![]() You can only fly one at a time but you can keep others in storage. And there are plenty of different ships to own. Ships can be upgraded in many ways from weapons through to ECM packages, power plants and ablative armour. ![]() The overall gameplay is classic Elite - one man and his ship scraping a living through trading and fighting and taking missions. General Gameplay – the basic engine that has been built upon, at least in general structure, appears to be that of Privateer (but with a 3D graphics engine.) But if I can put up with the comical cut-scenes of X2 I can live with this. There’s scope for the many great artists here to help out IMHO. Where it falls short are the planet-side screens where characters in the bar are incongruously cartoon-like. Space has that same colourful beauty, the lighting effects are excellent, and the ship and station models superb. Okay – they are not up to the bump-mapped goodness of X2 but they are better than XBTF. Graphics – much better than I was expecting. This immediately impressed me as joystick configuration can be a weak spot in both commercial and free games of this type. My Saitek Evo joystick with throttle and rudder worked straight off. Keyboard, three axis and throttle joystick support and a couple of mouse modes akin to Freelancer. (Runs fine at 1024 res on a poxy work machine with a cut down graphics card too.)Ĭontrol modes are multiple. Runs fine in 1600*1200 with all options maxxed on my Athlon 2200 processor and 1 gig RAM. The most salient point is that it is free, a labour of love being given away for the cost of a 200MB download. If you remember Wing Commander and Privateer fondly you’ll be half way to loving this. ![]() Vega Strike is an open source project aimed at creating a galactic sandpit for us to play in. ![]() (And if you don't mind below state of the art graphics - check out the screen shots on the main site.) If you're looking for something more privateer/elite than X then maybe it's worth checking this out. Apparently with a big enough ship and a tractor beam you can disable, capture and sell your opponents. It's very much a one man trader game - no buying stations or planets it seems, but lots of ships and even more equipment options to configure them for roles. Static cartoon-like characters that stick out against the background like my thumb after a bit of DIY. News items that actually relate to the game world.Ī faction system a bit like Freelancer so you can roleplay a bit. Trade - not sure yet but I think prices and stock levels dynamically respond to your actions. I can see a lot of possibilities for good blasting. Ramming seems common but unlike in x2 it's not a problem in that you can use powerslide maneuvers to avoid them and strafe them as they slide past. I've had one combat, against a pretty weak opponent but it was fun - 10 minutes of maneuvering and shooting. I like the multiple control options - kb, stick and a couple of mouse modes. The model is probably somewhere between the X and EOC models in sophistication. The flight model is good although there is no space dust to give a real sense of movement. Graphics are fine if not up to X2 standards but they do the job. Mucked about with it a bit and i'm pretty impressed so far.
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