doctorfrog on 7/7/2010 at 15:51
(http://store.steampowered.com/app/39000/) Moonbase Alpha is a
free game, developed on behalf of NASA, by the same developer who brought us America's Army.
It's a cooperative, fix-broken-stuff, non-shooter, distributed by Steam.
And I'll be honest, I haven't played it yet, it's downloading now. It looks like there are quite a few connecting hoses in it.
(http://store.steampowered.com/app/39000/) Get it yourself here.(
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07/06/moonbase-alpha-out-also-impressions/) Extremely chatty preview at RPS.
(http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/ltp/games/moonbasealpha/) NASA's Moonbase Alpha siteAll in all, it looks like a really good installation at a family museum, like Lawrence Hall of Science or the San Jose Tech Museum, the kind of thing that I would have
loved as a kid. It also looks like a possible tech demo/alpha for a larger project that may or may not emerge as an MMO or co-op competitive non-shooter, like a nerdy TF2 on the moon. None of this sounds bad to me.
Inline Image:
http://i50.tinypic.com/9r13si.pngdoctorfrog on 7/7/2010 at 16:07
Argh, anyone familiar with the UT3 engine know how to edit a config file to invert the mouse and lower sensitivity? They seem to have omitted this from the Options dialog.
demagogue on 7/7/2010 at 16:27
This reminds me of the string of Mars Mission sims out there (Mars Sim Project, Marsbase5, at least one other) and Space Station Sim, and Orbiter a bit, but those aren't 1st person (or 3D open world anyway) and commissioned by NASA, nor multiplayer I think. Since I was already into the Mars base sims and Orbiter especially, I'm absolutely game for this one. I wouldn't be surprised if this makes waves that they decide to sim a Mars mission. But the moon need some loving too.
DDL on 7/7/2010 at 16:38
I love the idea of a system exploration/exploitation MMO, though. Especially if they had the guts to make it realtime.
*DDL is afk: en route to mars (back in two months)*
Course, you'd get to your first decent oort cloud mining rock and find it was already infested with gold farmers, but hey.
Sulphur on 7/7/2010 at 17:27
Quote Posted by DDL
*DDL is afk:
en route to mars (back in two months)*
Ha. At light speed, it's only going to take 4 and a half years to reach the nearest star system from Sol. It's the perfect long-term subscription model for an MMO dev. Genius!
Me, I suspect if I were dumb enough to buy that, I'd probably just slap on some virtual SPF 50 block, go on a space walk with a carbon fibre board, cut loose from the shuttle, and space surf into the sun forever and ever and ever. Ah, video gaming bliss.
ANTSHODAN on 8/7/2010 at 01:12
So has anyone had a go at this yet?
I've just had a wee runaround in it, and I have to say I'm mostly unimpressed.
The concept absolutely intrigued me, it sounded like a really cool cooperative problem solving game; I expected players to be creating and discussing plans with well thought out solutions to problems, communication to be paramount and people having to think logically on their toes. Now maybe I just hyped this thing up too much as I watched the steam download slowly edge towards completion.
You spend an awful lot of time running about (admittedly, realistically) slowly as hell from your tool shed to various relatively interchangable broken parts, playing a worse-than-bioshock's-bloody-pipes minigame to speed up the repair process - otherwise you are just watching a very slow moving progress bar. There is the option to use robots to do the same thing, but all you end up doing is carrying the robot to a certain point, setting it up, and controlling it in almost the exact same way you control your astronaut. They are only really useful for accessing certain areas, but rather than being an intuitive solution to a problem, it feels like just a tacked on 'tactical' layer. On the servers I played on teamwork didnt exist at all. Its interesting to see how even the most unruly game of TF2, for example, has an element of teamwork involved. In the case of MA, each player acts completely as a single unit, and the only influence we seemed to have on one another was whether or not we could access the toolshed (only 2 terminals, only 1 person can access a terminal at any one point)
I have to admit, i only jumped on random servers, and lasted maybe half an hour before frustration got the better of me, so I can't claim that i've extensively explored the game's content but I'm not inclined to do so in the future either. I know it's free, I know it may be a tech demo for something bigger, but well... I'd be interested to know what other folks think about it
doctorfrog on 8/7/2010 at 05:04
I played a few games today, it's more or less a tech demo to me. The welding/fixing minigame bores me to tears.
On the second server I hopped on, there were five other guys, and by then, we all knew what we were doing and we had things fixed within about 10 minutes. "Ok, I'll watch the conduits, you fix the sails. Who's on robots?" This was pretty cool, but after getting down a repair scheme, there isn't much more to do with this game than see how far you can ride on a buggy until you hit the invisible wall at the edge of the map.
Still, I think this shows some promise, with a mission generator, some variety in play, and removal/replacement of the welding minigame.
doctorfrog on 8/7/2010 at 19:36
That would be entirely awesome. I haven't played it (don't need the drama), but the idea of a moonbase with all these tools laying around, and all these widgets that can be tweaked with those tools, then all these effects that these widgets can produce when tweaked... the heinous interactions would be awesome.
It also sounds like it will never happen in a game. Introversion's upcoming espionage/thievery/terrorism game might come close to it, though.
Eldron on 8/7/2010 at 20:01
It's the best ever idea in the worst possible engine, spacestation 13 that is, and there's always some hidden objective, so everyone goes on their daily spacestation lives and nobody knows exactly what's going on, but yeah, it's quite open for drama and griefing (and some extremely funny scenarios). It's the entire freedom and and sandbox nature of the game that makes it so griefable.
the dynamic world does help.
but yeah, moonbase alpha should strive more for that, while still staying scientific.
