Helium Rain [Steam, Official Site] is a single-player space simulation title that's due to release on Steam on August 18th, in Early Access. The game looks good and it's being built on Linux using Unreal Engine and open source tools.
It's a game I previously posted about last year, as the developers sent over some screenshots of the game and talked a little about it.
Here's what the developer had to say to us recently:
I have to admit, I'm pretty excited to get lost in space with Helium Rain. The real-time, first-person combat as you're flying next to massive planets certainly looks decent. This looks like a space nerd's dream, I can't wait!
Thanks to Stranger for letting us know! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It's a game I previously posted about last year, as the developers sent over some screenshots of the game and talked a little about it.
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Here's what the developer had to say to us recently:
QuoteHelium Rain is a space sim that blends flying action and strategy gameplay, with a focus on realism and good graphics. We've been working hard to make the game as good as possible, and it's just a start, since we're going to improve on that base with player feedback. We're now working on a main quest, new content, new gameplay...
We're still working with open-source tools like Blender, we're still developing the gameplay on a Linux machine, and obviously we're still releasing the game to Linux. If you want to know what the source code for an Unreal Engine game looks like, you're welcome to check our (open) source code, too.
I have to admit, I'm pretty excited to get lost in space with Helium Rain. The real-time, first-person combat as you're flying next to massive planets certainly looks decent. This looks like a space nerd's dream, I can't wait!
Thanks to Stranger for letting us know! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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13 comments
Awesome!This might finally be the X3: Albion Prelude replacement I've been looking for, assuming it has a dynamic economy and station building.
1 Likes, Who?
Awww, maaan. I'm a sucker for these kinds of game. Instabuy for me.
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I love this kind of games, but what i see from that one makes me... nothing.
I'm not touched, so far, but i'll keep an eye on it anyway.
I'm not touched, so far, but i'll keep an eye on it anyway.
1 Likes, Who?
I've been waiting for this one since the original story as well. This is an automatic purchase.
1 Likes, Who?
Surely look interesting... Will give it a shot...
But regarding realism: Those tons of asteroids... You know that in real space you have to aim very precisely to even find one? There's usually dozens or hundreds of kilometers of empty space between them.. But everyone only remembers the scenes from the Star Wars movies when thinking about asteroid fields, etc. (Yes, I know I'm being a smartass and annoying right now)
But regarding realism: Those tons of asteroids... You know that in real space you have to aim very precisely to even find one? There's usually dozens or hundreds of kilometers of empty space between them.. But everyone only remembers the scenes from the Star Wars movies when thinking about asteroid fields, etc. (Yes, I know I'm being a smartass and annoying right now)
1 Likes, Who?
Surely look interesting... Will give it a shot...
But regarding realism: Those tons of asteroids... You know that in real space you have to aim very precisely to even find one? There's usually dozens or hundreds of kilometers of empty space between them.. But everyone only remembers the scenes from the Star Wars movies when thinking about asteroid fields, etc. (Yes, I know I'm being a smartass and annoying right now)
Hey, developer here :)
This actually something I find annoying in many movies or games too, because as you point out, you usually don't find asteroids flying in formation. Our lore justification is that asteroids were broken up for mining, resulting in smaller chunks (you actually find mines in these areas). Some other asteroids in the game are much larger and kept intact.
The real reason is that it's a trade-of, as many things in the game, between realism (which we try to keep as much as possible) and interesting things to see while flying.
Last edited by Stranger on 31 July 2017 at 8:09 pm UTC
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Luke_Nukem Jul 31, 2017
I think I'll be supporting this team just on principle of them being completely awesome about open source.
2 Likes, Who?
As someone with way too many hours in X3, I can't wait for this game to come out. Also once the Steam version releases (and I can get my hands on some assets) I'm gonna try to compile it myself for the fun of it because an open source game is so cool in this day and age. (also because I kinda wanna see if it will build successfully on my Raspberry Pi even though I know its specs are too weak to run it)
So wish me luck.
So wish me luck.
1 Likes, Who?
Sir_Diealot Aug 1, 2017
Neat.
I notice that you write everything in C++.
A colleague of mine is working on a game in Unreal Engine too. It's only a proof of concept so far. What he does is that he writes as much as possible in Lua. The idea is that you can work faster and change stuff without recompilation. Lots of games do that and Lua is a popular choice because it's easy to embed and pretty much the fastest scripting language around.
Another benefit is that it's easier to make games moddable. A recent negative example I encountered on that front is Battle Brothers, which is written in C or C++ and the devs don't want to work on it anymore, so all people can do is exchange the assets. If they had written the game logic in a scripting language people could modify all that stuff and give the game longevity.
Just something to consider.
Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found her
I notice that you write everything in C++.
A colleague of mine is working on a game in Unreal Engine too. It's only a proof of concept so far. What he does is that he writes as much as possible in Lua. The idea is that you can work faster and change stuff without recompilation. Lots of games do that and Lua is a popular choice because it's easy to embed and pretty much the fastest scripting language around.
Another benefit is that it's easier to make games moddable. A recent negative example I encountered on that front is Battle Brothers, which is written in C or C++ and the devs don't want to work on it anymore, so all people can do is exchange the assets. If they had written the game logic in a scripting language people could modify all that stuff and give the game longevity.
Just something to consider.
Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found her
1 Likes, Who?
As someone with way too many hours in X3, I can't wait for this game to come out. Also once the Steam version releases (and I can get my hands on some assets) I'm gonna try to compile it myself for the fun of it because an open source game is so cool in this day and age. (also because I kinda wanna see if it will build successfully on my Raspberry Pi even though I know its specs are too weak to run it)Cool !
So wish me luck.
We're still working on handling source-code modding for the game. Right now you can very easily build the game, but we don't yet provide the game content - we can't do that for a variety of reasons, including the fact that ~20% of the content is derived from third-party assets. Our plan is to provide a minimal game content with a few sectors, ships, weapons, etc so that modders can actually build the game, play it, modify it, and send us pull requests if they want.
Neat.Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found herI'll let the author of that part of the game explain it all here :)
Last edited by Stranger on 1 August 2017 at 7:02 am UTC
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Hello, other developer here !
The spaceships and projectiles physical model is only Newtonian : ships have a mass, few big engines and a lot of RCS. Rotation and translation are done with a combination of engine action, and without any engine action, the linear and angular velocity is constant.
As all engines are damageable, your reactivity decrease with damage and you can loose control on some degree of liberty if you loose the wrong thrusters.
When you play to Helium Rain (or see video) you may think Helium Rain has a classical non realistic flight model, because the engine controller do a great job to simplify pilot life : when you don't give order, by default, the engine controller will kill rotation and lateral translation and try to keep the current forward velocity. When you rotate your ship, the engine controller will automatically use thrusters to rotate your prograde vector and keep it in front of you. A low velocity, it seem to behave like a plane, but if the velocity is too high (there is no real velocity limit in Helium Rain) or if you have damage, the engines won't be powerful enough so you will experience a lot of inertia.
At any time you can disable this behavior just pressing a key, during fight for example, to pass near target firing at it like a turret.
Neat.
Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found her
The spaceships and projectiles physical model is only Newtonian : ships have a mass, few big engines and a lot of RCS. Rotation and translation are done with a combination of engine action, and without any engine action, the linear and angular velocity is constant.
As all engines are damageable, your reactivity decrease with damage and you can loose control on some degree of liberty if you loose the wrong thrusters.
When you play to Helium Rain (or see video) you may think Helium Rain has a classical non realistic flight model, because the engine controller do a great job to simplify pilot life : when you don't give order, by default, the engine controller will kill rotation and lateral translation and try to keep the current forward velocity. When you rotate your ship, the engine controller will automatically use thrusters to rotate your prograde vector and keep it in front of you. A low velocity, it seem to behave like a plane, but if the velocity is too high (there is no real velocity limit in Helium Rain) or if you have damage, the engines won't be powerful enough so you will experience a lot of inertia.
At any time you can disable this behavior just pressing a key, during fight for example, to pass near target firing at it like a turret.
1 Likes, Who?
As someone with way too many hours in X3, I can't wait for this game to come out. Also once the Steam version releases (and I can get my hands on some assets) I'm gonna try to compile it myself for the fun of it because an open source game is so cool in this day and age. (also because I kinda wanna see if it will build successfully on my Raspberry Pi even though I know its specs are too weak to run it)Cool !
So wish me luck.
We're still working on handling source-code modding for the game. Right now you can very easily build the game, but we don't yet provide the game content - we can't do that for a variety of reasons, including the fact that ~20% of the content is derived from third-party assets. Our plan is to provide a minimal game content with a few sectors, ships, weapons, etc so that modders can actually build the game, play it, modify it, and send us pull requests if they want.
Neat.Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found herI'll let the author of that part of the game explain it all here :)
Wow, just Wow. I'm not fan of the genre but will buy for support :D
2 Likes, Who?
Sir_Diealot Aug 5, 2017
Hello, other developer here !
Neat.
Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found her
The spaceships and projectiles physical model is only Newtonian : ships have a mass, few big engines and a lot of RCS. Rotation and translation are done with a combination of engine action, and without any engine action, the linear and angular velocity is constant.
As all engines are damageable, your reactivity decrease with damage and you can loose control on some degree of liberty if you loose the wrong thrusters.
When you play to Helium Rain (or see video) you may think Helium Rain has a classical non realistic flight model, because the engine controller do a great job to simplify pilot life : when you don't give order, by default, the engine controller will kill rotation and lateral translation and try to keep the current forward velocity. When you rotate your ship, the engine controller will automatically use thrusters to rotate your prograde vector and keep it in front of you. A low velocity, it seem to behave like a plane, but if the velocity is too high (there is no real velocity limit in Helium Rain) or if you have damage, the engines won't be powerful enough so you will experience a lot of inertia.
At any time you can disable this behavior just pressing a key, during fight for example, to pass near target firing at it like a turret.
Thanks. I think that's quite similar. Accelerate to as fast as you want, but you need the same time to decellerate. That also meant that combat can become like jousting or strafe running.
I really have to suggest you try and make another video. The one linked here is not very exciting, it shows only a few in-game sequences but does not convey what the game is about or where it's strengths lie.
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