MrFlibble Posted October 25, 2009 Share Posted October 25, 2009 (edited) I just stumbled upon this very interesting game: Hard Vacuum. Inspired by Dune II, it would have preceded both Warcraft and Command & Conquer, were it released in time. Unfortunately, Hard Vacuum was never completed, and only graphics are available for download. Apart from regular features associated with the then-newborn RTS genre, some interesting things were planned for this game: Quote There were several interesting systems in Hard Vacuum. Some made it into future RTS games and some did not. Supply Lines: When you built a mining tower on a resource deposit, there was no need to manually build and manage drones to carry the minerals back and forth. Instead, a road was built from your base to the mine. Drones were automatically created when the mine had a full load and sent along the road to your base. Enemies could blast your supply line and interrupt your flow of resources. So protecting fixed supply lines became a bit part of the strategy. Variable Height Terrain: This was a 2D tile-based game intended to run on 386 and 486 machines. We had a full system of variable height terrain. Units on higher ground would have targeting advantages over units on lower grow Deformable terrain with flowing water and lava: You could blow huge holes in terrain with artillery in order to divert streams and lava. Drop a water bomb on a city and watch it wash away an entire troop. Drop a dirt bomb to create a mountain. Walls: Walls played a huge part in the game to give large defensive barriers to attack. These existed in Dune2, but were extended in HV Player created landscapes: Walls, base building, supply lines, and advanced terrain modification all contributed to a game where players built intricate maps during game play. We couldn't afford to spend lots of money building maps so instead we had to create fun systems that let players create unique and interesting combat situations. Edited August 8, 2021 by MrFlibble updated link & screenshot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veK Posted November 2, 2009 Share Posted November 2, 2009 Could have been a great title back then. Never heard of it though which is probably due to the lack of internet back in that time as I played Dune 2 for so long and so extensively I would have heard of a game like this if I had internet back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrFlibble Posted November 2, 2009 Author Share Posted November 2, 2009 I got the impression that the game was developed by a group of students, and it looks like they suspended the project because they did not find a publisher. Of course, were this all happening in the Internet age, spreading information about the project would pose no problem. But back then an unreleased game rarely got any publicity at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gobalopper Posted November 2, 2009 Share Posted November 2, 2009 It looks a lot like Tyrian:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_%28video_game%29 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyerguds Posted November 7, 2009 Share Posted November 7, 2009 yeah, I guess the style is similar. But this was RTS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrFlibble Posted November 7, 2009 Author Share Posted November 7, 2009 It looks a lot like Tyrian:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_%28video_game%29People at Abandonia told me this very thing :) It's because the artist is the same ;DDaniel Cook: I did the artwork and a bit of the HV design. I went to work with Epic and created a game called Tyrian that paid my bills for a long while. After that I designed a program called Anark Studio, which is used to create thousands of interactive 3D project. We even started selling it to the game developers this past year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raminator Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 tyrian =)remember playing this alot with a friend Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrFlibble Posted August 8, 2021 Author Share Posted August 8, 2021 It took almost two decades to happen but Daniel Cook's Hard Vacuum resources finally found their use in OpenHV - a project to (re)create this game based on the OpenRA engine. I have not tried it yet but it appears to play exceptionally well already. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthias M. Posted December 20, 2021 Share Posted December 20, 2021 We also expanded on the original pixel art to have 2 distinguishable factions and yes, those gates can open: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X3M Posted January 2, 2022 Share Posted January 2, 2022 That looks nice! It also reminds me a bit of Factorio. I wonder if anyone is going to build a RTS in that game Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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