There's a Discord that assembles online games run by United Stellar Navy (it's officially an role-playing community, but the EmptyEpsilon games aren't heavy on it): https://www.unitedstellarnavy.net
They organized a few 50+ player games last year, which have some videos on YouTube. A bit chaotic without context, but if you want to see the upper scope of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHExJWYB8CM
EmptyEpsilon also has traction as a LARP platform, thanks in parts to being pretty straightforward to modify in source, using Lua to script scenarios, and having a rudimentary optional HTTP API to trigger scenario events, manipulate game state, and control player stations.
The custom backend for the tech, which included several systems and physical interfaces outside of EE that interfaced with the game, got a good talk at RopeCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE7j1SgUpKs
Artemis (on which this is based, if loosely) is most fun when you have hardware built to simulate the environment of a bridge.
Recently, the most involved bridge setup for Artemis I've ever seen - present at Convergence and other geek conventions in the Midwest - was given up for adoption, owing to its enormous size and the owner's desire to reclaim garage space.
Truly huge, since it was room-sized. I would have liked to take it but I don't have the space.
I played some bridge game at a convention a few years ago with my buddies. I wish I remembered the name... but the main issue was that it wasn't quite "hectic" enough to require so many people to be in so many different roles.
I used to play Starcraft Brood War at low-levels of competitiveness (maybe ~120 APM or so, D-rank Team Liquid. Very low end of competitive). I also enjoy Factorio and Pikmin, so I'm no stranger to multitasking.
Ideally, you want to have a game where so much is going on, that you *NEED* to split up the tasks to multiple teammates. I don't know, maybe have each of the players doing an "Overcook'd" style minigame, trying to do whatever their sections of the ship need to get done.
So the idea is that each player needs to actually focus their mind on their minigame, but _ALSO_ needs to juggle the discussion with the captain / bridge. I can't imagine how a game like that would work, but... sitting around calmly in a "Star Trek" style bridge isn't very fun IMO.
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I think we have an issue of expectations vs gameplay. Anything that requires a team of multiple humans would necessarily be incredibly hectic. (See DOTA, Counterstrike, Overwatch, and other team games).
But on the other hand, there are people who want to role-play Star Trek scenarios, which isn't... very realistic from a team perspective. Just as combat in Hollywood is unrealistic (1 vs 5 fight is really a sequence of 1 vs 1 fights 5 times in a row: every enemy waiting their appropriate turn with the hero...) Star Trek scenes progress logically and simply, for the audience to follow. Its almost the opposite of the chaos that requires a command structure of any kind.
"Archon" / Team Melee from Starcraft 2 / Starcraft Brood War was also a good bit of fun, since two humans playing 1-commander requires communication (make sure both players are going for the same build), and you naturally figure out how to split up work with your teammate.
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I guess a more appropriate "Bridge" game is "keep talking or the bomb explodes". At least for people who want "my" style of hectic team-based game with difficult communication going on. If someone can amp up the "difficulty" of bridge games up to this level, it'd be more interesting to me.
> I think we have an issue of expectations vs gameplay. Anything that requires a team of multiple humans would necessarily be incredibly hectic.
I used to develop simulations as part of the combat systems development team of a military ship builder. I have assisted to actual training which I guess you could view as the ultimate bridge simulator. I think the main issue with bridge simulator is that you can't really simulate a bridge without the complexity which requires having multiple people on the bridge but at the time you can't ask your players to follow days of formation before playing.
It seems to me that in the game simpler model, the roles which end up assigned to players are always somewhat arbitrary and convoluted. As they are so artificial, it's not surprising some people end up with little to do.
As an aside, amusingly, all the bridge simulators seem to have user interfaces which are both less user friendly and older looking than the actual ship interfaces I used to work on. I find that endlessly funny.
I think Captain Sonar (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/171131/captain-sonar) is a great example. I haven't seen an online version of this, which is disappointing - it's hard to get 8 people who are willing to play it in one place very often. It's PvP, so a bit different from the typical bridge simulator, but it has the feature of everyone playing different mini games, but the mini games have to sync regularly, and everyone needs to be fairly aware of the overview as well.
I haven't seen any other game that is this stressful/hectic, to the point that we typically take breaks between rounds because many people find their heart rates/stress levels become uncomfortable while playing.
> Ideally, you want to have a game where so much is going on, that you NEED to split up the tasks to multiple teammates. I don't know, maybe have each of the players doing an "Overcook'd" style minigame, trying to do whatever their sections of the ship need to get done.
Puzzle Pirates really nailed this for me; each ship had a number of action stations (with different kinds of puzzles) that did different tasks, such as providing speed/maneuverability to the ship, pumping the bilge, or keeping the cannons loaded. This all came together in ship-to-ship combat, where having the crew man the stations appropriately was integral to the captain being able to fight other ships... and then boarding was another game.
Since you mention Overcooked, when last I played we actually used a non-player "captain" who was watching for bottlenecks, environmental hazards, and upcoming food orders; as a player you can get tunnel vision when working your specific station(s) and having that coordinator really helps.
Some of the EmptyEpsilon scenarios are very much like this, and many have tunable difficulty settings to increase the number and frequency of things like enemy activity. The enemy AI is extremely simplistic, but the chaos on the bridge tends to balance it out.
Minigames come up pretty often for EE, with one problem being that they aren't fulfilling when there's less to do and overwhelming when there's more. The only station that has them in EE is the Relay/communications station, which models hacking other ships with puzzle minigames.
Space Alert[1] (board game) is awesome for that sort of chaos. When I played with friends, we decided we needed a non-player captain to keep us on track even though it isn't in the rules.
> ... sitting around calmly in a "Star Trek" style bridge isn't very fun IMO.
You need to embrace the whole experience. Your RL STDs? You've just been to a planet where you encountered a very demanding warrior queen. Can you get medical to sort it out before it wipes out your crew or your extracurriculars? Can you get Comms to alter the ship records? All the while acting normal at your station?
If it were simulation hard SF torchships or slower craft, that would be exactly it - you (hopefully) calmly observe you options and plan for a mostly automated very hectic encounter with the enemy ship screeching towards you at hundreds if not thousands of relative km/s, with the laws of physics making sure you will meet at this point. The waves of autonomous missiles you sent an hour ago might do something, but most likely your ship mounted weapons will have to do most of the work at a couple thousand km. No fancy jump drive to get you out of this - you have to fight your way out and make the other party into a cloud of expanding plasma!
Not intended as a simulationistic game at all, but one of the funnest multiplayer asymmetric ship combat games I ever played was Subspace, or now, Subspace Continuum[1]. In some game modes you could "join" another ship in the 2d universe, manning a separate set of guns, while the primary pilot flew around & blasted as usual. It was a force multiplier, a blast joining a huge floating blob. But also, all it took was a couple well placed shots & your whole blob was toast!
There's also Guns of Icarus[2], where you are a crew member on a flying steampunk airship. You move around between stations, which let you pilot, shoot, repair systems, which does have more of the asymmetric break down of responsibilities. It sort of feels like you're playing a FTL character, in a 3D, steampunk, desert planet environment.
Overall I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities in asymmetric gameplay, in exploring how to game together by creating different roles that have to collaborate.
Lovers in a dangerous spacetime is also a fun couch coop with different roles in a 2D spaceship.
Each of the 4 weapons platforms faces a different direction, so you need to run around to cover everything. And then there are engines and shields and the map and superweapon
> game together by creating different roles that have to collaborate
Not like any of the games being discussed here, but this made me immediately think of Tribes 2. Each class had a role in winning, and you couldn't win without a team comprised of most of them. (Or maybe you could, but it was very, very difficult.)
Midair has made the attempt (https://midair.gg/ and "MidAir, Community Edition"), but is focusing on light-armor "capture the flag". They have a lot of the other "stuff" implemented, but it isn't/wasn't balanced by the time I got out of it.
Artemis dev here. I think very highly of Empty Epsilon and the other spaceship bridge games. I'm currently hard at work on Artemis 3, which is a ground-up re-write, using Python for embedded scripting.
I really enjoy Artemis, and it was my first bridge simulator, and it's no exaggeration to say that you basically invented an entire genre of video game.
We played Artemis in the NYC Board Game group, connecting multiple bridges together. At one point we had four bridges talking, with Communications officers on Mumble talking to each other across NYC, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
I have very strong positive feelings for it, and have purchased it at least twice. Thank you for not DRMing it.
You've certainly done an amazing job of capturing the feeling of Star Trek without impinging on copyright. That's not easy.
That said, besides the moral issues around Free/Open Source software- the reason I initially switched to EE was both practical and moral. I'm a Free Software guy, but also, Artemis under WINE is not very good, and EE has builds for every platform other than iOS.
I wonder if you might find a better model that would let you work on it without making it proprietary. For example, might Patreon give you that reliable income source? I'm genuinely asking.
I might be speaking out of turn here, but I think techbear actually makes money from Artemis, and it's kind of his job, so this is unlikely. Me (Space Nerds in Space author) and Daid (Empty Epsilon author) just have our projects as hobbies and I can't speak for Daid, but I make between $15 and $20 per month from SNIS from a handful of wonderful patrons. I'd be surprised if Daid makes a lot more than that (but even more surprised if he makes less, as EE is much more popular than SNIS). Open source games just don't seem to work very well as a reasonable source of income, and it's generally a mistake to treat them as income sources. Nobody needs them, and nobody feels an obligation to pay for them (they're free software after all -- why would anyone pay for them? Isn't a part of the point of free software that you don't have to pay for them? Arguably a bigger point is freedom to modify, but the not paying part is nice too, and realistically, more people are "not paying" than are "modifying".) Is there any open source game that makes its author a living? I'm not aware of one. It's hard to make money from any open source project, but open source games are especially difficult in that regard, in my experience.
And to be clear, I actually value the "modifying" part more then the "paying" part. If someone sends me a patch, it definitely makes my day.
techbear and Daid and me are alright, but let's be real, we're no John Carmack. These are super-niche games, not world-beating blockbusters like Doom was.
> I wouldn't call Ryzom a world-beating blockbuster.
I wouldn't either.
But you've already got two open source alternatives to Artemis, and you're asking this guy to risk his job on a gamble in which the odds are incredibly stacked against him.
I mean, if you're on the open source bandwagon, that's great, but just go with one of the open source alternatives that are right in front of you. You don't need to badger techbear.
Since I first made Artemis, the option to open-source has been available, and I had several reasons not to do so. First, I've always been a very lone-wolf coder, and I find it hard to collaborate on big projects with anyone. Either they don't move fast enough for me, or I lose interest entirely. It's a real personal failing.
Second, my code is embarrassing. I've come a long way since I started Artemis 11 years ago. But I now treat my own Artemis 2 code like a toxic waste dump; I don't wanna go back there. So the idea of exposing anyone else to my codebase isn't exciting.
Third, I've actually made very good money from Artemis. I don't make much now, but at the height of Artemis's popularity in 2013, I made over 100k that year. I did it by asking for the sale, DRM-free, money-back-guarantee, and ensuring people that the project was still alive. Donations are great, but there's nothing wrong with asking for an honest sale.
Honest question: suppose Artemis was created by a small game studio. Suppose the studio maintained paid to use servers for people to play it on-line with most server-side processing so cheaters wouldn't have any advantage. Also suppose the entire art not freely available. Would open sourcing it affect how much money could be made from it?
Bought ABSB in 2010, still got the receipt, $43.13 Canadian. Tried to get an upgrade code to ABSB 2 in 2013. Never heard back, despite trying every email address I could find. Pretty disappointing.
These bridge simulator games have been going on for at least 8 years, by my count. With rivals setting up shop next to each other in various conventions.
Hacker News does have this thing where if you see one story you like, people often post similar stories in the hours following.
There's also a hard-to-find book from 1978, "The Complete Star Ship: A Simulation Project" by Roger Garrett, that included a pseudocode implementation of a bridge simulator. https://www.biblio.com/9780918398109
Loved Objects in Space (wish they'd open-source it or let modders at it) but it's single player.
Unless… maybe my definition of bridge simulator is wrong? I thought they're inherently multiplayer, and having hardware tie-ins (which I what Objects in Space had) weren't a core feature of the genre.
There's a Discord that assembles online games run by United Stellar Navy (it's officially an role-playing community, but the EmptyEpsilon games aren't heavy on it): https://www.unitedstellarnavy.net
They organized a few 50+ player games last year, which have some videos on YouTube. A bit chaotic without context, but if you want to see the upper scope of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHExJWYB8CM
EmptyEpsilon also has traction as a LARP platform, thanks in parts to being pretty straightforward to modify in source, using Lua to script scenarios, and having a rudimentary optional HTTP API to trigger scenario events, manipulate game state, and control player stations.
A Finnish group used EE in their large 2019 LARP event Odysseus: http://www.odysseuslarp.com
The custom backend for the tech, which included several systems and physical interfaces outside of EE that interfaced with the game, got a good talk at RopeCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE7j1SgUpKs
A French LARP scene has an active fork with features more geared toward that usage: https://github.com/tdelc/EmptyEpsilon