Shores of Hazeron OR Your New Timesink

[Orv]

Picture for me gentlemen (and where appropriate, ladies) a game. A video game. That takes the city management elements of Anno 1404, the exploration of a procedural galaxy generator, and the starship and race customization of Spore.

Now imagine it's free, in alpha, and is running on an engine that was developed starting in 1995.

Still with me? Right. No, it's not the prettiest thing on the ground. Ground textures are rather just a thing, and nothing spectacular. But the procedurally generated wildlife comes up with some astounding cool and sometimes frightening and weird things. You can see the entirety of your solar system from the ground of any planet in the system. At the appropriate times, mind you! If the sun is out and it's mid-day, you can't see the stars, but you might be able to pick out your neighboring gas giant. Hell, if you have a binary star system, you may never see a night! (Godsdamn that would be so nice right now.)

Starship customisation allows for pretty much anything you can come up with, though one of the developers (or at least the one doing the screenshots) seems to have a thing for Star Trek replicas. The race options are. . .detailed and interesting. (I could have created bi-pedal, three-armed, cyclopian birdmen, if I wanted.)

The basic idea of the game is you start with your own system, in a sector, somewhere in the galaxy. (Eventually there will be multiple galaxies, I hear.) You start with nothing, just a torch and a knife the tutorial NPC gives you, provided you don't off him first. You move from there to creating the basics of a city (housing, food) and eventually working into an entire city of manfactorum and production chains. Once you have everything set up (you're making petrochemicals to make plastic, mining crystals, mining ore to make metal and making mechanisms in order to produce an electronic component, for instance) you move out into space. You take a rocket initially, and must find the components to create grav-couplings and wormhole drives, from which you can make proper starships from.

All of your civilization is run by civilians. You attract these with sufficient food, housing and luxury needs, and in turn they run your factories, mines and what-have-you. You have to keep them happy (sufficient amounts of luxury goods, equal jobs to equal people [overwork or out-of-work makes them unhappy) but other than that, once there, they run things for you.

Starships (and spaceships later on) can be crewed by trained men, or by a handful of actual players. Ergo, a single starship can be crewed and ridden in by multiple players, instead of the typical one. (EVE, STO) Starships generally travel within systems. They can move to the nearest systems, but must do under their own power. Spaceships (the reason you leave you homeworld to find two special components) are able to traverse wormholes, taking you from system to system much quicker.

That's a basic run down of it, and I currently have a mostly set-up city going (I was working on getting the final power/electricity chain working when the server kicked the bucket) and should be in a rocket scouting the system by this afternoon/evening. I'll get some screenshots before I go to bed if the server isn't down for the night.

(Perhaps) unfortunately, I'm a bi-pedal bird, but you can create your own race and join my empire by creating your own empire and then joining mine, which, if anyone is interested, I can go over later.

The government is set to Dictatorship currently, simply because it's the only one that isn't either totally or partially broken, but we don't have any positions of authority filled other than mine, so I can give a good few people building rights. I think I can even give regular citizens build rights, I'll have to look into that.

So, anyone interested?

[Orv]

Screenshots/Miscellany post.

MANUAL: http://www.hazeron.com/manualf.html

A view of the upper city, from overhead mode.

The lower city, also from overhead mode.

The lower city from the character perspective.

The local gas giant and a habitable M-class beneath it. All of the brighter stars (those not obviously the skybox texture) are in our sector of space.

Current Empire Info:

Name: Morphostatic Ambiguity Inc

Planet(s) Controlled: Tal Verrar III

Member(s) And Rank:

Orvidos - Emperor

Gwardinen - Prime Minister

Open Government Positions:

Prime Minister

Viceroy

Senator

Governor

Prefect

Citizen Populations (As of last Empire cycle):

Tal Verrar III - 238

Tal Verrar IIIa (III's moon) - Carmorr - 24

Tech Level:

T1

Edited April 28, 2011 by Orvidos

[Gwardinen]

That actually sounds incredibly cool. I may get bored with it within three days, but I'm definitely going to give it a go. I'm downloading the installer now but I intend to make my screen name Gwardinen.

[toblix]

You had me at before the screenshots.

[Gwardinen]

As it turns out we can choose to join an existing empire as soon as we start the game, so do you want to give us your details so we can all work for the glorious betterment of Orvidosia?

Alternatively if there is enough interest we can begin a civilisation of Intergalactic Thumbs.

[toblix]

Wait just a minute, this is multiplayer? That makes it interesting again!

Is it like Minecraft, only with stars?

[Orv]

If you'll give me about fifteen minutes, I can set up and declare the capitol of Morphostatic Ambiguity Inc, so you can join it without me having to be online.

Alternatively, we can just start a Thumbs race, and while it wouldn't bother me overmuch to start over, I'm quite fond of my little hellhole.

Capitol will be up at about 2:10PM MDT, 8:10PM GMT.

At which point you log in, create a new character (the tabs at the top of the login page), choose Join Existing Empire, search for "Morphostatic Ambiguity Inc" and if I understand the system right, you'll pop right in. You won't have build rights right off, I'm afraid, but I'll check in every fifteen or so to grant people positions.

E: Done! Fair warning, declaring a capitol shows your empire on the galaxy map, so there is a minor chance we may get lasored into oblivion. A very, very small chance, but it could happen. Just be aware.

E2: Added a night sky screenshot and a list of pertinent Empire info to the second post.

E3: Added link to the manual and updated Empire info.

Edited April 27, 2011 by Orvidos

[Orv]

I'm happy to announce we now own a moon. I believe the technical term is "YA BITCHES" but I could be wrong.

So, just two people? Surely more are interested.

[a purple future]

those screenshots are making my eyes bleed but it sounds interesting enough. i'll give it a shot

update: i accidentally killed my mentor thinking my mouse was stuck. the game has crashed twice. i can't read the text. sorry, but no thanks

Edited April 28, 2011 by a purple future

[Murdoc]

Why hello there game of my dreams....

Time is limited, but certainly reading up on it, sounds awesome!

edit: Can we start a thumbs race and conquer your civilization? hehehe. Nah I'll just join your empire, but will try one out myself for the sake of it one day.

Pretty much linked this to everyone I know and its not even done downloading... better be as fun as it sounds, hehe.

I get so jazzed over this kind of thing.

edit2: So far it feels like Im stuck in the ground or something. Not too sure about this, will read more.

Edited May 5, 2011 by Murdoc

[Orv]

As it's an alpha, there seems to be a pretty common issue of not being able to move very well. There's also the fact that there's a giant galaxy to be simulated at all times and 4 servers on which to do it.

I've actually gone and founded another empire, with (delusions of grandeur) the stuff I learned from the first.

It's the "Kushan Embassy" and entering everything between those two quotes when creating a new character and selecting "Join Empire" will find you in New Tiir, where you may contact me if I'm on (Orv), which I am most days. Also, if you find yourself wanting to learn city building, hit up the manual and let me know and I'll make you a government position and send you off somewhere.

Alternatively I can give you a ride to the ringworld we're busy colonizing or teach you how to make ships of your own.

Since the idea that a starship can be crewed entirely by players was what most interested me about Hazeron (though, I'm considerably more into for other reasons now) I think a

THUMBS SCOUTING EXPEDITION

would be fantastic. We can all take turns at various stations and captaining the tub. . .I mean ship. You don't have to do anything else. Just show up on the appointed night at the appointed place and hop onboard. You do have to install the client of course, but no other effort would be required.

TL;DR

New Empire - Kushan Embassy (Join as previously indicated)

Thumbs Night? (We all take turns doing various tasks on the ship and as captain)

Express interest! Or don't.

[a purple future]

so the not being able to move thing is normal? because my experience in loading up your old city was to accidentally kill my obi-wan guy and then wander around at about 1fps while text popped up i couldn't read. despite being a bird, i couldn't figure out how to fly. i think if the game animated slightly more than a Viewmaster it would be more playable. it was seriously one of the most head-scratching 15 minutes of gaming i've done in many years

although i do like the idea of flying a spaceship. especially if i could be the resident Barclay

LOHxTsL-hsc

[Orv]

Yeah, planets are incredibly poorly optimized right now, and certain systems/setups just seem to utterly hate you moving around in game. This computer that I'm posting on has no issue for instance, but the one downstairs (which is actually better) has issues moving. It can build, and work and design, but if I try to move in an established city, no bueno.

But yeah, I'll see about taking screenshots and annotating them, or taking some video of the various crew postions. Because

A. We have no enemies currently

and

B. We're only Tech Level 2

We only have 6 unique stations on a ship currently (helm, navigation, engineering, sensors, weapons, captain) so there would be a few issues with everyone getting a turn off the bat, but you can still just stand around on a spaceship if you're not technically crew.

Space however, is perfectly fine for performance and looks fantastic.

So, anymore people for a great STAR TREK?!

Or something.

I promise not to crash the ship into the sun.

[Thompson]

I promise not to crash the ship into the sun.

Lies.

[a purple future]

maybe if i run it through dosbox...