Space flight simulator game

A space flight simulator game is a genre of video games that lets players experience space flight in a spacecraft. Highly realistic examples include Orbiter and Microsoft Space Simulator.

Space flight simulators, at one time popular, have for most of the 2000s been considered a "dead" genre.

Space combat simulator
Space combat simulators feature a futuristic simulation of space flight involving combat, as opposed to the modern-day and highly realistic simulation of space flight in other space flight simulators. Such games generally place the player into the controls of a small starfighter or smaller starship in a military force of similar and larger spaceships. The prominent Wing Commander, Tachyon: The Fringe, X-Wing and Freespace series all use this approach. Exceptions include the first Independence War and the Star Trek: Bridge Commander series, which model craft at a larger scale and/or in a more strategic fashion.

Space combat simulators tend to be mission-based, as opposed to the more open-ended nature of space trading and combat simulators.

Space trading and combat simulator
The general formula for space trading and combat simulators  , which has changed little since its genesis, is for the player to begin in a relatively small, outdated ship (that said, the ship the player controls is generally larger than that in pure space combat simulator) with little money or status and for the player to work his way up, gaining in status and power through trading, exploration, combat or a mix of different methods. Notable examples include Elite, Wing Commander: Privateer, and Freelancer.

In some instances, plot plays only a limited role and only a loose narrative framework tends to be provided (in certain titles of the X series, for instance, players may ignore the plot for as long as they wish and are even given the option to disable the plot completely and instead play in "sandbox" mode ) -- but many games of this genre place a strong emphasis on factional conflict, leading to many small mission-driven subplots that unravel the tensions of the galaxy.

Games of this type often allow the player to choose among multiple roles to play and multiple paths to victory. This aspect of the genre is very popular, but some people have complained that, in some titles, the leeway given to the player too often is only superficial, and that, in reality, the roles offered to players are very similar, and open-ended play too frequently restricted by scripted sequences. As an example, Freelancer has been criticised for being too rigid in its narrative structure, being in one case compared negatively with Grand Theft Auto, another series praised for its open-ended play.

All space trading and combat games feature the core gameplay elements of directly controlling the flight of some sort of space vessel, generally armed, and of navigating from one area to another for a variety of reasons. As technology has improved it has been possible to implement a number of extensions to gameplay, such as dynamic economies, cooperative online play and realistic flight models based on Newtonian physics, but the core gameplay has changed little over the years. Some recent games, for instance EVE Online, have expanded the scope of the experience by including thousands of simultaneous online players in what is sometimes referred to as a "living universe" -- a dream some have held since the genre's early beginnings.

An additional subclass of space trading games remove combat entirely, focusing instead entirely on trading and economic manipulation in order to achieve success.

Control systems
Most modern space flight simulators on the PC allow a player to utilise a combination of the WASD keys of the keyboard and mouse as a means of controlling the game (games such as Microsoft's Freelancer use this control system exclusively ). By far the most popular control system among genre enthusiasts, however, is the joystick. Most fans prefer to use this input method whenever possible, but expense and practicality mean that many are forced to use the keyboard and mouse combination (or gamepad if such is the case). The lack of uptake among the majority of modern gamers has also made joysticks a sort of an anachronism, though some new controller designs and simplification of controls offer the promise that space sims may be playable in their full capacity on gaming consoles at some time in the future. In fact, X3: Reunion, sometimes considered one of the more cumbersome and difficult series of space simulations to master, was initially planned for the Xbox but later cancelled.

History


The modern space flight simulation genre emerged at the point when home computers became sufficiently powerful to draw basic wireframe graphics in real-time. The game Elite is widely considered to be the breakthrough game of the genre, and as having successfully melded the "space trading" and flight sim genres. Elite was highly influential upon later games of its type, although it did have some precursors, and games similar to Elite are often called "Elite-clones".

Elite
Elite has made a lasting impression on developers, worldwide, extending even into different genres. In interviews, senior producers of CCP Games cited Elite as one of the inspirations for their acclaimed MMORPG, EVE Online. Thorolfur Beck credits Elite as the game that impacted him most on the Commodore 64. Developers of Jumpgate Evolution, Battlecruiser 3000AD, Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Hard Truck: Apocalyptic Wars and Flatspace likewise all claim Elite as a source of inspiration.

Elite was named one of the sixteen most influential games in history at Telespiele, a German technology and games trade show, and is being exhibited at such places as the London Science Museum in the "Game On" exhibition organized and toured by the Barbican Art Gallery. Elite was also named #12 on IGN's 2000 "Top 25 PC Games of All Time" list, the #3 most influential video game ever by the Times Online in 2007, and "best game ever" for the BBC Micro by Beebug Magazine in 1984. Elite's sequel, Frontier: Elite II, was named #77 on PC Zone's "101 Best PC Games Ever" list in 2007. Similar praise has been bestowed elsewhere in the media from time to time.

Elite is one of the most popularly requested games to be remade, and some argue that it is still the best example of the genre to date, with more recent titles&mdash;including its sequel&mdash;not rising up to its level. It has been credited as opening the door for future online persistent worlds, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, and as being the first truly open-ended game. It is to this day one of the most ambitious games ever made, and yet resides in only 22 kilobytes of memory and on a single floppy disk.

Other examples
Elite was not the first game to take flight simulator mechanics into outer space. Other notable examples include Star Raiders (1979), Space Shuttle: A Journey into Space (1982) and Rendezvous: A Space Shuttle Simulation (1982). Following Elite were games such as The Halley Project (1985), Echelon (1987) and Microsoft Space Simulator (1994).

Some tabletop and board games, such as Traveller or Merchant of Venus, also feature themes of space combat and trade. Traveller influenced the development of Elite (the main character in Traveller is named "Jamison"; the main character in Elite is named "Jameson") and Jumpgate Evolution. Trade Wars and TradeWars 2002 were early BBS door games that featured trading and combat set in outer space, and were influential in their own right.

Decline
The seeming decline of the space flight simulators in the late '90s coincided with the rise of the RTS, FPS and RPG game genres, with such examples as Doom, Warcraft and Diablo. The very things that made these games classics, such as their open-endedness, complex controls and attention to detail, have been cited as reasons for this decline. Some recent franchises such as the X series and EVE Online, however, appear to have broken this mold. The open source community has also been active, with recent projects such as FS2 Open and Vega Strike serving as platforms for nonprofessional efforts. Remakes of Elite and Privateer are even being made using the Vega Strike engine.