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Evochron Mercenary Trailer

Timed Demo Link

Official Website


The game was officially released 17 September 2010, recently released on Steam, hence this OT.

Description
Trading commodities while sneaking past hostile forces, racing the best pilots in the area, mining for diamonds, negotiating for survival, spying for a curious energy company, cleaning dirty solar arrays, transporting an impatient passenger... and that's just on a Monday. The life of an independent mercenary is rarely without excitement. At times, you may choose to work under contract, while at others, you may want to take matters into your own hands in a quest to build your reputation and fortune. Your spacecraft awaits. Your adventure begins in the Sapphire solar system.

In Evochron, you are free to seek your fortune as an independent mercenary in an adventure directed by your choices, abilities, and accomplishments. Each player can bring their unique skills and interests to the game, forming clans for cooperative goals or remaining solo to complete objectives on their own in true freeform space-sim gameplay.

Key Features

• True freeform gameplay without plot restrictions, conditions, or limitations. No character attribute/skill limitations to hold you back. Experience ultimate gameplay freedom and play the game the way you want to. Your decisions and abilities define your role in the game and establish your reputations, wealth, progress, and ranking.
  
• Diverse gameplay choices and activities including racing, spying, mining, trading, commodity shipping, escorting, combat (both in civilian space and military war zones), exploring, asteroid clearing, equipment cleaning, crew management, station building, and ship designing. There are many ways to make money and advance in the game.
  
• A vast seamless universe that lets you fly anywhere without in-game loading screens. The Evochron universe is not boxed in by 'walls' or 'rooms' that require a jumpgate 'door' to access, there are no required gates or trade lanes to restrict your travel and hold you back. You can travel virtually anywhere you want. Descend into planet atmospheres to land at city trade stations, mine valuable materials, or explore for hidden items. You can escape to nebula clouds for sensor cover or hide in a massive asteroid cave for protection. Fly from planet to planet, star to star, and solar system to solar system.
  
• Unified gameplay architecture and profiles let you keep the ship, upgrades, equipment, money, weapons, crew, and commodities you acquire in the game for use in both single player and multiplayer.
  
• Cooperative multiplayer objectives that pay all linked players. Join forces with other players to complete more challenging activities that can offer much better pay.
• Construct space stations to dynamically expand the game's universe with new trade routes, docking points, and economies. The online multiplayer system stores player built stations with the server so other players can have access to the new stations and trade routes you create.
  
• Specialized industries and economies provide realistically variable item availability and pricing.
  
• Use your wealth to design and build a new ship, buy better weapons, hire crew members, recruit other ships, install upgrades, load commodities, and more.
  
• Advanced physics system features velocity adjusted acceleration curves and accounts for mass, thrust, and vector calculations. Realistic zero gravity inertia based 'Newtonian' style flight model including complete 3-way rotation and 3-way direction control with optional variable input. An advanced inertial dampening system helps keep flight control simple in space, atmospheres, and gravity fields.
  
• Realistic environment interaction far beyond the genre's typical 'background wallpaper'. Nebula clouds, asteroid fields, planet atmospheres, moons, and more all provide unique options for shelter and strategy. Such environment elements include changes in gravity, fuel consumption, physics, sensor range, and visibility.
  
• Supports keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and joystick flight control. Use the control device you prefer to play the game.
  
• Supports Natural Point's TrackIR 3D head control system for managing the viewpoint from the cockpit with all six degrees of movement.

System Requirements
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7
Processor: 2.0 GHz AMD/Intel
Memory: 1.5 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 750 MB
Video Card: 128 MB DirectX Compatible
DirectX®: 9.0c

Final Words
The final edition in the trilogy of the indie space sim series Evochron. The game was recently released to steam for the price of 20 dollars. Until I did some research, I wasn't fully aware this game was originally released in 2010. The game looks stunning and anyone with a hard on for space sims (X3, Homeworld, Freespace, Freelancer) is recommended to pick it up. Key features include traveling within planet atmosphere, no transitioning (everything happens live, and you don't jump through gates/loading screens to get to places), co-op missions, physics based space engines and much more. I can't wait to pick it up when I have the time.

 

[MNC]

Shit, Mercenary*. My hands are cold.

 

[SteveWinwood]

I just love how it looks like the cover of a box for a graphics card in the 90s.

I'll buy it in a day or two and get some impressions soon hopefully.

 

[Confidence Man]

I almost bought this so many times from GamersGate. Definitely getting it.

 

[Snuggles]

Isn't that the tagline from the XXX spoof of Alien?

Anyways, this looks dope, I'll give it a shot if it's not as daunting as the X series.

 

[Alexios]

Can a 360 controller be configured nicely? I can't really play it otherwise since I don't have a joystick and don't enjoy such games with mouse and/or keyboard. I couldn't get Legends configured well even though I did games like Freespace 2 and Tachyon.

 

[MNC]

Isn't that the tagline from the XXX spoof of Alien?

Anyways, this looks dope, I'll give it a shot if it's not as daunting as the X series.

Is it? :lol i honestly thought i was being a bit original

I heard something about controller support. im not sure, wil look it up and edit op

 

[Adnor]

So this is open-universe a la Freelance? Cool, I will buy it when it's a little cheaper (I don't have the money right now)

 

[Xander51]

I've always wanted to jump into this series and now seems like a good time. I'll at least check out that demo.

 

[Phanatic8390]

One thing I read is that despite the fact that you can travel anywhere without loading, there still are warp gates to speed up travel. It's very Freelancer in that respect.

I look forward to impressions. I just ordered a TrackIR so any game that supports it I'm interested in, even more so if it's a space sim.

 

[Slermy]

Holy shit, I remember seeing this guy's earlier Star Wraith games when I messed around with Dark Basic around 2000. He's come a long way!

Good for him.

This looks pretty good; I'm especially fond of the look of the cockpit controls.

 

[Evlar]

Now I just have to figure out where the hell I put my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2...

 

[Odrion]

I wonder if there is a way to play this game with dual mice.

 

[Alexios]

Yeah, played the demo, I don't think this is very playable with a 360 controller the way the controls are set up.

Like, unless I missed some functions, I can't even put just the roaming/combat basics on the controller and leave the complicated stuff to the keyboard. I consider enemy targeting switches among these basics yet the game only has general craft targeting hotkeys and you have to use the hardcoded modifier key ALT to make those same keys target enemies so I can't even put that "ALT" function on a button instead to be able to use it in combination with other buttons to target nearest enemy etc.

Shame, was gonna give it a serious shot this time but if I can't get the basics to be hassle free and fun it's not worth it. I was even willing to give up things like strafing and manage with the botched way thrusting with the 360 triggers is handled (as usual in such games pressing no trigger makes it half-thrust, pressing left trigger 0 and right trigger full....).

Game has nice newtonian physics model though, in inertia mode you can basically endlessly (maybe, I stopped at 5k) increase your speed with your afterburner. And then take ages to come to a halt (I crashed on a moon ).

Should be a blast with joysticks & keyboard if it delivers on the premise.

 

[ElectricThunder]

Well worth bearing in mind that a major Expansion for this is also in the works and should arrive sometime later this year:

There are many new features planned for the game including a new planetary engine, weapon crafting, new visual effects, revised ship/station designs, new equipment, and even terrain walkers that let you get out of your ship and explore planet surfaces 'on foot'... along with much more.

http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/development.htm


The dev is VERY active on the official forum, and has already pushed through a ludicrous number of enhancement patches and whatnot since the game first came out.

 

[Alexios]

Sounds good... are people in his forum pestering him for more gamepad friendly functions too? That'd be rad...

All I really need is left stick pitch/roll, clickable to tractor beam, right stick yaw and strafe up/down, clickable to afterburner, triggers as thrust (maybe right trigger as thrust and left as reverse thrust), shoulder buttons primary/secondary weapons, d-pad to be bindable as more than HAT which I'd set to weapon switching, counter measures and mines or whatever it has, back as match speed, start as the hyper speed thing, y as inertia mode, x as target whatever is in crosshair, b as target nearest enemy, a as next friendly... whatever else, I'm just going by memory here... A lot of that is possible already but far from all... And I'd leave complicated stuff like diverting power levels or ordering wingmen and other communications and trade screens and such to the keyboard... if not a nice mouse GUI... Something like this would allow for the majority of the gameplay to be done on gamepad. Even with cripplings things like the lack of sideways strafing I'd be ok with it... Though that could be fixed too with having a few modifier buttons, say, clicking the stick wouldn't be afterburner but switch the right stick functions from yaw and whatever to strafe.

 

[Megasoum]

Sounds good... are people in his forum pestering him for more gamepad friendly functions too? That'd be rad...

Official 360 pad support would be great!

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

How's the actual game, though? I really wanted to like the X series, but I just can't get into it...

 

[Lizard with a ladder]

So is this more of a space rpg? Reason I ask is, I've been looking for something equally as awesome as Star Control II and majority of space games developed these days tend to be strategy.

 

[MotionBlue]

So, if I wanted to. I could just explore space, find anomalies, battle/hide from god knows what?

This is looking really cool, and I've had an itch for space exploration.

Edit:

Is it like the exploration in Mass Effect 1? I loved that.

 

[daxy]

Just got this and so far I'm not disappointed. Granted, I've only played about an hour or so, but the amount of freedom you're given is very satisfying, in particular the seamless movement from space to planetary surface. I loved freeroaming in Fuel and this feels kind of like that but in space. The graphics aren't exceptional, but with forced AA (no in-game option to do so) it looks pretty decent. Haven't tried multiplayer yet but it seems interesting.

I suggest that anyone who's on the fence about this game just check out the timed demo. You're given an hour, if I remember well, to do what you want, which is enough to get through the basic tutorials and get a general feel of the game, at least it was for me. In the demo I didn't recall seeing as many other ships in space, so maybe that was cut, because it seems more populated in the actual game. I'll reinstall the demo later and see if this is actually the case.

From what I've played I guess you could compare EM's space exploration to ME's Mako exploration, except that it's much grander in scope and there are actually things to do. The planet surfaces look alike (though EM is a step down texture wise) but there doesn't seem to be an awful lot to do on planets except visit the few trade cities to upgrade your ship, get quests and that kind of thing. I'm not sure whether the races and mining are also held on planets. Most of the game's content seems to be set in space. I haven't played enough of the game to give you a definite answer on that unfortunately.

Apparently the game is only off 20% until Monday January 23rd 10AM PST.

 

[remnant]

can't you download the full game off their website?

 

[R1CHO]

can't you download the full game off their website?

tutorial + 90 min demo

 

[ElectricThunder]

IIRC, said demo unlocks into the full game, as is the style with a few indie outfits.

 

[Woorloog]

Dat HUD in the final pic... Demo available on the developers site you say?
EDIT, wait does this thing require joystick? If yes, then i need to get a new one... (Last one was some 1st generation Sidewinder... broke last Spring)

 

[bengraven]

...this may be exactly the game I've been looking for for years.

Sounds like Mount & Blade In Space, which is...probably my perfect game ever.

 

[daxy]

Dat HUD in the final pic... Demo available on the developers site you say?
EDIT, wait does this thing require joystick? If yes, then i need to get a new one... (Last one was some 1st generation Sidewinder... broke last Spring)

Doesn't require a joystick. KB/M works really well.

 

[TheExodu5]

I might get this to put my Saitek X52 Pro to use. I also ordered a TrackIR yesterday...does it work with this?

 

[Phanatic8390]

I might get this to put my Saitek X52 Pro to use. I also ordered a TrackIR yesterday...does it work with this?

According to the site it uses all 6 D.O.F with TrackIR. I just ordered one myself to go with my standard X52 for use in D.C.S. A10C.

TrackIR support is one of the main reasons I'm interested in this game.

 

[Sye d'Burns]

I played this for about 3.5 hours yesterday. It works terrific with a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick. The controls are fully customizable.

The requirements must be absurdly low. I was playing it in a Parallels VM of Windows XP and it worked great.

 

[Joseph Merrick]

Yeah, played the demo, I don't think this is very playable with a 360 controller the way the controls are set up.
Like, unless I missed some functions, I can't even put just the roaming/combat basics on the controller and leave the complicated stuff to the keyboard. I consider enemy targeting switches among these basics yet the game only has general craft targeting hotkeys and you have to use the hardcoded modifier key ALT to make those same keys target enemies so I can't even put that "ALT" function on a button instead to be able to use it in combination with other buttons to target nearest enemy etc.
Shame, was gonna give it a serious shot this time but if I can't get the basics to be hassle free and fun it's not worth it. I was even willing to give up things like strafing and manage with the botched way thrusting with the 360 triggers is handled (as usual in such games pressing no trigger makes it half-thrust, pressing left trigger 0 and right trigger full....).
Game has nice newtonian physics model though, in inertia mode you can basically endlessly (maybe, I stopped at 5k) increase your speed with your afterburner. And then take ages to come to a halt (I crashed on a moon ).
Should be a blast with joysticks & keyboard if it delivers on the premise.

just use xpadder?

According to the site it uses all 6 D.O.F with TrackIR. I just ordered one myself to go with my standard X52 for use in D.C.S. A10C.
TrackIR support is one of the main reasons I'm interested in this game.

trackir isn't really that useful in the game. or I have never found it to be. it's so easy to just move the ship around looking at stuff while going in another direction. but in dcs a10c it's really useful yeah

 

[TheExodu5]

trackir isn't really that useful in the game. or I have never found it to be. it's so easy to just move the ship around looking at stuff while going in another direction. but in dcs a10c it's really useful yeah

Yeah, I suppose looking around doesn't benefit you that much since you can turn the ship around at next to no cost. Still, I hope it adds a level of immersion I can appreciate.

As for DCS A10C...never heard of it before today. Maybe I should check that out.

Also, what controls do you suggest for strafing and up/down? Should I use the POV hat for that? Or maybe the throttle hat?

 

[MotionBlue]

Played the demo. Game focuses more on the simulation part, than much of anything else. The controls at your command are daunting, and confusing at times.

 

[Unhandled Exception]

I've dumped about 5 hours into this game with just a keyboard and mouse. Love it, but I really need a flight stick.

 

[AndyD]

Bought it. Going to install it later. I just found my old joystick in the closed a few weeks back, so this game came to Steam just in time.

 

[Xander51]

I checked out the demo and had trouble getting it to run on my PC. It kept crashing during the load screens.

 

[Erudite]

So I notice on the Steam page that this game has a co-op component. I haven't been able to find concrete info on it, so maybe someone can fill me in.

Can you play the whole game co-op, or is it just specific instances of playing with other players.

 

[KKRT00]

So I notice on the Steam page that this game has a co-op component. I haven't been able to find concrete info on it, so maybe someone can fill me in.

Can you play the whole game co-op, or is it just specific instances of playing with other players.

Yep, whole game. You can actually make a server like in Terraria or Minecraft with persistent world and play on it and affect it even when other player isnt around.
Its one feature, i would love to have in X series.

 

[Jharp]

So is it more towards the Freelancer end of the spectrum or the X end?

By which I mean is it a dumb baby game that's easy to play so I can get right into it like Freelancer or will I stare at it installed in my Steam list and dread launching it like I've done since I bought X during the holiday sale?

 

[KKRT00]

So is it more towards the Freelancer end of the spectrum or the X end?

By which I mean is it a dumb baby game that's easy to play so I can get right into it like Freelancer or will I stare at it installed in my Steam list and dread launching it like I've done since I bought X during the holiday sale?

Something in a middle, just download a demo to find out.

 

[Stahsky]

This looks like fun. Can you explore the "world" with a friend, or are the online parts sectioned off?

 

[KKRT00]

This looks like fun. Can you explore the "world" with a friend, or are the online parts sectioned off?

Seamless world.

 

[Staab]

Seems to have mod support too and with the multiplayer aspect being in already this could develop into something really huuuuuge.
Still have really fond memories of playing Freelancer in co-op, was awesome.

 

[Stahsky]

Seamless world.

So the whole thing is cooperative? Oh man, I think I'm buying this. I've had an itch for a new game like this. Thanks!

 

[AndyD]

So after playing quite a bit I have some questions that maybe you guys can help with. I tried to figure out the answers with the game guide with no luck, so maybe the features dont exist, but I thought to ask here before I set up an account on the evochron forums.

Is there an autosave option? Because I have died several times by crashing into things only to have to backtrack for hours to a last save.

Will there be any equipment available to buy later that allows communication with a station without entering? I hate having to enter every time just to get a mission or check news. Or is there an easy way to target a station and auto pilot the entry?

Can you equip more than one mining beam to harvest faster?

Is there something I need to install to see flying items? I have been unable to do any of the "we lost an item in space" missions as I fly to the waypoint and there is nothing floating around to retrieve.

Is there an option to free mouse, in other words, using alt to toggle between flight and control, rather than having to hold it down?

Is there any time compression?

Do the space alerts for planets in need have a range in which you hear them? I think I have had several where the planet requesting was very far away, no way to jump to it in the allotted time. Am I doing those wrong?

Is there a way to improve equipment to auto-label planets? Or do I have to manually do it, or do they auto label once I land on them?

More later. This is a great game, but not as refined as X3, so maybe the things I am missing simply are not there.

 

[bonesmccoy]

Steam sale!

 

[Echoplx]

So I've put about 40 hours into this now and am finally starting to wrap my head around everything in this game (I think) Having a blast playing mp in a clan me and some friends have started, building our own stations and everything. I'm currently getting military rank in order to buy their ship frames and I was just wondering what benefits does civilian rank actually give you?

 

[KKRT00]

There are releasing expansion that will be available late November.

Here's a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PqwX_UcZKwQ