Space Nerds In Space
June 24, 2015 7:30 AM Subscribe
Space Nerds In Space
Space Nerds In Space is an open source (GPL) multiplayer networked starship bridge simulator for linux inspired by Artemis: Starship Bridge Simulator that I've been working on for the last few years. It's still not "complete", since, well, I can't stop working on it, but it is complete enough. The idea is, you get a bunch of your friends together with a bunch of computers and a projector, and then you drive around and shoot stuff (kind of like Friday night in a small Texas town, except you're driving the Hubble Space Telescope instead of an El Camino.) There are stations for Navigation, Weapons, Engineering, Damage Control, Science, Communications, and a "Demon" station which serves as a kind of "Game master" station where various things can be injected into the game, and from which Lua scripts of various scenarios might be run. If you're reading this, you probably already know whether it's your kind of thing.
There's a (now somewhat dated) mini documentary here: Space Nerds in Space, an Indie Game in Development that sort of happened to me. There is what amounts to a development blog on freegamedev.net that goes back to the beginnings when the game was no more than some dots on a laptop screen. There are some technical posts about procedural generation of gas giant planets and about earthlike planets.
Space Nerds In Space is an open source (GPL) multiplayer networked starship bridge simulator for linux inspired by Artemis: Starship Bridge Simulator that I've been working on for the last few years. It's still not "complete", since, well, I can't stop working on it, but it is complete enough. The idea is, you get a bunch of your friends together with a bunch of computers and a projector, and then you drive around and shoot stuff (kind of like Friday night in a small Texas town, except you're driving the Hubble Space Telescope instead of an El Camino.) There are stations for Navigation, Weapons, Engineering, Damage Control, Science, Communications, and a "Demon" station which serves as a kind of "Game master" station where various things can be injected into the game, and from which Lua scripts of various scenarios might be run. If you're reading this, you probably already know whether it's your kind of thing.
There's a (now somewhat dated) mini documentary here: Space Nerds in Space, an Indie Game in Development that sort of happened to me. There is what amounts to a development blog on freegamedev.net that goes back to the beginnings when the game was no more than some dots on a laptop screen. There are some technical posts about procedural generation of gas giant planets and about earthlike planets.
Role: I am the guy that made it so
Space Nerds in Space isn't really anything like Space Team. It is closer to games like Artemis: Bridge Simulator, Union Cooperative Bridge Simulator, Quintet, or Empty Epsilon. Space Nerds in Space is a bridge simulator, imagine you're on the bridge of the starship enterprise, and your laptop is one of the stations on the bridge that you're manning. The stations together are viewing a coherent universe with which you can all interact.
Spaceteam (as I understand it, i've never played it) doesn't try to simulate a spaceship at all. Each player's phone presents a set of controls (which may break or malfunction) and a set of instructions. The instructions are along the lines of "increase the turbo matrix to 5!" , "Set the frobulator to 7!". The player may not have the indicated controls on their phone, so they shout out the instructions (all concurrently) and each player attempts to find the indicated controls on their own phone and do as the shouting suggests. So it's all the players shouting instructions while simultaneously attempting to follow the other shouted instructions.
posted by smcameron at 8:58 PM on June 24, 2015
Spaceteam (as I understand it, i've never played it) doesn't try to simulate a spaceship at all. Each player's phone presents a set of controls (which may break or malfunction) and a set of instructions. The instructions are along the lines of "increase the turbo matrix to 5!" , "Set the frobulator to 7!". The player may not have the indicated controls on their phone, so they shout out the instructions (all concurrently) and each player attempts to find the indicated controls on their own phone and do as the shouting suggests. So it's all the players shouting instructions while simultaneously attempting to follow the other shouted instructions.
posted by smcameron at 8:58 PM on June 24, 2015
That sounds about like the conclusion I was coming to upon quick glance, but I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth itself. I'm greedily looking for friends with projectors and "no life" (me too) to get it on with this thing!
posted by phlyingpenguin at 5:42 AM on June 25, 2015
posted by phlyingpenguin at 5:42 AM on June 25, 2015
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posted by phlyingpenguin at 12:32 PM on June 24, 2015