Not sure what brings back more nostalgia in that picture to be honest. The feeling of the vastness of a game that had no right to feel so big given it’s constraints, or the GLC’s lyric “I made love to a BBC Micro”.
It’s amazing that 10 years after launch, Elite Dangerous is still running (online only, but has solo mode) and still has an active community. We can argue about how shallow the gameplay is, but for some of us, it ticks the right boxes. It’s just like the point made in the article - sometimes you have to use your imagination. It’s not a story game, it’s just open and you do your own things, same as it always was. And the sound design, that’s the real treat.
But it could be so much more. People were so hyped for Horizons when we learned we’d finally be getting space legs but it just fell so flat on release.
FPS isn’t big for me so I just bop around looking for bio signatures. I feel the FPS portion parallels the flight portion the same way. It is flat, it is vast, it is a grind. That’s part of why I don’t do any FPS combat. I do wish it had better immersion, more features to FPS at least on some core planets and of course giving depth to the stations (since it’s copy and past) but I do also wonder if that’d really be worth it. The game takes long enough to travel as it is, so do I really want to also have reason to walk through a place for hours? My headcanon for not having any depth on planets is because the depth would all be located on terraformed planets. We’re barred from that so it works well enough for me (with suspension of belief). But they have such smooth transitions between instances that it doesn’t seem like an integration problem, just an effort problem for a waning game.
A half dozen years ago, or thereabouts, I entered the Canadian version of this competition, just to see how I’d fare, and to look at the process. Made it through the first couple levels of screening (from 3200 applicants, I was still in the hunt at 300 remaining) but then got filtered.
Some interesting bullet points if you’re thinking of applying, assuming the NASA questions are similar to the CSA ones:
(1) ham radio, morse code, or other amateur radio operator experience is an asset.
(2) Anything aviation or amateur rocketry is an asset, but in particular a pilot’s license. Anything aviation adjacent is still useful.
(3) Russian language (this might be changing in the current political environment)
(4) Experience in an “operational environment” – I suspect this is military jargon, but if you’d don’t field research as a scientist out of wilderness camps, or anything like that where you’re in a small group for work/adventure might apply here.
(5) Medical degrees, or advanced science degrees.
(6) Physical fitness and perfect vision
When I applied, my Russian sucked, my aviation experience was tangential (but copious), and I was a grad school dropout (from a planetary science program), so I didn’t float to the top. But it was enough to make it through the first layers.
There person who ended up winning was a medical-degree air force pilot. Hard to compete haha.
I’m so glad society has teams allocated to identifying these hard-hitting issues. It’s true - we don’t have enough consumer protections in place for space tourists. A poor innocent space tourist could “go to space” without fully understanding that “space can be dangerous”. Thankfully, these analysts discovered this issue before too many people were “at risk”. Future space tourists will have to sign a waver, or watch a presentation, or something.
The interesting question here is who paid for this “study”, and who from the register accepted the bribes to get this dogshit published.
I should check those out! I really miss those days. Playing the Vampire slayer mod. The Specialists, Sven co-op, Brain bread, even the silly minigames in counter strike 1.6.
I miss these times so much. I know there is minigames in csgo, but its mostly just the jail and zombie escape ones.
In counterstrike source there were zombie survival maps where you had unlimited ammo and could shoot props such as couches infront of doorways to kind of block yourself in. I would hide in the vents and shoot a couch into it. Then go in it myself and they would only be able to attack from the front because the couch would block my back.
This is the mod that’s blown me away the most. They somehow made the limitations of the Goldsource engine look stylish, all the while having some incredible animations and model design. Unfortunately development is temporarily paused but hopefully they pick it up again soon.
The “problem” is that Godot is very much geared more toward 2d and lighter 3d games. Whereas Unity was in a great middle area where you could do A and even AA games that held their own.
With Unity basically dead we have seen an increasing shift toward Unreal for anything where visual fidelity “matters” and Godot for the rest. Which is awesome but it also has led to an increasing amount of “Just learn Unreal”
Also: Fuck the gods. Thank the people who actually are working their asses off on Godot and have been for years fund.godotengine.org
A ~7% increase from $2040 to $2200 for a single yearly seat isn’t exactly a price hike, its barely a price walk. Even the Enterprise level, which increases by 25% (but is negotiable) isn’t that big of a jump when you put it into perspective.
Unity Pro yearly seats only need to be purchased if your game makes more than $200k in revenue (was previously $100k). If you made that much, you can most likely afford the $2200 per seat.
Unity Enterprise requires $25 MILLION in revenue. If you’re making that much money you can absolutely afford a 25% price increase on your Unity license.
This wouldn’t be 25% of your profit, it’s just increasing one of your expenses by 25%. It looks like it’s going up to $3000.
Edit: Enterprise price is negotiated with each company, so there’s not a set subscription price. But it’s still just the price of one expense, not a portion of total profits.
You aren’t losing 25% profit. The cost of your Unity Enterprise license that you pay once each year would increase by 25%. For ease of understanding, if your license previously cost you $100, now it would cost you $125. However, Unity has stated that this is negotiable and does not have a fixed price. It is possible that this price is calculated with many variable including number of employees that use Unity (seats), yearly revenue and expenses, and potentially other factors as well.
And again, for Unity Enterprise you would need to make a Unity game that makes more than $25 million per year.
theregister.com
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