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Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

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Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#21

Post by Mithaldu »

Zikes wrote: post #20
Mithaldu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't. In order: Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.) No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation. Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the imme…

You're assuming the goal is to teach astrophysics, rather than astronomy. If we're just trying to teach the space equivalent of geography, the physics and plot don't matter so much as the physical locations and nomenclature.

Astronomy is the study of the laws of stars, not of their names, regardless of how close "nomy" sounds to "name".

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy

Additionally Sagan was most certainly conflating it with astrophysics, as is commonly done, and evidenced by his mention of "stellar evolutionary events".

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#22

Post by Mithaldu »

xigency wrote: post #15

Carl Sagan was a very interesting man. I'm sure he would have loved this simple space game I made - http://brainplex.net/space It uses random points for stars, but tracking "the nearest few thousand stars" from Earth would be pretty simple. I actually want to make a scientifically educational game. I want to make a game that demonstrates the concepts of relativity with accurate space travel at near light speed.

Some hints on controls would be nice. Also, in chrome the top two things aren't clickable. Otherwise, this looks adorable!

Edit: I wonder what kind of horrible people would downvote the parent post.

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#24

Post by Mithaldu »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #13

Interesting that even the author of the original work seems to put aside the point of the original work for a game adaptation. Contact is about the search for god(s) and higher powers and the human religious experience, and contacting extra terrestrials was the mechanism to talk about that.

That is open to interpretation. I adore Contact and i got nothing even close to religious out of it.

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#25

Post by llanfair »

fche wrote: post #17

FWIW, just recently read Sagan's Contact book, and found it really disappointing in terms of fiction-writing technique. The game idea sounds more like a screen-saver ... alas. In his home nonfiction niche, like Cosmos, he was great.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#26

Post by JoshTriplett »

Mithaldu wrote: post #24
kevinmchugh wrote: post #13

Interesting that even the author of the original work seems to put aside the point of the original work for a game adaptation. Contact is about the search for god(s) and higher powers and the human religious experience, and contacting extra terrestrials was the mechanism to talk about that.

That is open to interpretation. I adore Contact and i got nothing even close to religious out of it.

The movie has far more religious overtones, or more generally overtones of valuing "faith" as directly characterized by believing in things without evidence.

However, personally I still appreciate it for a different reason: it suggests that the human drive to seek a higher purpose or a deeper meaning can meaningfully apply to reaching for the stars, too. Put together with the rest of the story, I still enjoyed it despite the overtones.

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#27

Post by Mithaldu »

ctdonath wrote: post #23

He basically describes Star Raiders (Atari, 1979). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Raiders

Star Raiders is one game in a long series of games that pretend space travel works like airplanes of the WW2 era. It's a very impressive game for the technology it was on, but doesn't convey any of the concepts Sagan was talking about or is known for.

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#29

Post by shostack »

Mithaldu wrote: post #18
Zikes wrote: post #3

Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?

They can't. In order: Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.) No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation. Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the imme…

Slight correction but Elite: Dangerous has the capability to do better flight mechanics.[1]

The game is often quite boring, but I joke with people that it makes an amazing space station docking simulator. I actually can't wait to try that with an Oculus.

[1]http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/224726/does-elite-...

Re: Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

#30

Post by nether »

Zikes wrote: post #20
Mithaldu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't. In order: Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.) No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation. Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the imme…

You're assuming the goal is to teach astrophysics, rather than astronomy. If we're just trying to teach the space equivalent of geography, the physics and plot don't matter so much as the physical locations and nomenclature.

That's barely even astronomy. At the university level, astronomy coursework is basically math.
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