Ascent: A space mmo that does pretty much what Infinity the quest for earth was aiming at


the graphics are a little dated, but who cares when there’s so much sandboxiness?
It’s a subscribe if you want game, so if it really strikes true to you then support it. I’d say this is a good system.

Your title is quite overrated IMO. This game seems to have one instance per planet zone (warping and stuff), while Infinity will allow you travel freely from one planet to another.
Scales of planets seem under rated : that giant gas in ep.1 looks small when the ship finally goes through the white band. And planet landing is rather goofy : you barely see the terrain !

There might be some interesting ideas overall, but graphics are terrible. You won’t see me there :stuck_out_tongue:

How are those graphics a ‘little’ dated for a 2014 game?

Also:
“free access to every feature in the game, and premium options available for planetary production, combat and heavy industry” - Eww.

Also Also:
Comic sans for the game’s title on their website. They should be deeply ashamed.

Er yeah, its the first space game I’ve seem to have dated graphics. How can a space game even have bad graphics?
Also it’s not content complete with only 12 ships so far. It uses multithreading and focuses on PVE though, which I think all space games should have. Eve online pve sucks…
Hopefully I:B will have some PVE.

I tried it out a few weeks ago. It (or at least what of it I saw) was interesting, and the potential is there, but it’s got a long way to go. It’s one of those “check in every few months” games.

It’s pretty impressive for, apparently, one person, but it didn’t really knock my socks off. It uses similar technology and gameplay concepts as Infinity intends to have, but it’s going to be a while before it’s worth making an account, IMO.

It was good to see a PvE-centric space sandbox in the making, though.

Battlescape’s an arena shooter, like World of Tanks. No PvE planned.

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With the dated graphics and the music at the beginning, am I the only one to get a Babylon 5 feel?

Apart from that, what TA said ; I’ll make sure to check this one in a few months.

Pretty sure there’s been mention of AI piloted ships, at least for a stretch goal. That and talk of plans to have some form of offline freeroam. So yeah, why assume the AI piloted stuff be taken out of the freeroam game mode?

*I mean, even the old ICP had some PvE functionality. Not too fussed if it doesn’t have this, but I’d wish the devs the best of luck trying to sell a ‘multiplayer only’ experience to kickstarter backers…

**also:

Ewwwwwww.

Hey, battlescape is NOT going to be a garage shooter like WoT. Even if they only raise minimum ks, which is unlikely, in that situation, there would be a few battlescape maps in the solar system, but they would be large and related to each other unlike the small, completely unrelated Wot maps!
If they raise more than minimum, they there will be a full solar system with points of interest called “battlescapes.” but that doesn’t mean you can’t go anywhere else. (also seamless)
Also, it would be nice to have PvE pirate factions if Inovae raises max ks.
Also WoT is the most pay to win bullshit since, well there hasn’t been a more p2w game. The devs even confessed to making shitty tanks just so you would pay real money to get past them faster. Good arena shooters almost always have AI.

Probably because Ascent is using the Unity game engine(source). While the Unity editor will become 64 bit with the release of Unity 5, I doubt it will change the matters of Ascent’s scale notably enough.

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(Also, “becoming 64 bit” almost always refers to using a 64 bit instruction set/address space, and has nothing to do with using the double precision location coordinates required for to-scale solar systems that don’t suck).

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Wait, so Unity engine can’t even do a decent space game?

Well, Kerbal Space Program uses Unity and is a (more than) decent space program. But they had to replace significant parts of Unity’s base tools with their own custom code, and they did encounter significant problems with simple/double precision (the original Space Kraken bug).

So the real issue is that Unity can’t properly handle space sized scales. I thought that most space games used slow speeds and minute scales, instead of the real distances.

Huh there is even a entry on Kerbal Wiki.

The bug could be triggered by moving at high velocities in the game. The cause was that KSP prior to 0.17 would move the ship in space, instead of moving space around the ship.

Ah, so kerbal space program moves the space around the ship. This doesn’t work for MMOs though.