Orbiter: The Video Game

[Messierhunter]

That would definitely work. I'd love to see a CD with Orbiter on it handed out to every kid who attends Space Camp. That would be getting it out to the specific people who can appreciate it but as a retail PC or console game at Wall Mart Orbiter would go bust.

I like that idea a lot. I'm wondering what it would take to put together a simple distribution disc with some of the basic mods on it, along with a copy of Go Play in Space (and links to other orbiter support sites), perhaps. I'm guessing we would have to get permission from each modder involved as well as Flyingsinger? The other big hurdle I can forsee is convincing the museums/centers/camps that these discs are 100% benign and contain absolutely no malware, spyware, etc. Obviously they don't want to be held liable for anything.

 

[Andy44]

And you're dating this moron....why?

Hey look! It's a couple of boobies!

 

[flaugher]

Somebody said they downloaded Orbiter to get Firefly. I downloaded Orbiter and STAYED for Firefly ... well ... Firefly Sport at least.

I can't see this as a box game. I bought the box games to keep my kids off the computer so I can play my simulators! They crashed everythign they got their hands on until "the box" came along. If Orbiter were made that foolproof, it would be no fun at all.

Now, if Orbiter had weapons like nukes and fasers and photon torpedoes, you might get some others interested. I sat a friend down to see Orbiter and his first comment was, "Let's blow something up!"

 

[Eagle]

Maybe we need a mmorpger type mission generator.

"Dock to port 3 on ISS" You gained 14 xp!
"Land on pad 2 on Brigington 30 times." You gained 30 xp!
Congratulations, you are now level 2! You can now fly missions to Mars!

You have been eaten by a grue.
Game Over.

 

[Messierhunter]

"Dock to port 3 on ISS" You gained 14 xp!
"Land on pad 2 on Brigington 30 times." You gained 30 xp!
Congratulations, you are now level 2! You can now fly missions to Mars!

You have been eaten by a grue.
Game Over.

LOL! Actually that might not be a bad idea if it were refined a bit... It would be awfully fun to have an elite/privateer/freelancer style mod that created a persistent economy and universe to the sim. The more complicated the task (or the faster you get there), the more it pays. The more limited your ship is, the cheaper it is to fly. Ideally it would include AI ships coming and going (not for battle, just for immersion), but I wouldn't know where to start in trying to code that. I would think that the first part could be done by a rudimentary MFD though. If it included purchasing new ships, perhaps it could just spawn one of a chosen type into the scenario at a predetermined landing pad?

 

[Andy44]

I have thought along similar lines. You could have a kind of storyline with missions flown in between to unlock the next cartoon cut-scene, kind of like the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games.

Or, you could "dumb down" Orbiter and make a sort of "Orbiter Lite" which could fit onto a cartridge for a box game.

We had one of those back in the 80's, you know. It was called "Space Shuttle" by Activision and it was an Atari 2600 flight sim.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Boobies

Hey look! It's a couple of boobies!

Greetings!

Just a quick note on the Wikipedia definition of boobies. Locally, (on Galapagos) they are known as "Piqueros" and not "bobos", so that´s probably not the origin of the name. A friend of mine managed to ingest one of these into an engine of an Islander at San Cristobal airfield, though he did not say if it was the left or right one (engine, not boobie)....:hooters:

....Now, if Orbiter had weapons like nukes and fasers and photon torpedoes, you might get some others interested. I sat a friend down to see Orbiter and his first comment was, "Let's blow something up!"

I did find an add of an ICBM on Orbiter Hangar that had a mesh of an atom bomb mushroom cloud. It is one of two Minutemen add ons, and attributed the mushroom cloud dll to another add on, the Trinity series.

That brings me to another (slightly) related topic. I made myself an add on of an ICBM as an excercise to get to grips with Vinkas Multistage.dll, (before looking up ICBMs on the ´hangar) but was reticent to upload it as it might offend an international and resonably peace loving community like the forum. I noticed, also, the authors of the ICBM add ons were quite apologetic about their publications, as I would have been had I dared upload mine.

What´s the community´s concensus, if any, on this sort of bellicose add on?

And a final note on topic; like all of you, I am a bit surprised at how few people I show Orbiter to actually take to it.

 

[Andy44]

What´s the community´s concensus, if any, on this sort of bellicose add on?

Please, this again? It's a sim of a real-life system. No problem.

 

[MattNW]

It's been argued before on the old M6 forum. Personally I don't care. Everyone's sim is their private business. If you want to make something that blows up then I'm all for it. If someone doesn't like it they don't have to download and install it. Sometimes I like to blow something up. Makes for a great stress relief.

 

[Omhra]

If orbiter was "bundled" with other games like the old battlezone ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1998_video_game) ) where a campaign is waiting for you at arrival to the designated coordinates.
Still it would be a limited clientele, much like it is now... I think it would lack about half of us who fly it in its present form... some in this crowd are purists and seek only the hard realism and the understanding from it... still battle zone was fun... online base building with First Person Shooter action and able to jump out your tank/ship to run and snipe pilots off... it remains the only game that caught my fancy and I always wanted to fly from Earth to the Moon to Mars, Europa, Io and then to Titan... as the game progresses.
Strange thing that, quite unconsciously, those were the planets I visited on my first grand tour, except Titan which I flew out to but have not returned from... yet.

 

[flaugher]

I like the idea of a mission builder, or ready-made missions for Orbiter. I did enjoy games like Freelancer, but I was never into the "trading" thing. I always like the opportunity for free flight and exploring ... go where I want when I want, then get back to work on my particular project. I hate linear games with only one outcome.

How about this? "Save our NASA!" We start with a set of unfinished projects that, if completed, will re-energize the public's thirst for space trave. Each mission is assigned a public favor value, some easy with little value and some hard with lotsa "favor points". If you complete enough project and gain enough points, you save NASA and they get the money to build a new shuttle fleet.

---------- Post added at 10:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 AM ----------

I saw the review of Battlezone "most underrated game of the century". Looks cool, and it's still out there for twenty bucks. Hmmm. I like older games that really cruise on my dual-core. I recently bought a used copy of Sub Command, which I last played on a P1. Wow!

 

[Wolfer]

Yeah, both Battlezones were great. They were my favorite video games... until I discovered Orbiter. It's a shame that they didn't got the success they deserved.

I think if we were to make Orbiter into a mass market game people would return it because they couldn't make it into orbit without reading the manual.

 

[Andy44]

Well, if Urwumpe and I ever get off our butts and form a BattleTech dev team, I would love to see Orbiter merged with a MechWarrior 2 type game, similar to the idea for Battlezone (which was a fantastic game itself). I would love to have a freewheeling interplanetary campaign game set in some system in the BattleTech universe, the Orbiter part of which would involve piloting DropShips between planets, avoiding enemy surveilance through careful flight planning, and making precision drops of BattleMechs into drop zones on the battlefield, which would mean the right approach angle and ground speeds, etc.

That would be fun, and in between Orbiter sections you would slug it out on the ground with Mechs. And when things don't go well, it's back to the cockpit to evac and dust off your forces from the battlefield! (Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.)

 

[Eagle]

Well, if Urwumpe and I ever get off our butts and form a BattleTech dev team, I would love to see Orbiter merged with a MechWarrior 2 type game, similar to the idea for Battlezone (which was a fantastic game itself). I would love to have a freewheeling interplanetary campaign game set in some system in the BattleTech universe, the Orbiter part of which would involve piloting DropShips between planets, avoiding enemy surveilance through careful flight planning, and making precision drops of BattleMechs into drop zones on the battlefield, which would mean the right approach angle and ground speeds, etc.

That would be fun, and in between Orbiter sections you would slug it out on the ground with Mechs. And when things don't go well, it's back to the cockpit to evac and dust off your forces from the battlefield! (Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.)

I've been noticing a lack of ginormous spherical dropships among my addons. Hey, there's no extra coding for the jump jets.

 

[T.Neo]

Or, you could "dumb down" Orbiter and make a sort of "Orbiter Lite"

Maybe, have autopilots fly most of the mission, and let the player just sit there and watch...

 

[flaugher]

The thing is, you gotta have options. Let the players decide if they want to be inside the ship or watch it from afar. Someone needs to develop a game that let's me do what I WANT to do. I have buying a game and finding out it's not what I thought.

 

[RangerPL]

There was someone here who was interested about the game aspect of Orbiter.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=4829

Orbiter is too complex for the Video Game Generation to understand or appreciate. Just today, I heard a High School sophomore ask how many centimeters there are in a meter. In an honors Geometry class. I'm not saying all people my age are dumb, but most people don't care enough to learn the metric system properly, much less how to get into orbit.

It would be difficult for people to appreciate it as well, to today's generations "space is for nerds". Most people my age would rather sit on AIM all day.

 

[Chasingu]

I kind of doubt that they would make it a console game. I mean, what would be the point. Plus, you could not download addons.

 

[Pilot7893]

Plus, you could not download addons.

The reason I am now getting all my Source games for PC instead of for the 360.

 

[Arrowstar]

Yeh, the general public gets all confused when thinking is required. My idiot girlfriend doesn't like orbiter since she thinks I'm going to somehow mess up the *real* space program. So we came to a compromise - she absolutely insists that I disconnect the internet from the computer when orbiter is running.

heh heh now if I could get a suit to visit the house!! That would be hilarious..

Yeah... heh, it's funny, we barely got to use OMP in alpha testing, but we can certainly interface with the real world. Of course, perfectly plausible.