Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all

April 28, 2019 5:15 AM

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional. They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’ People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real.” Chernobyl comes back to life in Ukrainian computer game, Isotopium: Chernobyl.
posted by Evilspork (18 comments total)

Wow, amazing. I wonder how possible it'd be to just drive around looking at stuff and ignore the less-interesting-sounding competitive part.
posted by ITheCosmos at 6:42 AM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

This would be my approach to making a video game. I like tangible. The thing is as much as I applaud the effort I am not going to spend $9 to see how bad the latency is.

It's a small world after all!
posted by Pembquist at 6:44 AM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

A video of a youtuber playing a pre-launch version of the game.
posted by enfa at 6:45 AM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

Kind of apt, since investigators of the real Unit 4 had to resort to a toy tank with a radiation sensor taped to it after the official remote sensor failed almost immediately. Midnight in Chernobyl is one hell of a read.
posted by scruss at 6:59 AM on April 28, 2019 [6 favorites]

Ooh! My inner pyromaniac teenaged entrepreneur sees possibilities. This is awesome! You could build really detailed sets and then charge $$$ for people to actually trash it, using 2mm pinfire or 'flamethrowers' made using bolixed butane lighters on mechs only 10cm tall or so. All those miniature railway modeling skills, set to work at last! Or hold tournaments using micro-NERF stuff and the only get destructive in the finals...
posted by ianso at 7:28 AM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

The real fun comes when someone witnesses a murder taking place in what they thought was just a game of radio-controlled tanks and model buildings, and they then discover that they were being hired via a time-travelling web server by people in an alternative future as some kind of weird gimmick but now the murderers from that future want to get rid of the witness so they corrupt the economy of our own timeline to buy the state security forces and have the player assassinated.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 7:57 AM on April 28, 2019 [36 favorites]

This is neat! I'm game to try it.

(I was initially hoping it involved vehicles driving through the real exclusion zone. But, I can see why that would be millions of times harder to create.)
posted by eotvos at 8:06 AM on April 28, 2019

Third seems like an interesting story about how much it costs to make good 3D graphics with excellent textures vs.making physical models.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:29 AM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Take that, Lucas.
posted by Evilspork at 8:36 AM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Good job porting an existing physics engine to new uses in gaming. Very innovative.
posted by q*ben at 9:32 AM on April 28, 2019 [8 favorites]

chappell, ambrose,

The real fun comes when someone witnesses a murder taking place in what they thought was just a game of radio-controlled tanks and model buildings, and they then discover that they were being hired via a time-travelling web server by people in an alternative future...

There exists a novel with a very similar conceit, but mentioning the title in this context would now be a spoiler.

( (ambrose or anyone,) feel free to memail me if you don't mind spoilers and want to read a novel of intrigue and crosstemporal teleoperation)
posted by thedward at 10:36 AM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

That's genius, watching that let's play I was oscillating between enjoying the hand crafted diorama and being immersed enough to be spooked. I can't decide if it would improve it if the audio was modified to deepen it and make it sound more like a big tank.
posted by lucidium at 2:19 PM on April 28, 2019

This concept is weirdly familiar. Did someone try this sort of thing back in the Web 1.0 era?
posted by BungaDunga at 3:34 PM on April 28, 2019

ITheCosmos:
Wow, amazing. I wonder how possible it'd be to just drive around looking at stuff and ignore the less-interesting-sounding competitive part.
Yes, me too. Actually, this is how I experience some other computer games, to the dismay of my far more lethal children.
posted by doctornemo at 5:13 PM on April 28, 2019

> The real fun comes when someone witnesses a murder taking place in what they thought was just a game of radio-controlled tanks and model buildings, and they then discover that they were being hired via a time-travelling web server by people in an alternative future as some kind of weird gimmick but now the murderers from that future want to get rid of the witness so they corrupt the economy of our own timeline to buy the state security forces and have the player assassinated.

Aww man, did you just force another Stross/Gibson upcoming novel re-write?
posted by genpfault at 9:13 PM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Aww man, did you just force another Stross/Gibson upcoming novel re-write?

Luckily, Gibson got there first. Spoiler for the joke.
posted by books for weapons at 4:57 AM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Overall I thought that was one of Bill's better efforts this century.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:15 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

There was a little R/C tank diorama at the chuck-e-cheese or someplace I recall from my youth. It didn't have the first-person perspective, tho, but the tanks could shine coded lights at each other to make them "blow up". There were also some set-pieces you could blow up, so there was stuff you could do even if you were the only player. There was a little helicopter, and if you blew it up, it spun around and shined a red light.

But putting a camera on the tank is genius. It reminds me of Tim Hunkin's "Mobility Masterclass" machine, which I would like to see.
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 8:25 AM on April 30, 2019 [1 favorite]