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Minecraft Creator Announces Space Sandbox Game Mars Effect
An anonymous reader writes "Notch posted the official page of Mars Effect today, saying through Twitter, 'it's a completely different game! Our takes place in space, and focuses on characters, and lets you land on planets!!' He gives more detailed on the new website, noting the game will be based around hard science fiction (think Star Trek sci-fi) and puts characters in control of a character rather than just a ship. Similar to Minecraft, it will be a free-roaming game, but with a full economic system, different planets, customizable ships, space battles against AI, and other features. There will also be an in-game, 16-bit computer. Notch also took the chance to poke fun at Mass Effect, noting it will have 'A game ending that makes sense.'"
Please?
Thank you.
After the whole Scrolls debacle, this seems like Notch is purposefully trying to use other companies names with only a slight change. I give it about 5 seconds for EA to threaten a lawsuit (his comments of an ending that makes sense totally prove he's trying to confuse and play off the identity).
Posted at "2012-04-01 0:14". First April fools day joke! Keep them coming, always nice to see if you get fooled this year
This sounds cool, but..
around hard science fiction (think Star Trek sci-fi)
Since when is Star Trek considered "hard science fiction". I like star trek and all, but I've considered it very light on real sci-fi content. Stories tend to revolve around the characters, with technobabble added in for effect. Most of the stories you could transplant into a medival setting without losing much.
This sounded like such an awesome game idea until I saw:
© April 1 2012 Mojang
at the bottom of http://marseffect.net/
"noting the game will be based around hard science fiction (think Star Trek sci-fi)"
How is Star Trek hard Sci-fi? Dont get me wrong, i love Star Trek, i watch a few episodes per week, but star trek is hardly hard science fiction. The first series was a western set in space, the next three was soaps with a sci-fi element, set in space. The last was a mix of those two types of shows.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-transmission
Notch is into the tumblrs, you know. Also, it most definitely isn't the first. AdBlock is showing me kitties on every page I visit
April fools, guys.
If this article isn't an April Fool's Joke, there's no way EA doesn't sue for trademark infringement (and EA would win).
Instead of noticing the obvious Mass Effect parody in the name and logo design, and the April 1st copyright date at the bottom, Slashdotters are zeroing in on...the classification of Star Trek as hard science fiction. Yeah, because THAT was the obvious tip-off.
How long has it been sine "1.0" and we still don't have basic features like villager AI and interaction.. Dude drops and starts projects like nothing else. Cashed out with minecraft never finsihed it and has been bouncing back and forth between crap no one gives a shit about for months but everyones so blinded by notch fanboyism to stand up and tell him to finish the shit he's started.
looks like an elaborate april fools unless they announce later that this was and april fools joke and then say even later that saying it was an april fools joke was an april fools joke and it is real after all.
We'll just make our own version in Mine craft ourselves. Won't take long at all.
Shit April fools has started early, everyone ignore news sites for the next three days. If we are lucky congress won't use the confusion to rush any draconian bills through.
The concept is not an April Fools, the minecraft creator not to long ago mentioned he was starting a spacegame where you were part of the crew as oppose to controlling the ship, he was thinking more along the lines of Firefly (which got me really interested).
This launch site howerver is full of April 1st tomfoolery
Still looking fwd to this game whenever it goes alpha, esp if it is firefly like (which he originally compared it to), startrek like... meh
What is this obsession with making digital circuits in Minecraft? I don't get it. If you want to simulate a simple digital circuit then use any of a number of free or student-version or pirated simulators. I thought at first that people were actually building simple mechanical computers, but it turns out that it's nothing of the sort.
Since when has the technobabble of Star Trek been hard sci-fi?
oops...
Way to go on making a non-infringing logo! :)
The Universal (http://www.theuniversal.net) did this years ago. Incredibly fun, too bad most servers are empty now.
I feel like this isnt doing anythimg new. Eve online? Maybe it could be more first person idea vs eve's 3rd person, but still...
The title appears to satirize a lawsuit over one of Mojang's titles being too close to Id Software's The Elder Minecraft: Skyrim .
How about formalizing a set of interfaces for the modding community so they won't see all their hard work go up in smoke every time you release an update? Its really hard to explain to the kidlets that the 'Ooh yay, kittycats!' Minecraft update they downloaded broke all the mods they had installed.
The 1st is in a few more hours.
Have you seen the end of Minecraft? This seems like the bigger poke to be had.
The logo gives it away, it is the same as the mass effect logo, font included, along with the arc through the top word
Ha! I got sucked in by this until I saw the comments about April Fools! Notch's fake game is similar to my Light Rising browser based mmorpg... http://lightrising.com/game/ I was inspired by Elite, Sundog, and the Ultima aeries of games, along with the browser mmo Shartak: http://shartak.com/ I actually would really have enjoyed a Notch game like this, but oh well... I'm still hoping for the remake of Sundog!
After all, there were rumors about a space game by Notch before. So I think only the name is the April fools part, and later the game will be announced with its true name!
I hope, at least, the game looks so great...
If it was real hehe. Good one Notch!
It's going to be named "Call of Doody Too". You can sign up for the beta on the 15th.
#DeleteChrome
Logo gave it away immediately -- rip off of Mass Effect's logo.
The real April Fools joke is that their "serious" projects are just as laughable.
As much as I like Minecraft, I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of it, Mojang and Notch are one-hit wonders. It became all too painfully clear when they started rolling back their expectations of what Minecraft was supposed to be because they simply lacked the technical ability, resources, and motivation to accomplish their goals. Which of course didn't stop them from continuing to sell the game based on those promises that they knew would never be delivered. We're never going to get a robust NPC system. We're never going to get user controllable bots to do the menial work. We're never going to get those core RPG elements, even just as a creator kit so the community can create stories that aren't hacked onto the engine like a tabletop game. Every few weeks they make a new block type or a new mob.
Notch got lucky with Minecraft--and the idea wasn't even his. He basically ripped off Infinminer. When he has to actually create something original we'll all see how truly inept he is. Mojang is going to be bankrupt or bought for its properties within 3 years, mark my words.
From a technical standpoint Minecraft is a disaster. Despite having 8-bit graphics on a crude 3D engine it runs horribly even on very powerful machines. Stuttering and glitches abound. Java just wasn't the right tool for the job but he used it because he didn't know anything better. Minecraft will forever be limited by that unless it gets completely rewritten properly. I would have loved for this concept to have been executed by a competent developer. Notch is the George Lucas of video games.
The one hope for Minecraft is that it'll eventually get released as open source. Maybe then the very talented community can finally make something out of it that lives up to its potential.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
...at least by my calendar. April Fools!
Looks like he took some "inspiration" from a real game: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/
Fuck you and April 1st and Notch. Why doesnt he change his name to tool?
Why has no one given us "waist high walls" until now? This is definitely not a hoax. How long have we waited for walls high enough to protect us from small children while affording us an easy view?
I also say that because of the previous announcement, I'm skeptical that the joke is the game itself. I think that the April Fools aspect of this posting is more about the name given to the game and some of the Featuers that were listed as being a potential ripoff of Mass Effect.
Personally, I think it's well past time for another space-sim of any kind to be released, and hopefully it will have a single-player option like Minecraft where I don't have to go online if I really don't want to deal with other players. If Notch pulls it off where it's an Elite style game with original content and optional Online components, I'm buying. I'm DEFINITELY buying.
This is for those who haven't a life.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
Yep. The name is a joke and some of the features (Ex. "A ending that makes sense") but Notch is working on this for real. He wrote on Twitter later: https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/186739199523831810
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.