Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dwarf_reform]

The best ones I know of are Prospector and Star Flight (the Sega version, the remake with its goofy graphics grates on me..).. Freeware is good, but I'd pay for an excellent one..

I just can't handle space "exploration" where no real exploration happens.. Parking my ship by a round orb and scanning it/dropping colonists on it doesnt count as exploration to me :| Prospector is priceless to me for its random enemies and the fact that not only can you explore surfaces, but some surfaces have caves and forts on them that can be entered as well..

Am I missing any gems??

[OwlEpicurus]

Shores of Hazeron is supposed to be pretty good (forum topic).  It's a free MMO that I think has what you're looking for, at least to a certain extent.  Has some problems, though.  When I tried it, the lag was so bad that it was rendered unplayable.  You may still want to check it out; it is free, after all.

[dwarf_reform]

Free is good I wish DF's engine could be made to generate small planet surfaces/alien ores/caves and random monsters.. Having the DF combat engine along with the blood melting your face off would spice it up :O To me, nothing beats the feeling of landing on an alien planet and spotting something "man"-made..

Also been wishing for a random small town generator zombie survival game.. Rogue Survivor is okay, but its all so much blocky city, not so much fields/woods/nature.. Sure an apartment complex is nice, but it doesnt capture the creepy aspect of un-fog-of-warring a 2 story farmhouse and barn

[GreatJustice]

The Ur Quan Masters does, sorta, and its free to boot

[dwarf_reform]

Aaah.. sweet old Star Control! Another Sega-platform space-age gem.. It, Star Flight and Toejam and Earl Perhaps Toejam and Earl doesnt count, but it may have been my first sweet experience with random generation Another old console gem that needs released into the new age is E.V.O. Search for Eden.. Classic stuff

[NobodyPro]

Mass Effect the first .

[dwarf_reform]

Can you explore lots of planet surfaces on Mass Effect 1? :O I have 2 and have my preorder of 3 half paid for.. (gotta hurry up..)

EDIT: to say quickly that ME2 feels like a really nice skeleton for a game, but nothing complete besides story :| after the end all you can do is bet on the Varren Pits and shoot Pyjacks.. nothing to spend money on, nothing left to fight.. terrible!

While I'm being curious and spammy I'll multi-task this thread and ask a secondary "gems" question (while still being 100% interested in planetary surface landings!):

Other games with the majestic combat targeting of DF?? :O

Nothing says loving like deciding to chop the left hand off every single person in an entire village..

Without thinking too hard on it Jagged Alliance and Vagrant Story (PS1) come to mind.. And neither come even one shade close to being as epic as DF..

(I'm losing my internet, among many other things, soon.. Trying to stockpile precious games before Doomsday also hoping DF update comes out before then too..)

[Biag]

Spore, if you're willing to do the whole Spore thing first. The space stage was decent, and there's an expansion pack dedicated to improving it.

As for the second question, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas have body-part targeting. Best part of Fallout 3, in my opinion.

[dwarf_reform]

Blech, my bad memory I have Spore special edition and Creepy and Cute pack.. Also Fallout 3 and New Vegas.. I'm into space stage on Spore but not too close to done. Loved it most in the pre-tribal stages though :O Haven't beat either Fallout yet either, but thats just an odd habit of mine with console games :| Got barely played Dark Souls sitting over there too.. I own a GBA/DS, PSP, PS2 and 3, and this laptop loaded with my Steam games and various other titles..

.. and spend most of my play time on TOME, Prospector, XCOM, a little minecraft pixel-art, and DF adventure mode Haven't turned my PS3 on in almost 3 months.. And when I do play PS3 I'll divide the time 50/50 and quit halfway through to hop (back) on "another one of those weird games where everything is square" that none of my other new-gen gaming buddies have the brains to comprehend

[Lightning4]

I think Evochron Mercenary allowed you descend down to the planetary surfaces to explore in your ship.

[BurnedToast]

You could try noctis, it's a pure exploration game - there's no combat or anything, just billions and billions of stars. You just pick one, fly to it, and see what's there. You can land on planets and explore them, some of them have life others are like... solid quartz crystals that you can see through, etc. There's even a system where you can catalog worlds and name them, and send it to a central database for other players to download (which, actually, I don't think works anymore but there are some prenamed worlds around)

The only problem is, it's old as dirt so the graphics are TERRIBLE... i mean like, 640x480 terrible or something. There's an updated version being created.... but it's been years so don't expect it any time soon.

[alway]

There may, at some point in the unspecified future, be Infinity. Most promising space exploration game I've yet seen, though it's going rather slowly with no hints as to a possible release date. Sometime within the next half decade or so probably. Be sure to browse through the gallery, it's really really pretty and will be entirely procedurally generated. Video gallery in particular.

[Vattic]

Infiniverse is an ASCII space exploration game that will fit your description when it's done. The current early, buggy, single-player version is worth a look even if it's missing a lot. Sadly no updates have been posted in a year now.

[LegitMacgyver]

StarQuest is, in my opinion, a pretty good MMO.  The most engaging thing is that the ship needs players in every role (imagine the star trek deck it is a lot like that).  Every console on the bridge is fun to play and suiting up to land on a planet is pretty awesome as well.  The only problem is that there are too few players.

[goldark]

You could try noctis, it's a pure exploration game - there's no combat or anything, just billions and billions of stars. You just pick one, fly to it, and see what's there. You can land on planets and explore them, some of them have life others are like... solid quartz crystals that you can see through, etc. There's even a system where you can catalog worlds and name them, and send it to a central database for other players to download (which, actually, I don't think works anymore but there are some prenamed worlds around)

The only problem is, it's old as dirt so the graphics are TERRIBLE... i mean like, 640x480 terrible or something. There's an updated version being created.... but it's been years so don't expect it any time soon.

Last time I checked Alex dropped programming altogether, so I don't think we're going to get Noctis V anymore.