Slashdot Mirror
Forty Years of Lunar Lander
Harry writes "2009 marks not only the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11, but also four decades of the iconic, omnipresent Lunar Lander, one of the first simulation games ever written. The first version was written by an Apollo-crazy high school student; among its countless descendants are the classic Atari arcade machine and versions for practically every other platform, from the Apple II to the iPhone. We're celebrating with a look at the game's origins, history, and significance — including an interview with creator Jim Storer, who hadn't given the game a moment's thought since he left high school, and wasn't aware of the phenomenon he spawned."
Bah. Most of my friend hated my lunar lander version. as you burned fuel your mass dropped so the thrust that worked last burst would be different for the next.
if you burned it all to the last drop, it would become a major PITA to land it because your mass was significantly lower.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
50 cents, surely. Isn't the reason for the prices here on Earth that they have to ship the beans from the Moon?
Currently on a boardwalk somewhere in England, Hack-a-Day posted this link last week: http://www.lushprojects.com/lunarlander/>http://www.lushprojects.com/lunarlander/
last I was there, a few years ago, disney quest (a 5 story arcade in orlando, with a retro section), had the original game. My friends were playing all the "cool" games while I camped out at Lunar Lander all night. It was one of the few open....
It'll be a Tim Horton's fly-thru.
rewriting history since 2109
A lot of commercial games make the same mistake - trying too hard for realism. When you're writing a game, the #1 thing you want is for it to be FUN. Not too easy, not too hard.
Free Martian Whores!
Selfish and Materialistic is okay... so long as you are willing to earn it yourself.
In fact, it is GOOD, as it drives the economy.
In the '70s, my Dad brought home a teletype terminal with an acoustic coupler from work. He let us play Lunar Lander. It was a Honeywell timeshare system.
After each game, you got a comment. When you crashed, it might be "What was that flash, Wilber?"
And my favorite, when I finally got it right, "Like a honeybee alighting on a nectar filled hibiscus."
Them was the days.
madmac
And I guarantee that strip mall will be owned by a Korean, Iranian, Iraqi, Vietnamese, or some other immigrant. One *more* reason America is #1 cool. When you want to own a strip mall on the moon, America is where you go.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I remember playing the line graphic version of the game on a stand up console in the arcade. It was one of my favorite games. The version I remember was a line graphic one, with the craggy outline of a landscape, and different size "flat spots" you could land on. The smaller ones gave you more points. The game was replaced, probably by Donkey Kong or Pac Man and I remember being pissed off at the time that I could no longer play it (this was Pre-Atari 2600).
/really/ PC compatible. We also had one Silicon Graphics IRIS machine. It was the hot rod of the bunch, but single user, so you had to wait your turn.
In college, I took an advanced CAD course where we wrote CAD software. There was a hodge-podge of machines there, from a Dec PDP-11 to a Harris 800. Lots of DEC Rainbow machines with the dust covers on them because they used the 80186 chip which wasn't
Anyway, we finally got an open ended assignment on the SGI machine, so I decided to write the Lunar Lander game on it - with the original as my design reference. I did a pretty good job of it too - as a mechanical engineer, I was able to use Newton's laws to accurately reflect the behavior of the LM... it obeyed Newtonian mechanics (no - it didn't take into account the weight of the fuel burned but neither did the original to my understanding).
I got all done and most of the people who looked at the rendition had not ever seen the original game. So they complained that I hadn't taken advantage of the 3d graphics the SGI machine had. It was like drawing a picture in Kindergarten and having the teacher tell me my grass was the wrong color. Only one other guy understood what I'd done - copied a real live arcade game from scratch. When they asked him what he thought, he just kept playing it and said "Awesome!"
The other funny thing was that at the end, nobody went back to look at the modeled objects... they all went back to play the game.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Doesn't everyone succumb to the lure of the Lander? Our entry in the BADGE killer demo contest was a version of Lunar Lander that ran on the Amiga Workbench... with the terrain being whatever windows you happen to have open at the time...
I can't find a screen shot or even a copy of the program on google now, and while I have a box of Amiga floppy disks at home I doubt I could find anything that would read them now. I know it was on Fred Fish's disk collection, if someone has a copy I can load into UAE I'd appreciate it.
I'm surprised nobody has linked to it yet, but there's this guy who made a physical Lunar Lander arcade game. No flashy vector graphics here! You control an actual model of a lander using real gauges and everything.
Lunar Lander
In California WE PAY FAMILY MEMBERS TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN FAMILY!
If they have to quit their job to do so, or work less hours. This is a cheaper and better solution than paying for their care entirely through insurance or state run institutions.
They are unionized as well.
Unions are a symptom of a larger disease. Which leads us to your next complaint,
We are going to be guaranteeing health care to all.
This isn't a bad thing. We already have the most expensive health care system in the world and we still can't cover everyone. It's abhorrent to me that there is an entire industry who's purpose is to stand between you and your doctor and find a way to NOT pay for your treatment. The health insurance industry simply should not exist. It's counter productive to the health of the individual, and consequently, the health of the nation as a whole.
Murderers sit on death row for decades.
As someone who opposes the death penalty in all cases, I find this a good thing. Ideally there wouldn't be a death row at all.
Teenagers graduate high school not because they know anything but because to hold them back would damage their psyche.
There were kids in my high school class who did not graduate, that was THIS decade.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org