Favourite computer games of all time.

I will give it another look Lance and see how its coming along, thanks.

Still in Alpha but shaping up nicely-

More in my ongoing attempt to convince all Frontier is the greatest game ever.

As has been noted on another thread the most obvious thing about space is that its big. Very big. It has a sense of scale.
A sense of scale Frontier strives to replicate. Its like Google Universe, only with a game attached (I have left out the the fight with the five pirates stupid enough to try to jump me in their little one man fighters, and the more serious encounter with a bounty hunter in an Imperial Cruiser who tracked me down in return for a job I recently did for someone, and to think all I wanted to do was take pictures of stars   )

Anyway I thought I would illustrate scale in Frontier using three different suns- our own, seeing as we are familiar with it, a smaller Dwarf Star and a bloody huge Red Giant.

So heres Frontiers stats on our own sun-



But stats aren't the same as going and looking for yourself, and in Frontier you can of course do just that. So here's what it our sun looks like from a distance when you jump into the Sol system (its the yellow dot) -



At at a distance of 1AU (astronomical unit, roughly the distance between the earth and the sun)-



And up close-



Van Maannens system, with its White dwarf-



From a distance its so small I cant distinguish it in this shot form the background stars-



1AU out- as you can see its notably smaller than our own sun, so much smaller its still just a blue dot-



Worth the trip though, its rather cool looking up close-



And finally Acturus-



Even at a distance its big-



1 AU- imagine that rising on the horizon!



A comparison shot of our own sun and the Arcturus sun from the same 1AU range-



And as close as I dared get to the monster- still at least half an AU out-



Stay tuned in the future for more reasons why Frontier is so good.  

Does this game run on Mac? I'm guessing "no."

The short answer is no, at least not the version I've been posting screenshots of- there is a bit of a complex history to Frontier First Encounters.

When it was released it was not finished, and this caused much angst and ill-will between programmers and publishers- law suits, all sorts of unpleasantness- and was the reason there were no more Elite games until now, when the original creator David Braben can control and publish when he wants.

The upshot of all this is that the original version on Amiga, ST and PC were brilliant, but broken, sometimes in a fundamental way- like some of the scripted missions not working, more commonly with lots of small glitches that were just annoying.

When the game went out of general release and was hard to get a version optimised to work on modern pc's without dosbox came along; JJFE.

This became the standard code for Frontier on pc and the framework for a large graphic overhaul undertaken by a group of Russians, this is known as FFE D3D. Same game, same code under the hood, just better graphics.

But then that was abandoned before it was complete- but others took up the gauntlet.

The version I have been posting screens and vids from is the current build and its the work of several people- the original Frontier Developments programmers for the source code it all runs off, the Russian modders for the original graphical alterations, the Itzzi mod which redid most of the textures and finished off those which had not yet been done, Zak Gordon who optimised all the new textures and got a bunch of net artists together to design the new ship interior backgrounds, and finally the great AndyJ whose has been painstakingly finishing off the incomplete code, and debugging it and correcting all the issues the original programmers wanted to but never got the chance of. (and a custom sound fx and music track by me!)

The good news, sort of, is that way back when FFJE came out making the original game run on a modern pc they also brought it out on mac.
As far as I know this is still the latest version available on MAC- but I could be wrong there.

Its called MacJJFFE and I have no idea how easy it will be to find, but it does exist somewhere.

Now this is he way to play to Elite Dangerous- with occulus rift and a proper joystick/thruster set up- I want!!!!-

I hope Facebook doesn't ruin the Oculus Rift somehow; otherwise it's good they're getting funding.

Nice. ENB's do make everything look better! I wish I had a graphics card could handle them!

I dunno if this belongs in a "favorite" thread, but I remember reading about this story as an uncomfirmed urban legend in the past.

Construction workers unearth legendary cache of Atari games in New Mexico deseert - The Verge

Context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

 Well at least it wasnt a cursed Indian graveyard.

Been playing Titanfall, its really fun and very fast paced.

Also have been dabbling in the Civilization realm and played a couple games of Civ III. And though I never truly played it, it brought back memories of watching my dad play it.

I havent played a civ game in years, I used to really enjoy that game- wonder what number they are up to now.

Theyre up to 5 now, though they do have a new space age one coming out called 'Civilization: Beyond Earth'

Thats an interesting idea- not sure about it though for a game so long versed in actual history.

Elite Dangerous have released the first shots of planetary rings in the game-





'Here we see different views of a rocky ring system around a small planet. This sort of thing can happen when a rocky body is ripped apart by gravitational forces as it passes close to a planet (technically it passes within the Roche limit) and much of the debris is captured. A few tens of thousands of years later – a blink in cosmic time - the debris will form a beautiful disc as shown here.'

Nice vid demonstrating the importance of heat signatures in Elite Dangerous-

Speaking of games not yet released. Gaslamp Games, the guys who made Dungeons of Dredmor, have a new colonization simulator that will be coming out in an Alpha form this summer. The graphics are underwhelming as they now stand, but the theme, game mechanics, and pace of the game look quite promising!

Ive been reading through their development blog, it's rather entertaining.
http://www.gaslampgames.com/category/clockwork-empires/

Trailer for the latest CoD, featuring a computer generated Kevin Spacey, who as far as I can tell form this is pretty much playing the same character as he does in HoC.

As to the rest- it looks like a typical CoD game- a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Space is great and that looks like it could be a really intriguing premise for an action/thriller movie, but alas, it's a COD game.

Indeed. Call of Duty, subtle thou art not.

In the opposite direction, I recently tried out a horrible terrible absolutely horrendously disturbing creation of some fanatic.

It is what it is. I can see enjoying it, because of the unique situations one encounters, but my goodness, those graphics.     

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress

The entire thing is done in text-based coloured Code 437.

It's best taken in small doses I have found.

But then, at the same time, it can be greatly entertaining. I'm still just a year into my first fortress, and so I don't know squat about how to actually play the game. Even so, it was strangely rewarding to see my glassmaker go berserk after hiding out in her workshop for a few months demanding ingredients (which I did not provide, hence the berserkness). She blocked the door into the Dining Hall and started beating up anyone who tried to get out. Thankfully a group of the dwarves inside eventually finished eating and got riled up enough to fight back and end her. She bled out on the cavern floor. It was good.
I also had a dwarf give birth while inside her carpentry shop, that didn't seem sterile, but oh well.

Oh man, a friend of mine showed me the Dwarf Fortress world she was playing in a long time ago. It seemed very, shall we say, involved.

I read a quote by one of the game creators, who said that this game was his life's work: he would be spending the next twenty to thirty years working on it.

I just felt really depressed after that for a while.


Speaking of very small things that can be frustrating, what on earth is that signature of yours Eldo? I see it as being no more than half an inch across.

It's the Flag of Maryland, but I deliberately used a really small image because I don't like large images in signatures.

Apparently Witcher 3 is going to have 36 different endings.

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/the-witcher-3-preview-how-to-build-an-rpg-with-36-endings/2/