Shattered Horizon is set in the near future, where privately funded companies have begun military operations against each other in orbit. A huge explosion has put a large amount of moon rock (the titular shattered horizon) into space, and this orbital flotsam now plays host to a guerrilla war between space-suited mercenaries and miner.
6DOF gameplay:
While you use normal FPS controls to move around, with forward propelling you in whichever direction you happen to be facing, you're also able to bind a key or mouse button to \"rotate\", allowing you to move into whatever alignment you fancy at the flick of a wrist.
Wow, this is the first FPS I've seen in a while that looks like a legit 6DoF. Hopefully the weapon balance is decent and allows for some dogfighting (unlike the distance-sniping in that vid).
Wiki shows it as a Windows-platform game. I suppose it wouldn't have much success on consoles just because of controller limitations.
I'm really looking forward to this now. Thanks, Pandora!
Foil wrote:Wow, this is the first FPS I've seen in a while that looks like a legit 6DoF. Hopefully the weapon balance is decent and allows for some dogfighting (unlike the distance-sniping in that vid).
(...)
I'm really looking forward to this now. Thanks, Pandora!
same here; I am quite hyped up about this now. And Thenior's new trailer looks really good. Although the levels seem awfully large so far --- I wonder how this will play out in deathmatches, with fewer people involved.
Wow! That second vid... I'm actually kindof hyped about this.
I think this beats minerwars by a longshot. Minerwars seemed kindof like a game a few people were working on during their spare time, and IMO MMO's are an enormous waste of time.
Foil wrote:Thanks, Thenior. Now I'm curious about the movement when the players have their feet on a surface. I wonder if the movement becomes any different.
Apparently, there is a key that allows you to "lock on" to any surface (does it have to be metal?). Not sure about what the advantages of this are. Probably that players don't have to deal with inertia anymore, and can duck in and out of cover more efficiently.
I registered on the Shattered Horizon forums, and asked a few questions. Here's the response from one of their developers:
FM_Antti wrote:
Foil wrote:I've looked around the game specs, and I'm wondering about a few things regarding player movement and control:
1. Is there a difference in movement or response when standing on a surface? If so, are there advantages/disadvantages to being on a surface?
You get a movement speed penalty when attached to a surface, with the benefit of higher accuracy when shooting.
Foil wrote:2. Is movement fairly inertial? E.g. Is there momentum to overcome when reversing or changing direction?
You have inertia when flying with your rocket pack but not when walking on surfaces.
Foil wrote:3. Is there an established maximum rotational speed (like turning a vehicle), or is it mouselook-ish (like other shooters, where the player can spin around in virtually an instant)?
We designed the game around responsive FPS controls, so moving the camera is "mouselook" style. Certain special situations (getting caught in the radius of an EMP blast) can limit your turning speed.
Foil wrote:4. Will there be options for joystick control?
Joystick control isn't currently planned. We prototyped different input methods earlier in the game's development.
Foil wrote:5. Will S.H. implement tri-chording? I.e. Are multiple concurrent thrusts vector-added? [For example, if a player uses a combined forward + left + up thrust, will this result in more acceleration than a single forward thrust?
Acceleration and maximum speed are the same regardless of movement direction and how many keys are pressed at the same time. We abstracted actual thrusters for the sake of intuitive controls.
That sucks, I would have loved to play the open beta.
The only thing that bothers me really, is that they will allow mouselook in this game. IMO, that is one of many things I like about console games, you don't have to deal with players that have a 3500 dpi mouse and can get a super accurate aim. Sure, you can amp up your sensitivity but you will sacrifice accuracy if you do that so most people keep their aim at default levels.
[]V[]essenjah wrote:That sucks, I would have loved to play the open beta.
The only thing that bothers me really, is that they will allow mouselook in this game. IMO, that is one of many things I like about console games, you don't have to deal with players that have a 3500 dpi mouse and can get a super accurate aim. Sure, you can amp up your sensitivity but you will sacrifice accuracy if you do that so most people keep their aim at default levels.
That's almost like saying it's not fair when someone has a faster computer and gets a perfect framerate.
And regardless of whether or not you have a very fast mouse, you still have to have the skill of hand-eye coordination.
[]V[]essenjah wrote:That sucks, I would have loved to play the open beta.
The only thing that bothers me really, is that they will allow mouselook in this game. IMO, that is one of many things I like about console games, you don't have to deal with players that have a 3500 dpi mouse and can get a super accurate aim. Sure, you can amp up your sensitivity but you will sacrifice accuracy if you do that so most people keep their aim at default levels.
That's almost like saying it's not fair when someone has a faster computer and gets a perfect framerate.
And regardless of whether or not you have a very fast mouse, you still have to have the skill of hand-eye coordination.
I saw the last video posted here and while it looks cool, it's going to be to muhc of a sniper game. To many places to hide in a such a HUGE play area. Also, it will be a ground pounder game. It's based on those controls. I will keep an eye on it.
I'm not sure that it's really a long-distance / sniper game. From some of the Beta-tester comments, there are quite a few close-up melee-style kills.
The thing that concerns me is that they said there's a dropoff in accuracy when shooting from space compared to shooting from a surface. I hope that doesn't tend to prevent the kind of open tumbling dogfights we all know and love.
What I read on their site was that you won't tumble but you won't have the best accuracy. Sadly it will leave XP users out of the loop as it's only for Vista and Windows 7 and DX 10. I won't be playing this for years or unless I win the lottery, whichever comes first.
One day we'll come to admit the reality that a descent 4 will never happen because the masses are too dumb to handle genuine 6-dof battles; (& thus finance such an effort) enabling us to ascend to demigod status & join the Alterans.
Hm. Looks like my system meets the minimum requirements, but not quite the recommended ones. I'm planning on getting it anyway; I'll let you guys know how it plays for me.
It's official: There will be no options for independent roll input (rolling will be solely tied to right-click + mouse) until a post-release patch. Link
