Is Artemis still where its at or should I also be paying attention to any of the other bridge sims?

edited July 2015 in General
I have been with Artemis since the beginning, but recently noticed some Artemis inspired alternatives popping up.

Are any of these at a point where they are competitive with Artemis?

We normally all get together at my place and I run the stations on an aging accumulation of laptops and a HTPC hooked up to a projector.

Better missions I think would be the main thing. Better graphics would be nice, but I love that I can run Artemis stations on the old laptops I have laying around. I don't know if there are better stations, I think that would depend a lot on how missions utilize the stations. Maybe a better tablet app would be nice for the captain.

The main things I like about Artemis is that it runs without any fuss on very minimal hardware. Any reliability issues would pretty much rule out a potential alternative.

Sorry if there is already a great thread covering this, but I didn't turn one up (though my google-fu is not the best)

Comments

  • I've been developing EmptyEpsilon for a year now. The main reason to develop it was to work around shortcomings of Artemis. It does quite a few things different now. Which for example makes "comms" (called "relay" in EE) a bit more interesting if you know how to play it well.
    But it does not have "space monsters" or cloaking. 3D graphics are a bit less bright. As space is black, and not like an acid trip.

    EE also has options for 3/4 players, where weapons and helms are combined into a single station, and science and comms as well (and engineering has shields control instead)

    We run EmptyEpsilon on a bunch of old and discarded laptops from various people. Most of them actually have broken laptop screens (we use external touchscreens) and it runs quite fine. The station screens don't use too much resources. But the main 3D screen does needs a bit more 3D power. Think the oldest laptop is 10 years old.


    The Android version of EE only got build a week ago, and still has a few issues. It is quite usable, just be sure to force quit it after using it. As it can consume CPU in the background and drain your battery.
    Question there is, what would you like to see on the captains tablet? I recently changed a lot of the GUI code to make it easier for me to add extra screen/station types.



    Scenarios are script-able. But the only real mission we're been playing is the waves one, which just sends more and more stronger enemies. Which usually makes for about an hour to 2 hours of great fun.


    (Also, it's 100% free, and open source code)
  • aviphysics, Most BridgeSims that I've come across all run with old hardware. Usually it's the servers/main view screen that requires a little more horsepower. Even those don't need that much.
    If Artemis is what you are used to and what you like, by all means, keep playing it. I would check out the other games too though. They are all a little different and have cool features of their own.
    Most of the current BridgeSims support mods. If there's a type of mission you are looking for, suggest it to the community. And if you are so inclined, make one yourself. As the genre matures I'm sure better graphics, more missions and more games will come out.
  • @Daid Thanks for the summary of EE. When we were trying out the captain's tablet for Artemis, we mainly just used it so the captain could still have access to the map when the view screen was set to another view. IIRC, it also has a button for red-alert. There was some mixed opinion among the crew, as it does take a little away from the science station, so whether it adds or takes away from the scenario it really depends on how much else is going on and the number of crew.

    @kwadroke I mainly ask because I don't think my crew would put up with me dragging them through several different simulators on any given evening, especially if there is any amount of frustrating technical glitches.
  • Technical glitches is one of the reasons I started EE. We where running Artemis 1.6, and it was getting out of sync all the time (stuff on the server was at different locations then on some of the clients). I also did not like that the main screen HAS to be the server. And that there is no LAN server discovery.

    So EE setup is actually designed to be quick. If you have random peoples computers, just download the latest version and run. If you actually have a static hardware setup, you can configure it to auto search & connect to a LAN server with a prefixed station setup.

    (I've actually made a very cool setup at the office, where 1 machine is hosting a network boot setup, and the rest of the machines just boot from network and then automatic start the game. So I only have to update 1 machine if I roll a new version)
  • @avuphysics, I was more talking about watching some of the available videos on Youtube about the BridgeSims and do a simple single player run-through demo. That way you can deside what would work for your players. Some games will be more suited than others.
  • Starship Horizons is more in tune with a simulation experience rather than the arcade-action style of Artemis. You can see images and videos on our Facebook page.
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