stores but I don't know if the credits ever reach it's creators.

What is the message of this post?

Please let me make something clear. Nowadays theres no Submarine Sim with state of the art GFX and Engine available, none at all my friends! Besides Silent Hunter and only a few other examples Aquanox 2 or it's prequel "Schleichfahrt" were the ones taking care of unterwater fun. And remember, Silent Hunter is also a sunken project and no doubt, other games on topic didn't even appear well so Submarine games were and still are a niche.

SimTech2K must have played on all grounds:
After beeing a Sci-fi fan looking up at spaceships, playing dozens of space related games I once realized... "hey, deepsea is like space, too, I wanna hopp into a sub". But just like they say in spanish: ¿y duespues? "and then?". What happens now!? I ask this for real now that Star Citizen is leading the race into the new space age! Some time ago while researching the topic deepsea Sims I found an ambitious CryEngine3 project on the CryDev Forums. However I couldn't manage to re-find this project. Why is that? Was it bad re-research skills or did this project also sunk already? I also heard of a community project trying to recreate Aquanox but with slow like no progress. I really want to play a Submarine game with the look of Steampunk but as you might know, I'll get serious on shapes and engineering details + I want good visuals and a powerfull game engine. Now give me that dude, I'll appreciate, all my support!

Count me in for a Kickstarter or Indigogo crowdfunding action – feel free to contact me on this topic, I might have lots of things to add!

Battlestar Galactica Diaspora – The trickiest game to play! Something for the Hall of Fame of game industry

This time around I would like to tell you about another masterpiece of Open Source software power. Introducing Diaspora, a dream that came true!

Created not so long ago but with years of development it features 99% real space flight Physics with the aim to recreate the handling + look and feel showed in the award winning TV series Battlestar Galactica. That's why the developers just claim that this is no real physics Simulator, only a BSG Simulator (strike, we all agree). Other than that it does act like a true space Sim. Believe me, what the guys from Hardlight Productions created is truly one of the best games ever saw the light of the day (if not the best).
It wants to combine old BSG with new BSG elements so theres plenty of ships for you to play with. And in multiplayer chat messages can set to be voice-speech (big fun because it's a computer voice talking).

Sit inside a Colonial Viper MK VII or how about a Cylon Raider (an organic ship and you will see it's blood veins for example). The ships are very exclusive, not based on random BSG mods made entirely from scratch and they designed new ships you never saw before (this way they did a favour to BSG). The Engine used to make this dream of a game come true is based on FreeSpace2 which wasn't a big seller (shame on all of us, the game studio behind it got broke long long time ago). But the original developers saw the power of their engine and granted access for further improvements. The graphics and detail level are state of the art looking awesome even the former FreeSpace2 engine is an old sailor (FS2, existing since more than ten years). I recommend flying with the so called Glide-Mode which makes the game act like a hardcore Space Flight Simulator. You need lots of training to be able to manage a dogfight. Limited ammo makes you feel tiny. The ambient is dark and cold. I never saw a game that delivered that experience!

The storyline of the campaign mission set is epic, BSG fans gonna love the thrilling end. Spoiler: it's all about fate. It features voice speech briefings and great cut scenes, the music is great, too. It has TrackIR support. The Multiplayer part is the biggest fun – I call this the most tricky game to play ever! After a ten minutes online session I end having an epileptic seizure (or at least it feels like that). Said with others words: It's breathtaking, it's sick, only skilled gamers gonna enjoy, you can't be a n00b pilot on this, it ain't your average game! ;)

The community behind it is strong, more and more mods appear, many missions and maps are in the making. A powerfull mission editor is included. A lot of ships known from the game Battlestar Galactica Online have it's origin from one of Diaspora's lead artists. This game is about quality.

Five stars rating on this! Get it here for free while it's hot:
http://diaspora.hard-light.net

Coming soon: My first Mod pre-release for this game, an fps intensive map for skilled manuevers (WIP). 

Note: It ain't easy to find people in the Multiplayer mode. That's properly because only a few of you even know about this game. It's worth it, let's play it togheter – go spread the word! 

BTW: I loved FreeSpace2 the game. It was the most exciting childhood game I ever played and it had the so far unseen most epic ending even it was sad and almost made me cry (the Carrier beeing the players home just blows up and meanwhile, in real life, the game studio called "Volition. Inc." is no more).