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Games Entertainment

Parsec LAN-Test Released 52

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-cool dept.
A reader writes: "Linux and MacOS versions of Parsec LAN-Test have been released! Windows version will follow soon. The game will also be included on the European version of Red Hat Linux 7, with more than 50 minutes of music by Stefan Poiss. You can download the game here. Please use the mirrors."
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Parsec LAN-Test Released More

Parsec LAN-Test Released

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  • I'd give it a read if you have the time.

    It's a little after two. Start reading.

    -Pete

  • funnniest thing today :P
  • I see...

    Interesting => Offtopic
    Not Slashdot => Troll

    Please teach slashbot-speak! RIAA double-plus-ungood?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Why don't you just compile the sources and release the BSD binary yourself/
  • You'd think they'd know better than to put a 113k animated gif on the front page.

    the actual screenshots are very yummy though.

    fross

  • Re:No, it's not a conversion of the TI-99/4A game (Score:4)

    by Fross ( 83754 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2000 @02:10AM (#733066)
    ObNostalgia: Anyone else remember playing this game until their hands ached from those black and orange joysticks?

    God i hated those joysticks. worst designed ever. i ended up buying one of those adapters that allowed you to plug in two "regular" joysticks like Quickshot etc

    I liked parsec, definitely the best game of its kind at the time, it was so colourful, and more fun than Defender et al.

    Had so many TI-99/4A games... alpiner, chess, defender, pac man, donkey kong, q*bert, Adventure (with about 7 cassettes), but the best by far was one called Tunnels of Doom.

    Tunnels of Doom was a cartridge for the basic engine, with cassettes to supply the actual dungeon etc.. it is comparable to something like might and magic etc, that kind of RPG. if you consider it had:
    • random map generation every game
    • buying/selling items
    • 3d walking around view, changing to overhead (turn-based) for combat
    • tons of monsters and items, weapons and armour etc
    • 4 character classes, each with unique skills and attributes
    • Character advancement through experience
    not bad for 1982 eh? You can go check it out (along with a lot more info on the TI) here [nerp.net], it's just someone's homepage, but it's cool, and has a screenshot of Tunnels of Doom in it ;)

    Fross
  • I strung up this lad in the dungeon for seven years and set upon him a solid diet of anal stretching and so on (they have devices for that you know [tripod.com] - down the bottom of the page).

    In this modern-day world of people wanting freedom without responsibility I take responsibility for this man, his images, and any distress I may have caused you filthy peasants.

  • Thanks for the link, that's interesting.

    Kuro5hin is what slashdot should have been; we told them what would happen and how to fix it, and they blew us off and told us there wasn't a problem.

    And then they wrote duct tape and bailing wire in Perl and called it a day.

    Nope, sorry guys, moderation is broken. See?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • Re:Sourcecode and other platforms (Score:3)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2000 @03:59AM (#733069) Homepage
    I can understand their standpoint. Parsec was developed by a closed team, and they raise some valid points about controlling the artistic aspects of the game. They also raise the point that there are a number of perfectly good open-source counterparts in existance today (namely CrystalSpace and WorldForge.) They also say that they'll probably end up opening at least some of the source, and that they haven't really decided on which license they want to use yet. So yes, today it's not OS; tomorrow, maybe. Sometimes, greater things can come out of a small, close-knit and closed development team than can come of the community at large.

    If Free Speech and Free Beer are requisite criteria in your book (they're not in mine, but I wholeheartedly consider them vaild criteria) then Parsec doesn't measure up. It's a free program released by a private group of developers who want to keep their code their own. There do exist the Free BeerSpeech counterparts; support and contribute to them.

  • Less than twenty years ago (Jesus, I am getting damn old...) I used to play a computer video game called Parsec on a Texas Instruments 99/4a computer.
    Naming a game "Parsec" sounds like copyright infringment to me.
    After all, MB was about to sue a friend of mine because he was about to call his Acorn RiscPC Doom-like "Destiny" so, don't the guy who wrote this Parsec take some risks ???
    --
  • I doubt you'll be able to buy it, but the developers do suggest supporting them by picking up some parsec swag here [cafepress.com].
  • Scary, that was my first thought, too...
    "Parsec Lan-Test... must have to d/l that from ZDNet..."

    --

  • See question 37:
    Is there any way I can contribute to Parsec?

    Right now we are not looking for new team members. We really appreciate all the input and feedback we're getting via e-mail, though. There will also be many possibilities for contribution once we release model-specs and the game code.

    I think they are just 'strong believers' in having total control over the source with a specific team of people. It's more of a guarantee that some hot headed dickwad isn't going to cause some trouble with development. Also, they probably don't want 17 different (incompatible) versions popping up all over the globe (GPL'ed Quake comes to mind).

    Where would Quake(tm) be if it started out as open source?


  • That was my all time favorite game! Though there are good emulators for the TI, I've searched the internet for the Parsec ".rom" to no avail. I guess the TI99/4A emulator scene is a bit stagnant....
  • I argue that the crappy stories that are accepted lead to the S/N ratio going to shit; if I were actually *really* interested in this article, would I be posting this? Conversely, if there was a good place for us all to really talk about this, would we be posting here? Like I said, the hidden sid's are worthless these days, so lets just get it out.

    The anomalous moderation bugs me, but what bugs me more is that there isn't really a good check against this; metamod is broken, too. Also, I wonder where these people get all their mod points; do they just have a few accounts they switch between and imitate "regular slash user" behavior, or do they have scripts to do this now?

    The corporate influence might be to blame for some of 1-3, as well; the slash people have known that there are better solutions to these problems; heck, there are better *implementations* out there, too. But do they change this? Nooo...

    I think a bit more user control over the submission queue might help, but ultimately I don't think mob rule is really the answer, especially when it comes to moderation. Heck, I'd just be happy with an Everything-like interface to slashdot--recent story submissions, popular story submissions...

    Anyone who wants to, feel free to continue this discussion in sid=moderation as well; I'm just not enthusiastic enough anymore to think that slashdot users can make a difference on slashdot.

    ...Oh, and for anyone who is reading this obscure thread in the article and thinking that it's offtopic, or irrelevant, or wants to post a snotty followup...

    FUCK YOU, Go back up to the top, sort at +3, Highest Scores First, Flat, read the first two comments, and then shoot yourself. This is pretty deep into a thread that's already pretty low in this pretty crappy story, so stop reading if you aren't interested, or change the damn channel already and lay off the cheap $3 crack, OK???
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Uh.. dude, it's free. Totally. Check the site for details. Free rules the world, especially when you're a student on a grant.. But hey, you can always buy an official Parsec-coffee mug. :)
  • Hey! That's my page! I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembered this great RPG on a not-so-great computer system. I played that game for HOURS on end.

  • yerp, it's just finished mirror for users in AU/NZ (only.. sorry)

    ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/parsec/lantest/
    http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/parsec/lantest/

    -jason
  • WOW!

    I just dloaded the test, it worked 'out of the box' and I just saw the first gameplay. Ow man, horny.
    Now all I need is opponents and an internet-capable test. Can't wait.

    Congrats to all of the Parsec team. You rock. I think this is the best game ever developed for Linux.
  • 70 megs is alota downloading for one game. I remember when my friend came up to me and told me he had a WHOLE 25 MEGS FREE on his hard drive. Oh well. I feel sorry for all you MODEMers... this is going to take awhile on my T3.

  • Re:Where can I buy this game? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It won't be free until it is free-as-in-speech, I mean free-as-in-I-can-find-exploits in the source, man!
  • What 'European version of Red Hat 7'? What's the difference between that and the US version?

    (Any large institution will have users whose native language is not English... so IMHO it's best to always install internationalized versions of everything, if you have the disk space. So why not a single distribution where you pick the language at install time? Or is there a separate European version for legal reasons?)
  • Now I can test my lan!
    ---
  • Nifty, been watching the site (and screenshots!) for some time now. Wonder if they will consider making a Solaris or IRIX build sometime once the dust clears? Outta be somone out there than can lend those folks a machine and compilers for a couple months. Parsec will certainly be a nice change of pace from xpilot and bzflag.
  • I'm just happy to see a female game developer. Kick ass.
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • The TI was my introduction to computers (at 5 years old no less!) in 1982 and wow, it was fantastic. Tunnels of Doom was great, I remember the music, fighting kobolds (I believe), and even the scratchy loading sounds from our cassette player (I guess we were too poor to buy the disk drive).

    I also remember playing Ms Pacman, Donkey Kong, and other classics, and realizing how much BETTER they actually looked and played than on my friend's atari console. It was really ironic since they were Atari games themselves (why would Atari make their games look better on other systems?). For instance, donkey kong on the Atari was limited to two levels, while it had four on the TI. There seemed to be more colors, correct sounds, and perhaps a higher resolution on the TI to, IIRC.

    TI also introduced me to programming, too. Somehow my dad had a book on TI programming with a whole bunch of sample code. Now, I had no idea what this code did, after all, I was only 6 or 7 at the time, but I definitely understood that with these lines in a book, if they were typed into the computer I could have a game which I MADE MYSELF! There must have been a thousand lines or something, but at the end, somehow miraculously (no typos, which sounds impossible), it worked. I had a maze game saved onto a cassette! To make a long story short, I have been doomed to be a computer programmer ever since.

    -------------------------------------------------
    It is easy to control all that you see,

  • Congratulations to Parsec (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Before everyone on Slashdot goes crazy about how there is all this prior art from NetHack, Quake, and Rogue, read the actual press release.

    What Parsec has here is a LAN test system. This is not traffic control. Most importantly every product mentioned as prior art in the /. posting is missing one thing: trafficflow processes. The ability to automatically enforce some asset be edited by this client, approved by 2 of these 3 servers, then moved to staging, approved after ICP testing, and moved to production seems to be a key part of what Parsec has.

    This has certainly been done before though not by any of the products mentioned above. Interwoven's ltest and Vignette's L/5 LAN Management Server are 2 examples of products (and there are a number of others) that seem to do everything mentioned in the press release.

    But true LAN management and trafficflow support are things that neither ping, ferret, or V/5 have. Slow down Slashdot.

  • Anyone else remember playing this game until their hands ached from those black and orange
    joysticks?

    How in the world did you use the joystick to
    manuever for refueling? Even sticking the lift factor on 1, the keyboard seemed to have an advantage (OK, I didn't actually own joysticks, but whatever).

    Speech synthesis, 16 color graphics, and who knows where the enemy ships are going to come out on the screen? (well, we all did after we figured out the pattern, but you have to admit, the first time some of those Urbites came out the back it scared you!)

    Ah, those were the days.
  • This is a little off topic, but...

    When I first read this I was hoping they were working on a conversion of the classic TI-99/4A game Parsec. Unfortunately its completely unrelated (expect that both take place in space, and both involve blowing things up, and both are trying to be state-of-the-art for their time).

    ObNostalgia: Anyone else remember playing this game until their hands ached from those black and orange joysticks?

  • I posted at "No Score +1 Bonus" ;>

  • Sourcecode and other platforms (Score:4)

    by kritanus ( 9944 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @11:56PM (#733091)
    So i do not see a FreeBSD-Version. Ok, that is not so bad, because FreeBSD on x86 can start Linux-x86-Programs. But nevertheless I don't get it. This is a free Program, but it is free as in beer, not speech. (Take a look at http://www.parsec.org/faq.html question 33.) Why? So it is very likely we will never see native Versions for *BSD and also not for different hardware than x86 an Mac.

    Ok, so they say "We're strong believers in a coordinated development effort". Even if they give the sourcecode away they can. Just look what it is with FreeBSD. Is is highly coordinated, but the sources are free.

    AFAIK some of the Parsec-guys have been at Linux-Tag 2000. Didn't you hear the speech of Stallman? :-)

  • I saw the following on their website...

    >>After starting up the game you simply choose a ship and select the galaxy you want to be playing in. You can do this in a number of ways. You can either select the desired galaxy in the starmap, enter stellar coordinates, choose a gameserver from a list of servers, or enter the DNS/IP address of a specific gameserver manually.

    Now what about those people not located in US? eg Australia, Hong Kong, EU, Malta etc... Does the gameplay depend on ping times? (we probably get lpb issues etc etc)...Do the gameservers talk to each other thus allowing players outside the US to challenge people who are in the US?

  • Re:Xshipwars? [rant] (Score:4)

    by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @11:13PM (#733093)
    XSW is a nifty game, and has some competant people on the development team. Unfortunetely, Taura (the lead) isn't one of them. I've been on the mailing list for the last year and a half (started after doing some help w/ display support), and have been simply astounded by the level of general incompetance she's displayed. Also, the code sucks -- read it and see. XSW is one of those projects which effectively consists of duct tape and string. There are places where files are duplicated throughout the build tree because Taura "didn't want the complications" of putting them into static libraries. She repeatedly refused to use autoconf, and after permitting people to create autoconf-based packages for one version, wrote her next version w/o it and asked the same people to redo their work! There have also been several occasions (check the ML archive) where Taura has actively driven off developers, and she insists on keeping an extra, unnecessary, poorly written clause in the license (a modified GPL) which makes it potentially incompatible w/ the regular GPL. Until Taura gets a clue or the competant folks leave, I can't support XShipWars.

  • Where can I buy this game? (Score:3)

    by SurfsUp ( 11523 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2000 @02:55AM (#733094)
    I'm not kidding. This is professional quality stuff (probably because a lot of the people working on it *are* professionals). I want to pay money for it, get it in a box. How can I do that? Loki are you listening?

    And when I do pay for it I'd like most of that money to go into the game team's party fund, so they can fly around the world and have conferences and parties, and attract more of the kind of first-rate engine hackers, artists and story writers who can take this thing all the way to the top.

    I played it, it's good. It's slick.
    --
  • Last time when they released the selfrunning demo they released the windows and macintosh versions first and said the linux version would come sometime during the next days.

    Now with the playable lan-test they release the linux and mac version first. Which is of course nice.

    The only sad part is that I have to wait until I get home from work before I can try it.

    Let's hope they keep up the good work and hope for the full internet playable version ASAP 'cause my gut feeling is that this will make working late hours at work worthwile with a few parsec breaks ;>
  • I think Linux is starting to be the victim of its success. I'm running a box with RH 6.2/7.0 and 2.4.0-test8+reiserfs+arla; some things are stable, and some things are flaky. Most notably, gcc and arla are pretty flaky; 2.4.0-test8 is a little flaky; reiserfs and RH 6.2 are pretty stable. But all the new flashy stuff for Linux starts out at almost Windows-level quality, and sometimes worse. Just look at the history of Enlightenment development--always flashy first and stable later.

    I've also been here so long that I've been reading it more out of habit than anything else--actually, check out Siggy's piece at Kuro5hin, and ask yourself when Slashdot has had even 1/4 of the enlightened discussion that they have there, every day.

    The emu community hid under a rock a long time ago. I loved Node 99, and after that EmuNews was really good too, I remember I asked slashdot to make a slashbox for EmuNews when slashboxes first came out, but they didn't do it. What is the cool Emulation news site now? I always just search when I'm in the mood, or generally use MAME, MESS, Frodo, snes9x and TuxNES...

    Tired of computers? Don't say that! :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Sorry, I think you didn't get the point. There is no sourcecode. Or am I wrong? If the source-code is available (under GPL-Licence or similar) I am perfectly happy. But in the FAQ it says, that this is not an open-source-project. And I wonder why.
  • Oh ya. That was a sweet game at the time. I remember playing as a kid, and my wrists would be aching by the end. I guess the designers of the controllers weren't too concerned about ergonomics at the time.
  • TI 99/4A...I had one :-)
  • Uh.. dude, it's free. Totally. Check the site for details. Free rules the world, especially when you're a student on a grant.. But hey, you can always buy an official Parsec-coffee mug. :)

    Uh... dude, get a clue. I want to buy this game even though I know it's free. What part of that do you not understand?
    --
  • I had one too. Parsec was the game. I could play it for hours on end. I just wish I could find a ROM and an emulator.

    Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
  • You've got a Lan that spans parsecs?
  • I only hear the Stevie P stuff on the main menu. When I actually play the game I get some kickin indie rock songs. One by Elf Power, one by some chick band I have, don't know the rest. I've found no mention of what songs they are on the web site. Does anyone know the name or artist of the one that goes "Just go away and leave me alone, and don't fucking call me on the telephone... I'll be happy when you're gone" Damn good song, but I have no idea who it is. Any pointers here would be appreciated...
  • I learned English with Tunnel of Doom. But Parsec was my fav. No-one knew how to fuel up the ship in the 3-rd stage fuel-up-sequence as secure as I(well, no-one in my family anyway ;)

  • http://www.cafepress.com/parsec/

    buy a Parsec t-shirt, mug or mouse pad. $2 goes to the project for each item you buy.

  • Oh, it's a game! (Score:4)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:33PM (#733106)
    I thought it was some kind of *really* high-end network benchmarking utility.

    Anyhow, the screenshots look really neat. Hmm...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • I don't know, maybe it's just me - but I think Xshipwars [twu.net] totally kicks its ass...

    XShipWars is a highly customizable and massivly multiplayer space gamming system designed for play entirly over the Internet...

  • Grettings fellow /.'ers! After watching Eddie Izzard and consuming massive amounts of peyote tonight, I had a vision - a vision of software being released that reeks of Satan doing.

    The voices in my head are telling me that the Parsec LAN-Test is it!

    The About page states - "Parsec is going to introduce you to a whole new universe." Blasphemy! There is but one universe, the one that God has given us. Do not even think for a second that the universe Parsec will introduce you to is not one of nothing but eternal pain and fire!

    Further down the page -"To facilitate the creation of new galaxies" Heretical! We cannot create galaxies. Perhaps statues made of ear wax in the glorious visage of Natalie Portman, but not glaxies!

    Lastly, this test release is for GNULIX and MacOS only. Where is support for the glorious operating system made by God (Bill Gates) himself? NOWHERE!

    I will say a prayer and take a shot of whiskey for each of your souls tonight.


    With love,
  • Wow, I could have sworn you were doing better than that lately. :)

    However, if I had mod points, it'd be the least I could do, provided I could have some of that cheap $3 crack too. The market seems to be flooded with it, lately.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • The news of the release isn't much to read of. But the history of the game is very interesting. I'd give it a read if you have the time.

  • he's a fantastic composer and i'm glad to see him get mentioned on /.

    the soundtrack for Parsec is particularly cool - sort of like a techno jungle thang with a moody groove. great stuff.

    1. I LOVE YOU [mikegallay.com]
  • You will give it a read if I have time, great deal, thank you very much!

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