What is Reddit's opinion of
Endless Sky?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ Endless Sky website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
35 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
https://endless-sky.github.io/
Endless Sky is a free open-source modern remake of EV. Okay, well, not technically a remake, but it's like 95% based on Escape Velocity. Except that it makes you start out the game with crippling student loans.
+1 for Cogmind and ASCII Sector. Never heard of those others.
Oh, and since /u/hailthetomato asked for roguelikes or roguelites, I absolutely adore the real-time space exploration/combat/trading roguelite Transcendence. It's sort of along the same lines as the old Escape Velocity and its ilk, but with more questing and activity among the planets of single star systems before jumping to the next, rather than doing trade routes through multiple systems (though if those multi-system trade routes sound interesting, Endless Sky is a modern EV clone that is pretty much unrivaled).
/r/Elona - This game was a 'rogue-lite' before rogue-lite was a thing. It takes a very different approach than the modern rogue-lite. It retains the complexity of roguelike games while not having permanent death (death hurts, though), having a hand-made world map and cities. It's kind of like "roguelike meets 16-bit RPG" so if that appeals to you, give it a try.
Transcendence Here is another rogue-lite that predates the popularity of the genre. It's a top-down space shooter, conceived as a cross between Star Control and Nethack. Hop in your little ship and upgrade it as you travel to your goal (I forget exactly what that is?)
Endless Sky You can also get this on Steam. It's similar to the previous game in gameplay. But it's not at all rogue-like. Best described as a fan-made tribute to the Escape Velocity series of games, such as EV Nova.
Those are the free games that have given me the most play time over the years. I don't get much chance to talk about the first two, but I think DCSS players are the most likely to enjoy them.
There are quite a few games in Debian and Ubuntu repos, installable with one command.
ScummVM (point and click) engine games:
apt-get install beneath-a-steel-sky drascula drascula-music flight-of-the-amazon-queen lure-of-the-temptress
Arcade-type games:
apt-get install astromenace ballerburg tecnoballz
Simulation/builder:
apt-get install openttd freeciv
RPGs
apt-get install freedink # Humorous isometric RPG first released in 1998
Turn-based tactical:
apt-get install ufoai # In the vein of X-COM
Steam categorizes 'Free' games with 'Free to Play', but you can find a list of all 172 of the free games for SteamOS and Linux like so. I recommend <em>Endless Sky</em>, which is on Steam but is open-source.
I loved the EV series. My favorite thing though was editing my file to make an overpowered ship and kill ALLL the factions with the forklift.
Also, don’t tell him about this modern spiritual successor: Endless Sky
If you're not against open source engine / commercial asset, you should try http://openxcom.org for X-Com: UFO Defense from 1993 https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_ufo_defense
https://endless-sky.github.io/plugins.html
https://opengamemods-group.github.io/ES-Mod-Share/
Creating a plugin (mod) for endless sky is super easy, and that's what you'll need to do if you want to share your tweaked ships.
ASCII Sector is great, I didn't play it a lot.
Prospector is great, I love it, a bit on the comedy side.
Prime is pretty much a space dungeon, a roguelike that is quite painfull but fun.
TraumaRL is another space dungeon, a SystemShocklike?
My favorite space game is Endless Sky, it is hard to tell how great it is as it seems a very light at first glance with a poor gameplay, but it has a lot of depth and the gameplay makes a lot of sense in the end. The developer is very active and the game is highly modable, which is even better (not a roguelike and no dungeon, sorry).
So far most people have named popular games, so I'm not sure how well this thread is going to do. Anyway...
I'm a huge fan of Endless Sky.
It's an updated open source clone of an old Macintosh game from the 90's called Escape Velocity.
The official blurb:
>Endless Sky is a 2D space trading and combat game inspired by the classic Escape Velocity series. Work your way up from a relatively wimpy shuttle, cargo ship, or fighter, to a highly upgraded and customized flagship or to a massive fleet of warships or freighters.
If you're like me and spent a lot of the period from 1995-2005 playing the Escape Velocity series of games, check out Endless Sky. It's open source and still in development, but it's everything EV was and more.
They're sort of similar. There's no trade element to it, and there's a ceiling to how many ships you can have and how big each of those ships is allowed to be, so you can't work your way up to a fleet of 20 dreadnoughts. Combat's also fairly different - combat in SPAZ relies pretty heavily on the mouse, where I recall being able to ignore the mouse completely for EV.
There's an open-source game (currently on Steam, even) called Endless Sky which is intended to be a spiritual successor to EV. In terms of look-and-feel it is way closer to Escape Velocity than SPAZ is. Between Endless Sky and SPAZ, I honestly don't know which I would say is more fun - SPAZ has more interesting combat in my opinion, but sometimes I just want to lead a fleet of 10 warships around collecting tribute from those Free Worlds punks.
Endless Sky - An open source homage to the classic Escape Velocity series. If you like sandbox top-down starship combat rpgs (and who doesn't?), this one is pretty damn great. And available for free on Steam.
Battle for Wesnoth - An open source tactics rpg in the vein of Fire Emblem or FF Tactics. The main campaign is pretty good, and there has been a ton of community development around this title as well, so you'll never run out of content.
Frog Fractions - If you haven't played it. You must. Easily the single greatest browser game. Ever.
Destination Sol looks a lot like it. Also, maybe you would like an excellent Escape Velocity clone Endless Sky (I've spent at least 70 hours in it).
There's this cool game called Endless Sky that is completely open source. It's free to play on Steam, and the community is constantly making really cool content.
The Carrier is a Republic ship, and it technically requires ship licenses that aren't in the game yet, so you can't buy them. They're the ones that fly around dropped drones all over the place. You've probably seen them without realizing it, since they look just like other Republic ships, just slightly bigger. I'm not sure if you can board and capture them or not.
The Shield Beetles are alien "Hai" ships. They're off in a different part of the galaxy. This link isn't a great picture of the map, but in the upper right you can see the system Ultima Thule. Head there and you'll be able to find your way to the Hai systems. You'll need pretty good fuel reserves, it's 6 or 7 jumps between planets you can refuel at, but it's no problem for a Bactrian. You'll have to land on their homeworld to buy a Shield Beetle, and to do that you'll have to bribe them (Shift + T to talk to a selected planet). They also sell some pretty good shields you can equip onto any ship.
You're right that Battle for Wesnoth gets far less recognition than it should. I don't think it's up there with my list of best games, personally, but free/open-source titles in general get a lot less advertising and a lot less praise than they deserve.
My favorite libre game has got to be Endless Sky, personally; I've put literally thousands of hours into it... XD
check out Endless Sky too if you haven't - open source community of modders doing a pure EV revamp one Github pull at a time. (well, the engine was written by one guy I believe, but massive content from the community)
https://endless-sky.github.io/
It was seeing that community that pushed me over the edge to give this craziness a go.
There are already a bunch of great space games for the desktop, but the one which spacerpg3 is inspired by is the classic game EV Nova. Although the game is more than a decade old, it still has a loyal following to this day; you can find the reddit community for this game at /r/evnova, and it covers the whole ev series including classic and override. You'll find instructions for playing it on your computer; it's free now, since the company that created it no longer exists.
Another one, with a very different kind of play style but lots of automation of the boring parts, is endless-sky. You can have fleets in endless-sky, and the size of your fleet is only limited by the strength of your computer. You can find endless-sky on steam or at https://endless-sky.github.io/
the Wanderer storyline is MZ's, and in his most recent blog post he said again that he wishes to continue it:
https://endless-sky.github.io/2020/05/01/stable-release-0.9.12.html
so I'd discourage you from writing for that storyline because of that
It's not my intention to throw cold-water on all the great investment that volunteers are making in this project, but I have to say something slightly uncomplimentary, here.
This is an in-joke name that's very searchable and unique, but is otherwise awful branding. There's no law of open-source that says everyone has to have taste as bad as RMS.
In five years when no game players want to play Tomatenquark or <em>Uebergame</em> but are intrigued by the sound of Superhero League of Hoboken or Space Truckers on Mars or <em>Endless Sky</em>, let's think back how hilarious that name was, okay?
If you want to scratch that Escape Velocity itch, download you Endless Sky, an open source clone. It's also on Steam. I've put several hours into it and really enjoy it. It scratches an itch!
assuming you leave out like a million multiplayer FPS/MMO games which could top 10 al list by themselves as well as omitting "abandon-ware" , also leaving out fan based sequels to classic games - Off the top of my head:
Starcraft classic and SC2 Terran campaign is free now as, it's better than RA, you could also throw C&C Tiberian sun in the mix. RA is great but hasn't aged all that well.
Treasure Adventure Game is a real gem. Rockin soundtrack, cool world, some solid platforming. Overall refreshing little Metroidvania
Mechwarrior 4 Mercinaries is a great game, though can be tricky to get running.
Tyrian 2000 is also one of my favorite old school shooters. several long episodes and a boatload of fun weapons. Co-op mode
Endless Sky might scratch that old school escape velocity itch.
Dwarf Fortress, It's not for everyone but for the ones who can get into it..
Minecraft Classic, not as cool as the current version but it's still minecraft.
Another Open Source free game that i'd recommend(this one is on pc) is Endless Sky
r/endlesssky
https://endless-sky.github.io/
From the website:
`Endless Sky is a 2D space trading and combat game similar to the classic Escape Velocity series. Explore other star systems. Earn money by trading, carrying passengers, or completing missions. Use your earnings to buy a better ship or to upgrade the weapons and engines on your current one. Blow up pirates. Take sides in a civil war. Or leave human space behind and hope to find friendly aliens whose culture is more civilized than your own.`
Also from the site is this:
`Endless Sky is designed to make it as easy as possible to create new content to add to the game, and people are hard at work on other story lines, as well as new alien species, ships, and outfits.`
And it's actually true, though there are more developers than modders(we have around 30 active devs)
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I haven't played it yet but I just found it.
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Not the same post-apocalyptic setting but it looks to have the same economy based style of gameplay.
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I haven't played it yet but I just found it.
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Not the same post-apocalyptic setting but it looks to have the same economy based style of gameplay.
While not the game you're looking for, there is a game that is similar called Endless Sky. It's an open source remake of an older game, Escape Velocity, and you may enjoy it. You start out with a small shuttle, doing cargo and passenger transport jobs, and maybe some trading of various commodities between the different solar systems. As you make money, you can upgrade your ship, build a fleet, etc. You can also take various jobs from the federation or pirates, or become a space pirate yourself.
I wish I knew the app you're looking for, but this game may be a reasonable substitute.
hella I still check in time to time with the EV / EVN crew on IRC
I think you guys ought to check out "Transcendence" and "Endless Sky" if you haven't already! both are pretty inspired/influenced by EVN and play slick too.
Transcendence is more about a singular ship travelling the world while endless sky is more focused on a fleet and trading
I haven't played Endless sky that much but I loved Transendence, and the dev is working on a part 2.
also tagging /u/athazagor and /u/TaranSF
Yeah, Nova was certainly the most polished and thought-out of the three. Override just happened to be the game where it all clicked together for me and I got sucked in. I think it's the most interesting one lorewise, a bit like Babylon 5 or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica in tone. It feels gritty and sometimes realistic, while the world in Nova is more akin to something like Mass Effect with more scifi magic and fantasy-like elements. All this in retrospect, of course. I haven't played any of them in a long time.
By the way, there are two spiritual successors, Naev and Endless Sky. They're both open source and free. I've tried both but since they lack the nostalgia, I've never really gotten into them.
Were you on a Mac? If it could have been Escape Velocity / Escape Velocity Nova.
Not sure if those are still available but there's an open source similar style game Endless Sky: https://endless-sky.github.io/
Also upkeep and deployment costs should be separate.
Call it "danger pay" for the pilots.
Extra costs for fielding heavy mechs could be your armor insurance company that's paying for those armor repairs, and like all insurance it's use it or lose it. Insurance makes a profit on every point of armor they don't have to replace. The insurance company maintains distribution facilities, even cashes of armor stockpiled on backwater worlds since it's fungible and only profitable to trade on massive quantities. They are really selling an "armor anywhere" service like AAA for mechs.
Also I'd like to see planets with Mech repair facilities you can rent to accelerate Mech repairs and refits faster than what you can do on your drop ship, but at a cost. Give you a reason to hang around in orbit instead of jumping to the next planet if you still have some nice contracts available where you are at.
I'd also like to see aggressive bidding. Basically bribing a faction on a planet with no missions to cook something up for you for the cost off ammo (automatic minimum credits and salvage) but you get a random mission for full reputation and a re-roll of the existing missions when you finish it (sparking up a conflict).
In Battletech the only thing more powerful than a Mech is a shit ton of C-Bills, it would be nice to have things to do with those credits.
Maybe even a bank(s), so you can pay down your loan principal and lower those interest payments, refinance with lower interest rates, and/or take out more loans for quick cash. The open source game Endless Sky has a really good but simple bank/loan system.
https://endless-sky.github.io/
Most people just focus on paying off the loan but I found once you have good credit it's more profitable to take the loan and have an extra ship(s) making money. It's a little extra to juggle so if you aren't into micro managing you can just skip it and not get punished, but if you do manage it you can make faster progress.
It would be nice to see ships that aren't Pentagons (Asp, Cobra, Viper, DeLacey), dildos (Saud Kruger and Gutamaya), or bulbous space vans (Pretty much all of Lakon's transporter stuffs). Some more ships with the Eagle's design style...with you know...wings.
A design like the Raven from Endless sky Would look fucking amazing
A little late here but I didn't see Endless Sky in the list. It's a 2D space trading and combat game. Very addictive. You can be a trader, a fighter or a space bus, build a fleet and it's open source.
Endless Sky. Customize a spaceship you got from squirrel-people with parts from bird-people to haul freight and passengers for insect-people to raise enough money to buy a fleet and take part in (or ignore) a human civil war. The gameplay is such that you can play for 5 minutes or 5 hours and engaging enough that when I first played it, I got 10+ hrs. in before I realized there were quests. Plus it's open-source and modding in your own ships, quests, anything is really easy.
For the Escape Velocity fans out there, there are games like it available free to play.
NAEV: http://blog.naev.org/
Endless Sky: https://endless-sky.github.io/
EV was one of those early games I got off a CD Demo Disk for Mac. Loved it.
endles sky, heres a link to their website, try it its free on steam Its the best open sourced game on the market (my opinion). It has a great story and t feel like reading a book