The original game Hardwar was a British game released in 1998. It is a futurist flying game based on Saturn’s moon, Titan. In the game you could fly to different buildings, trade, fight and do missions. It was kind of like Elite but with land.
Soon after releasing the game, the company that produced it went bankrupt. 6 Years after that I was lucky enough to get in contact with one of the original game makers. We discussed the possibility of open sourcing the code because the game had aged and there were many bugs with it. We came to the conclusion after lots of contacting of various people that it would be impossible to legally open source the game.
It was around this time that I decided to start working on a remake of the game. It is a really great game that didn’t deserve to die the way it did.
In the end I decided to call my remake game Hardwar as well. Although this maybe confusing calling the remake the exact same name as the old game my reasoning for it is to bring the old fans that enjoyed the old game together. If they Google search “Hardwar” hopefully they’ll find my project and join in the effort.
Hi there,
sorry but i don’t know your name. Anyway i have to say how much i love what you’re doing. So i’m writing to you in order to give you my deepest thoughts. Definitely all the remake project make sense. Hardwar is a game that i discover many years ago, and i was so much impressed about it as much i was frustrated about its abandon state. I knew everything about the game, as a great game deserve full attention. Few people plus Ian Martin, they were already trying to improve the main game. The standalone project will definitely boosts the game through internet. Because, in my point of view, hardwar was just missing the people to fully enjoy the experience online. Maybe hardwar was too little space in order to let many people to play on it. A bigger enviroment, like any other space trader game, will fit the issue. Starting with the hangars, just improving hangars in a way that you can explore them inside, for example like navigating on internet, each hangar offers you different services, not only for shopping or storage purposes. Here it’s where you can expand the sponsor ideas. I don’t suggest to put macdonald fastfood in the game, but since i play the game the first time, i thought about how much the game could improve drastically if it could have an inside world to explore, and why not internet itself, or websites, or companies, or artistic performances. This will make of the game a new social network that we cannot imagine how much big could it become. Finally in that way, not only few but many people will be interested to experience hardwar. Hardwar is not just a fighting combat game and its little enviroment was designed to give to any player an amazing experience of dinamic virtual world. That’s why many other games online on internet they copied from hardwar giving to players just the online experience, but missing the principal spirit of hardwar, the atmosphere of a living virtual AI world. I hope all this matter could be interesting for you. Feel free to contact me if you want to and keep in touch anyway. I’ll love to test your effort and i wish you all the best! Daniel
Yes Yes Yes!!!
I bought this game back in ’98 and, while I couldn’t get very far as a trader due to baddies clobbering me, I loved the game! The concept was totally novel back then, and the music helped make it. Learning about this open remake, words cannot express the awesome.
Thoughts:
1. The one bad thing about it was that the trading, like all such games, becomes tedious. A much-improved, or better yet, “next-level” trading AI would do wonders. Trading is fun, accountants-in-space is not.
2. I totally agree with one of the news items about keeping the futuristic, subdued feel of the music. It goes well with the game without distracting. (I listen to the game “album” all the time–still!)
3. Please, please, please, do not utilize .Net for the M$ Windoze port in any way. A lot of fanboys love it, but it’s slow junk.
If I had time to help I would. This is a great project.
I was a big fan of Hardwar, first with the original, then later with the modified versions. This game really caught my imagination! At last, a 3D combat/trading game where you could actually see the pilots inside the crafts! I am so pleased and hopeful that you are remaking it. I really hope you managed to retain the original atmosphere of the game, but I hope you’ll enhance the sense of scale and detail. With our modern PC’s it should be possible to really make an excellent game.
I’d prefer a single player experience, over multi-player. Add more depth and variation to the landscape (deep tunnels, hidden caves, bizarre structures, places where you could really test the piloting skills). I hope you’ll concentrate firstly on copying the original, getting that to work well, before atting too many enhancements, or changing it too much. After all, we’re all here because we loved the original, we just want to be able to play it in a modern way.
I’d like to help or assist, although I’m not a programmer or designer. A few years ago I did spend some time drawing new craters and writing down some ideas I had, but sadly, I’ve lost these notes since then. I’ll spend some time within the forums and learn what the other fans have to say. Maybe I can contribute there….
Anyway, the best of luck to this project. I’m proud that you’re taking it on and I’m really looking forward to being able to play this great game again!
regards,
Paul