Show HN: Corsair Game – Minecraft Meets the Martian in Space | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Corsair Game – Minecraft Meets the Martian in Space

corsair-game.net

54 pointsNestoriaan34 comments

I'm another guy working on the game.

Whoa, thanks for the attention! Left the computer here and came back after an hour to see quite a few new email signups... Didn't really know what to expect, but this was a positive surprise!

Anyway, regarding the similarities with Space Engineers, it is understandable, as both are kind of first person space games. To be honest, it has been a while since I looked at their game, but I believe our vision is different. We have more of a back story, more gameplay (not just a sandbox), living ecosystems, NPCs, missions, etc. Ship building is a core part, where you build and improve your ship and crew to be able to travel further and explore more.

The demo we have on our site is a bit dated concept version we built with WebGL (Three.js and Cannon.js). We have recently moved to Unity and are working on an intro/tutorial that will be our new downloadable demo. ETA of that is few weeks from now at least.

I think it's a great concept. It looks good, but the controls are a bit funky and not intuitive, compared to for example Minecraft where you "got it" right away. You should make the demo into a tutorial, so when ppl make the decision to buy or not, they already know how to play.

Looks similar to Space Engineers: http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/

I thought the same thing... I wish they didn't pretend that they existed within a vacuum, and made it clear how they're different.

But they're space games...don't they exist in vacuums by definition?

Space Engineers only sometimes exists in a vacuum as it simulates pressurised spaces and planets ;)

Has that become any better? last time I played with it about the only mechanic that worked was slamming ships into rocks and watching them crumple

Planets, programmable systems, automation, the game is basically constantly under development

Why would you want anything else?

After watching the video I didn't understand the game at all. Maybe add some text "Explore the open world" or something.

Regarding your demo: When Firefox is an unsupported browser, and it isn't the year 2000 anymore, I stop using your website.

Looked like a fun game, but unless it has a (not half-assed) SteamOS port, you probably won't get my money.

I don't understand the downvote, if the demo doesn't work on half the browsers[0] in the world at the moment then it's not great is it? More so when most of them can actually have decent WebGL performance.

[0]: http://gs.statcounter.com/

Better support for the demo would be good, sure. But "I stop using your website" because one feature of it is browser-specific is rather extreme. And the snipe about SteamOS support, when as far as I can see there's no mention of target platforms at all, just comes off as rude.

There was a lot of density in my comment. I'll unravel.

The point is I'm a linux-only gamer using firefox. I am clearly not their target market. I felt it appropriate to explain that I was not about to download chrome(ium) on my device in order to view their game. Browser monocultures are a dangerous meme I do not wish to support.

If there was a chance it would be ported to SteamOS, I would buy it in a heartbeat, even if I didn't get to play the demo (the Youtube video was nice). It's safe to guess (I'd love to be wrong) that, if they're focusing on only one browser, they're likely going to focus on only one platform. If I'm wrong, and this ends up being released via emscripten/asm.js, (or, even better, a native SteamOS port) I'll happily eat my words.

SteamOS has some lousy linux ports so far, unless you get Ryan Gordon to port it, or use Unity/Unreal. My "Half-assed" parenthetical was in reference to this. There's a real Blue Ocean opportunity here for good coders fluent in DirectX and OpenGL/SDL to make decent careers off porting to SteamOS right now.

I work on the game. Really happy to hear you like what we have done, and sorry to disappoint. We have moved from WebGL to Unity and are currently porting our demo.

Send us an email at hello@corsair-game.net if you want to help test our Linux releases!

(lengthy) email sent. The fact that you ported from WebGL to Unity proves that I was largely barking up the wrong tree.

Shouldn't WebGL work in Firefox though?

I'd say if the demo doesn't work in Firefox, it's definitely not great. Do we really want to go back to '90s with "best viewed in IE" or "best viewed in Netscape" type of signs?

Did we ever really leave that behind? Seems half the Show HNs are "best in Chrome" things.

> When Firefox is an unsupported browser, and it isn't the year 2000 anymore, I stop using your website.

But all the hip kids in San Francisco are using Chrome on MacBooks! And as far as they're concerned, the world consists of … kids in San Francisco using Chrome on MacBooks.

What was your issue? I had no problem looking at the site in firefox

https://alpha.corsair-game.net/demo redirects to https://corsair-game.net/unsupported-browser/

Unsupported browser

The browser you are currently using is unfortunately not supported.

As of now Corsair can only be played with Chrome. In the future we hope to add support for more browsers.

Ah, I missed the demo part. that is pretty shitty of them. I don't mind if sites say "warning: we havent really optimised for your browser, but try anyway", but flat out blocking the content is indeed terrible.

This is at best an pre-Alpha version. Multi browser support can generally be added fairly late in the process.

Adding multi-browser support late in the process is like adding error handling into your application code late in the process.

I was able to view in Edge just by changing the user-agent in browser dev tools. Might work in Firefox, too.

Agree, browser user agent sniffing is horrible.

This looks pretty cool, our minecraft addicted kids are going to love it.

I'm curious, do you plan to charge for this game? And if so, I wonder how that might work when it's a browser-based game. Ads? Subscription? Something else?

We will charge for the game, yes. We are building the game with the Unity Engine, and that allows us to release on practically any platform we want. Currently we are aiming for a standalone PC/Mac/Linux release, but mobile is of course also interesting. First things first, though.

We are considering selling the game on Steam, but have not decided yet.

While steam is a good platform to sell on, I think a lot of people here will agree that selling a DRM free version on sites like GOG.com would be awesome especially if you can support Linux.

What about GOG is better than steam? I'm pretty sure you can sell your game DRM free on steam too. Valve is also pushing pretty hard for Linux gaming.

oh my god. I'm five minutes guiding the mini man to the other asteroids. I could only make eletronic parts with the two asteroids close.

Did anyone manage to create anything other than eletronic parts?

    - 2x polymer = empty hull
    - hull + electronics = boardable ship (unpowered)

Then I got back to work.

creepers...in space?

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