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

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 11:02 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #22

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.

Post by avar » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 11:41 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #39

Mithaldu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the book, only watched the movie. And i am saying quite seriously: Until i read the post above i did not see anything religious in the movie. Whatsoever. I do realize that this is highly likely to be due to being not an american and coming instead from a culture where religion is looked upon as at most a hobby, something a vanishingly small percentage of people spend time on and even less take seriously…

The religious aspect of the movie wasn't some deeply masked symbolism. It was right on the surface. The two main characters of the film were a scientists and a reverend who had multiple debates about faith and the existence of god. Then the climax of the movie is when their roles are reversed and the scientist is the one asking for people's faith to believe her without any physical evidence.

Post by theoh » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:10 AM UTC

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…

Post by rquantz » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:23 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #44

slg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The religious aspect of the movie wasn't some deeply masked symbolism. It was right on the surface. The two main characters of the film were a scientists and a reverend who had multiple debates about faith and the existence of god. Then the climax of the movie is when their roles are reversed and the scientist is the one asking for people's faith to believe her without any physical evidence.

There's the evidence of her having recorded many hours of static after the pod fell for a few seconds.

Post by scrollaway » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #14

wavefunction wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star Citizen perhaps, since they out of the games you've mentioned hew closest to established astronomy. The rest just invent whatever through the magic of procedural generation, which is cool but not coherent with using actual astronomical data.

But that's my point exactly. If those games did use actual astronomical data (and I'm told by foo123456 that Elite: Dangerous actually does) then could those games accomplish Carl Sagan's goal of teaching astronomy in a compelling video game setting? Those games' established plots are apparently compelling enough, but would they drive learning if their current environments were swapped with something based on reality…