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The Long-Awaited MOO!
Number13 writes "Quicksilver's Master of Orion 3,
declared vaporware by Wired magazine, has gone gold! Set to hit the streets on Feb. 25, MOO3 is the the successor to what many consider the best space strategy game series."
Thanks Slashdot for killing the site :) But you can still get to the communities to hear from the dev's themselves...
Anyways, I saw an incredulous comment above that the system requirements are Pentium II @ 300 MHz... the game has been in development for so long, that the game engine is not based on modern 3D-accellerated engines. Instead, the engine is voxel-based, which has angered some in the past because the game's "smoothness" is software speed based, not add-on hardware or slickness of video card.
The game supports 8 human players, with up to a total of 16 (assuming the other 8 are computer AIs). Human players can drop connections and re-connect without reloading from a saved state (like Moo2 makes you do). Battles between players are executed in real-time, and multiple battles between two exclusive sets of players will happen simultaneously. Between turns, when battles are resolved, non-battling players are forced to wait.
Indeed. And you can still play TW2002 on BBSs via telnet over the internet. It is still a great game, with new additions, like multiple people are able to play at once, and more than 1000 sectors. Who needs graphics to have fun? I remember Food Fight, too. THAT was a great door.
Starcraft
The original Master of Orion came out about a decade ago, and has always been referred to as "MOO". It (along with the sequel) are probably the best selling turn based strategy games of all time.
MUDs were in their barest infancy back then, I don't think the Object Oriented sort even existed yet.
But anyway, who cares? Acronyms can stand for more than one thing. Unless you're the WWF. Nice shamless plug for your site though.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
10 years ago.. 1993... MUDs were already out of infancy by then.
Lambdamoo had already been around for a few years, and so had FurryMUCK. Both of them started in 1989-1990 or so, and quickly became popular. There were many other systems around too, and some people consider this to be the "good old days" of MUDs, IE, before everyone and their mother could get on the Internet.
Heck, when I first read the headline I thought a new version of MOO had come out.
There are some reviews on amazon that may be of interest(one who claims to be a beta tester) and many useless reviews.
Preview can be found here:e ws/0,10 869,2902095,00.html
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/previ
Enjoy
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
For those of you who have Macs (and consider Masters of Orion only the second best space game), the classic Spaceward Ho! version 5.0 shipped recently. Think of it as the core essential fun gameplay elements of MOO without all the extra complicated junk. Main attractions of the new version are TCP/IP Internet play, and it's now MacOS X native. This is my second-favorite computer game of all time.
It DID interfere with legit copies. Because of the nature of the protection system used, it conflicted with widely popular CD drives (you know, the kind that also BURN CDs) It also seeks out virtual drive software and other software used by developers, and "accidentally" crashes if such is found.
;)
I bought TWO copies legitimately the day it came out, to be able to play with friends on my LAN. My main machine was unable to run the game. It wouldn't recognize either ORIGINAL disc. only this particular sceme (Safedisk 2 I think) causes this problem. Both copies went back. I had to threaten a lawsuit in order to get a refund. Against the clerk who had assured me that there would be no such problems. Obviously the store wouldn't care, but threaten to sue an individual, well, things happen much more quickly
It was suggested that I replace my brand new (and perfectly compliant with all standards) 40x burner drive with a NEW CD drive to resolve this. I suggested the PUBLISHER not expect me to replace perfectly legal and properly functional hardware (I use this drive to back up my network, incremental backups) that cost more than their GAME did.
Eventually, I believe they either fixed the game or the bug in their implementation. I'll never know, because I wrote that game off permanently.
Publishers need to remember it is NOT the responsibility of people with CD drives, new ones, to worry about a game being compatible. It's the publishers' responsibility to make sure their copy protection doesn't BREAK on current hardware. Nothing less is acceptable. Unless they want to put "WARNING, THIS PRODUCT IS PROTECTED BY (Insert protection scheme here) AND THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT CHANCE THAT IT WILL NOT WORK WITH YOUR CD DRIVE", coupled with an easy to read list of known incompatible drives, in readable text, on the box (NOT IN IT).
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Yes, they did remove it with one of the patches. The problem is it shouldn't have shipped with that copy protection scheme in the first place. I don't blame Bioware for the problem as it was the publishers decision, but it unfortunatly reflects badly on Bioware.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
So when they finally did get close to having a finished product, instead of going into the usual bug testing, they rushed it through to get it out as soon as possible.
I've been following MOO3 off and on in the forums. Either they put a lot of effort into being deceptive or the final delays were all dedicated to thurough bugtesting and squashing. It sounded like they were pretty dedicated to shipping the game with zero "major" bugs. Several of the beta-testers said that the game was in good enough shape to ship weeks ago.
I have no doubt that the game will get patches for minor bug-fixes and balances issues, but it is supposedly going to be crash-free with no major flaws in either single player or multiplayer.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
From the "Official Master of Orion III FAQ":
Will there be a Linux version?
I hope to e lucky.
VGAP is still alive and well... There are many hosts still out there. Among the best:
r .com
http://www.robomaster.ca
http://www.echocluste
There is an almost-complete Java client, suitable for both Windows and Linux:
http://home2.inet.tele.dk/larsdam/jvc.html
Anyone needing any VGA Planets help is always welcome on IRC, #vgaplanets on EFnet.