Ace of Spades

Has anyone else heard of this? It's a pretty nifty little free game I've been getting into this past week.

The best way I can describe it is Minecraft with guns. The world is made of blocks that you can mine, destroy and place, using either a pickaxe (takes several hits to obtain one block) or a shovel (destroys 3 blocks quickly, but doesn't give you any blocks). You also have a rifle that you can fire from the hip or with iron sights, and frag grenades. It's very simple, but also very fun. Even the shooting mechanics are pretty good; body shots do more damage than limb shots and headshots are an instant kill.

The gameplay itself is CTF style, with the Blue and Green teams trying to capture each other's intel. Teams can build fortresses, bunkers, structures, trenches and tunnels, and all sorts of stuff using blocks, both to better defend their intel and provide vantage points to fire from. This makes the game very dynamic, since everyone can alter the map and build and destroy. The block physics are actually better than those of Minecraft; if you destroy the supports of a structure, instead of just floating in the air like in Minecraft, the entire structure will fall.

The game is in a pretty early beta stage right now, but it's playable and very fun. You need to install a client file, which is like 1MB, and then you join a server through the server list on their website. It's updated fairly often. Last week it was on version 0.27, a couple days ago it was 0.33, and now it's 0.35.

It's completely free, and you can host your own server if you like, with the right ports open. Perhaps we could get an NBR server going?

Link to download, and server list: http://ace-spades.com/

A few photos:

 

you also forgot to mention that notch is pissed at them for not giving him credit and is trying to find a way to shut them down

 

I don't think he's going to get very far with that. Minecraft was certainly not the first block game either, and the mechanics of AoS are quite different from those of Minecraft.

 

Looks remarkably like minecraft. Did they use the same engine?

 

Not even close. It's hard to tell from still screenshots, but go play it for yourself. It really doesn't look or feel anything like Minecraft.

 

Is their a Linux version?

 

Not unless you want to use WINE.

Linux - Ace of Spades Wiki

That said, this game is so simple and easy to run, I doubt there's any significant performance hit from the overhead of running it in Linux via WINE as opposed to just running it in Windows itself.

 

Yeah, actually this looks much like a linux-style game. Ill give it a shot with Wine.

 

Hope it works out. It's really fun, building forts and trenches and going to war

 

you can't disagree that the game has a very similar feeling to minecraft.

 

I do disagree with that notion. Ace of Spades has actual game objectives and team-based play, and shooting mechanics, none of which are in Minecraft. Really, the only things in common are the blocky nature of the world, and the ability to place/destroy blocks, which are hardly unique to Minecraft.

 

Why not play Battlefield 2 or Call of Duty?
It got guns and objectives as well.

 

^ I haven't played AoS but why must one play the most popular games in their respective fields? Maybe because thery're tired of them, don't enjoy them or that you can't mine and play legos in those other games. there are always new games to try and enjoy. If that was the case LotR would be the only fantasy book I would bother reading, but I would be doing myself and other authors or game devs a disservice here

 

I think AoS is based on a voxel engine while Minecraft is on a java 3D engine.

Overall AoS looks much worse graphics-wise (not that that is too important but still), also you'll get dizzy really fast because your PoV tilts in a weird way each time you turn even a little, and your view distorts if you look down.

I'd actually prefer it more if it's just a fps mod built entirely on the Minecraft engine, much MUCH more playable in terms of overall feel and control.

 

Correct, it's a voxel engine. As for the dizziness, I think that's an exaggeration. I only really experience tilting when I'm looking almost straight down while spinning.

The website has been revamped, and instead of plain text, it now looks like...well, an actual website

Ace of Spades

I'm going to hop on for a bit now.