[HN Gopher] Empty Epsilon: a fully open-source spaceship bridge ...
___________________________________________________________________
Empty Epsilon: a fully open-source spaceship bridge simulator game
Author : marcodiego
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-08-29 11:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (daid.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (daid.github.io)
| bovermyer wrote:
| Artemis (on which this is based, if loosely) is most fun when you
| have hardware built to simulate the environment of a bridge.
|
| Recently, the most involved bridge setup for Artemis I've ever
| seen - present at Convergence and other geek conventions in the
| Midwest - was given up for adoption, owing to its enormous size
| and the owner's desire to reclaim garage space.
|
| Truly huge, since it was room-sized. I would have liked to take
| it but I don't have the space.
| emacsen wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think Artemis
| is prettier, but the gameplay of EE is far superior.
|
| By prettier, I mean the visuals, the models, the music, etc.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I played some bridge game at a convention a few years ago with my
| buddies. I wish I remembered the name... but the main issue was
| that it wasn't quite "hectic" enough to require so many people to
| be in so many different roles.
|
| I used to play Starcraft Brood War at low-levels of
| competitiveness (maybe ~120 APM or so, D-rank Team Liquid. Very
| low end of competitive). I also enjoy Factorio and Pikmin, so I'm
| no stranger to multitasking.
|
| Ideally, you want to have a game where so much is going on, that
| you *NEED* to split up the tasks to multiple teammates. I don't
| know, maybe have each of the players doing an "Overcook'd" style
| minigame, trying to do whatever their sections of the ship need
| to get done.
|
| So the idea is that each player needs to actually focus their
| mind on their minigame, but _ALSO_ needs to juggle the discussion
| with the captain / bridge. I can't imagine how a game like that
| would work, but... sitting around calmly in a "Star Trek" style
| bridge isn't very fun IMO.
|
| --------
|
| I think we have an issue of expectations vs gameplay. Anything
| that requires a team of multiple humans would necessarily be
| incredibly hectic. (See DOTA, Counterstrike, Overwatch, and other
| team games).
|
| But on the other hand, there are people who want to role-play
| Star Trek scenarios, which isn't... very realistic from a team
| perspective. Just as combat in Hollywood is unrealistic (1 vs 5
| fight is really a sequence of 1 vs 1 fights 5 times in a row:
| every enemy waiting their appropriate turn with the hero...) Star
| Trek scenes progress logically and simply, for the audience to
| follow. Its almost the opposite of the chaos that requires a
| command structure of any kind.
|
| "Archon" / Team Melee from Starcraft 2 / Starcraft Brood War was
| also a good bit of fun, since two humans playing 1-commander
| requires communication (make sure both players are going for the
| same build), and you naturally figure out how to split up work
| with your teammate.
|
| ----------
|
| I guess a more appropriate "Bridge" game is "keep talking or the
| bomb explodes". At least for people who want "my" style of hectic
| team-based game with difficult communication going on. If someone
| can amp up the "difficulty" of bridge games up to this level,
| it'd be more interesting to me.
| mawise wrote:
| Space Alert[1] (board game) is awesome for that sort of chaos.
| When I played with friends, we decided we needed a non-player
| captain to keep us on track even though it isn't in the rules.
|
| [1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38453/space-alert
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > I think we have an issue of expectations vs gameplay.
| Anything that requires a team of multiple humans would
| necessarily be incredibly hectic.
|
| I used to develop simulations as part of the combat systems
| development team of a military ship builder. I have assisted to
| actual training which I guess you could view as the ultimate
| bridge simulator. I think the main issue with bridge simulator
| is that you can't really simulate a bridge without the
| complexity which requires having multiple people on the bridge
| but at the time you can't ask your players to follow days of
| formation before playing.
|
| It seems to me that in the game simpler model, the roles which
| end up assigned to players are always somewhat arbitrary and
| convoluted. As they are so artificial, it's not surprising some
| people end up with little to do.
|
| As an aside, amusingly, all the bridge simulators seem to have
| user interfaces which are both less user friendly and older
| looking than the actual ship interfaces I used to work on. I
| find that endlessly funny.
| trynewideas wrote:
| Some of the EmptyEpsilon scenarios are very much like this, and
| many have tunable difficulty settings to increase the number
| and frequency of things like enemy activity. The enemy AI is
| extremely simplistic, but the chaos on the bridge tends to
| balance it out.
|
| Minigames come up pretty often for EE, with one problem being
| that they aren't fulfilling when there's less to do and
| overwhelming when there's more. The only station that has them
| in EE is the Relay/communications station, which models hacking
| other ships with puzzle minigames.
|
| EmptyEpsilon also has a few PvP scenarios.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Of the bridge sims we tried to set up at work, this one was the
| most successful.
| trynewideas wrote:
| There's an active forum for bridge sims that's the de facto
| community space for EmptyEpsilon:
| https://bridgesim.net/categories/emptyepsilon
|
| There's a Discord that assembles online games run by United
| Stellar Navy (it's officially an role-playing community, but the
| EmptyEpsilon games aren't heavy on it):
| https://www.unitedstellarnavy.net
|
| They organized a few 50+ player games last year, which have some
| videos on YouTube. A bit chaotic without context, but if you want
| to see the upper scope of gameplay:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHExJWYB8CM
|
| EmptyEpsilon also has traction as a LARP platform, thanks in
| parts to being pretty straightforward to modify in source, using
| Lua to script scenarios, and having a rudimentary optional HTTP
| API to trigger scenario events, manipulate game state, and
| control player stations.
|
| A Finnish group used EE in their large 2019 LARP event Odysseus:
| http://www.odysseuslarp.com
|
| The custom backend for the tech, which included several systems
| and physical interfaces outside of EE that interfaced with the
| game, got a good talk at RopeCon:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE7j1SgUpKs
|
| A French LARP scene has an active fork with features more geared
| toward that usage: https://github.com/tdelc/EmptyEpsilon
| queuebert wrote:
| Apparently I've been living under a rock. What is up with all the
| spaceship bridge simulator stories lately?
| dragontamer wrote:
| These bridge simulator games have been going on for at least 8
| years, by my count. With rivals setting up shop next to each
| other in various conventions.
|
| Hacker News does have this thing where if you see one story you
| like, people often post similar stories in the hours following.
| smcameron wrote:
| In this case, the same user posted both of them.
| macintux wrote:
| Recent discussion regarding a similar(?) game:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28343941
| rektide wrote:
| Not intended as a simulationistic game at all, but one of the
| funnest multiplayer asymmetric ship combat games I ever played
| was Subspace, or now, Subspace Continuum[1]. In some game modes
| you could "join" another ship in the 2d universe, manning a
| separate set of guns, while the primary pilot flew around &
| blasted as usual. It was a force multiplier, a blast joining a
| huge floating blob. But also, all it took was a couple well
| placed shots & your whole blob was toast!
|
| There's also Guns of Icarus[2], where you are a crew member on a
| flying steampunk airship. You move around between stations, which
| let you pilot, shoot, repair systems, which does have more of the
| asymmetric break down of responsibilities. It sort of feels like
| you're playing a FTL character, in a 3D, steampunk, desert planet
| environment.
|
| Overall I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities in
| asymmetric gameplay, in exploring how to game together by
| creating different roles that have to collaborate.
|
| [1] https://subspace-continuum.com/
|
| [2] https://gunsoficarus.com/
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > game together by creating different roles that have to
| collaborate
|
| Not like any of the games being discussed here, but this made
| me immediately think of Tribes 2. Each class had a role in
| winning, and you couldn't win without a team comprised of most
| of them. (Or maybe you could, but it was very, very difficult.)
| ramses0 wrote:
| Midair has made the attempt (https://midair.gg/ and "MidAir,
| Community Edition"), but is focusing on light-armor "capture
| the flag". They have a lot of the other "stuff" implemented,
| but it isn't/wasn't balanced by the time I got out of it.
|
| VGG!
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Lovers in a dangerous spacetime is also a fun couch coop with
| different roles in a 2D spaceship.
|
| Each of the 4 weapons platforms faces a different direction, so
| you need to run around to cover everything. And then there are
| engines and shields and the map and superweapon
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-30 23:00 UTC)