Kinetic Void: a sandbox space sim

I hate to do something as spammy as joining a forum to post about an upcoming game, but I feel a little less guilty as I've played through Freelancer over the last month and recently installed Crossfire 1.9 for a second playthrough. I have a clear memory of picking up the Freelancer box when it was released, and I'm now kicking myself for putting it back down. Better late than never, I suppose. (Something about the big corny Trent on the cover turned me off; I'm glad he got a facelift in Crossfire.)

Anyway, the game is Kinetic Void, a procedurally generated sandbox space sim with module-based ship design and five vessel classes, dynamic factions, game-changing advancement, trade, piracy, etc.--i.e., sandbox. Maybe some of you are familiar with it, but a search turned up no results. I figured I'd mention it here because it bears a lot of similarity to Freelancer, especially in regard to some of the features initially promised by Chris Roberts which were only realized in FL with mods. Additionally, the flight controls seem to take a page from FL; at this point, that perfect mouse control is pretty much something I can't do without. (I find complicated keyboard control for sims ridiculously stupid, and I don't have a joystick.) The developer is a big FL fan, so it makes sense that he'd incorporate a lot of what made it so good.

RPS covered it several days ago: Space Is Infinite, Time Is Brief: Kinetic Void | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

And the Kickstarter page is here, where the clock is rapidly winding down: Kinetic Void by Badland Studio LLC — Kickstarter

Side note: Eric Peterson recently launched a Kickstarter for a sequel to Digital Anvil's Conquest: Frontier Wars, so maybe we'll see Freelancer 2 up there one of these days. I'm not sure what kind of licensing impediments would stand in the way of that, but with a community that has survived this long, I'm pretty sure supporters would come out in droves.

And again, my sincerest apologies for being a one-post spam douche.

I couldn't agree with you more. I think Freespace 2 is approaching my threshold for complexity, and it's a cakewalk compared to a lot of other space sims. I had no idea what to expect when I first fired up Freelancer, but I fell in love--and got comfortable--in less than a minute. It doesn't make the game any less deep to have smart controls, and combat shouldn't be challenging just because a ship is hard to fly.

I've been playing a few other titles now that my excitement for the genre has been piqued again, and time after time the controls just suck. I'm an adept typist, but so many control configurations amount to guess-pecking at keys, which is no way to fly a spaceship. That a ton of modern space sims haven't learned from FL's example is pretty surprising. I think this might be part of the reason that a lot of people altogether skip new sim games, assuming the controls are crap, and perhaps why Kinetic Void isn't doing as well as it could be.

Keep in mind that, like Freelancer, Kinetic Void has both a free-mouse mode and a mouse-follow mode. It's not exactly the same, but it's close, and it's still in pre-alpha so that might well be improved.

Edit: One of the first PC games I got was Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. IIRC, it came with a keyboard map overlay, because there were so many keys with functions that it was nearly impossible to remember them all. That, to me, is some damn crappy control, and I never got any good at that game.

Yeah, with 55 hours to go now, my hope is waning somewhat.

I listened to some of the dev's live stream yesterday, and it sounds like this is a guy who has played every space sim out there. He seems to have a good sense for what makes them compelling and what makes them not, and I think the features he's planning speak to that. As to whether the procedurally generated galaxy and missions will actually be fun, I think that's an unknown at this point. In a lot of sandbox space games, it wears out pretty fast. I get the sense that he's aware of that, and trying to make the universe react to the player and change considerably depending on the player's choices. One thing vanilla FL did so well, even if it was fairly static post-campaign, is make the galaxy feel alive with activity, with passing ships, busy trade lanes, etc. The comm chatter was vibrant and relevant, which is seldom the case in these kinds of games.

I'm actually backing Drifter as well. I've seen a lot of backers comment that they're fans of Elite/Privateer/Freelancer, but Drifter is a lot more EV: Nova than any of those games, especially in comparison to Kinetic Void. I think Drifter just managed to sell itself better, which is unfortunate because I think KV is the best chance at having a modern sandbox space sim that isn't Evochron: Mercenary, etc. No offense to anyone who likes these games; I just don't have the patience for vertical learning curves anymore, especially not after FL demonstrated that they're entirely unnecessary.