Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by xigency » Mon, Nov 16, 2015, 5:11 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #43

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.

While not exactly what you want, and more than a little imperfect, you should be aware of Velocity Raptor[1] [1] http://www.testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html

Cool, thanks.

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

#72

Post by xigency » Mon, Nov 16, 2015, 5:12 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.

Right sorry.

Arrow keys to steer and Q/W to roll. Spacebar applies thrust.

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

#73

Post by Freaky » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 3:24 AM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #51

Mithaldu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the barest sense, sadly: "Each ship has a top speed, this can be increased with better thrusters and power distribution, but they still cap out whether you have flight assist on or off."

I was pretty disappointed about this. The predecessor games to Elite Dangerous, Frontier and Frontier First Encounters, had a Newtonian flight model (and an optional "time acceleration" feature to artificially shorten intra-system flight time).

Rogue System looks promising as a semi-realistic combat space sim: http://imagespaceinc.com/rogsys/

Pioneer also exists as an open source Frontier remake, with the same sort of flight model and universe: http://pioneerspacesim.net/

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

#74

Post by 6502nerdface » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #19

6502nerdface wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the entire Elite series has always used real star coordinates and names, at least for those close to Earth.

Except for the original game, which used procedurally generated galaxies, and didn't feature Earth. This was the only way to get the game to fit into the 32K RAM of the original BBC Micro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)

You're right! It wasn't until the second game, Frontier: Elite, that they started using real stars around Sol.

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

#75

Post by fche » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #47

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.

Really? I love it, because it's science fiction written by an actual scientist, one who knows how scientists talk to each other and who knows what the Fourier integral theorem is. The Soviet-American politics of the time in fiction form are also pretty interesting. My only complaint was that God in the digits of pi was a stoner cop-out, but other than that, I love it. I think his depiction of what would happen to hum…

I liked that it was written by a scientist. But the text was bogged down by so much science exposition that the story - characters & drama - could barely breathe. There was a paragraph of [tech] on every page.