August 22, 2006
Boundless Planet Free for a Limited Time
Massive 3D real time online strategy game is
about to end its beta phase and go gold
BoundlessPlanet is a 3D persistent MMORTS
(Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) game played on enormous
spherical worlds of islands, rivers, continents and oceans that the user shares
with hundreds of others at the same time. A new player starts with only the
basic vehicles and buildings necessary to begin playing, and is invited to grow
his base by mining the planet’s natural resources, advance his capabilities by
researching new technologies, ally with other players or even start his own
Faction, expand his military might over land, sea and air, and wage war in the
ongoing struggle to control land, iron and precious oil.
Click here to see all Boundless Planet screens.
What’s unique about the game?
First of all, MMORTS games themselves are a
relatively new category and afford the player an entirely new way of interacting
with a game. The fact that the environment in which a user is playing is
inhabited by hundreds of other human players and constantly in flux, immerses
the player into the reality of the world in an unprecedented way.
BoundlessPlanet takes this concept several steps further, setting it apart from
the landscape of MMORTS games in a variety of ways:
- It’s 3D. Many popular MMORTS games like
Shattered Galaxy base their games in 2D environments. The BoundlessPlanet
player, however, interacts with the game through a fully navigable 3D camera,
and all player assets like vehicles and buildings are high quality 3D models
with detailed textures. - The planets are enormous, random, and round.
Instead of a limited map designed inch-by-inch containing arbitrary borders
that the player cannot pass, the planets of BoundlessPlanet are procedurally
generated spherical worlds with over 600 square miles of land and water to
explore. The features of the maps are designed by mathematically layering
Perlin noise algorithms in very controlled ways. This means that no land
feature is repeated, giving the worlds of BoundlessPlanet a natural and
realistic feel. - It’s fully persistent. A BP planet exists
independent of its inhabitants, so whether or not you are playing, your empire
is vulnerable to attack by other players. The game has many unique features
designed to take advantage of this fact, including Under Attack Alert messages
that can be sent to your cell phone, pager, or PDA when you or your allies are
offline. - Realistic resource management. Most mined
resource-based games have an unrealistic global resource pool that allows them
to mine a resource one place and magically use it in another. In order to
accurately represent the importance of protected supply lines in a modern
military, BoundlessPlanet treats iron and fuel like real substances that must
be transported using cargo vehicles, opening up a whole new layer of strategy
offensively and defensively. - It’s played on land, sea, and air. Some MMORTS
games like Navy Field are only played on water, others like Time of Defiance
are only played with flying vehicles, but BP allows the player to build his
empire with the full exploratory and military capabilities of an army, navy,
and air force. To give the player the true sense that the his experience
within the game is as analogous as possible to his understanding of real-world
war and empire-building, BoundlessPlanet has gone to great lengths to allow
players to build everything from long-range heavy artillery tanks to VTOL
fighter jets to sea-faring transport freighters to hover tanks – and
everything in between.
A free trial version of BoundlessPlanet is
available for download at
www.BoundlessPlanet.com. The difference between a Trial Account and a
Premium Account is a user with a Trial Account cannot research technologies past
a certain level, gain Skill Points past a certain level, or participate in
certain types of planets. A Premium Account, which gives full access to all of
the game’s features and planets, will cost $9.95 per month. A Lifetime
Membership Account may also be available (pricing TBA).
