Nexus: The Jupiter incident is a science fiction themed computer game developed by the Hungarian based Mithis Entertainment. The developers call it a TFS: Tactical Fleet Simulator. It differentiates with space based RTS games like Homeworld by laying the focus on tactics and individual ship managment, without having any resourcing or base building.
Story
At the dawn of the 22nd century the conquest of space and the colonization of the solar system is being monopolized by several huge and ambitious megacorporations. Although extremely delicate and vulnerable, a balance is maintained by these companies. It has now been 60 years since the terrible catastrophe that befell Noah's Ark, the first colony ship of mankind.
At the very edge of the solar system the companies make a discovery which will shift the technological advantage and upset the balance. And so a new conflict is born: "The Jupiter Incident". You are Marcus Cromwell, a young but already famous captain. With your legendary spaceship Stiletto you find yourself in the middle of the conflict.
source: official Nexus homepage
Features
Nexus itself uses the Blacksun Engine, a self made engine by the developement team. It is based on DirectX 9 and it tries to exploit the display possibilities of the latest technologies. This of course means the extensive use of the vertex and pixelshaders, that opens the door to the use of bump-, luminosity-, specular-, and reflection maps, as well as the shadows.
Its other asset is the effect system that it makes possible to simultaneously display numerous lens flare and other light effects, and it contains a well parametrical particle system, which makes the fight scenes very spectacular.
The solar-system simulation is also worth to mention, it animates the planets, moons, asteroids and comets on a real scale elliptical orbit. The planets themselves – thanks to the shaders – also have a realistic appearance.
For screenshots go to this page.
But eyecandy is not everything. In Nexus you will encounter battles with spaceships, from little maneuverable frigates to kilometre-long battleships, in true 360° space. Forget what you saw in shows like Star Trek or Star Wars and games like Homeworld about capital ship fights. In this game the ships will move like they would move in space: inertia. So if you rotate the ship, it wont stop rotating but when it is launching its retro engines. When a big battle is going on, it looks like a cosmic ballet. Capital ship fights have never looked this good.
Development Troubles
Before arriving at the final name and publisher HD Interactive , the game went through a myrad of names and publishers. Mostly known as Imperium Galactica 3 at one time - a sequel of the highly acclaimed Imperium Galactica 2, when being developed under CDV . A leaked demo attracted a lot of attention and - later on - dissapointment when the game got dropped.
The final game has no connections with any of the Imperium Galactica IP or its game genre 4X.
External Links
