The other day I rediscovered my old Sidewinder joystick and also remembered all those games and how many hours I spent in the cockpit of MadCat's, Atlas, TIE-Interceptors and Comanches :D... maybe due to these games requiring some sort of commitment the current market doesn't request? Seeing that gaming becomes more and more popular and more often than not oriented towards the casual experience maybe they don't fit the modern customer's profile? Good question...
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The demise of the joystick might be part of the reason... In the 90's owning a joystick was quite common, but these days not many have one, and the ones who do tend to be into the more serious flight sims. So I guess it's a matter of nobody who would play those games have a joystick, and thus no games like that gets made, and because no games like those gets made, nobody who are into those kinds of games will get a joystick.
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But niche games are still being made though, even games that are far more niche than those semi-sims. Just look at this.
And I'm not sure how much the "downfall" of Fallout was a matter of Fallout devolving, or it just changing into a Bethesda game. Bethesda has a formula for how they make their RPGs, one they've not really tampered with since Morrowind.
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419 All-Time Peak players for a free-to-play base game. Not a very big market. However real planes flight sims have an advantage over space sims. If done right (better than already available ones) you can get small, but long-term player base willing to spend money on new planes
Beth released F:NV, which could be considered back to roots of F1/F2 after shooter-ish F3. For some reason they have dropped it and went back to FPS sandbox formula. Probably because it has better roi.
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DCS world has a non-steam version that has been out for longer, and to my knowledge there's no way to turn your non-steam version into a steam version, or the other way around. So that number does not tell the whole truth.
Well, I listed a real planes flight sim up top :P It's not the only one out there, something like Strike Commander also fits the semi-sim bill. But yes, you're right about the long-term player part. Playing a real sim is a commitment, they take a long time to learn, and once you've learnt one, you're likely to stick with it for a while at least. On the other hand, getting a real sim right is also relatively expensive because of how complex they are, and how much research has to be put into them.
Beth did not make F:NV though, they just published it, Obsidian made it. And Obsidian are a lot better at writing interesting characters and telling good stories than Bethesda.
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I got a joystick for playing games like those not too long ago. I've got no nostalgia for games like MechWarrior or Tie-Fighter, yet I really like them. They're quite simply good games, and while their age does show in some regards, the core gameplay is very solid. That and that type of games has not evolved much over the last 15 years, so they've not really had the chance to be surpassed.
I do suspect I qualify as an older game as well though. Not exactly sure where the line is drawn.
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If having basic physics rules applied is serious sim, then no wonder there is no semi-sims. I mean, what's the difference between running around shooting germans in CoD and flying around shooting german planes (except visuals that is)? From development costs, exactly none. On top of that, everyone subconsciously knows that piloting a fighter is hard, while shooting rifle isn't. And so you have multiple CoDs and no Red Barons
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That was not quite what I said...
I-War 2 has far more than a basic physics model, it tried to have a rather realistic one, and that did make the game a lot less approachable. Where most space sims & semi-sims deal with things like inertia and such in a way that makes sense and could be seen as relatively realistic, very few tried to have a full on real physics simulation model underneath the hood. It's the difference between having to worry about how gaining & losing altitude in a fighter aircraft impacts your speed, and how strong gusts of wind will impact your aircraft when rising at a steep angle. One is found in most games that strives for a believable representation, while the later is only found in full on simulators.
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Compared to the run of the mill space "sims" you could say it was strict, but only because all other had none. xwing had no flight model worth speaking of. Turn radius independent of speed, switch off engine to stop, combat tactics was limited subset of ww1 tactics, because altitude (z-axis) changes give no edge. Tbh I'd call xwing more of rpg than sim, as it was focused on putting player as heroic rebel in SW universe than combat/flight.
IW2 on the other had had more focus on combat and flight. It had Newtonian physics implemented (but you could fly with pilot-assist on, when thrust behaved like in other space games) and you could take full advantage of it in manual thrust control mode - that's what made it "hard" on ppl as pretty much nobody has everyday expirience with that many degrees of freedom. Everything else was extremly simplified or fully managed by ship's ai.
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Shouldn't Elite: Dangerous be scratching that particular itch?
Haven't played that one myself, but the rest of the series fit the genre despite not being as combat-heavy as most comparable titles...
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I'm a big fan of the Elite series but I have a lot of hate for Elite: Dangerous. Either way I'm not sure it fits into the category of 'semi-sim'. It's a realistic simulator, but streamlined because of a focus on complexities beyond combat rather than simplified for approachability. Which I think is a slightly different genre...
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Are Euro Truck and American Truck sim considered semi simulators?
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I was thinking that since they are pretty low level entry sims, I mean they are not like flight sims where you have to study the controls for days before you are able to even lift take off.
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No, not really.
But don't they fit it best of all? o.O
Really though, I was waiting for that reference to be made, and it seems like it ended up being unintentional. Go figure. :P
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Microsoft Fury 3. Oh my where do I start...
A flight combat "sim" made by Microsoft to help sell their new OS at the time, Windows 95. AND IN 3D !! (lol)
Some review of it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdUV3apppDQ
Some gameplay : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=126Siqyggfc
Trivia : The sense of speed and rotation in this game is EXHILIRATING actually !! Like a Star Wars fight sim of sorts.
AND WITH AN AWESOME SOUNDTRACK!!! TOP CONTENDER OF BEST MUSIC EVER :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxxcoQKNeYY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY9Jt4twWdo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT49bhofsIc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJq5c5HJF3A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4PnRJVfO34
I can even you get a copy for modern computers to try it if you're interested, complete with its expansion (wink wink) ;) ;)
Some old advertisement that includes it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnuF8Z8_p4w
Oh, and the backstory includes IP wars. COPYRIGHT WARS !! Music companies and Microsoft vs Pirates and possibly chinese knockoffs LOLZ :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
=====
Concerning Starsiege, Tribes, Earthseige, and all the games that form the universe made by the Sierra Dynamix games, there's a vast universe and lore encompassing all of the dozens of games that they made. I'm not even sure where to start, there's tons of reading material, links, documents scattered around the net, in old hardrives, or lost, about this universe. Here are some links to just give you and idea :
Those 2 links read after each other
http://www.starsiegecompendium.com/writersguide/wg-backstory.html
http://www.starsiegecompendium.com/tribes/index.html
Other:
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/vgp/starsiegehistory.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/comments/sflvj/does_anyone_know_what_the_lore_is_for_this_game/
http://www.the-flet.com/dynamix/Story%20of%20the%20Earthsiege%20Universe.docx
http://wiki.theexiled.pwnageservers.com/Main_Page
http://wiki.theexiled.pwnageservers.com/Tribes_Timeline_(Complete)
The games include a platformer, quite a lot of Mech games, turn-based strategy games, and the Tribes FPS.
What's more sad is that all the games that I played from the series are all good games if not excellent ones. Some of them have been released for free here by Hi-Rez (the studio who owns the rights to the franchise now) http://www.tribesuniverse.com/
And they didn't include the Cyberstorm games here. A shame, real shame. Very infuriating actually.
If you're more interested I can give you more links, help you install the oldest games on recent Windows versions, or you can join the Starsiege remants here https://www.facebook.com/groups/starsiege/. Or you can rely on your Google-Fu if it's strong enough.
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There is a better timeline for the "Dynamix universe" with the according games
http://www.the-flet.com/dynamix/timeline/
been looking for it for a while now :)
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But we're getting a big budget classic RTS soon: http://store.steampowered.com/app/285190/
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CoH is also alive and supported, but that's another Relic/SEGA game. Last year we also got Deserts of Kharak, which seems to have had a relatively big budget. Act of Agression was another upper mid-budget range game (which is where the RTSs of old that we so fondly remember tended to be). StarCraft 2 got its Legacy of the Void not too long ago as well. RTS with an alright budget might not be common, but it's not a completely dead genre.
Oh and this thing seem to have sold really poorly, but just going by the graphical quality, it was likely not a small budget game at least. And this is still in early access.
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Didn't really mean completely dead, but the few numbers of today simply pale to what once was.
Also sad to see how out of those few that do exist, some have ratings of only ~60% (Act of Agression, Call to Arms)
this thing
yeah, Russian produced titles have basically all alone kept the genre alive during the drought decade.
Ever heard of/played Ancient Wars Sparta? Fun but too unbalanced&buggy as the one important patch only released for the Russian version (due some publisher disputes), high difficulties were completely unbeatable on base-less missions. ^^
But there was simply nothing much else to play of this type at the time.
CoH
Is a new one in production? The 2nd has honestly become too much of a demotivating DLC mess.
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It took me a few seconds to realize "X-wig" was a typo, but if I saw it on greenlight I'd probably vote for it.
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well there is Mechwarrior Online.
it has a bunch of buttons i never ever touch since their controls are for features you can\not equip on certain mechs. or when the situation that requires their usage happens, i'm freaking out since i'm in the middle of dying. (like if you overheat yourself shooting off all your weapons, then your mech auto shuts down, you can force start it back up at the cost of armor\health or something like that)
just read your response about liking joystick controls. i don't think they have any for Mech warrior online.
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Can't add much to the search, for present day semi-sims, but the topic did make me remember that I always wanted to try Steel Battalion someday.
It's probably still the closest one can get to a home setup of one of those Battletech Center pods. Those centers were really amazing... the atmosphere of the place was like awesome overload to 12-year-old me at the time. I remember buying and studying the manual that they sold for those centers and trying to memorize what all the buttons in the cockpit did.
More recently, in Japan they have the Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senjō no Kizuna mech pods, which are pretty cool. They've been out a while now, but the last time I was at a game center arcade there was still a section which had the pods available to play.
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I've always been a fan of the "semi-sim", and it's a shame that we hardly get any of these anymore.
For those unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, a semi-sim is an attempt to make a game that feels like a simulator (like a flight sim), yet which remains approachable. Games like X-wing, MechWarrior, Red Barron & Wing Commander all have a lot of buttons to press, a lot of different actions you can make that makes it feel like you're actually piloting a complex craft, without becoming unapproachable, like a real simulator. These days games seem to either be full on arcadey (like the H.A.W.X. series) or full on simulators (which are rare, but are still being made, like the DCS World-series). Most serious simulators do let you cut back on the realism, but they tend to lose that tight feel that a "real" semi-sim has when it's done right.
So what happened to the semi-sims? Why did they die out?
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