Tarr Chronicles Interview

[falcon]

GamingNexus has posted a short interview (http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=Article&I=1586)with one of the designers of the space shooter Tarr Chronicles. They cover a lot of the basics of the game as well as why space shooters aren't as popular as they used to be.

Space shooters aren't as popular as they once were, so why take the risk on new one? Why do you think the genre isn't more popular?
Well, there are many reasons why we did it…the first and key reason is our love for this genre and our fond memories of the games I listed before - Homeworld, FreeSpace, etc.

There is a wide variety of genres and, probably, many gamers prefer more character-oriented titles that enable you to control a person, not a ship. We aimed at developing a sense of personification of the ship and we believe that Tarr Chronicles will be a real joy even for fans of the genre and those who have never played space shooters before.

What do you think? The game actually looks pretty solid for the genre.

[XxSATANxX]

Tried the demo.

Looks fun.

[karak]

Tried the demo. Actually not bad at all. It's no Freelancer but hey what is?

[KingGorilla]

It is not that Space Shooters are not popular, it is just that there has not been a good one since X-wing vs. Tie Fighter. Immagine if all the flight genre had to offer were Blazing Angels and Ace Combat.

[Phoenix1985]

I'm surprised we played the same demo... while the game looks pretty and the mechanics are mostly ok, it was buggy as all hell, the voice acting was pretty much the worst of any game (And I've played that Ufo: Enemy Unknown clone), and the written text was equally intelligible. If they fixed those things, sure, I'd get the game. But not before.

[karak]

It is not that Space Shooters are not popular, it is just that there has not been a good one since X-wing vs. Tie Fighter. Immagine if all the flight genre had to offer were Blazing Angels and Ace Combat.

DUDE. Freelancer rocked. I swear I will "mouseflight" to your house and shoot you with my modded Battlestar Galactica:)

[camberiu]

Initially, we made the controls like they were in Freespace – just using the mouse and keyboard however later we added joystick control so it’s up to you to choose the best option

What?????? I am betting that this guy has never played Freespace to say such a thing.

[01010]

It is not that Space Shooters are not popular, it is just that there has not been a good one since X-wing vs. Tie Fighter.

Freespace 2 says hello.

[Wayfarer]

Im pretty sure he meant Freelancer not Freespace

[MacD]

I thought Freelancer was a pretty OK game. A beautifull game, surely: I have never before or since seen nebula/dust clouds done so well...so much so that I'd almost say that smoke is a solved computational problem for realtime applications.
But the game fell flat for me. Mouseflight sucks and took away most of the sense of dogfighting. The game's story was horrible and paced utterly wrong (to the point that the last poart dragged you along without any chance to explore the universe...which is BAD for a freeroaming universe simulation!). There were numerous upgrades which were omitted (time constraints, butr sorely missed). The game starts off great, but doesn't go that extra mile to keep it a great game in the long run. The MP was great though.

As for this game....demo? Never knew about it so I'm gonna get that as soon as I'm done typing this. But the interview is strange to me. I can get that the visual style of Homeworld had an impact, but that's an RTS, not a spacesim. The interviewer could have cleared that up. I do like the screenshots....they look pretty nice, and I can see the Homeworld-inspired space-megalyth structures. I just hope that the joystick controls are integral to the gameplay and not tacked on as an afterthought.

[ElectricMonk]

Freelancer was awesome. I thought mouseflight was awesome even though I had to re-adjust to non invert controls.

[Kem0sabe]

Cant get the demo to run on windows vista. :(

[Shifter]

Yeah I ran the first mission in the demo on Vista, then it locked up on me. It seemed ok, but I'm not sure it's all that much better than X-3 or any of the other recent space shooters.