Anyone still play O.R.B?

[adamstrange]

Even though its a bit old i still play this game alot and have been modding it for awhile now,of course...while still modding/playing HW2.

This is my latest work in ORB which should be ready in a few months for all you die hard O.R.B players...if any:
http://www.strategyfirst.com/forum/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=38;t=000172#000000

[Akalamanaia]

I kind of dropped interest when Black Box disappeared, again.
Modding that game is kind of a lost cause, fan interest is for all practical reasons 0, and some people keep whining how theres nobody to play with, and whenever i stay at the gamespy lobby for a whole day, nobody even comes wich makes me think those people are just lying..


Modding that game is extraordinarily hard, Multiplayer was left in an unbalanced state, and none of the races in the game were actually finished.

[AceRimmer]

The ships look crap too, although it was fairly atmospheric and had decent music and backgrounds.

Just a cheap Homeworld knock-off.

[hiddensmoke]

My brother beta'd it and it looked stupid to me so i didnt touch it. So i went on to beta'ing a bunch of mmorpgs which all seemed the same anyways so im not playing them any more... gets expensive.

[General Nuke Em]

ORB had great potential, but it completely blowed. :/

[Magus]

I recently unearthed it and beat it, after having consigned it to the pile of games I wish I had never bought. My opinion of it is quite a bit higher now. It doesn't have the same feel as the Homeworlds, less like a game and more like a simulation. Working with actual newtonian physics makes it much more of a challenge. However, the complete stupidity of some things (Ok, we'll close the range between our frigate and that destroyer. We're behind it, killing it while its fixiated on the carrier... and then we fucking run into the destroyer and die because we didn't start decelerating earlier.) keep it from the same tier as Homeworld. I'd like to try it multiplayer though, haven't got the chance.

Edit: On another note, your reskinning stuff is amazing. The celestial objects particularly, though I like the Marksman

[adamstrange]

Thanks Magus
Working with actual newtonian physics makes it much more of a challenge So thats why the fighters act and move the way they do.

I always thought it was a bug how some times the ships would just drift when firing on a target.

The one thing that would bother me was that i could have about 20 torpedo fighters and just when i'm closing in on a carrier to fire,they would just veer off and i would then have to reorder them to attack the carrier.

But by then the carrier would have taken out a few of them.

[Magus]

Well, from what I understand, marksmen are bugged up and don't make proper attacks. Torpedo interceptors seem to work fine. For the Alyssians, I know the Starchaser torps work, not sure about the Invaders (they worked the one time I used them, but that was against the Uber-Elathen ship at the end of the campaign)

Yea, I thought the same thing about the fighters the first time I played, and thus tried to micro them. Which makes it much, much worse, since the fighter AI does consider their current vector, and screwing with their orders can cause issues with it.

[DatonKallandor]

I played ORB after getting it for free (kinda) but I quickly stoped playing after seeing there were no impact graphics for any projectile weapons. How the hell am I supposed to see if I hit when there's nothing to indicate it?


Daton

[Magus]

The big shield flare that appears even when shields are down isn't good enough for you?

[Chrysophylax]

I bought orb when it came out. I played the SP out of sheer will, since the game was extremely hard to play somehow... It had amazing graphics, but meh...

[adamstrange]

The Invader ships totally suck Magus.
They move around and look like metal fish in a tank.

I never build them at all and they seem to share the same AI as the Marksman because they both move in the same manner.

I've never played through the whole Malus mission and never played the Alyssian...but i'm going to as soon as i finish my mod.

One of the programmers that worked on ORB,[Black Box at the ORB forum] said that they were working on new features and updates and an expansion when all of a sudden the investors just pulled the plaug on the whole game the very next day ...and that was it.

ORB's editor is what keeps me playing the game since i got the hang of creating orbiting planets and asteroid fields.

In fact,on some of the maps that i'm making like the map "THESE COOL WORLDS",i have 3 asteroid fields that rotate in 3 different directions that you have to move through and there are about 130 asteroids in each one of these fields.

One wrong move and you can kiss your ships goodbye because i edited the damage factor and setup collision in the game.

I really wish that HW2 had a dynamic universe like ORB instead of the painted background thats so damn hard to try to create your own.

[DatonKallandor]

The big shield flare that appears even when shields are down isn't good enough for you?

I didnt get any shield flare. Shots just disappeared and armor was substracted from the target. (Thats for fighter shots)


Daton

[adamstrange]

I didnt get any shield flare. Shots just disappeared and armor was substracted from the target.
Ok,open up your ORB.ini file and make a search for SHIELD and you will find 2 lines of text.

Make sure they look like this:

flag_shield=1
flag_override_shields=0
This should fix the problem.:smash:

[Noir]

The ships look crap too

Well, overall ORB WAS an example of how the "OMFG REALISM!" arguement falls flat on it's face...

[DatonKallandor]

Homeworld had playable realism in its ships. They werent over the top full of weapons but they werent soulless boxes either.


Daton

[Noir]

However, It was well implemented. ORB's realism felt like it was "HAY GUYS, THEY DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS IN REAL LIFE SO LET'S HAVE IT TOO" with seemingly little regard of the consequences that would come from that design decision. The idea of realism for the sake of realism in a non-sim GAME has always been despised by those that know better, and this GAME paid dearly for it.

[adamstrange]

As much as i love ORB i do have to agree 100% with Noir.

Although i did not know that it was suppose to have some sort of realism, the reality factor is killing some games simply because it does not give you any other option.

Case in point TOCA RACE DRIVER 2.

Yes its suppose to be a race driving simulator but i've been driving since 1988 and in all kind s of weather conditions and surfaces and i will tell you this,no vehicle on earth drives the way these cars do in this game unless your a crosseyed 4 year old on a skateboard rolling over a wet icey road.

Just about every car in the game skids when it takes a turn and the moment that your car's tire touches the gravel or grassy sidebanks the damn cars want to skid.

Even if your on the grass and slowly start your car rolling it wants to skid.

You know whatwould make games like this fun...an arcade mode.

If this game had a mod to make the cars handle like those in the NFS games then it would rock,other than that this game totally sucks and codemasters who made the game had the nerve to charge for the cheats.

Yes ORB does have a lot of problem but overall its still really a fun game,though i have never played MP but would like to but not with the stock game.

One thing i didn't like was the sounds in the game,just awful but the good part was that the files are Mp3 and Wav so i modded those but unlike HW2 the sounds seem to be hardcoded which is not good.

In HW2 i can create a new sound for each ship and a different sound for each different weapon on a ship but in ORB ships like the Malus fighters,although there are different fighters ,they all share the same sound.

Trade off is that in HW2 unless Zatch had not written his music converter program there was no way for me to make them because the HW2 Devs chose to use some weird sound file format instead of normal Mp3/Wav files dumped into a folder the way some other games do.
The ships look crap too Not after i'm finish with them:tooth:

[Magus]

Personally, I really liked several of the ORB ship designs. I thought the Malus Interceptors (all variants), Marksmen, Destroyers, and Assault Carriers looked quite excellent, and most of the other ships didn't look bad (despite the admittedly miniscule polycounts). The only one I really hated was the Justice. It's a friggin car! In space!

[adamstrange]

:slow:

[Noir]

The assault carriers were generally fugly :p ,though the destroyers and the interceptors were decent, especially the Alyssian destroyer.

[AceRimmer]

Well......I did like the Destroyers and the Malus Interceptors. But all the rest just lacked coolness factor. I remember reading somewhere that the developers tried to go a different path with ship design than Homeworld, i.e. less detail, no aerodynamics, hardly any variety. It just looked boring.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I liked the Assault Carriers. But launching /recovering ships at such a slow pace sucked. In any case the cost and balance structure of the game meant that the bigger ship the better basically. Even with Torpedo fighters.

[Noir]

well the firing arcs on those blew as well. You could only point like 2 at one target and the other two would be spining wildly in their mounts.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

If you put it right, you could get 4 on one target. But they were powerful enough that that didnt even matter; they were still worth the cost.

[adamstrange]

I remember reading somewhere that the developers tried to go a different path with ship design than Homeworld, i.e. less detail, no aerodynamics, hardly any variety.I had a conversation with one of the ORB players about a year ago about this and what i was told was that the reason for this was that ships in space did not need wings and stabilizing fins [think of the Borg Cube or the Death Star].

So that was the reason for the boxy look of most ships where as the the ships in HW2 look like they are more fitted to be in the atmosphere [all fighters and corvettes] in the water [al the other ships,Hiig SY looks like a floating dock] or under the water [ both MS's].

[TheDeadlyShoe]

On the other hand, all the movies showed ships in the atmosphere ;)

[DatonKallandor]

Well, its much more cost effective having spaceships be able to go into atmo. And if you can design them to do both - why not?


Daton