Yeah I was thinking of emailing them would probably be helpful to get in touch with some indie developers who are making similar sort of games.

anybody playing Doom3?

I'm pretty sick-to-death of FPSes and have played most of them. I've been completely uninterested in playing most of the space games that have come out because they'd just be disappointments in most cases. (Notable exceptions, MOO3 and the Homeworld games). I've wanted to build a space combat sim for almost as long as I've had a computer. Stumbling across this group filled me with hope.

and no, I'm not playing Doom3 nor am I planning on it, despite the glowing reviews and freakishly large poly count.

The Homeworld games were really good. Different concept from the usual RTS Command & Conquer types of games. Probably closer to MechCommander (another favourite of mine) in terms of tactics but still totally different. I got into MOO late and have only played 3. Unfortunately, some of it was a bit dodgy and the patches never really fixed the gameplay which in some areas appeared totally random.

A Pentium3? My god, man. We've got to get you a new chip, stat!

Have you gotten intouch with anyone yet?

anybody playing Doom3?

I'm pretty sick-to-death of FPSes and have played most of them. I've been completely uninterested in playing most of the space games that have come out because they'd just be disappointments in most cases. (Notable exceptions, MOO3 and the Homeworld games).

I've wanted to build a space combat sim for almost as long as I've had a computer. Stumbling across this group filled me with hope.

Not playing it beacuse my computer is a simple pent III

Freelancer was a big let down to begin with then with some of the mods that have come out it is pretty good I like the no story mod (Makes it like it was suposed to be...

... Freelancer was a big let down to begin with then with some of the mods that have come out it is pretty good I like the no story mod (Makes it like it was suposed to be... No story what so ever!) And a few equipment mods which allow you to put diffrent equipent on diffrent parts of the ships.. SO you could have 2-3 thrusters or extra guns and such . ...

Flatspace which only heard of today in the space sim news group is a 2d space trader simulator along the lines of Escape Velocity Nova and has a very simlar flight engine which is simple, but effective.  The thing about this title that grabbed my attention is that it was developed by indy developers and in my short session of playing it, struck me as a lot more fun than many other more higher budget professional efforts I've seen recently.  

This I think is in part due to the way the game industry operates nowadays.  Game developers have to toe the line with a shrinking number of very large publishing companies and have much less creative freedom than was the case a few years ago.  Due to the growing cost of delivering cutting edge graphics, the average budget for a commercial quality game is around $2m, therefore publishers who put up the initial development costs (and so take all the initial risk) prefer to fund games which imitate past titles that have been successful, rather than risky new ideas with no proven track record.

This is unfortunate as a once exciting and creative industry has become stifled with a lot of new titles simply variants of old tired themes.

But the developers of flatspace have gone the way of marketing their game exclusively over the internet and it seems a lot of frustrated indy developers are going this way.  

The game, although soft sci-fi mush is fun and addictive and also considerably polished and professional and to me is an excellent example of achieving good results on a low budget. I especially liked the intro which I thought was simple, but effective.

The game is available from their web site, but is a 16 MB download, so rather large for those on dialup.  You also need DirectX 9 to run it which might not install on older versions of Windows and is also a considerable download.