By Jim Rossignol on August 13th, 2009 at 4:51 pm.
A space MMO based on the concept of destructible asteroids? Yes, it’s one of those offbeat ideas that might just work. Developers Keen Software dropped us a line to announce the game, Miner Wars, and explained that it was a “space shooter played in a fully destructible environment and is a combination of single player story game and MMO.” So far so unclear. And then: “As a player, you operate an advanced mining ship in an open world asteroid belt area. You dig kilometers of tunnels, harvest the ore, travel the solar system, fight your enemies and discover mysterious alien secrets.” Which sounds kind of awesome. On closer inspection it seems to be the aberrant alchemical offspring of Descent, Minecraft, Eve Online, Dig Dug, and Red Faction. An open world game with beautiful, destructible space rocks. Yeah, it’ll probably take a couple of videos of the thing in action to really get your head round it. Fortunately, they’re beneath the click. Brilliant, eh?
13/08/2009 at 16:57 Dubbill says:
This appeals to the bit of my brain that used to love play Pocket Tanks, controlling both tanks and trying to clear every bit of earth from the screen.
13/08/2009 at 17:01 rivalin says:
Looks fairly awesome, those terrible stock ship models aside. Hope that travel the solar system implies seamless exploration.
13/08/2009 at 17:10 Dominic White says:
The great thing about this concept – All in space, with environments literally carved out by the players themselves – makes it pretty much the idea indie MMO. The only thing I’d worry about is bandwidth and server requirements on the devlopers side.
Games about digging are fun. Infiniminer is addictive, and adding Descent-style space combat to that mix can only make it better.
I’m assuming that in addition to rival miners, there are the obligatory alien drones to contend with, also ala Descent?
13/08/2009 at 17:11 Dominic White says:
ideal indie MMO, even, on account of them having to actually produce very little in the way of costly and time-consuming content, and instead focus on making the gameplay mechanics fun.
13/08/2009 at 17:19 JonFitt says:
Along with Doom2, Descent was one of the first games I bought when I first got a PC (upgrading from an AtariST).
It took maze traversal to a whole new level, one quick flip and dodge while fighting a baddie and you could get completely disoriented. It would take a while to work out which tunnel you’d come from and which one you were heading for. It really helped my spatial awareness skills.
13/08/2009 at 17:25 the affront says:
Sounds awesome, as a concept.
Hope they add decent physics so that you’ll have to compensate for rotating roids and/or can mine roids on a collision course with each other (or set one of them with a rival of yours inside on one yourself with explosives/etc) or other celestial objects, so only the most daring miners get to hollow out that roid falling into the local star for the maximum reward.
Although the trailers didn’t really look promising for this.. yet still definitely cool enough to give it a shot.
13/08/2009 at 17:31 Berzee says:
Ooh, the potential for creative traps ^_^
Now asteroids by themselves don’t have a lot of personality, so we can hope that there will be some charm in the interface, ship design, missions, NPCs and alien secrets…or at least in your home base. If there’s something to give a human touch to all those rocks, it could be brilliant. =)
13/08/2009 at 17:40 Vinraith says:
Huh, that looks cool enough that it’s a real shame it’s an MMO. It always distresses me to see a creative idea disappear down that particular hole.
13/08/2009 at 17:50 Dominic White says:
@Vinraith – missed the part where there’s a singleplayer campaign as well?
13/08/2009 at 17:51 JonFitt says:
Yeah, I pretty much switch off when I see ‘MMO’.
13/08/2009 at 18:09 eyemessiah says:
MMO.
13/08/2009 at 18:11 Vinraith says:
@Dominic
I didn’t miss it, I just don’t trust it. Hellgate comes to mind. If something is advertising itself as an MMO, how likely is it that a significant bulk of development resources are going towards single player? I’m happy to be wrong, of course, and will keep an eye on future information in the hopes that I am.
13/08/2009 at 18:24 Feintlocke says:
I was gonna say “2009, the year someone finally makes good use of voxels”. I then found out that the Crysis terrain engine makes use of them which prompted a “Wait, what?! We’ve come a long way since Outcast”.
13/08/2009 at 18:29 TheArmyOfNone says:
Give me now.
13/08/2009 at 18:36 Xercies says:
How can you have an epic story about mining asteroids…
13/08/2009 at 18:56 Tei says:
Or a movie about ASTEROIDS?
13/08/2009 at 19:01 superking208 says:
Jim, by Minecraft you mean Infiniminer, because one’s actually a game with structure and a purpose that would be a positive comparison and one is blocks.
13/08/2009 at 19:01 Demon Beaver says:
By golly, why have we never thought of mining with automatic rocket launchers?
13/08/2009 at 19:10 Wacky says:
wait wait wait,what happened to the site interface?It looks all blogy and professional now?
13/08/2009 at 19:14 Sartoris says:
I liked the old one better. Boo.
13/08/2009 at 19:15 Sartoris says:
Oh, just read the announcement. Oops.
13/08/2009 at 19:18 Alex says:
This almost sounds like what I wanted Spore’s space game to be. It obviously doesn’t have the scale, but I’d rather be rooting around for stuff instead of just dropping a colony for spice money or detecting a new chocolate terraforming tool.
13/08/2009 at 19:18 DMJ says:
So I could… sculpt an enormous asteroid into an obscene shape?
13/08/2009 at 19:19 nabeel says:
Hey, I love the new look!
*runs*
13/08/2009 at 19:19 Alec Meer says:
No redesign, just a snafu. Normality will be restored soon.
13/08/2009 at 19:23 The Innocent says:
I hope there’s more to tie it all together than in Minecraft, which was only fun for an hour seeing as how there wasn’t any objective to it. Other than carving swastikas into the side of mountains, apparently.
13/08/2009 at 19:43 plant42 says:
Why the hell does every game trailer have to have that needlessly dramatic O Fortuna sounding chanting music? I mean maybe if you’re going to make some medieval RPG fine, but every damned game uses something similar?
‘Ok uh, we’re looking to tease our ? Anybody got any ideas for a trailer?’
‘I got it – how about really epic O Fortuna style chanting music with marketing sell-points flashing up overtop of game footage?’
‘Sweet, in addition to ‘Ship Upgrades’ flashing in can you throw in some explosions?’
13/08/2009 at 19:46 Schaulustiger says:
RPS looks quite unique now.
13/08/2009 at 20:02 Golden_Worm says:
Perfect time for the Games Media Award Judges to visit.
13/08/2009 at 20:06 JonFitt says:
RPS has had a shave and a haircut.
13/08/2009 at 20:15 FunkyLlama says:
what is this I don’t even
13/08/2009 at 20:27 bookwormat says:
white sites can’t jump
13/08/2009 at 20:42 Dominic White says:
While some may turn their nose up at the idea of an MMO, this is pretty much the perfect setting for it. Mining by yourself is pretty dull, but a dozen players working together to core out an asteroid, kill anything in there that might look hostile, then fight off any claimjumpers is likely to be a much more entertaining experience.
13/08/2009 at 21:04 Snook says:
Wait… explore the Solar System? does anyone else think that sounds a little bit small?
13/08/2009 at 21:19 Vinraith says:
@Snook
Wow, science fiction really has damaged popular perception of size, hasn’t it? Assuming an absence of faster than light travel, a solar system is PLENTY big.
13/08/2009 at 21:22 JonFitt says:
Hooray, we’re back in black.
13/08/2009 at 21:28 LionsPhil says:
In the absence of FTL, the Solar System is too big. Thirteen-odd hours to cross it, and it’s mostly full of nothing?
13/08/2009 at 21:30 Heliocentric says:
How much a month anyone know? If it tried to claim the full tariff i think it would make me turn my nose up.
13/08/2009 at 21:32 soylent robot says:
Looks pretty awesome. The blasting spherical holes in the rock reminds me of the Worms series, but 3D
13/08/2009 at 21:33 Vinraith says:
@Lionphil
13 hours?
Anyway, I agree, but then again the principle objects of interest in this case will be asteroids. A properly populated system has PLENTY of those.
13/08/2009 at 21:36 Wooly says:
“Gravatar bookwormat says:
white sites can’t jump”
Casual racismmmmm.
13/08/2009 at 21:36 JonFitt says:
It looks pretty, and the first trailer said, Single/Multiplayer, not MMO so that might not be too bad.
It’s not that I don’t like the concept of a Massively Multiplayer game, I just detest the reality. For example, I like the descriptions of Eve events and wars, but when I play an open universe trading game I want to be the boss of the universe in 40-100 hours. The thought of slaving away as a peon in a corporate machine sounds like work.
You are free to play in my universe where I get to be boss, but failing that I feel AI is the way to go, ergo single player or coop.
13/08/2009 at 21:37 Howard says:
Whoa! My Spidey Sense is having a fit! Did someone mention…DESCENT?!!!
Is this actually Descent-like or are you just taunting me with your cruel nostalgia jibes?
13/08/2009 at 21:37 JonFitt says:
@Vinraith: My guess was he was quoting the size of our solar system in light-hours. I didn’t check it though. Sounds about right.
13/08/2009 at 21:43 Howard says:
Wa-a-a-ait a minute, I thought that ship was familiar:
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/yager/screenshots.html?id=158670
(I know, I know, it’s not exact but still…)
13/08/2009 at 22:01 Vinraith says:
@JonFitt
Kuiper belt diameter, yeah, I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me. I tend to think of the solar system as bounded by the Oort cloud, which makes it considerably larger (and considerably emptier).
13/08/2009 at 22:04 obo says:
@DMJ: Yes, the grand dream of smashing a massive stone dildo into an excavation hole, then blasting your way through and out the other end. That’s a million-seller. Put that on the front of the box, except in Australia.
13/08/2009 at 22:04 Owen says:
Looks inter-est-ing…..hmm.
13/08/2009 at 22:18 Larington says:
Well, if memory serves, theres supposed to be an asteroid belt in this very solar system, believed to be the remains of a planet that either didn’t completely form or to which something pretty cataclysmic happened. And this belt of asteroids occasionally chucks rock in our direction, theres a pleasant thought.
13/08/2009 at 22:34 Vinraith says:
@Larington
This solar system is VERY well populated with asteroids, as we suspect are most. If nothing else, the leftovers of planet formation are more than sufficient to provide a fairly substantial pile of flying rubble. The densest part of the “belt” is between Jupiter and Mars (with Jupiter acting as a sort of asteroid vacuum and hauling around it’s own cadre of trojan asteroids along its orbit).
And yeah, we occasionally get buzzed (and more occasionally get hit) by asteroids (as well as comets from the Oort cloud, but that’s another issue). In fact, Jupiter has the effect of shielding us from a lot of potential impacts, while (it’s thought) ensuring that we get hit often enough to kick start evolution now and again. Quite a few mass extinction events were the product of asteroid impacts, like the Yucatan strike that killed off the dinosaurs.
13/08/2009 at 22:35 Heliocentric says:
@Larington it started some shit with pluto. Something about it not really being a planet. Pluto has a real temper.
13/08/2009 at 22:40 Larington says:
Glad to see folks are more knowledgeable than me, otherwise we’d be in a right state as a world (Then again we already are aren’t we?).
As to the concept, theres a lot of potential, but I think the developers might have to take a few risks to realise said potential to its fullest.
13/08/2009 at 22:54 Tei says:
the concept jupiter protect us is weak. meteors go where meteors go. don’t have to pass trough jupiter or anything, to hit us. is more like a casino with million of numbers, is the sheer size of it. is also like a dance, and like a dance, jupiter can change the trajectory of a meteor, so it hit on our planet.
13/08/2009 at 22:58 Vinraith says:
@Tei
It’s not about hitting Jupiter, it’s about Jupiters (comparitively enormous) gravity well. If you don’t think Jupiter has an impact on asteroid trajectories in this solar system, you haven’t done the math.
13/08/2009 at 23:06 Tei says:
A gravity well is not a “shield” that stop most stuff. Most stuff that hit a gravity well are too fast anyway, so will just change trajectory. I think you can even use one to accelerate yourself.
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/grav/primer.php
13/08/2009 at 23:18 JonFitt says:
@Howard: It reminded me more than a little of X3′s Buster:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v714/Major786/X3/x3screen00001.jpg
13/08/2009 at 23:26 MacBeth says:
The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter orbits is dense compared to the rest of the Solar System… but in fact even there the average separation between anything bigger than a grain of dust is at least 5 million km. If you were next to one you most likely couldn’t even see another one…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-science-fiction-movies for references…
13/08/2009 at 23:27 MacBeth says:
OK maybe not for grains of dust, but certainly for big ones (ie. in the ~1 km diameter range)
13/08/2009 at 23:40 Vinraith says:
@MacBeth
I didn’t want to get in to a diatribe about “all popular conceptions of asteroid belts are scientifically inaccurate) but you are, of course correct. These dense fields of rocks you see in games and movies just don’t exist.
13/08/2009 at 23:45 Vinraith says:
@Tei
You’re looking at this from the wrong angle. It’s not about Jupiter’s impact on ONE asteroid, it’s about Jupiter generating gaps in the asteroid field as a whole due to its gravitational influence and interaction with the sun’s gravity. Planetary physics isn’t my subfield, but there’s been extensive modelling that’s demonstrated that the presence of Jupiter has the net effect of reducing collision rates on the inner planets. There’ve been any number of peer reviewed papers on the subject, like this fairly recent one:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005Icar..179…63B
I’m trying to find something more accessible, but haven’t had a lot of luck yet.
14/08/2009 at 00:03 Tei says:
I agree with your last post.
14/08/2009 at 00:10 heroic zero says:
In their forums there’s a post discussing the different types of payment models they could use, sounds like they haven’t decided yet but they’re leaning strongly away from both “single pay, play forever” and “monthly fee” and instead seem to prefer the idea of a yearly or biannual subscription, e.g. “pay once per year or two.”
It sounds sensible enough, and I like the idea better than a monthly subscription or free+microtransactions.
14/08/2009 at 00:43 Dominic White says:
Personally, the free w/ cash-shop approach suits me best, so long as the stuff that rich-folk can buy is convenience or cosmetic stuff, rather than direct advantages.
It means cheap gits like myself can get plenty of fun out of it, while people with more money than sense can fund that fun.
14/08/2009 at 06:34 woppin says:
Be very interesting to see how this pans out from the performance perspective, since I believe it’s running on XNA rather than native DX9. Looks fun too.
14/08/2009 at 09:18 Alex says:
@Howard: actually, the models seem to be taken from here
14/08/2009 at 11:43 Tei says:
XNA? ugh.. so this is more like a Java game than a C++ game. I like games made with C++, games mades with JAVA, .NET, etc.. no soo much. No ofense, but most are crap. Most. Some games are gems, and the progamming language is not important.
14/08/2009 at 12:01 Trithemius says:
I think it is illegal to talk about mining wars and not mention Caver Wars. Ah Cave Wars, I miss you mithril revolvers…
14/08/2009 at 15:34 Karry says:
MMO = MMMeh.