Flyout Alpha Discusion

[linuxgurugamer]

I am intrigued by this new game/competitor to KSP, and have asked them for a key.

It is an alpha, and why it obviously has taken some inspiration from KSP, it does look like a totally different game.

I’d like this to be a discussion about this new game, with no discusion about “ripoffs”, copyright infringement, etc.

Mods, if this isn’t the correct place for this, please move it.

 

Anyway, so far all I have is the impression of the videos.  According to the YouTube posting, you need to email them to ask for a key.  I couldn’t find the game by name on Steam yet, so either I was loking for the wrong name or it’s hidden.

My impression n is that they are right now concentrating on the a iation aspect of it, although they do have spaceflight implemented, the planets and moons are procedurally generated.   It isn’t clear whether they are regenerated for each game or not.

Here is what appears to be their latest video on YouTube:

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

No offense to the devs as I realize it's an alpha but; I seriously doubt they can take this product to maturity. Or compete with an established product in the same genre. I know a pipe dream when I see one, lol.

Game looks like it lacks heart, what was their direction? "Make KSP but better and more how we'd want?" which is an admirable sentiment but a poor framework to build a game series on.

Mark my words, this will fade into obscurity as it wallows in dev hell or it will launch to resounding silence. Copy cats and "me-too's" rarely ever pan out even when they have good intentions.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[linuxgurugamer]

Sometimes pipedreams come to fruition.  Why not give them a chance?

 I dont understand the “heart”, it is a demo video which shows promise.

Look at Cities Skyline comaped to SimCity.  Same thing, only much better

Edited January 27, 2018 by linuxgurugamer

[RizzoTheRat]

Looks pretty good to me, but don't think my pc is currently high enough spec to join the alpha. 

I picked up Simple Planes in a humble bundle deal the other week but not had a go with it yet. Flyout looks like it goes a lot further than simple planes with some of the videos looking like you can design your own engines even. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

15 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Sometimes pipedreams come to fruition.  Why not give them a chance?

 I dont understand the “heart”, it is a demo video which shows promise.

Look at Cities Skyline comaped to SimCity.  Same thing, only much better

Why not give them a chance? Well...the fact that they don't even have a website I can find about their company? Also, that as far as I can tell; this will be their first game release ever. E-mailing some rando guy for a key doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their business structure/acumen either. Buying a game is more than just software, I'm buying into a company that makes a product.

"Heart" is another way to say "inspiration" if your only source of inspiration is another existing game and "making it better" (or in this case, adding some mods like procedural parts and BDarmory) you are off on the wrong foot already. (In my opinion.) Greatness comes from inside, from a vision, from passion for your idea.

This is a niche part of the market really; there prolly isn't enough interest to support 2 "orbital physics" style games. Which is fine, competition is good after all. However when you have a game like Minecraft or WoW it's really, really hard to make any waves in that genre; the public just doesn't care about "me-too's" if they have an existing well known product that fits the niche. This is like trying to make a new "cola" styled soda to compete with Pepsi and Coke. Admirable, but foolish.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[klgraham1013]

19 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Copy cats and "me-too's" rarely ever pan out...

Really?  This seems to be common practice for making money in the game industry.

2 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

if your only source of inspiration is another existing game and "making it better"...

Again.  This seems to be generally how the game industry actually works.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Just now, klgraham1013 said:

Really?  This seems to be common practice for making money in the game industry.

Like any of those Minecraft clones ever came close to even making 1% of what Minecraft made?

You might get a few mistaken purchases from grandmothers who don't have their glasses on, but that's about it.

4 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Again.  This seems to be generally how the game industry actually works.

Which explains the current state of the industry; stagnation and sequelitis.

The best games are born from a unique concept, just because we haven't gotten one in a while doesn't mean that's not true anymore.

Nintendo still innovates at least, and they do very well.

[klgraham1013]

Just now, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Like any of those Minecraft clones ever came close to even making 1% of what Minecraft made?

You might get a few mistaken purchases from grandmothers who don't have their glasses on, but that's about it.

How about all those first person shooters?  ...character action games?  ...cover shooters?

The game industry seems built on evolving established genres.  I'm not saying Flyout will succeed, but saying only original products survive completely disregards the nature of things.  Certainly, there are some genres like MOBAs which can only support so many games, but the genre of KSP only really has one game at this point.  I don't consider orbiter to be in the same genre.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

14 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

How about all those first person shooters?  ...character action games?  ...cover shooters?

The game industry seems built on evolving established genres.  I'm not saying Flyout will succeed, but saying only original products survive completely disregards the nature of things.  Certainly, there are some genres like MOBAs which can only support so many games, but the genre of KSP only really has one game at this point.  I don't consider orbiter to be in the same genre.

I think you are confusing "genres" and "creative spaces." (Not exactly a real technical term, but the best way I could think of to describe the concept.)

An FPS is a genre, however a "WW2 shooter" is more of a creative space you select for your FPS to exist in. The more popular the genre, the more room there is for more "flavors" of that genre. If a genre is REALLY popular like FPS's you may even have room for more than one game in a given creative space like multiple competing WW2 shooters.

Orbital physics is hardly a popular genre yet, I really doubt there is room for two games of the same flavor, existing in the same creative space.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[LordFerret]

Right off the bat, that background recurring jet noise in the SPH is the first thing I'd be turning off. I'm wondering how its flight model stacks up next to the likes of FS and X-Plane... there's a whole lot of other questions I'd have about it in that respect. And as has been asked; Where is it going? Space? Multiplayer? Are there other airports / cities/ scenery?

[linuxgurugamer]

Just now, LordFerret said:

Right off the bat, that background recurring jet noise in the SPH is the first thing I'd be turning off. I'm wondering how its flight model stacks up next to the likes of FS and X-Plane... there's a whole lot of other questions I'd have about it in that respect. And as has been asked; Where is it going? Space? Multiplayer? Are there other airports / cities/ scenery?

And where was KSP, back when it was still free?  It was pretty raw back then, I think you can look at this as being in that state;

[LordFerret]

1 minute ago, linuxgurugamer said:

And where was KSP, back when it was still free?  It was pretty raw back then, I think you can look at this as being in that state;

Oh I understand this. I'm just wondering about the intended direction, what its focus will be. Will it be more like an FS/X-Plane type of sim, or Kerbalish? I mean; no question, KSP is not an ideal (airplane) flight simulator.

[Mr. Quark]

54 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Oh I understand this. I'm just wondering about the intended direction, what its focus will be. Will it be more like an FS/X-Plane type of sim, or Kerbalish? I mean; no question, KSP is not an ideal (airplane) flight simulator.

It has making flight parts, so like a way more advanced and realistic KSP flight wise, I would never stretch it as a ripoff as you can take inspiration without being a ripoff (a.k.a modular parts)

[Starman4308]

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

This is a niche part of the market really; there prolly isn't enough interest to support 2 "orbital physics" style games. Which is fine, competition is good after all. However when you have a game like Minecraft or WoW it's really, really hard to make any waves in that genre; the public just doesn't care about "me-too's" if they have an existing well known product that fits the niche. This is like trying to make a new "cola" styled soda to compete with Pepsi and Coke. Admirable, but foolish.

I'm not sure I agree. The videos were 95% about aircraft, with a token rocket thrown in there, probably to demonstrate that the engine could be extended to spaceflight, even if the game is currently lacking a huge number of support features such as an orbital map.

In short, I'm not sure they're trying to make a better Pepsi, I think they're trying to make Mountain Dew. Some similarities, but the products are distinct enough to not be overlapping.

In the other thread, I suggested that this would really appeal to BD Armory players: Flyout will have the design-your-own capacity of KSP, with more realistic treatment of jet engines, built-in support for weaponry, etc.

While it's too early to tell for certain, I suspect KSP and Flyout will be complementary, with different strengths, instead of being strict competitors.

[Superfluous J]

Raw impressions as I watch:

• Wow they copied KSP's translation widget exactly.
• Their procedural part controls work like I wished Procedural Part mods controls worked in KSP.
• Planes are cool and all but where are the rockets?
• Okay I'm skipping forward to the rocket.
• I must have missed it, I'll skip back for the rocket.
• Hmm. There must be less than 30 seconds of rocket.
• Okay I'm bored skipping around.

All in all a decent looking game, but it looked more like "not so simple planes" than "the ksp you've always wanted."

[KerikBalm]

So I watched some videos, one of which showed a mission system with 3 types of missions, one was military, I think one was science, and the other... I forget.. commercial or something. The military mission I saw involved shooting down "bombers" (looked like commercial airlines, but whatever).

It mentioned the idea of having different airports, different factions, etc.

I saw another video which specified a planet size of 1200km (2x kerbin's size), but its not clear if its always that size, or if the home planet will vary in properties.

It looks very aviation focused, but also very combat focused.

 

Personally, I like building cargo spaceplanes, and the engine design system looks very interesting to me. I'm guessing the procedural wings will allow for better aerodynamic simulation than stock KSPs wing segments that perform the same no matter how you combine them.

I don't like the combat focus. I do like the engine design feature (particularly if this is extended to rocket engines). I'm fine with the aero focus as long as it gives suitable tools for interplanetary spaceflight as well.

I like that many elements seem to have more of a "numeric" input/design aspect, and some of the procedurally generated terrain I've seen looks quite good.

Other parts remind me of just a noise function... kind of like Val's terrain

[Starman4308]

18 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

• I must have missed it, I'll skip back for the rocket.
• Hmm. There must be less than 30 seconds of rocket.

The rocket segment was not in that video. It's in this video, from about 2:06 to 2:54.

Notice: no orbital planning (requiring multiple midcourse corrections on a very approximate Hohmann transfer), and they had infinite fuel turned on like a scrub.

EDIT: And on even closer inspection, time warp capped out at 16x, which suggests to me they don't have on-rails timewarp, which suggests to me they don't have orbits properly coded in yet. It's looking less and less to me like a "KSP clone".

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by Starman4308

[KerikBalm]

6 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

• Wow they copied KSP's translation widget exactly.

Well, there are only so many ways to show a way to move things in 3 axes. I think its also simple enough that they could easily replicate it (heading off copyright accusations here). The rotation widget is again, very similar, but again, there's only so many ways to do it.

They also seem to have an aero-force overlay that is VERY similar to KSP, I wonder if its a unity thing. However, it also seems to show thrust, not just lift and drag. Again, lift and drag vectors will be pretty basic components of any flight sim, and making a display with lines corresponding to the magnitude would also be fairly simply.

This game is clearly being made by a team (single person?) comprised of (an) individual(s) that has/have played KSP. You can't copyright ideas. You can't patent ideas (only technical solutions to technical problems).

KSP may be the first game of this genre (although there is overlap with Orbiter, of course... and I saw a "velcro rockets" mod for orbiter that allows players to stick rockets together that seems to start being a bit kerbalish), but time will tell what competition comes up and which one dominates in the end.

Homeworld was the first 3d space RTS, it did well, there were some imitations (ORB, and some other game I can't even remember), but ultimately the genre seems to have died... RTS game in general sort of contracted as a genre. Even starcraft moved in many ways towards being more of an RPG.

And speaking of RTS games and early trend setters... Total Annihilation was very innovative for its day... yet it died among a glut of RTS games (although it did have a spiritual successor somewhat recently, Total commander)

[DoctorDavinci]

Advertising the game as KSP on YouTube to get views is false advertising and Intellectual Property infringement

Also I did not say to flag it as a rip off, I posted that people should report it as it is being advertied as KSP to get views ... read the thread and see what I repeatedly said in it

As a side note I find it amusing that some the videos in question have had the KSP tag removed since I brought this to the attention of the KSP community and Squad

I clearly expressed my opinion which is that the game is a KSP rip off (the video uploader has clearly stated that KSP was the inspiration), however I also clearly stated that I am not sure if there is copyright infringement going on and that is why I feel that people should report the game ... so that those who are involved become aware that their IP might be in the process of being stolen from them

A game company using another company's IP to advertise their own game which is direct competition to the the IP they are using for advertising is a clear violation of copyright law as I understand it

The person who uploaded the videos of Flyout also incriminated themself in this regard by admitting that he/she uses the KSP tag (as well as other games) in order to get views on their videos ... Essentially admitting that they are infringing on the KSP IP as the only reason for those videos to be up there is advertising for the game they are creating that is competition for the game they are using to advertise their game 

It is a rip off in my opinion and the video uploader has pretty much confirmed this by the comments he has made on their videos as well as mine ... case in point - "You also falsely accused me of advertising my game as KSP. I use KSP (and other related games) in my video tags to get views." - this is a contradictory statement

Here's the link to the video that except comes from - 

Edited January 27, 2018 by DoctorDavinci

[LordFerret]

2 hours ago, Mr. Quark said:

It has making flight parts, so like a way more advanced and realistic KSP flight wise, ...

I am not referring to the parts or construction potentials of any vessel one might dream up, but the actual flight model - the physics/math of the aerodynamics behind it. Flying 'airplanes' in KSP is not very close/accurate to a flight simulator (such as FS or X-Plane)... it's not meant to be, and that point has been explained many times. So that's what I question about this new game; How rigid does it stick to actual flight simulation (as FS or X-Plane does).

I guess maybe what I'm asking, using a broader brush, is: is it a game? or a simulator?

[nightingale]

Given this seems to be a one-man dev team (as far as I can tell), it's extremely impressive to get to this point.  It absolutely lacks polish, but it looks better than KSP did back in the early days.  I agree that (at least right now), it's more of a flight sim (the video implies to me that staging is not yet a thing).  But hey - you've got to start somewhere and what I'm seeing on the flight side is mighty nice.

I'd say this is one to keep an eye on in the next few years.

[Sandworm]

Marketing / advertising / listing a game using "KSP" and such ==>> Clear trademark infringement.

But the game itself, even though very similar to KSP, is not any sort of copyright infringement.  So-called "look and feel" is outside copyright protection.  Without going into the copyright v. patent lecture, remember that KSP/Squad do not own the concept of flight sims, or even of building your own aircraft from parts.  MS flight simulator was doing that sort of thing back in the 90s (customization of aircraft using stock parts).  And nobody owns physics.    The fact that an author states that they take inspiration from something doesn't mean that they have copied anything that is protected.  The root issue with all simulations is that, as they get closer to reality, they all start looking the same.

 

That said, this guy seems to have a much more mature approach to the concept.  I hope he runs with it and/or someone hires him.  I'd pay for a more accurate/realworld version of the KSP concept.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Sandworm

[FlyoutGame]

Hello everyone.

I'm the developer of Flyout and I'd like to clear out some things. 

For the background: Flyout is a one-man self-funded game. It is obviously not a massive corporate project with an intent to replace KSP.  At the time I made the (ugly old) video which includes a moonlanding, Flyout was just a showcase I made to make sure I get applied to the games developement branch in my university. It was heavily inspired by KSP, but I wasn't planning to release it ever. However I got very addicted to working on the project and figured I'd like to make a game that feels like you're flying a sim like DCS, Orbiter, X-plane etc, but has the fun aspect of creating the vessels yourself.

To answer to the previous thread: No I do not use any KSP code or assests in the game. It's built from scratch.

Someone mentioned the transform gizmos. It's the most common and only way to do the gizmos that I have ever seen in any game or app. It's the exact same way you move and rotate objects even in the Unity editor!

When it comes to the general building mechanics: I played KSP for years. I can't think of any better way of doing it. Maybe use Minecraft blocks? Nope. What makes it somewhat different are the procedural parts, which I plan to add even more, as it could greatly reduce the needed part count in the game.

Then to the Youtube video advertisements. The label you see below the videos is assigned by Youtube's automatic content recognition system. Because Youtube doesn't know Flyout exists, my videos get easily labelled as being something else. I can't do anything about it. Even if I type "Flyout" in the game label. They do it so the game developers get credit from Let's play videos etc.

So what is Flyout now and where is it heading?

Currently it's mostly a modular flight simulator. I have spent a lot of time on the detailed aerodynamics solver. It takes into account, for example. current wing sweep, wing thickness, leading and trailing edge devices, aspect ratio. The wings are divided into segments and the forces are calculated for each one of them, like in X-plane.

It also has (very WIP, reintroduced to the alpha 2 days ago, features include only seeing and hearing others) multiplayer with 5 people max. per room at a time.

About the engine creation mode, that many people seem to be interested in. Unfortunately it's not integrated to the actual gameplay yet, althrough the same solver is used in the premade engines. Seems like I have to get it done asap.

Then to the space aspect. Like I said my resources are very limited and I can't work on multiple large features simultaneously, and I haven't had time to work on space simulation for months. So what can you do in space at this time? Orbit around the first planet, that's it. More space features will come later when everything works well on the first planet. Someone mentioned about the possibility of rocket customisation. Rocket performance in Flyout  is calculated according to nozzle throat area, chamber temperature and fuel density and ambient pressure (using some equations I found on a NASA website) so they could be tweaked a little bit. I haven't found a way to calculate performance effects from the nozzle shape yet, but yeah, I have been looking into that as well.

Hopefully this makes some more sense now.

If you have any questions, please ask.

 

Edited January 28, 2018 by FlyoutGame

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

This is very promising- I really like the modular engine part! This system look more flexible and realistic than anything KSP can offer with or without mods. I wish best of luck to this guy, and I might try to get the alpha!

4 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

"You also falsely accused me of advertising my game as KSP. I use KSP (and other related games) in my video tags to get views." - this is a contradictory statement

Not really- he is simply using it as a reference point so fans will notice. After all, this game certainly doesn't have its own tag and KSP is the closest thing to it. He is not pretending that the game is KSP- he makes it very clear that it isn't.

 

I've seen videos of smaller games that don't have a tag using the tag of the dominant game in that field. When you have such a small selection of games, the game kind of becomes the "genre" for other games.

It is certainly inspired by KSP, but it isn't a ripoff- it has better physics, more flexiblity (doesn't use "parts" in the same way as KSP, seems to use individual components that would have been clumped into a unchangeable, rigid part), and has superior sounds and graphics. I think one of the vids said something about multiplayer, too. Not to mention it is designed around airplanes, instead of rockets.

[KerikBalm]

1 hour ago, Sandworm said:

Marketing / advertising / listing a game using "KSP" and such ==>> Clear trademark infringement.

Not so clear, but the closest to an actual case. You are allowed to mention competitors for comparison purposes IIRC (I took a course on this from WIPO 2 years ago, but I was mainly in it for the patent stuff). You are not allowed to present your goods/service as if it was the work of the trademark holder. Adding a KSP tag to a video to get people to see your product is not the same as adding a Nike swoosh to your shoes to make people think that Nike made them (or a rolex logo to your watch, etc). They are clearly presenting this as a different game. Also, I doubt the 3 letter combo KSP is trademarked. The KSP logo may be trademarked, the full name may be, but I have my doubts that they could trademark just 3 letters sans distinguishing font or color or design.

But then again, people who search for KSP may come across this, so your argument would have to be that there are cases where people search for KSP, come across this video, and think that this game is what they were searching for... not an absurd argument, but I don't think its clear or one that would certainly prevail in court.

5 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Advertising the game as KSP on YouTube to get views is false advertising and Intellectual Property infringement

 

Also I did not say to flag it as a rip off, I posted that people should report it as it is being advertied as KSP to get views

#1) "Intellectual Property infringement" is not really a thing, there are specific types of IP, if you can't specify the type, then there probably isn't any

#2) They aren't advertising it as KSP. If you go to their video, they don't mention it, using the tags... well see above

#3) You are grossly mischaracterizing what you said on the other locked thread, don't come get this thread locked too