So mind blowing I have to tell somebody

Ok I am a middle aged woman and a bit weird (OK a lot weird).
When I was in my late teens I was introduced to a computer game called "Elite" ( the plus edition on the atari ST) and I totally fell in love with it (to the point I have had emulator version on my PC for years) There was a follow on called Frontier but I did not try that one - then a couple of years ago one of the original writers put the suggestion of a new version for the PC and internet out to crowd funding to see how much interest there was. There was a lot as the original players tend to now be seeing children leaving home and have reasonable disposable incomes and had (like me) dreamed of seeing a game ahead of its time 30 years ago reborn with todays systems that could do justice to the idea visible way back then.
With the crowd funding the new version Elite Dangerous was started and the developers worked to justify the reputation or the original of being ahead of its time and mind blowing awesome. They have built an accurate as possible scale of our own galaxy and where possible ie within range of the stars we can actually chart skys are accurate as they would be if you were actually there. The model created is of scientific benefit http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-video-game-that-maps-the-galaxy
Anyway Elite Dangerous was fully released in December and I got it just last week and having done the training for fighting and docking and started exploring - there are various space stations from basic ones to the giant orbis I have just come across for the first time - and that has absolutely blown me away. It is huge and has a ring with glass roofing through which you can see plants being grown with the rotation providing light and dark - there is even the shadow of my own little ship.
It has got me ridiculously excited and I have bored my family and friends with my raving already and I just had to tell someone about orbis station. There are videos on you tube and I serious recommend people to have a look and get this game - even if you are not really into computer games.

Will definitely have a look at that. Slightly on topic, were you ever a fan of the old NES game River City Ransom? It came out in 1991 and is about to get its first officially licensed sequel, thanks largely to a process like you described above Looks awesome, too!

     CONSIDERING that those old 1980's Z80-powered souped-up calculators-on-steroids, such as Ataris, Apricots, MicroBees and Commodore 64s, would have required the ingestion of copious amounts of such mind-altering substances as with the likes of LSD, Acapulco Gold, speed, Magic Mushies or ethyl alcohol-spiked punches; for anyone to get anywhere close to the near-orgasmic delights admitted to by the author of that O/P...

ON the other hand, there's also some quite sensory-appealing recent releases of war and medieval/fantasy as well as SF titles - where the UHD visuals are near-movie quality in their execution..

I MIGHT have been tempted to look at a couple of those latest games ~ if only they weren't so ridiculously over-priced for what they are !    

[P.S. CONFESSION : There is still the corps of a Z80 Microbee hiding away at the bottom of my computer paraphernalia here.  Maybe one day I will find an alternative use for it, apart from as a bulky yet quaintly novel paperweight ?]

No Ben I had not heard of that game but I know there is a big movement in crowd funded game developments at the moment. The big developers have got to playing it safe and only releasing games to tried and tested money making formulae and gamers are crying out for stuff that is new, different, and which people are prepared to risk development on. Crowd funding is giving the smaller guys with ideas a chance to pitch straight to the market instead of trying to get one of the big boys interested.

Wolf I think the thing with elite is that the vision of the incredible graphics etc now realized was there in the original. The original sort of opened a door to imagining what could be even if the machines of the time could not do it. Although ED is new with lots of never before seen stuff it feels familiar and like it was there all the time.

On a side note it is fully VR compatible (in fact they are "future proofing development as much as possible building in technology that is not available yet but which will be) and use of devices like occulus rift has resulted in some very hardened experience gamers getting more emotional than me - if playing on a screen is wow total immersion is wow to the nth degree. The best thing is they are not claiming it is finished - this is just the point that development is rounded enough for full release. They are working on planetary landing, , being able to move around inside ships and space stations from a first person viewpoint, ship to ship transfers, and for the very very very long term the idea of passenger transport is being batted around. I dont know how much and for how long they will keep going but it really is another world.

The thing that has been said about a lot of the great older games before is that they were fun because they had to be; there was nothing else but the game to sell it with -- not the graphics, not the voice actors -- but what that also did was force designers to branch out and create different "types" of fun for different types of people, which I think also became a lost art for a while -- though coming back from the indie scene.

I used to love the game Sim Earth, which if you're unfamiliar is basically a game where you start with a barren planet and try to get life and then civilization to evolve on it. But for a lot of people it was like watching paint dry

No doubt the way I enjoy elite would have lots of people including dedicated players, going nuts with boredom because I just randomly wander exploring and trading. I do not have complex up to date market lists to work out how to make the biggest profit in the shortest time to get a bigger ship which is how the purist traders do it, and neither do I plot complex routes through as much undiscovered territory as possible aiming for a ship with huge fuel capacity and top range scanners which the purist explorers do - I just meander around just watching to make sure I am making a modest profit.

This new elite has several different career paths and 3 areas to be rated in to try and make elite - I might get trader and explorer but I probably wont get combat as that is an area that does not really do it for me but I am not going to be racing through it like some are.

Happy New Year Sphinx
Long time no see.
Hope all is well with you and your family.
Hope the game lives up to your reputation.
Was gutted when Rome Total War 2 came out, they rushed bringing it out for public sales and it had untold problems, put me off one of my favorite games.
Hope it is all you hope it will be.

Brasidas wrote:Happy New Year Sphinx
Long time no see.
Hope all is well with you and your family.
Hope the game lives up to your reputation.
Was gutted when Rome Total War 2 came out, they rushed bringing it out for public sales and it had untold problems, put me off one of my favorite games.
Hope it is all you hope it will be.

Happy new year didge. I am busy with election stuff so not on forums at all at the moment - wont be till after May I should think.
I think they have been as careful as they can with this but any project this size is going to have bugs. I am enjoying it anyway and although there are some moans around the general feedback is good so hopefully it will be successful enough for the developers to properly bring in the planned developments.

sphinx wrote:

Brasidas wrote:Happy New Year Sphinx
Long time no see.
Hope all is well with you and your family.
Hope the game lives up to your reputation.
Was gutted when Rome Total War 2 came out, they rushed bringing it out for public sales and it had untold problems, put me off one of my favorite games.
Hope it is all you hope it will be.

Happy new year didge.  I am busy with election stuff so not on forums at all at the moment - wont be till after May I should think.
I think they have been as careful as they can with this but any project this size is going to have bugs.  I am enjoying it anyway and although there are some moans around the general feedback is good so hopefully it will be successful enough for the developers to properly bring in the planned developments.

Cool I hope it is great when it comes out. I was gutted how they rushed through Rome Total War 2.
My brother is also busy campaigning for them, though doubt he will have much luck in Bromley, but good luck to you on your campaign, even if I do not agree with their policies.

Hi my Sphinxy poo, lovely to see you as usual xx

I've never been into computer games but when my son was about seven we really got into a kids game called Adventure Quest.
You could buy and trade weapons and kill different monsters which were based on the four elements and other things such as "darkness" and "light"

We got quite addicted actually!
Anyone heard of it?