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.'"

Comments

Sigh

[bonch]

© April 1 2012 Mojang

Re:Sigh

[alexgieg]

© April 1 2012 Mojang

Yep. I was believing it until this: "hard science fiction (think Star Trek sci-fi)". Very hard indeed.

Re:Sigh

[interkin3tic]

According to wiki,

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both

Mass effect was pretty much the closest thing to "hard sci fi" I've encountered in a video game. A google search for "hard sci fi videogames" came up with two yahoo questions asking if there were any, mass effect was mentioned in both as the closest examples of it, so I'm not alone in that opinion. There was a scientific explanation in the codex (text that got added under a menu nearly every time you encountered something new in the game) that was surprisingly detailed. You could just play the game and ignore the explanations, but in case you were wondering why your guns overheated but never ran out of ammo in ME1, there was a detailed explanation you could pull up.

At the same time, they are very similar to star-trek. I would call it more like star-trek than "Rendezvous with Rama" by Artur C. Clarke (which wikipedia mentions as an example of hard sci fi).

I'm sure calling mass effect hard sci fi would annoy some slashdotters, but with an interactive media, there's different challenges. Perhaps "star trek level" is as hard sci-fi as anyone has figured out how to make a game and still call it a game, rather than an interactive science lesson.

Re:Sigh

[Digital Vomit]

Mass effect was pretty much the closest thing to "hard sci fi" I've encountered in a video game. A google search for "hard sci fi videogames" came up with two yahoo questions asking if there were any, mass effect was mentioned in both as the closest examples of it, so I'm not alone in that opinion. There was a scientific explanation in the codex (text that got added under a menu nearly every time you encountered something new in the game) that was surprisingly detailed. You could just play the game and ignore the explanations, but in case you were wondering why your guns overheated but never ran out of ammo in ME1, there was a detailed explanation you could pull up.

Just having techno-babble explanations for how things work does not make scifi "hard". Having explanations for how things work which do not require handwavium (e.g. "element zero") or magic (e.g. "biotics") and which follow the known laws of physics makes scifi "hard".

The various technologies depicted in the Mass Effect games are most definitely "soft" scifi.

I'm sure calling mass effect hard sci fi would annoy some slashdotters,

Well, at least the ones who know what the term "hard scifi" means. :-P

I have a feeling that I just responded to an "April Fools' Day" joke-post, though...

Re:Awesome

[toygeek]

Actually this has been in the works for a while, this isn't the first mention of such a game. I do not believe this is a slooF lirpA article.

Re:Awesome

[krakass]

Yeah, looking through his tweets this goes back at least a couple days, so I'm hopeful this isn't an extremely elaborate joke.

Typical Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Typical Slashdot

[rbpOne]

That feeling when you realize you are a moron.. Im feeling it now.

Shit it started early

[Dyinobal]

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.

Re:Shit it started early

[osu-neko]

Shit April fools has started early...

Not early. Notch lives in Europe.

Re:Finish Minecraft First

[Sarten-X]

No software project is ever "finished".

Notch was smart enough to recognize that, and has moved out of the main role developing Minecraft for quite a while now.

Re:Neat, but..

[SwedishPenguin]

No it's not, says so right there above your post.
"by wmbetts (1306001) on Sunday April 01, @12:50AM " :)

Re:Hmm

[Mitchell314]

You may want to check the date. Keep in mind Notch's timezone, if you reside in the west.

Poking fun at the ending

[Enigmaster]

Notch also took the chance to poke fun at Mass Effect, noting it will have 'A game ending that makes sense.'"

Have you seen the end of Minecraft? This seems like the bigger poke to be had.

Re:Awesome

[game kid]

In particular, he started spec'ing a 16-bit processor (listed as a feature of this game) some days ago on his tumblr and twitter pages (its data format, registers, instructions, a "Hello World" program...).

If this is a 4/1 joke, it's a fairly elaborate and overengineered one. It's ok to me; I love overengineering. :)

Re:April

[Teancum]

The name may be a joke, but the game isn't. Notch has been doing some development work including creating a virtual machine that he claims to have on his development system running 4000 instances of that VM simultaneously with only 50% of his development machine CPU bandwidth in use. Some details about the VM can be found here:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/20056289891/start-classified-transmission
(note the date... not April 1st)

He has been talking about this game for over a month, and a couple of days ago he tweeted out to his "fans" to give some name suggestions.

Almost everything on the "Mars Effect" website is pretty much a compilation of everything he has said about this game in terms of interviews, tweets, blog entries, and casual comments over a pint of beer in terms of his vision for the next big project he wants to be working on.

The game itself is very real, it is just that the name is something I strongly suspect and was something I noticed immediately after its name was announced. With Notch though, me might be saying "damn the torpedoes" and be willing to make everybody think it is a joke of a game too... if for nothing more than to get some fans off his back. Any time he makes reference to a website in his twitter feed, it often crashes to something like the Slashdot Effect in part because of how many people are following his tweets.

Re:Elevators in Minecraft first

[Danieljury3]

Been done already

Re:April

[Teancum]

Perhaps. You really don't know what to expect on April 1st.

The CPU instruction set is real and has some thought put into it though.

Re:Really!?

[Johann Lau]

Since when did Notch make games?

Re:Finish Minecraft First

[Shoe Puppet]

He made a shitload of money and presumably enjoyed working on Minecraft. If that is no success, I don't know what is.