FRESH
Hacker News
Hacker News Hacker News- Here's a web version (with backend): https://webspeak.terminal.ink/
- Steam thread: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=91936...
- "Modern" codebase and builds: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk/
The final song in that one is so subtly sophisticated; check out the underlying text. For example, to get it to sing "it doesn't matter now" the user types "tdah zih ntmae trr nnaw"; they're providing the phonetic sounds of every word rather than the words themselves, presumably because it produces better output and it allows them to change tone in the middle of words.
I recall probably not seeming so enthusiastic for many of the same reasons I don't understand why people play Star Citizen now, there just didn't seem to be any compelling gameplay loop or reason that it would be more intrinsically interesting than any other game or any other source of media on Space. If you were already a Space enthusiast and looking for Space games, I imagined it might be another thing to play with, but they and Nasa seemed at the time to hope that it was going to spur that interest, almost like if bureaucrats wanted to make a rollerblading game to get people interested in being active, even though it would have taken a miracle to resurrect what had already become unpopular. As in, if you don't have an interest in space, it would take a miracle to make a sufficiently compelling game, especially setting out to build an MMO, especially with a small budget, and relatively dated sdk, to capture the attention of kids who already had endless options. It was a grand vision that seemed unlikely to be captured, and I guess I was hoping I was wrong.
Aside from all that, it looked like a challenging and compelling project from the development perspective, probably a good learning opportunity for the team, it must have pushed them pretty hard. I appreciated being welcomed into their Space despite certainly impairing their productivity, and I hope they've continued on to other ambitious projects since.
I purchased that as a kid, in a souvenir shop, on our way out of Cape Canaveral. We were there specifically to see the Space Shuttle slow-crawl to it's launchpad destination. I never got to see a shuttle take off first hand.
That book, though, began a life-long love of space and all things unexplainable.
I love space, science, and the unknown. That love all comes down to a childhood fascination with the Space Shuttle program, and Ben Bova opening my childish mind to the idea of life on the moon, and how different everything would be.
Thank you Ben Bova. And thank you NASA for daring to dream big. You've both made a lifelong friend.
EDIT: whoops I thought this was moonbase commander, another NASA sponsored game from another time.
First episode saw the moon permanently leave Earth orbit.
"JohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMadden"
"uuuuuUuuuuUuuuuuuUuuuuuuUuu"
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
30 seconds
Ahhh so they're the ones who made that game less realistic and more modern shooter-y. Which I have no doubt is exactly what they were asked to do, because the original AA game was slow and a lot of people hated it compared to ut or cs1.6
Shame though, it was the only game that kinda had that level of realism, with "rifle from prone while waiting can hit you at 400+ yards, but if you're running around you struggle making hits under 100 yards" that encouraged very methodical play with teamwork and spotting.
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