Forty Years of Lunar Lander 136
Harry writes "2009 marks not only the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11, but also four decades of the iconic, omnipresent Lunar Lander, one of the first simulation games ever written. The first version was written by an Apollo-crazy high school student; among its countless descendants are the classic Atari arcade machine and versions for practically every other platform, from the Apple II to the iPhone. We're celebrating with a look at the game's origins, history, and significance — including an interview with creator Jim Storer, who hadn't given the game a moment's thought since he left high school, and wasn't aware of the phenomenon he spawned."
USA!! USA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:USA!! USA! (Score:4, Funny)
Remember that when there's a Starbucks and a strip mall in the Sea of Tranquility.
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I would hate to think how much I'd be charged for Starbucks coffee on the moon...
Re:USA!! USA! (Score:4, Interesting)
50 cents, surely. Isn't the reason for the prices here on Earth that they have to ship the beans from the Moon?
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I will enjoy my Double Trim Grande Latte while chomping on my Big Mac and Freedom Fries.
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Re:USA!! USA! (Score:5, Funny)
I would hate to think how much I'd be charged for Starbucks coffee on the moon...
Well, the problem is that, as coffehouses go, Starbucks is nice, but it has absolutely no atmosphere.
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Perhaps if they wrapped the Space Shuttle in the same cardboard they insulate that 200 oC coffee with, they wouldn't keep exploding ?
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It'll be a Tim Horton's fly-thru.
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wait, what are we talking about?
Re:USA!! USA! (Score:5, Funny)
I'd strip Starbuck in a sea of tranquili...
wait, what are we talking about?
You know, as much as I enjoyed Dirk Benedict's work I don't think I'd want to see that.
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sarcasmfilter = set_filter(1)
Re:USA!! USA! (Score:4, Interesting)
And I guarantee that strip mall will be owned by a Korean, Iranian, Iraqi, Vietnamese, or some other immigrant. One *more* reason America is #1 cool. When you want to own a strip mall on the moon, America is where you go.
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Actually, I believe a vast majority of US assets are owned by international corporations. But that's a nice thought - we destroy your homeland, you can come over and run a Jiffy Stop. Sounds like a deal to me! If you live through the bombing and/or dictatorship, I mean.
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When you want to own a strip mall on the moon, America is where you go.
Shouldn't that be, "the moon is where you go"?
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McDonalds, FUCK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, FUCK YEAH!
The Gap, FUCK YEAH!
Baseball, FUCK YEAH!
NFL, FUCK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, FUCK YEAH!
The Internet, FUCK YEAH!
Slavery, FUCK YEAH!
Starbucks, FUCK YEAH!
Disney world, FUCK YEAH!
Porno, FUCK YEAH!
Valium, FUCK YEAH!
Reeboks, FUCK YEAH!
Fake Tits, FUCK YEAH!
Sushi, FUCK YEAH!
Taco Bell, FUCK YEAH!
Rodeos, FUCK YEAH!
Bed bath and beyond FUCK YEAH!
Don't forget these two things... (Score:3, Informative)
America... FUCK YEAH!!!!
First of all, you forgot to include a link to one of these [nocookie.net] all important pictures [photobucket.com]
And secondly, there's still one of the original lunar landers existing today, and is still actually flying intact. Snoopy was the LEM used on the Apollo 10 mission [theconquestofspace.com], and one of two that flew to the moon, but didn't land. Snoopy was flown down to within about 7.4 miles of the lunar surface, but was not equipped for actual landing. It was then flown back up to rendezvous with the command module, and the
Get your own accomplishments (Score:2, Insightful)
I grew up watching this stuff as a kid. The America we had back then is a far cry from that we have today. Gone is the self reliant take responsibility for one's self and actions. Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd that can only relive the accomplishments of past generations because all they have nothing to show for themselves (mainly because it would require DOING SOMETHING)
when all the money is sucked up by wants there really isn't much for doing some
Re:Get your own accomplishments (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Get your own accomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
That, of course, is a popular delusion. Its not that we aren't materialistic and selfish now, but we were just as bad back then. And 50 years before that, and 50 years before that, and 50 years before that ...
Human nature is human nature. It hasn't changed recently. There are a few times that we have still been able to do really cool things when we put our minds to it, and have good leaders. But, there isn't any real cultural difference today that would prevent it from happening.
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In fact, it is GOOD, as it drives the economy.
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In California WE PAY FAMILY MEMBERS TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN FAMILY!
If they have to quit their job to do so, or work less hours. This is a cheaper and better solution than paying for their care entirely through insurance or state run institutions.
They are unionized as well.
Unions are a symptom of a larger disease. Which leads us to your next complaint,
We are going to be guaranteeing health care to all.
This isn't a bad thing. We already have the most expensive health care system in the world and we still ca
Re:Get your own accomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
Gone is the self reliant take responsibility for one's self and actions.
Gone is Lyndon Johnson and his "war on poverty". Gone is the entitlement AFDC which guranteed generational welfare, replaced by TANF which gives only temporary help to folks with kids. Gone are business owners who gave a shit about anything but money. Gone are corporate ethics, replaced by Enron ethics and Bernard Madhoff ethics. Gone is the late Walkter Cronkite, replaced by Fox, apparently your only news source.
Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd
Unemployment in Michigan is over 10%. You need a job to work.
mainly because it would require DOING SOMETHING
You're not impressed by those little Martian robots? I sure as hell am.
Re:Get your own accomplishments (Score:4, Informative)
Gone are business owners who gave a shit about anything but money. Gone are corporate ethics, replaced by Enron ethics and Bernard Madhoff ethics.
You know how they referred to Madhoff's scam as a Ponzi Scheme [wikipedia.org]?
Yeah, "Madhoff ethics" are not a new thing.
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True, but having a head of the NASCAQ stock exchange running a ponzi scheme is a new thing.
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Is that the unholy spawn of NASCAR and NASDAQ?
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No, it's me trying to type too fast.
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Only in that the NASDAQ is new. But it's not at all new for the heads of large corporations, governments, or other organizational entities to take advantage of employees/investors/voters/subjects for personal gain.
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It's Madoff, not Madhoff.
So it is.
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Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd
Unemployment in Michigan is over 10%. You need a job to work.
Pssh, 10% is old news. It's over 15% now.
There's a reason I left MI for the east coast in order to get an engineering job.
Re:Get your own accomplishments (Score:4, Informative)
"I grew up watching this stuff as a kid. The America we had back then is a far cry from that we have today. Gone is the self reliant take responsibility for one's self and actions. Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd that can only relive the accomplishments of past generations because all they have nothing to show for themselves (mainly because it would require DOING SOMETHING)"
Just the opposite -- I think the main problem is that nowadays we no longer feel it necessary to PAY our fair share for our DEBTS.
Indeed, let's return to those halcyon days of our youth. Let's re-establish the top income tax rate at 77% as it was in 1969 (instead of today's pittance 35%). That will solve many of our problems, as it did for our parent's and grandparent's generations, who were not such belly-achers as we.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Tax_rates_in_history [wikipedia.org]
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Huh. I just took a look and I see your numbers. A little deeper shows:
1954 rate Income 2008 Equiv.
up to $2,000.00 20% up to $75,000.00
$2,000.01 - $4,000.00 22% $75,000.01 - $150,000.00
Looks to me like we're paying a bit more than we were back in 1954.
Top income tax rate is:
$200,000.01 or more 91% $7,500,000.00 or more
There isn't a specific page for 1969 though. Still, it seems that comparing levels closer to my pay shows I'm paying 33% compared to 22% back in 19
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Indeed, let's return to those halcyon days of our youth.
When dinosaurs roamed the earth and slide rules were all the computer that a "real geek" needed.
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How much has the change been in the American people and how much has the change been in the picture of America popularized by the mass media?
The image of the can-do take-charge American is an old one. See A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for an example from over 100 years ago. It is easier to believe that a particular self image has become less popular than that a culture that existed for over a century suddenly evaporated. That change is also importa
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Anyone else notice the irony of a right-wing anti-socialist rant that praises one of the most expensive, pointless socialist projects in history?
Of course, giving money to poor people so they don't starve to death or so their children don't die of treatable conditions is terrible, let's funnel the money to military contractors instead so they can build man toys that good on TV.
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All those wonderful new rights simply mean you can't tell coloreds, females or gays that they are fat lazy good-for-nothings who need to get off their ass and do some work, for fear of a discrimination lawsuit.
Mars landers ... well okay, that IS impressive ... 40 years after you put 2 guys on the surface of the moon, now you can put a LEGO kit with solar panels on Mars, and it might even talk to you if it's a "good day". And only for like 100 billion more than in 1969.
Global communication ? Last time I chec
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Humanity (Score:1)
I would like to take this moment to remind everyone how fucking cool humanity is for landing a man on the moon.
And if we want to give credit where credit's due - let's remember how fucking cool NASA were.
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I would like to take this moment to remind everyone how fucking cool America is for landing on the moon.
It's amazing what you can do with German rocket technology.
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Here is the complete timeline of the Luna missions: Luna Missions [usra.edu].
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The Soviets were not the only ones sending probes to the Moon. We sent the Ranger series of probes [wikipedia.org] to the Moon during the 1960s to take pictures. This accomplished two major goals:
1. The probes impacted, and failed immediately upon impact. This proved that the lunar surface was indeed solid rock.
2. The probes provided high-detail imagery to give planners a better idea of how rough landing it would be, and to allow them to pick an optimal landing site.
Now, I won't discount the impressive success the Sovie
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Bought one, then wrote one (Score:3, Funny)
It was in the early eighties, and I had a TRS-80. Bought a Moon lander game for it at a Radio Shack and it sucked donkey balls, so I wrote my own. The difference between my moon lander and radio Shack's was the same as the difference between a violin and a fiddle.
What's the difference between a violin and a fiddle?
People LIKE fiddle music!
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Bah. Most of my friend hated my lunar lander version. as you burned fuel your mass dropped so the thrust that worked last burst would be different for the next.
if you burned it all to the last drop, it would become a major PITA to land it because your mass was significantly lower.
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A lot of commercial games make the same mistake - trying too hard for realism. When you're writing a game, the #1 thing you want is for it to be FUN. Not too easy, not too hard.
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Well, forty years ago I'd only see one computer up close. Those were primitive times.
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And you haven't run out of fuel yet?
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I happen to agree with the GP, and I've written tons of games in the past 40 years. Here's my Atari 2600 version of Lunar Lander:
http://www.pdroms.de/files/73/ [pdroms.de]
Run it through an emulator like Stella to play.
I later ported the game to Flash, but it's not quite as fun as the 60Hz 2600 version. However, you can play it on a Wii! (Use S for thrust if you're on a PC.)
http://www.wiicade.com/gameDetail.aspx?gameID=692 [wiicade.com]
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TFA refers to it as a "simulation game". The idea is to appreciate the complexity of something as you take the controls and appreciate your natural reverse engineering process as you identify each new subtlety. It's one thing to read about how a pilot spent hundreds of hours in a cockpit, but especially so by contrast when you put the craft in your own unskilled hands.
Besides, most of the things in life that I remember best I learned by trying something and failing.
Negative thrust. (Score:2)
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I started making a Lunar Lander style vehicle in LittleBigPlanet. Had forgotten all about it until I saw this article! I was still experimenting with designs of vehicles and hadn't actually gotten round to creating different levels for it..
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There fixed that for ya!
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You mean like Yehudi Menuhin? [wikipedia.org] His accomplishments, pasted from wikipedia:
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Man. Imagine if Paganini had been a fiddle player instead of just a violinist...
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The difference between my moon lander and radio Shack's was the same as the difference between a violin and a fiddle.
So you rewrote the game yourself and made it exactly the same, but played it differently?
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No, theirs was commercial, I was just fiddlin' around.
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banjo.
Re:The difference between a violin and a fiddle? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, a fiddle is a crude folk instrument or a medieval precursor to the voilin, and a violin is a sophisticated, nuanced instrument that the fiddle is a crude imitation of. So your version was a bit of a fiddle?
Um, no. In the U.S. a fiddle [wikipedia.org] typically is a violin, especially when referring to American Folk, Bluegrass or Country music, so literally, from mcgrew's American point-of-view, the only real difference is the style of music being played (although "fiddle" players may prefer one variety of string or bow over another, the instrument that is called a "fiddle" and the instrument that is called a "violin" are typically the same thing.)
In the States, Classical music is not nearly as popular as Folk, Bluegrass or Country. Hence "fiddle" music is more popular than "violin" music, although technically these are typically the same instrument.
So what mcgrew is saying is that RadioShack's "Lunar Lander" game and his "Lunar Lander" game were very, very similar, but people liked his better for various reasons that he didn't clarify in his original post, but I'm guessing by the fiddle analogy, he means that his had better graphics/visuals and probably better controls.
Just thought I'd clear that up for you non-Americans out there who are all probably not going to get what mcgrew means.
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Thanks for that.
Space Invaders (Score:3, Funny)
He had a life (Score:2, Funny)
...creator Jim Storer, who hadn't given the game a moment's thought since he left high school, and wasn't aware of the phenomenon he spawned.
Yeah. It's always strange when a geek escapes the darkness of the computer cave to explore the big blue room and doesn't come back. Worse, if he does come back, he'll discover that he's become stupider than before.
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s/Except/Yeah,/
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Yeah. It's always strange when a geek escapes the darkness of the computer cave to explore the big blue room and doesn't come back. Worse, if he does come back, he'll discover that he's become stupider than before
Guilty as charged, your honor.
Live arcade cabinet from Hack-a-Day (Score:2, Interesting)
Loved the BASIC version of LL's preamble (Score:4, Funny)
The main reason why you took manual control of the vehicle.... XEROX built the on board computer! And it broke... (tisk)
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Then Apple borrowed some Xerox ideas and came out with iLander with only one button.
disney quest has one (Score:1, Interesting)
last I was there, a few years ago, disney quest (a 5 story arcade in orlando, with a retro section), had the original game. My friends were playing all the "cool" games while I camped out at Lunar Lander all night. It was one of the few open....
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Last I checked, there was one at the Space Center in Huntsville, AL. That was always one of the better parts of my visits there.
Wow. (Score:4, Funny)
My first memory of this game was seeing the Atari version at the Exploratorium. I never knew that the original was text!
HERE ARE THE RULES THAT GOVERN YOUR SPACE VEHICLE:
(1) AFTER EACH SECOND, THE HEIGHT, VELOCITY, AND REMAINING
FUEL WILL BE REPORTED.
(2) AFTER THE REPORT, A '?' WILL BE TYPED. ENTER THE
NUMBER OF UNITS OF FUEL YOU WISH TO BURN DURING THE
NEXT SECOND. EACH UNIT OF FUEL WILL SLOW YOUR DESCENT
BY 1 FT/SEC.
Reading that, I was expecting (3) to be "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." :-)
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I was playing Luner Lander on a PDP 11-34 back in 77 or so. Hunt the Wumpus was available too but I never figured out how to shoot the crooked arrows. The best game was Trek and I played that all through high school. I once wrote a text based Battlestar Galactica game and before I knew it other studens would copy the code, change 3 characters (not lines) of code and get a A. I must admit, the teacher was generious cuz I spent tons of time writing login simulators and reviewing the results of "anonymous" sex
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For those with too much time on their hands... (Score:2)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~imaging/lunar_lander_game.html [frontiernet.net]
http://sebleedelisle.com/games/moonlander/ [sebleedelisle.com]
http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/lunar_lander/ [thepcmanwebsite.com]
Copying it was my first BASIC experience (Score:2)
Copying the original text Lunar Lander was my first experience with BASIC. I just typed the program in from a copy of Creative Computing in I think Applesoft BASIC. I was great at typing it, not so good at playing it.
My arcade video game experience started with Computer Space around 1972 so I was in the right generation to take part in the video game madness of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I really liked the Atari Lunar Lander and still miss the wonderful sharpness of vector graphics.
They Choose The Moon (Score:1)
Nice game too!
Lunar Lander on a Teletype (Score:1, Interesting)
In the '70s, my Dad brought home a teletype terminal with an acoustic coupler from work. He let us play Lunar Lander. It was a Honeywell timeshare system.
After each game, you got a comment. When you crashed, it might be "What was that flash, Wilber?"
And my favorite, when I finally got it right, "Like a honeybee alighting on a nectar filled hibiscus."
Them was the days.
madmac
There was even a CDC 6600 version (Score:1)
I cant tell you.. (Score:2)
..How many times I wrote that game on my little Sinclair computer as a kid. Probably my first game, and first completed, functional program.
It was too annoying saving it onto tapes so I usually just reprogrammed it when I felt like playing. :)
Wrote a version of the game too. (Score:3, Interesting)
In college, I took an advanced CAD course where we wrote CAD software. There was a hodge-podge of machines there, from a Dec PDP-11 to a Harris 800. Lots of DEC Rainbow machines with the dust covers on them because they used the 80186 chip which wasn't
Anyway, we finally got an open ended assignment on the SGI machine, so I decided to write the Lunar Lander game on it - with the original as my design reference. I did a pretty good job of it too - as a mechanical engineer, I was able to use Newton's laws to accurately reflect the behavior of the LM... it obeyed Newtonian mechanics (no - it didn't take into account the weight of the fuel burned but neither did the original to my understanding).
I got all done and most of the people who looked at the rendition had not ever seen the original game. So they complained that I hadn't taken advantage of the 3d graphics the SGI machine had. It was like drawing a picture in Kindergarten and having the teacher tell me my grass was the wrong color. Only one other guy understood what I'd done - copied a real live arcade game from scratch. When they asked him what he thought, he just kept playing it and said "Awesome!"
The other funny thing was that at the end, nobody went back to look at the modeled objects... they all went back to play the game.
Another lunar lander (Score:1)
http://seed7.sourceforge.net/scrshots/lander.htm [sourceforge.net]
Greetings Thomas Mertes
Seed7 Homepage: http://seed7.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Seed7 - The extensible programming language: User defined statements
and operators, abstract data types, templates without special
syntax, OO with interfaces and multiple dispatch, statically typed,
interpreted or compiled, portable, runs under linux/unix/windows.
Workbench Lander? (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't everyone succumb to the lure of the Lander? Our entry in the BADGE killer demo contest was a version of Lunar Lander that ran on the Amiga Workbench... with the terrain being whatever windows you happen to have open at the time...
I can't find a screen shot or even a copy of the program on google now, and while I have a box of Amiga floppy disks at home I doubt I could find anything that would read them now. I know it was on Fred Fish's disk collection, if someone has a copy I can load into UAE I'd appreciate it.
I'm smarter than I thought (Score:2)
Heh, I'm smarter than I thought, or stupider. I kept a copy and it's sitting on my own colo server, been sitting there forgotten since about 1995.
A physical version (Score:2)
At the time most of us were impressed because very few people at the time, especially students, had micro computers much less the ability to interface them to the real world.
physical lunar lander arcade game (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised nobody has linked to it yet, but there's this guy who made a physical Lunar Lander arcade game. No flashy vector graphics here! You control an actual model of a lander using real gauges and everything.
Lunar Lander [lushprojects.com]
Cool, I'm referenced in the article! (Score:1)
Ok, so this is pretty cool because in the section where they are interviewing Jack Burness about the GT-40 version, he mentions me!
>>> Years later, a co-worker told Burness that the reason he got into programming was because he had played Moonlander as a teenager.
I had helped to video tape a symposium on stereochemistry at Wesleyan University, and the room that we put the video equipment away happened to have a GT-40 vector graphics system in it. Some students were playing
fun on cross-country move (Score:2)
CDC Cyber 6600 Console 3D Lunar Lander (Score:2)
Re:Further info on 3D lander games - shameless plu (Score:2)
My sister project, Flyin' Irons (a lander racing game set in a world of flying steam irons), is more playable as a game at the moment.
Wow, flying steam irons. You must've played too much Megamania [wikipedia.org] as a young'un.
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Just realised I phrased that badly - for clarification, the sister project is *not* written by me but by Anthony, the Disintegrator guy! I think he's more a project-finisher than I am :-)
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"My sister project, Flyin' Irons"
- I should clarify that I meant the sister project to "my" project, not that Flyin' Irons was also my project! Another, very productive, developer has been responsible for pushing Flyin' Irons to a more playable state than my game ever was.
Offtopic? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I seem to have ended up at -1, Offtopic, so I guess I must have upset some people. Just thought I'd link to some relevant information that I'd collected and thought might be of interest. The main blog link is about a whole genre of games that were inspired by lander-style physics, ranging throughout various styles and platforms. It happens to be on my site, which doesn't carry any adverts - I did think about posting Anonymous but I rather thought it'd be better / more reasonable to state my interest in t
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How could you talk about 3D gravity games and don't mention cave9 [google.com]?
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Thank you for the link! Yes, I've played with Cave9 and liked it, though it was relatively new and basic at the time. I helped them track down a minor bug in an early version because I thought it was a cool project. I had forgotten about it for a while ago and really ought to take another look.
I've been thinking I should either do another blog post or possibly just start a wiki page indexing 3D gravity games. For the relatively few of us who are fans I think it would be quite interesting / useful!