Favourite computer games of all time. [2]

That was really cool. The video description jumped out at me though:

One of, if not THE largest space simulator game worlds ever created. Elite Dangerous contains over 400 Billion star systems to explore, each with their own stars, planets and moons that you can land on and explore.

One game can't possibly include 400 billion fully explorable star systems, can it?

{{{Yup its does- all down to clever maths- procedural generation. Here the genius himself, David Braben explaining it}}}

That's so neat.

Actually now that I think about it I vaguely recall hearing about procedural generation before in the context of Spore.

{{{{Braben has been at it since the original Elite and Frontier- (its how he could get it all in a BBC Micro!) he is a bit of a pioneer in the field when it comes to applying it to game creation}}}

Edit to say: I streamed these videos live earlier from playing Elite: Dangerous to my youtube account. I'm out in the middle of nowhere in the distance you can clearly see the milkyway, I'm about two and a half thousand light years from Earth at this point Shows off a nice binary system with three close stars, in my Cobra Mk IV ship The other is more for the close up of the sun, which shows off some amazing fractal patterns to give the illusion of liquid.

The entire galaxy was created using Frontier Developments own game engine called the COBRA Engine. They used what star data we currently have to map in all known / visible from Earth stars, and using very very complicated maths created a proceduraly designed Milky Way. Over four hundred billion star systems. Many being binary (that is more than one star) many having dozens of planets. All based on real world data and physics.

Nagual wrote:Edit to say: I streamed these videos live earlier from playing Elite: Dangerous to my youtube account. I'm out in the middle of nowhere in the distance you can clearly see the milkyway, I'm about two and a half thousand light years from Earth at this point Shows off a nice binary system with three close stars, in my Cobra Mk IV ship The other is more for the close up of the sun, which shows off some amazing fractal patterns to give the illusion of liquid.

The entire galaxy was created using Frontier Developments own game engine called the COBRA Engine. They used what star data we currently have to map in all known / visible from Earth stars, and using very very complicated maths created a proceduraly designed Milky Way. Over four hundred billion star systems. Many being binary (that is more than one star) many having dozens of planets. All based on real world data and physics.

More edits:

Okay Mr fancy pants you say, just how varied can a computer program make it and still come across as real..?

Not mine, but made by a fan of the game, and of beautiful sights.

{{{I still get goosebumps every time when I look up at all the stars in the Elite sky and then think- 'They arent just a pretty skubox backdrop, their positions are all calculated relative to me and I can go to any of them and see whats there!'- get that gobsmacked feeling of scale every time. }}}

ObsidianAnts videos above, are wonderful to watch. Every Star, Planet, Moon, and Asteroid has been placed there using real data and plugged into a fancy computer program to produce not only visually stunning scenes, but visually stunning scenes with planets with the correct metal / rock / mineral content for it's age while also taking into account the type of star that it orbits, and it's place in the galaxy.

Procedural Generation at Galaxy scale. Right down to the rocks on moons. Down to the actual sand. It's not just a game, it's showing you in real terms, what 'out there' could really look like. For reference, our solar system is pretty boring compared to what NASA et al have found, so seeing what they find in real life, in the game is amazing. It's like going on a space holiday, but without the kids.

{{{Being watching his 'story' one, seen the first two episodes so far. }}}

{{{Nagual and I having fun in Elite Dangerous Horizons}}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{{Nagual and I having fun in Elite Dangerous Horizons}}}

Interesting to see it from someone elses perspective after 6 months of only my own.

{{Well you know I don't like to be rushed into things especially new things I don't hold with new things! There's enough existing stuff to be crabbit about already without new things coming along! }}}

{{Another Elite Dangerous video I put together, this time on the theme of the scale of things, three things to be exact of increasing scale- a space station, a planetary ring system and a planetoid. }}}

Been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately. Couldn't really ever get into WoW, but HS is really fun/frustrating. Anyone here play?

I am still playing destiny! And pokemon but that is to help boredom when commuting.

{{{{Visiting some ring worlds}}

{{{A vid I put together showing off some of ED suns. Mostly timelapsed for effect}}}

No Mans Sky seems to be getting it's arse kicked at the moment. From the couple of reviews I have read it seems the shell of the game it was supposed to be... especially when compared to Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.

I am looking forward to the next DLC for Destiny... 1 month to wait.

My top 10:

GTA: San Andreas
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Goldeneye
Red Dead Redemption
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Freedom Fighters
The original Spyro the Dragon trilogy
Pokemon Red+Blue
Medal Of Honor: Frontline
Super Mario Sunshine.

Not sure this will be a top 10 or more, or less for that matter, probably more! But these are the best games I've played, even though many of them I would not necessarily recommend now becuase the gorund breaking work they did as led to greater progression in the genre since.

1. Elite-  the first sandbox game I ever played, and the onyl one to exist for at least a decade or two. The granddaddy of Elite Dangerous, this is where it the space trading/shooting genre really satrted. The first open world, the first sandbox gameplay and the first truly 3d environment- oh and procedural generation to boot, all in 125k!)


2. The Lords of Midnight- the first third person sort of but not quite open world RPG/strategy game- zx spectrum (you can get a remake of this for windows from GoG)- Ahea df its time, as much of SIngletons work was, with a 3d world you can look around from a first person perspective, well sort of, in a primitive way. Deep, tricky, solid narrative and world, its skyrim in 48k.  Zx Spectrum


3. Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge II- in my view the pinnacle of the old skool sprite based racing games. Still gives an impressive feel of speed and going up and down hills.- Commodore Amiga



4. IK+- a great early beat-em up where you fight not one but two opponents. Also introduced bonus levels between fights and a host of other features that would go on to be mainstays of the genre. Still very playable and nice to have a fighting game that doesnt require you to have the dexterity of a piano player on speed to do a move in!- zx spectrum/Atari ST/ Amiga (I liked it so much I got it for all the versions I had computers for, and it was so good they were still making versions of it by the time the Amiga came out)


5. Barbarian- another fighting game, this time with swords. Single player was meh but came into its own on two player. Its limited range of attacks and blocks made it like a very tense game of rock,paper, scissors. And to add to the mix it had a decapitate move that if successfully timed would end a fight at any time.- Zx Spectrum/Atari St


6. Rick Dangerous- the only platformer I ever really liked. Loosely a comic take on Indiana Jones (if he was psychotic) it was lovingly animated, devious in its traps and tricks, and had a nice shooting element that worked well in the gameplay. - Amiga


7. Another World- the first game that made me feel like i was playing a film, or at least an animated film. Beautiful to look at, still is today thanks to its stylized look. And with a genuinely real feel relationship formed with your alien buddy, even though the game has almost no dialogue and what there is is in alien speak.- Amiga/pc Such a classic you can get the remastered pc version still today.


8. Dungeon Master- I dont know where to start on this- it coincided with my playing of Dungeons and Dragons for the first time and is perfect for that. A 3d, sort of, ish, dungeon crawler. Introduced party management (you had to feed and water them or they would die eventually) an ingenious spell system I still think is one of the best the genre has ever come up with, atmosphere dripping visuals for the time and the sound fx, though sparse as simply used to perfection. In fact the developers used every trick in the book- those old enough to remember would know the smart gamer new something was coming because the disk drive would whirr into life to load it- Dungeon Master randomely got the drive to spin just to throw you off- thats how much they cared about keeping the atmosphere- and boy it works. Clever puzzles, great magic system, classic dungeons and dragoins style monsters- just a classic. - Atari St/Amiga/Pc (there is a fan remake of it on pc and Grimlock which is inspired by it and includes player mods to remake the original Dungeon Master in it)


9. GTA III- I played the first ones (of which there are more than three!) but it was 3 blew me away. Everything form its graphics to the open world it created to the satuire and the characters. Enough has been said about this one before, lets just say stone cold classic.- playstation


10. Knights of the Sky- a WW1 flight sim, with attention paid to historical accuracy. Planes and equipment only become available as the war progress at their historically correct time. Real pilots who fought come and go as the history books say they did, and in the midst of it all there is you in your little biplane, with its likely to stall engines and one gun thats more than likely going to be useless as soon as it jams, and a bunch of Gerries in better planes than you have. Seat of your plants flying, where spend fifteen minutes nudging your battered and crippled biplane back over the lines with the hun on your tail just so you go down on the your side can be sphincter clenching gameplay.- Amiga


11. It Came From the Desert- Cinewares finest hour. A wonderful sort of openish world at points, but narrative driven homage to 50's B_movies like Them! A desert US town, nuclear experiments, scientists with hot understated assistants, stubborn military officials, mysterious cattle deaths and eventually people deaths, a driver in theater complete with greaser biker gang and a mad old prospector who saw giant ants and no one will believe- its all in there with humour and love. But its fiendishly hard to beat. Atari ST/Amiga (the amiga version is far superior thanks to the brilliant for the time soundtrack)


12. Stunt Car Racer- from the brilliant Geoff Crammond who normally did very serious coding for pioneering stuff like formula one games or complicated snooker simulations (any of which now I consider it could easily make this list)gave us what he does for fun- and its brilliant- race an opponent on tracks for the insane and try not to fly of the sides!


Blimey no 12 already and I think only GTA 3 on that list was made in the last 20 years! May need another list for more modern games.... }}}

Another world! Been a long time since I played that.

So many good games have been!

Sonic 1
Wonder Boy 3
Mortal Kombat
Street Fighter 2
Destruction Derby
Gran Turismo 1
Socom
Final Fantasy 7
Golden Eye
Mario Kart
Super Mario World
Star Fox
List goes on...

{{Well about a couple of months after getting my new pc I have finally got Skyrim looking about how I want it, for now.
For those who mod Skyrim I am not using an ENB, there were things I didn't like about ENB's.
Instead its a combination of mainly dynavision for the depth of field, imaginator for tweaking settings, and ICBINE which uses the sweetfx shaders, which has the added benefit over an ENB of not being so frame rate killing (I haven't noticed any difference with it on to it not so far).
Almost everything has been retextured using a combination of texture packs Amidianborns packs for landscapes, armours, creatures, weapons being the base with a bunch of other texture mods on top for furniture, buildings and general clutter, same goes for the fauna, Flora overhaul, grass and groundcover among them and trees and plants are a pick and mix from a variety of retexture mods. Weather wise got Climates of Tamriel installed, Real Nights to make it properly dark where it should be, and Realistic Lighting Overhaul.}}

New Destiny expansion out today. Hoping to get to play the raid on Friday before everyone knows how to do it.

If you haven't played it yet the raids are by far the best things in the game! No guidance... just work it out!

I'm happy with my PS3 copy of Skyrim, must have put hundreds of hours into that game and I'm still yet to complete most of the story missions...