Want direct control? Try this.

For those players whom would like to have direct control of their ships, I recommend ‘Battleships Forever’ by Sean Chan of Wyrdysm games.

wyrdysm.com/games.php

The game was inspired by the arcade shooter ‘Warning Forever’ from Japan. Available on PC.

Er…maybe it’s a little…tacky to post in the forum of an indie developer trying to get feedback and polish up their game and sell a few copies and whatnot, in order to suggest people go somewhere else to play another game?

Its a fun little game, I told Cliffski long ago, I thought his game was similar, however…his game is superior in oh so many ways, and there are nobody updating BSF anymore.

I played a bit of BSF for a while – and loved the concept – but I found that the game was very rough and the interface unforgiving. I see GSB as the BSF idea done right.

I posted this because a couple of forum members have suggested direct control of ships or of certain functions during the battle. I presented this other game as an opportunity to see what it is like to control the ships directly and get a feel for that. I don’t agree that direct control of ships during battle is a part of the nature of Gratuitous Space Battles and adding such functionality would immediately destroy the challenge system.

I would say that the reason Battleships Forever is no longer being developed, is because ‘Game Maker’ is such a very inefficient, although easy to use, development environment. I once tried to make a meta-game for Freespace 2, with dynamically generated missions. I gave up, as testing each stage of development was taking longer and longer to do. It’s like making a map for Warcraft 3. Easy, but so very inefficient.

Gratuitous Space Battles is highly efficient, excellently programmed and masterfully done!

Direct control == too much hassle. I just want battles! Gratuitous battles!

Indeed: GSB is GSB, and direct control would dilute that.

Battleships Forever is a fun game. However direction control emphasizes an irritating click-fest where your micromanagement skills and actions per minute you can perform (and degree of carpal tunnel syndrome you have) largely determine your success in battle.

GSB is about sitting back and coolly planning out how you will blow up the enemy fleet. It’s good to be space admiral for once instead of the space micro-manager that most strategy games demand you be. :wink: