Hugo Hacker News

Endless Sky: an open source space trading and combat game

JeremyHerrman 2021-08-17 00:56:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Back in the 90s I played countless hours of the Escape Velocity series. I still drop into a Mac OS 9 emulator every now and then to get a healthy dose of nostalgia.

I'm happy the EV torch is still going in the 2020s with Endless Sky!

DavidSJ 2021-08-17 02:35:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In that case, I’ll shamelessly plug 14 year old me’s Escape Velocity web site, which I still think is pretty good: https://web.archive.org/web/20050924134158/http://davidsj.co...

JeremyHerrman 2021-08-17 23:19:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Nice - great advice in there. Aside from capturing disabled ships I didn't really use escorts to trade cargo, but your freighter strategy can really rack up the credits!

btown 2021-08-17 02:37:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Fun fact: For Mac OS systems, Escape Velocity's entire mod and game data system was based on HFS Resource Forks. To mod the game, you'd create massive resource forks with ResEdit and other specialized editors, placing ship graphics in resources named to avoid collisions like shŠn and d‘sc. Such a unique and absurd system. http://escape-velocity.games/docs

hashkb 2021-08-17 03:15:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That was my very first encounter with anything hacking-related. Such a thrill. Before that the computer was a black box full of black boxes.

JeremyHerrman 2021-08-17 22:54:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Me too! I cut my teeth on ResEdit and discovered weapons I never saw in the game. Total thrill!

duck_bacon 2021-08-17 03:28:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Dude. Me too. One of my first, anyways. Hard to remember if it came before or after my forays into FutureBasic.

wlesieutre 2021-08-17 02:49:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Did you see the EVO remake in the works?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f...

It will ship the Override scenario (Peter Cartwright was the original creator) but plans to support the data files from all three games if you have them. Other additions include a ship garage to swap between owned ships, lua scripting, and plug-in namespacing to avoid ID conflicts.

rdtwo 2021-08-17 03:15:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Nice guess it’s too late to support wish I knew about it earlier. I never got into overrides story though. It seemed like the worst story of the 3

wlesieutre 2021-08-17 03:41:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Too late on Kickstarter but I’m sure they’ll be selling it once it’s done! If it goes according to plan you should be able to take the new engine and drop in whatever scenario you want.

rdtwo 2021-08-17 14:09:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Any idea who wrote the story for EV nova? That story writing was masterful and I was hoping to find more games written by the same person

wlesieutre 2021-08-17 18:02:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

ATMOS was

Luke "Nuada" Smart Stephen "-8-" Chick Philip "particlestan" Chick Jason "Frandall" Cook Scott "Eyeya" Vardy Jarrod "wooly_mammoth" Rainsford Paul "DalSoth" Pentecost Dafydd "pipeline" Williams

And this comment suggests that Luke and Jason wrote the missions

https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/ez4txv/a_qa_with_lu...

mrzimmerman 2021-08-17 01:17:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Same. I fire up Endless Sky whenever I need to scratch my Firefly itch for a bit.

LivelyTortoise 2021-08-17 01:44:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Oh man, your comment is the reason I clicked on this link. EV was amazing. Looking forward to reliving some of it!

virtue3 2021-08-17 02:36:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

aw shit EV is what got me into coding. I loved making stupid mods for it so much.

CapriciousCptl 2021-08-17 01:42:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sweet! An MMORPG element would be the bees knees here. Years ago there was a similar (though-MMORPG) game called Diaspora from a small studio[1]. I still remember waking up at all hours of the night to play inconspicuously (without tying up the phone line). It was freeware and featured in PC Gamer. Eventually cheaters/bots overtook the game, literally DDOSing the thing as each "node" could only support maybe 50 ships because of how they were displayed in game (~5x10 grid or so). Ultimately, the studio didn't have a solid monetization strategy and the project disappeared off the face of the earth when its users spiked. They would have made a killing with micro-transactions, but online payments weren't ubiquitous then. Instead these poor devs spent all this time/money developing the game, maintaining the servers and fighting cheaters for free before the whole thing crumbled under its own weight. It lived on in clones (Rillaspora, Xiaspora and The Reunion) but they all died within a year or two.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(video_game)

imtringued 2021-08-17 07:16:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>An MMORPG element would be the bees knees here.

The game you are looking for is called Star Sonata 2.

thomasballinger 2021-08-17 03:50:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A nice surprise to see this here! I did a web port of this game with Emscripten which much help from janisozaur: https://play-endless-web.com

There's an outdated post about what was hard about the port at http://ballingt.com/porting-endless-sky/ – with Emscripten as good as it is, it really wasn't bad!

Waterluvian 2021-08-17 02:18:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I’ve tried many times to play games that replicate Escape Velocity, but have never come close to reliving the feeling of being 10 and playing that game to death on my Macintosh.

rdtwo 2021-08-17 02:21:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If you haven’t played ev nova it was peak magic for that franchise. It perfected the whole experience.

ethbr0 2021-08-17 04:17:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I suspect part of it was being stuck in the school computer lab, without a portable supercomputer in your pocket, and with little web to speak of (and less connectivity to what there was).

A moment that will never exist again.

Waterluvian 2021-08-17 12:46:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Funny enough, It was 1996 or 1997 that I played the game and we had cable at home as well as two computers side by side.

But the same problem kind of existed: there really wasn't some quick access reference to the game, so we didn't think to just look stuff up.

And I think that was a lot of the magic. I still remember a moment where we hit the wrong key at a specific time and we got a warning BEEP and the text, "You are moving too fast to board this ship." "YOU CAN BOARD SHIPS?!"

rdtwo 2021-08-17 14:12:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

True mine just barely ran on a Mac lc3 with ram doubler installed. Somehow it tricked the computer into thinking it had 8 megs vs 4 and that that the game run. Though quite slowly as it couldn’t handle all the assets

Waterluvian 2021-08-17 14:45:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

My LC3 had 8MB so it ran okay. It slowed down when you get some large battle of like 20+ ships.

What REALLY slowed it down is when my brother, friends, and I daisy chained 4 ADB keyboards so that we could all control different parts of the ship (weapons, targeting, navigation, fleet).

rdtwo 2021-08-17 16:14:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Damn man I thought I was like the only kid out there playing ev on that crappy computer. It’s crazy to think that there was at least one other kid doing the exact same thing

ethbr0 2021-08-17 14:16:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/RAM_Doubler

Better disk paging and compression

foerbert 2021-08-17 04:05:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yep. I had that exact feeling with Endless Sky myself some time ago. I couldn't quite pin down what the problem was. There were obviously various things that could be improved, but none that I could really say for sure would help get the feeling right.

Maybe it's time I check it out again and see if it's gotten closer.

thrtythreeforty 2021-08-17 00:06:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I wasted a significant amount of time playing a similar concept game called Space Trader on PalmOS (and it seems someone has reimplemented it for Android!). This game is much expanded but Space Trader was very, very reminiscent of Drug Wars.

WaxProlix 2021-08-17 00:08:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Oh my god I had forgotten about that entirely. I had it on a Handspring Visor that I used as an organizer in high school. I must have looked like such a dork, but what a nostalgic vibe. Thanks for the reminder, and I'll definitely check out the parent game with this endorsement :)

alexjplant 2021-08-17 00:21:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I bought a Handspring Visor Deluxe when I was 10-11 (when they first came out) and loved it. My favorite game was by far Space Trader. I remember waiting patiently for the vaporware sequel Picoverse but I stopped checking Peter Spronck's site long ago after it seemed basically abandoned.

Somebody also re-implemented it in .NET if I recall correctly. I'd love to build a TUI re-implementation but there's other stuff on my plate at the moment that precludes me from doing so.

EDIT: From his site, "I I have been working on a sequel to the game, named "Picoverse", since 2003. I still haven't given up on that one, though it probably will not be for the Palm computer, as this brand is rather dead at the moment." There is hope yet!

themodelplumber 2021-08-17 16:57:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Space Trader on FDroid is fun to play, and it seems pretty similar to the PalmOS version. The downside is that there isn't a ton of help for new players, so you do have to do some guesswork, but it's not too bad.

b0afc375b5 2021-08-16 23:46:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I love space genre games (Spore, Starsector, FTL) and I remember getting addicted to Endless Sky. It's difficult to get started but once you do it's pretty fun.

rdtwo 2021-08-16 23:50:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I played all those any others you recommend?

Rebelgecko 2021-08-17 00:10:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I think Escape Velocity: Nova still holds up today. I'm also looking forward to Cosmic Frontier, which is a remake/remaster/new engine for Escape Velocity: Override (which I didn't enjoy as much as EV:N)

rdtwo 2021-08-17 02:23:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Did you figure out how to reinstall it? I think the license server is long gone and it requires an unobtainable version of QuickTime to run

Rebelgecko 2021-08-17 02:35:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If you still have your original license key email, registration works fine if you roll back your computer's clock to the day after you bought your license.

Windows: I've never tried the Windows version so I can't vouch for this fix, but if you trust random DLLs from the internet, supposedly placing these files in the Nova folder will let you run it without a full Quicktime installation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KhvxgI4dEi1CBV8SbLeFQkaaZT...

Newer macOS versions: You'll probably need this patch to make the binary actually work: https://github.com/RyuKojiro/novafix

From here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Escape_Velocity/comments/9atyzj/ev_...

cryptoquick 2021-08-17 01:19:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Can confirm, played an old Windows copy a year or so ago, it still holds up. Endless Sky doesn't quite have the same magic for me.

rdtwo 2021-08-17 02:19:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The story telling in nova was so fantastic. Endless sky writing is good but nova writing was fantastic

karsonic 2021-08-17 22:09:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I quite enjoyed Heat Signature. The gameplay is fast and fun, and the story has a very satisfying ending.

chupasaurus 2021-08-17 00:45:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Space Rangers 2, called Space Rangers HD: A War Apart on Steam.

toomanybeersies 2021-08-17 01:22:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I haven't played it in over a decade, but I remember Freelancer being a great game.

rdtwo 2021-08-16 23:41:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I love this game I played it a bunch a couple years ago. Gameplay is great and story is excellent. Would have paid at least 20$ for it.

It’s like 2d space sim. If you have ever played escape velocity on the Mac it’s the same formula.

eightysixfour 2021-08-16 23:44:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've always wondered why no one has taken this formula and developed an MMO.

notjustanymike 2021-08-17 00:34:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Elite Dangerous is multiplayer, bit more of a space sim.

X4 is single player and definitely focuses on the empire building.

A long time ago there was the Jumpgate MMO, probably the closest to what you want.

ttymck 2021-08-17 02:14:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Starport: Galactic Empires[0] is an MMO in which I spent many hours in the early 2010s.

If I remember correctly, it exhibits many of the mechanics of EVE, and appears to be very similar to Endless Sky.

[0] https://www.starportgame.com/

behringer 2021-08-17 02:31:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I played so many hours of this. Thanks for reminding me about it!

dleslie 2021-08-16 23:58:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Forget MMO; I'd be happy to play a game of Endless Sky with a friend in the same way we play a game of Civ. It seems well-suited to it.

reidjs 2021-08-16 23:45:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Eve Online is the MMO/spiritual successor to Escape Velocity in my mind

rdtwo 2021-08-16 23:47:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In some ways yes but eve slows everything down to a tedium this game is fun because progress is fast and meaningful

eightysixfour 2021-08-16 23:53:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes, I think this is the hard (maybe impossible) balance for an MMO like this. Eve Online is so slow, while EV was extremely fast paced. You'd have to find something in the middle to really make it work.

rdtwo 2021-08-16 23:57:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Freelancer was so close… that’s the closest anyone had come by they made it clunky due to no native joystick implementation

2021-08-17 01:16:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

brnt 2021-08-17 14:48:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Freelancer... if there ever was a game I want more of.

hashkb 2021-08-17 03:19:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

MOBA-paced would be so fun. Or, a few servers to choose with different pacing.

rdtwo 2021-08-16 23:45:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s been tried and it really works better as a 2d story game. Earth above and beyond and jump gate were the attempts

jimbob45 2021-08-16 23:50:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Earth and Beyond was really incredible and was the first to implement trading as a profession (e.g. buy tons of an item in one place, sell it at another for profit and xp). EVE took things to a wholly new level with trading though.

imtringued 2021-08-17 07:25:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There are lots of MMOs like that and they are all niche and not very successful.

hakuseki 2021-08-17 00:25:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I really like the world-building that went into this game but I wish it were more challenging.

I think the absence of escape pods is rather telling: they are an unneeded feature, since save-scumming is the default.

imtringued 2021-08-17 07:21:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In Skyrim the most powerful ability is to go back in time before you died...

rdtwo 2021-08-17 02:23:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

World building is something I’d always wished for in that game

throw0101a 2021-08-17 01:01:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Is this anything like the BBS game TradeWars 2002?

* https://if50.substack.com/p/1991-trade-wars-2002

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Wars

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27301478

cyanydeez 2021-08-17 01:36:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

yes.

napsterbr 2021-08-17 04:53:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I love the trip down memory lane in this thread.

The game that I immediately remembered when seeing this was Gazillionaire Deluxe [0]. I still have a Win95 emulator somewhere just so I can play it every now and then :)

[0] - https://gamefabrique.com/games/gazillionaire-deluxe/

martinmakesgame 2021-08-17 06:10:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Endless Sky is truly excellent. I've been playing it for the last couple of months. It's even possible to explore the whole galaxy playing pacifist and never firing a shot. It's wonderful to be able to play a game in a completely peaceful way.

Scene_Cast2 2021-08-17 00:02:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Huh, seems (superficially) somewhat similar to the recently released HighFleet.

Jarwain 2021-08-17 02:13:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I love endless sky, so I guess I've gotta check out highfleet next

rdtwo 2021-08-17 03:40:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I wish there was a community somewhere of space gamers that like ev style games. I don’t follow gaming much anymore but I’d love to know when similar games come out

2021-08-17 01:32:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

PikachuEXE 2021-08-17 01:52:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Anyone know/remember Skyrates?

http://skyrates.net (Ya no HTTPS :S

valyagolev 2021-08-17 04:42:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Star Traders: Frontiers is a good take on the genre. quite addictive! and exists for computers, ios, and android

lucas_codes 2021-08-17 08:30:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've been playing this recently, it's fantastic. And the developers, the Trese (?) Brothers, have been releasing content updates for it for years, with mod support coming soon - even while working on their upcoming cyberpunk-themed game.

breadzeppelin__ 2021-08-17 03:13:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm getting some star control vibes off this at first glance, definitely going to check it out

s09dfhks 2021-08-17 00:56:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

i recall playing some portable space shooter game on the library computers after school with my classmates (this would have been around 2002?). Can anyone think of what it was called?

All I remember is it was top down and everyone had their own ship

koverda 2021-08-17 01:08:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Subspace?

ericbarrett 2021-08-17 01:49:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s still around! https://subspace-continuum.com/

beckingz 2021-08-17 02:37:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A game you will easily lose 30 hours to without noticing.