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."

Comments

Some useful links

[Anonymous Coward]

...for those of you who haven't been following MOO3's development so closely.

• IRC logs from the developers
• Apolyton
• OrionSector
• Infogrames MOO3 forums

Development...

[Orne]

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.

Re:Development...

[paganizer]

As a longtime Tradewars, MOO, MOO II player, when I heard that there was a MOO III Alpha out, I had to go Spelunking in the dark recesses of the web.

Eventually, I stumbled across the Austrailian Alpha Release.

People, I love complicated; I used to buy up Every Traveller book and spend hours designing Spacecraft that were never used, just because it was neat; I wasn't even bothered by the bugs in MOO II, because the game was just so freacking cool.

The Alpha is from the pre-dumbed down version of the game; apparently, they decided the general public wouldn't appreciate it; I heartily agree.

If the Gold Version is 50% as complicated and in-depth as the Alpha, then this is going to be the cause of Many, Many, MANY divorces.

Re:Preview on Gamespot

[ggwood]

Sorry here is a proper link:
Master of Orion III Preview
phew.

Another golden oldie space game renewed

[Weasel Boy]

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.

Re:With a little luck...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

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).