By Jim Rossignol on March 17th, 2011 at 2:15 pm.
UPDATE: This is now available on the Steam version of the game, and will update automatically.
The next update for zeg-G astro-manshooter Shattered Horizon is called Last Stand, and it’s going to add bot support to all the multiplayer modes. It’s also got one of those co-op “fight waves of bots” modes added to it, “which pits a team of four against waves of increasingly difficult bot enemies.” No exact launch date for this yet, but “before the end of the month”. It’s turning out to be quite a rounded shooter. If they have another one of those free weekends we’ll have to organise an RPS pile-on.
They’ve had free weekends already? Must say I’m really quite looking forward to the game, and this has just got me even more excited.
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Your comment confuses me… The game’s been out for a year and a half and had several free weekends yaknow :P
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You’re looking forward to a game that’s been out for over a year? What’s wrong with you man!
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I’m so far behind the times…
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Oooh Co-op survival sounds fun with this.
Main problem (for me) is that it is very much a pro-campign and twitchy shooter. No real “dancing” if you go up against a competent person (and, as with any game with an almost dead multiplayer, most people are competent)
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Oh, yay! This means I’m finally going to get this! (never been one for competitive multiplayer, but love messing around with bots)
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Yeah, this makes me far more interested in it as well. I like multiplayer with real people, but across a LAN (often with friends who aren’t super-pro gamers) it’s generally a lot more fun with bots, just because they’re more predictable and more controllable.
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Worst scaling to medium spec machines ever. This game is totally unplayable on anything less than high-end machines.
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My laptop disagrees with you
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As does my 4-year old desktop that wasn’t that good when I bought it
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I might give it another try then – it looked like ass and ran like a drunk in a sack race on my old machine.
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It runs pretty terribly on my computer. Had to turn it down all the way to get it at all playable.
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I managed to scrape by on minimum settings with the minimum spec – this was on a 939 Athlon X2 and an 8800 GT 512MB. Granted, I ran into trouble when there were more than 10 players on a server, but it was and still is a blast.
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Game is fun. Kinda bummed it doesn’t have a more vibrant community.
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I wish to express my support for this game.
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This is excellent news, and I wish every indie MP game out there would take a leaf from their book. The single biggest downside of MP games is that without enough players, they can’t be played; and the single biggest downside of indie games is that it’s hard for them to get a big enough playerbase (before anyone quotes Minecraft, these are obviously general rules). Releasing with bots might not fit into your development schedule but you should 100% work on bots after a while just to make sure that your game will continue to be playable, even long after its playerbase has shrunk to minuscule levels.
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Truth.
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well altitude has quite a dedicated player base, nothing like a cod or battlefield but its steady and I still see new players coming in so it proves that it can be done. it just hasn’t seemed to work out for this game, I doubt the lack of bots was a major factor but it would have been nice.
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I bought this game yonks ago, but only recently played it after Christmas when I finally got a DX10 OS (Win7).
It was great fun, but there weren’t many populated servers, and those that were were populated by experts. Hopefully bot support will keep this game viable.
I do hope that they have their server browser indicate meatbag vs. droid populations. I have joined several games of DogFighter (similar situation) to find that all the “people” are bots.
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All servers have the player count (ex:6/24) then the bot count next to it, if there are bots.
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Sounds good. I’ve heard from people who have it that the servers are pretty lifeless between the free weekends. Hopefully this will change that, or at least compensate for it.
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I rarely play Shattered Horizon, (think last time was around Christmas) but I’m pretty sure it’s already had bots for quite a while. As part of MP games that is. The ability to play it completely without any other human-players will be new, as far as I know.
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Yeah there has definitely already been some Shattered Horizon servers with bots for quite a while now, though if I remember correctly they’re called “beta” servers.
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I always enjoyed this game. Thought it was stillborn though. Do people actively play it when they aren’t doing promotional weekends?
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I just logged in the other day to play it again and there were 0 people playing. I was quite a sad panda after that.
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I bought it more than an year ago and frankly i hardly play it, i know its a decent game, but after 1-2 hours of floating in zero-G you’re kinda bored. The bots won’t fix this, the game needs a new content Pronto.
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As someone who only ever gets around to playing stuff years after release, this sounds good to me. :)
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I’d really love to see a re-review of this game. It’s gone through so many changes, patches, and free DLC it’s a very different game than when it came out.
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Worth noting that there are official servers that are non-combatant (I forget the official term) so that newbies in particular can just drift around, get used to the controls and exclaim ‘ooh, pretty’.
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This pleases me greatly. Shattered Horizon is a lot of fun but the low player population has kept it from being something that can be enjoyed spontaneously. And the ability to play alone vs bots should make the game a lot more approachable to boot.
I’m also a sucker for cooperative game modes.
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This update is out now btw.
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this is a good review of the game:
http://tiny.cc/1fg96
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Thank you. I really want to get this game, but am worried about a low player count.
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When this game came out, I thought it looked brilliant, and would have bought it were it not for the fact that I didn’t have a computer that could run it.
Now, I still think it looks brilliant, but the lack of players is somewhat heartbreaking (see Plain Sight).
If they do a free weekend I’ll definitely get in and play it, and if they do a sale as well, may well even buy it. It’s still the only multiplayer fps that has me especially interested.
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One of the best, and most inovative, multiplayer FPS of the last decade, it didn’t deserved such a fate.
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