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Limited Edition Terminus For Order
A reader writes "Read over at GA-Source that the space sim game Terminus is finally about to start shipping and that they are taking 100 pre-orders for limited edition signed copies of the game. If you never heard of Terminus, check out GA's preview of the game here. It's got a load of cool features like real Newtonian physics and a persistent online universe and real good AI to boot! I've never been a big sim fan but this is one game I'm definitely gonna check into. "
Full newtonian physics is actually pretty easy to implement, and doesn't take up much computing power. However, it tends to confuse most people, so space games often leave it out. People generally expect three things to happen when flying something.
1) When you point the ship in a particular direction, the ship is moving in that direction.
2) If you keep the engines on, you speed up until you hit the maximum speed.
3) If you turn the engines off, you slow down.
None of these three things are physically accurate; they apply more to atmospheric flight. What Terminus is doing is getting rid of those things, so that when you point your ship somewhere you actually have to thrust to change direction. When you shut the engines off, you keep going. And so forth.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
here's an excerpt from this page.
The official U.S. retail launch date is June 8th 2000. We were scheduled to ship in May but the date was pushed back to June. Now before any of you come up with a conspiracy theory on this, here's what happened:
Vatical, our publisher, met with many of the major retailers to introduce Terminus to them. It turned out that the decision makers at some of these retailers, including Electronics Boutique, have known about Terminus and have been following the game's progress for more than a year. And let me tell ya, they were pretty psyched to see it nearing completion.
What happened was, when we finally nailed down a solid timeframe for going gold, the retailers came back to Vatical saying that they needed more time to prepare for the launch. So it was decided that the date be pushed back so we can give it a proper retail launch. It's really thrilling to see some of the retailers getting behind the game!