Solar Vengeance

Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:37:00 GMT

Solar Vengeance

Solar Vengeance kicks it Old-School with a capital “O.” Everything from the name, to the graphics, to the website design, is decidedly from a bygone era of PC computing, and that’s fine with me. SV debuted in 1995 as a turn-based strategy game with 3 unit types – 13 years later you can command 24 types of units in real-time, against human or AI opponents, on or offline, in a number of different customizable scenarios. The game has also gone from shareware to freeware.

Like many good strategy games, the basic rules are relatively simple, but open up complex gameplay. The goal of the game is to take over the Capital StarSystems of your opponents while protecting your own. To do this, you must create StarShips and expand your empire by conquering neighboring StarSystems, which will then develop resources and allow you to create more StarShips.

In any game you can create 6 types of StarShips, chosen beforehand out of a possible 24. Each StarShip has two ratings – an Engine rating and a Primary rating – that determine how effective the ship is. For WarShips, the most basic “soldier” unit, the Primary rating is Weapons, and determines how strong the ship is. A WarShip with a higher Weapons rating will always prevail over a weaker one.

Each Scenario in SV is randomly generated based on a few set parameters like “Number of Star Systems” and “Cluster Density,” making this a fitting game to mention as we wrap up our Procedural Generation Competition. But what’s really awesome is that most of the Scenarios and AIs available with the game are developed in C# by the small, but enthusiastic, Solar Vengeance community. And as creator Dion Kurczek continues to work dedicatedly on the game, who knows what we’ll see next?

(Source: Alehkhs, via Puppy Buckets)

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Comments

  1. First Post Getter said 44 minutes later:

    Me be first. Not you be first. I am first have gotten to the first post AGAIN.

    haaaaa

    so fuck youse all

  2. BeamSplashX said about 1 hour later:

    I almost beat the first post getter (comments were 0 when I read the post). ONE DAY, FPG, ONE DAY!

    Ahem. So does the game add “Lord” to your name, or do you believe yourself to truly be Lord Derek? Which is the indie equivalent of Lord British, I guess.

  3. Alehkhs said about 2 hours later:

    Alright! Glad to see you tried it out “Lord” Derek.

    I look forward to playing against you soon.

  4. Derek said about 2 hours later:

    Haha, the default name had “Lord” in it, and you’re supposed to be a “StarLord” so I figured why not?

  5. Ogmobot said about 2 hours later:

    Hey! I’ve played the original version of this game! It’s awesome.

  6. gnome said about 6 hours later:

    I remember the reviews! Yes, ‘tis a great one!

  7. Radix said about 8 hours later:

    Is that the Space Quest font?

  8. Pragma said about 12 hours later:

    Look at what I found in the HTML of the website index page:

    “Bygone era of PC computing” indeed.

  9. Pragma said about 12 hours later:

    Erg… fail. here we go:

    meta name=”GENERATOR” content=”Microsoft FrontPage 5.0”

  10. zee said about 15 hours later:

    So, I’m a little unclear both from this post and from wandering around the author’s site. Is the game turn-based or real-time? Or is there a mix? Or is it an option to play it either way?

    I’m just asking because I was sold on the game until the “real-time” bit. There’s not nearly enough turn-based strategy games, and I’m always interested in new ones.

  11. Derek said about 16 hours later:

    It’s real-time, but the game moves at one-second “impulses” and you can pause at any time.

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