I know the game well enough to simply build it out of the obvious required parts, and the vast increase in processing power since 1996 means that I'd have to spend zero effort on optimization. I feel that I could remake the original Escape Velocity within a week, excepting missions. There are no recursive relationships between entities, there is no scripting beyond mission definitions and effects, and everything can be represented by text, numbers, and links to other entities.
EV never had a proper editor, but it wouldn't be difficult to build one. Avoid the temptation of overly fancy graphics or new, complex game mechanics, and the game world remains utterly simple to represent: a list of places, things and missions with some cross-links. Sunless Sea is pretty fun, and doing pretty well for itself, so the same thing in space could do well too.Īnd that's missing out on EV's killer feature: trivial modding. You're on a ship rather than a spaceship, but the missions, trading, and 2D navigation are not entirely unlike EV. And indeed, there is a pretty close successor game to EV, probably unintentionally: Sunless Sea. That in itself would suit some people who aren't fond of 3D space combat as a genre. On the face of it, EV is just a less technically interesting Elite, replacing 3D combat and navigation with 2D.
#Ev nova game full
There's a demo, and the full game costs a whopping $30. That didn't happen, so the question is whether there's anything worth salvaging from this line of games that isn't pure nostalgia. One could theorize about an alternate timeline where Ambrosia took a risk, ended up lucky, and tens of thousands of people are now playing EV: Online.
There are of course plenty of newer games where you fly through space and do missions - EV was clearly inspired by Elite, and Elite: Dangerous has just come out, and EVE Online is going strong.
#Ev nova game software
I've poked Ambrosia Software about getting EV: Nova onto Steam or GOG.com, as it seems to me that the game could do quite well with a new audience, but have heard nothing back. The games market changed repeatedly: Escape Velocity was an Indie game hit long before the modern Indie world came into being.
#Ev nova game series
The Escape Velocity series was originally produced for Macintosh, and while the final game also had a Windows version, it was not "at home" there, and probably never really benefited from the much bigger Windows market.Īmbrosia shifted its focus to utility programs and less ambitious games, and appears to have ceased releasing anything new about a year ago. Ambrosia Software, the games' publisher, hinted that EV Nova had been a commercial failure, its modest success in sales not offsetting the vast costs of the major engine upgrade.
No further iterations of the game ever occurred. Nova was released in 2002 and after that, things sadly. The former was basically an officially sanctified total conversion, whereas the latter started out as a conversion effort but eventually included a major engine upgrade.
#Ev nova game mods
From these mods there arose two sequels, Escape Velocity: Override, and Escape Velocity: Nova. Even complex entities like new ships and missions were pretty easy to add.įor many years, there was a very active modding community around the game, adding new content or doing "total conversions" that swapped out the entire game world with a new one. As a result, adding a new solar system was as simple as creating a few planet records and a system record and wiring them in with hyperspace connections. The game could be supplied with mods ("plugins") of additional resource files to be loaded in. Everything was data-driven by Macintosh resources, a now mostly forgotten system for storing structured binary data. Virtually nothing in the game world was hardcoded. What made the game exceptional for the time was its extreme moddability. You can eventually join one of the factions as a mercenary, or just stay independent as a pirate or vigilante. There is constant low-level warfare between these two factions, and increasing numbers of pirates as you head towards the fringe. The known galaxy is largely divided into the Confederation of the core worlds and the Rebellion of the fringe, with a fair number of neutral planets and stations scattered between. From there, you can work your way up to better ships, better equipment, and increasing fame or infamy. You start out piloting a small unarmed shuttlecraft in orbit around a neutral planet. I could find no decent screenshots, so here's a Let's Play video found for me.
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