My favorite type of game is the "fly and trade" game. In this type of game, you get a space ship to fly around in and try to make money. The money can be used to upgrade your ship. It can also be used to buy and sell goods. In addition to this, there's usually a plot to the game. So you end up getting something like a cross between a flight sim and an RPG. A few examples of this type of game are: Elite Privateer (1, RF, and 2) Solar Winds Hardwar X-Beyond the Frontier X-Tension Is there some "official" name for this genre? Does anyone know of any other games in this genre? I would really like to make a game in this genre. I am working on my own 3D engine for it right now. I just got the first pass collision detection working and I'm thinking about how to design the game once the engine is finished. Does anyone have any ideas that I could use in the game? By the way, anyone who's interested in this genre would probably appreciate the X-Tension demo. It's available at http://www.egosoft.com/x/download/index.htm Steven Borkman http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~borkman/ Edited by - borkman on December 21, 2001 6:06:44 PM

I think you forgot Starflight.

I seached for Starflight on the internet
and found another game in this genre
called Star Control (1, 2, and 3).

Steven Borkman
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~borkman/

Often in this genre, once the player has
upgraded to the max and there''s nothing
left to buy to upgrade the ship, the player
just keeps accumulating wealth with nothing
really interesting to do with it.
What could be done to solve this problem?
Is there anything interesting the player could
continuously pay for that would be fun.
(Taxes are NOT fun.)


Steven Borkman
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~borkman/

Pirates! and Pirates! Gold! from Microprose stand out in my mind. Actually, just Pirates! I had endless hours of fun playing that. It was a "Sail around and trade" game. I believe it started the whole genre.... Back in the day

There''s a pretty good shareware game called "Smugglers" and its sequel. Check out http://www.smugglersfiles.com/ for the details.

I used to play a shareware game called War Path which was both simple and interesting. It may now be downloaded for free from http://www.synthetic-reality.com/warpath.htm.

Allowing the player to own multiple ships and complete customization of said ships? Sort of like Gran Turismo.

I wanna'' ride on the pope mobile.

It would be cool if
you could form clans with other players
and NPCs which could work together to
collect bounties or to plunder innocent traders.
I think stuff like that is possible in
some pure RPGs, but I haven't seen anything
like that in this genre.
One problem with clans (and the fly and trade genre in general)
is PKing. This genre seems to encourage PKing
through pirating. That's basically what it's all about.
I wonder if that's why this
genre isn't as popular as it could be.


Steven Borkman
Home Page: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~borkman/
Video Game Page: http://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu/~borkman/projects/game/index.php

Edited by - borkman on December 28, 2001 2:41:55 AM

quote: Original post by AEBergen1980
Pirates! and Pirates! Gold! from Microprose stand out in my mind. Actually, just Pirates! I had endless hours of fun playing that. It was a "Sail around and trade" game. I believe it started the whole genre.... Back in the day

There''s a pretty good shareware game called "Smugglers" and its sequel. Check out http://www.smugglersfiles.com/ for the details.

Oh yea! Pirates was a blast... especially on the Amiga

borkman:
I think the answer to your question is - SPACE TRADER
although that probably does not apply to Pirates or the non-space games that have the same style of play.

As for ideals... I have plenty Actually I have been designing a multiplayer space trader since about 1988. After playing Elite and FE2 I was hooked... I thought, way back then, that the next step for this genre was to allow multiple real people interact in the world/game. Of course, there are many out there that have tried to capture the feel of these games... with-out much success IMO. I have been watching the Multiplayer version of X - can''t remember the name but it does look fascinating... even David Braben is suppose to be working on a MMP version of Elite Maybe I''ll just wait and see what he does *GRIN*



Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Dave, it's interesting that you mentioned that the
games don't capture the feel of the genre. I was
just talking about that with a friend a week ago.
I think Privateer 1 probably did the best job at
capturing the feel of the genre. In that game, you
are the weathered pilot who is pretty much fearless
in a cyber-punkish world. You get the feeling like
you're the lone ranger of outer space; a real tough
guy who's rough around the edges. This leads
me to a dilemma. Some games in this genre allow you
to buy property (a hanger or base). This destroys
much of that lone ranger feel. You get tied down
and lose mobility. Does anyone see a way
to allow the purchasing of bases without losing the
feel of the genre?

Steven Borkman
Home Page: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~borkman/
Video Game Page: http://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu/~borkman/projects/game/index.php

Edited by - borkman on December 28, 2001 2:42:23 AM