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NASA Launches Moonbase Alpha
Several readers have sent word that today NASA launched Moonbase Alpha, an online game with single- and multi-player capability that "allows participants to step into the role of an exploration team member in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement." The game is available now through Steam for free. Moonbase Alpha was built as a precursor to an upcoming NASA MMO called Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, and they hope it will be "a proof of concept to show how NASA content can be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to inspire, engage and educate students about agency technologies, job opportunities and the future of space exploration."
Nobody can hear you troll.
Um, all the world lives in one area code, do they? ;)
BlackNova Traders
Only 11 years late...
Some cheats for players:
1 Stay away from the nuclear waste dump.
2 Don't shoot energy-absorbing being with a laser - just get them in a powered-down section and wait for them to run out of energy.
3 Neutron reaction drives won't make you a lot of friends.
www.eFax.com are spammers
When you're a teenager typing in modem commands by hand to call local numbers, yes :-)
8 second lag is pretty bad, but this can be viewed as a precursor to jobs of the future where basement dwellers driver loaders on the moon.
Is this how screwed up NASA is, reduced to releasing video games as opposed to sending people into space?
content 2 (kn-tnt)
adj.
1. Desiring no more than what one has; satisfied.
Sounds like a pretty good life to me.
My level 19 Rocketeer had fourteen Pristine Moonrock's, I had the fifteenth IN SIGHT, when a level 43 Cosmonaut ganked me and looted everything off my corpse. I took me ten hours of grinding Selenites to get that epic Oxygen Tank of Capacity.
Does anyone remember a time when NASA astronauts actually WENT to the Moon?
I can only imagine that the excitement curve for the game will be the same as any other MMO or living on an actual moon base.
Day 1: Woo! I'm on the server/moon!
Day 2: Wow! I can do like, 6 different things. Sweet!
Day 12: OH SWEET JESUS WHY CAN'T I ESCAPE THIS EYE-STABBING BOREDOM!!!!!
Greetings Friend Citizen!
It is the future, and you are a proud citizen of Moonbase Alpha, a moonbase run by a benevolent Computer.
All is foreseen. All is right and just. All is good and pure. All because of The Computer.
The Computer is Your Friend!
Welcome to Moonbase Alpha. The Computer is Your Friend!
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Can you get it from NASA directly? I don't allow steam on any of my machines.
Recommended System Requirements
Win XP SP3 / Vista / Windows 7
I wonder if it will run under WINE?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
That show is *nightmarishly bad*.
Nah, it's all about perspective!
I was five or six when that show was airing, and through the eyes of a little kid, it was the coolest and most astonishing sci-fi epic series EVER!
(Special effects made everything look real, and since I was too young to know that adults weren't flawed, I also assumed that everything made sense but that I was just too young to get it. Everything seemed wonderful and exciting on the moon!)
Oh, but it was a dark, dark day when I hunted down a couple of episodes of the program and watched them in my quality-discerning adulthood. Hit like a brick in the gut. Not a good memory. No sir.
It's true, what they say. You can never go home.
-FL
It depends on the game Engine.
I am currently downloading Mass-Effect 2 onto my Ubuntu system. Used Steam to download the demo. It worked. So I bought the game.
Anything I am going to buy from Steam I am going to want to run the demo of first to check for compatibility. Silly thing is the Steam store only works from windows. I have a really old system that gets the job done. My main system is pure Linux.
Getting way off track here but
Steam+demo is the best way to sell the windows games into the Linux market. Try it first, then buy. It lets you know it will work.
STO should work according to the Wine forums. The demo did not for me. So it's out.
nice.
Help! I am a self-aware entity trapped in an abstract function!
File a Freedom of Information (http://www.justice.gov/oip/) request.
I work for Los Angeles County and we do not give out our source code without one. We have given out the source but it involves several legal issues and "hold harmless" agreements that are way above me. (I'm not condoning or condemning the process, just stating what has happened in the past.)
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I find it funny that it says the game is "Valve Anti-Cheat enabled" on the Steam product page. So, what exactly are people doing to cheat in this moon base simulator game?
;)
Cause I just hate it when I'm bunny hopping along on the moon's surface and suddenly get head-shotted by some kid using an aimbot.
This space is not for rent.
The first player to have his his project canceled wins.
Obviously the Moon is a Muslim world.
There's craters everywhere and everything's dead.
(.sig doesn't apply in this case...)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Oh for crissakes. This is a stupid article that draws together two unrelated events. The first is an interview with Al-Jazera which (surprise!) emphasizes NASA's importance to the Muslim world. Which isn't all that big, but what do you expect him to say?
Then the writer manages to tie in this interview with Obama's Cairo speech which doesn't even mention NASA. Since this happened at about the same time, it somehow "proves" that Obama is only interested in NASA for helping him make nice with the Arabs.
Brainless.
It's fun for the first few months, then you start wishing some of those desires would return, just to alleviate the boredom.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.