Transcendence

July 30, 2008 9:45 AM

Transcendence,the outer space exploration/trading/shoot 'em up, has hit version .99. I cannot begin to tell you how much time I sunk into previous releases -- the Nethackish randomness, both in the layout of the systems to explore, and the mysterious devices and substances to apply to your ship in hope of an extra edge, makes the replay value immense. RGCD has a glowing review and an interview with the developer. (Mentioned but not actually linked to earlier.)
posted by CrunchyFrog (46 comments total)

I'm just glad that my home PC's internet connection is on the fritz because otherwise I would get rehooked on Transcendence. What a wonderful timewaste that game is. Reminds me of good ol' Star Flight, which was the first computer game I became obsessed by.
posted by Kattullus at 9:55 AM on July 30, 2008

Windows only. Please mention that for those of us who can't benefit from your post.
posted by ardgedee at 10:03 AM on July 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Windows only! GAAAAAAAH!

*gnashes teeth, laments*

(Anyone remember that Mac game that was kinda like Freelancer where you had to trade with different solar systems and fight pirates and buy bigger and better ships and stuff? What was that called? I remember playing the hell out of that on my old LCII back in the day...)
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:07 AM on July 30, 2008

Elite
posted by empath at 10:15 AM on July 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Galactic Trader?
posted by mkb at 10:20 AM on July 30, 2008

Could you at least add a Windows tag?
posted by tkolar at 10:30 AM on July 30, 2008

(Anyone remember that Mac game that was kinda like Freelancer where you had to trade with different solar systems and fight pirates and buy bigger and better ships and stuff? What was that called? I remember playing the hell out of that on my old LCII back in the day...)

Escape Velocity?
posted by adamdschneider at 10:35 AM on July 30, 2008

Or maybe Space Rogue?
posted by JaredSeth at 10:49 AM on July 30, 2008

Loot wreckage to obtains more powerful weapons, armor, and shields.

Looks like they're partially translated into LOLcats.

Or maybe I'm just bitter because I don't have a Windows box.
posted by gurple at 10:51 AM on July 30, 2008

Sorry for interjecting an AskMe into this thread...

It wasn't Elite, Galactic Trader, or Escape Velocity. It MAY have been Space Rogue, but the name doesn't sound familiar. It may have been shareware/freeware....

Oh well. Damn. That's gonna bother me until I figure it out...
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:01 AM on July 30, 2008

Neat, thanks for the reminder! See also Flatspace II for this kind of game. Me, I wish someone would make something as cool as Sundog again.

Windows only. Please mention that for those of us who can't benefit from your post.

God bless the 10% minority.
posted by Nelson at 11:02 AM on July 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I love the concept of these 1 or 2 man developer teams creating great games along the lines of this and Dwarf Fortress. What else is similar?
posted by daHIFI at 11:10 AM on July 30, 2008

God bless the 10% minority.

Who are, let's face it, disproportionately represented on Metafilter.
posted by tkolar at 11:14 AM on July 30, 2008

The best game of this type ever was STARFLIGHT from 1986.

There can be no debate.
posted by Justinian at 11:36 AM on July 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

>Escape Velocity

oh hell yes. I spent so much time playing that (and, come to think of it, pretty much anything else Ambrosia Software put out) back in high school. Down with the Rebels! Long live the Confederation!
posted by xbonesgt at 11:37 AM on July 30, 2008

This sounds a lot like Escape Velocity. That's a good thing. Might be worth a look, if I ever get my home computer unhosed.

"Could you at least add a Windows tag?"

He did. See up there where it says "game"? That means it runs on Windows machines only.
posted by Eideteker at 11:40 AM on July 30, 2008 [17 favorites has favorites]

Justinian: The best game of this type ever was STARFLIGHT from 1986.

There can be no debate.

While I broadly agree with you I will contend that Starflight II was even better.
posted by Kattullus at 11:54 AM on July 30, 2008

Works fine under Wine on Linux.

Along similar lines, I'm fond of Oolite, an open source 3D Elite-type game with Mac, Windows, and Linux versions.
posted by enn at 11:56 AM on July 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The best game of this type ever was STARFLIGHT from 1986.

Thems fightin' words. *cough* Star Control 2 *cough*
posted by juv3nal at 11:58 AM on July 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

While I broadly agree with you I will contend that Starflight II was even better.

I think that can be grandfathered in. A minor doctrinal difference at worst, not a full blown heresy like juv3nal's.

juv3nal: I suppose Star Control 2 was okay for children and those of more common tastes.
posted by Justinian at 12:01 PM on July 30, 2008

Sorry, can't look at this right now, too busy playing Space Rangers 2: Reboot, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, and Sins of a Solar Empire...

Damn, I need to pick a different genre.
posted by thanotopsis at 12:06 PM on July 30, 2008

Transcendence runs just fine under VMware Fusion, so I imagine it's fine in Parallels, too. Yay for a new game!
posted by Kyol at 12:28 PM on July 30, 2008

I just ran it in both Darwine and Crossover on OS X without any apparent weirdness. Go here and click on the download link, then drag the downloaded folder to your applications folder, and then go back to your downloaded and unzipped Transcendence folder and double-click on Transcendence.exe. You'll have to wait a while for the first launch while Darwine configures, but then it will run at native speed and it's free.

I was a big fan of EV and EV Nova so I'm looking forward to checking this out more thoroughly when there is time. So far, the flight controls appear to be nearly identical to EV. Was Elite the same arrows/180 and accelerate to brake and dock control scheme?
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 12:30 PM on July 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

juv3nal: I suppose Star Control 2 was okay for children and those of more common tastes.

You want to *take* *silly* words in *slow time*. It is okay.
I will *spit* words and then perhaps it is the *party*.
posted by juv3nal at 12:33 PM on July 30, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

I posted about this a couple years back . I am now ready to get addicted again...
posted by blahblahblah at 12:42 PM on July 30, 2008

Talk about conservative use of version numbers, my FPP on Transcendence from 2005 was about version .95, so only .04 version improvement, but the game seems to have come a long way.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:45 PM on July 30, 2008

From the interview:

"Q1. As way of introduction, please could you give a brief paragraph or two about yourself?

At twenty-two I quit school to work on a computer game that I wrote called "Anacreon". Unfortunately, I could not make enough money to support myself [...]"

In the old days, this is what the patrongage system was for, right? Occasionally, talented artists would be financially supported by an aristocrat and allowed to spend all their time doing what they loved.

Too bad I'm not a prince or something, because I'd totally support this guy (and people like Tarn Adams) to spend their lives working on projects like this. Not to revive the old "are game art?" debate, but I don't see a deep distinction between software like this and a painting, as forms of creative expression.
posted by molybdenum at 1:09 PM on July 30, 2008

Now this is making ME think of one of these types of games that I played as a kid... I remember the playing field was relatively small, but part of the plot required traveling to a very distant location, which required a special propulsion device and special fuel, but for some reason whenever I played the ship would always spontaneously explode on my way to that distant place. I never finished the game because of that, and now I can't remember what it is.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:19 PM on July 30, 2008

The only problem with Star Control II is that it doesn't identify the nature of the game at the start. It looks to be something very much like Starflight, an open-ended exploration game with a very generous time limit, but it turns out that the time limit is quite strict.

They simply don't make games like that anymore, not commercially anyway. Which is one reason current gaming sucks so much.
posted by JHarris at 1:27 PM on July 30, 2008

Too bad I'm not a prince or something, because I'd totally support this guy (and people like Tarn Adams) to spend their lives working on projects like this.

Hint: these days, everyone can be a patron. Tarn Adams has a tipjar on his site.
posted by JHarris at 1:29 PM on July 30, 2008

I know George put a good bit of time into making sure the game runs under WINE - because we shot emails back and forth when I was trying to get it running a couple years ago.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:44 PM on July 30, 2008

Hint: these days, everyone can be a patron. Tarn Adams has a tipjar on his site.

Yeah, I sent him $50. But the more I read about DF, the more I think I should have given more.

And Tarn Adams has been incredibly persistent, working on DF long enough to built a fan base such that he can now support himself on donations. But it sounds like this Transcendence guy isn't there yet, and I imagine most indie game developers are in that boat. Intuitively, it seems like supporting people like him is as valuable as supporting traditional artists. Maybe the NEA should expand into funding great game developers. :)
posted by molybdenum at 1:52 PM on July 30, 2008

This looks awesome. I know how I'll be staying up until 1 AM tonight. (I have been unemployed for weeks. New job starts Monday, so I have a few days to kill before then. :-)
posted by wastelands at 2:07 PM on July 30, 2008

Alpha Centauri remake plz.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:32 PM on July 30, 2008

Gotta go with Kattallus. I have working copies of both Starflight and Starflight 2, and you think the original is fantastic but the second loses nothing from the original and improves on it a lot.

td: an alpha centauri remake would be (could be) awesome. I like that Civ 4 took a lot of inspiration from AC, but they failed to note how great it was to have the different faction leaders do the speaking parts in their own styles for tech advances, instead of Leonard Nimoy for everything. I mean really, Spock quoting Capone is kinda lame.

And highly illogical.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:21 PM on July 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's reall a different kettle of fish, but it still puts me in mind of Galactic Conquest which used to keep us up all hours of the whatever. You typed your moves in secret, and you could undo them if you needed to by hitting the backspace key - but this caused a piercing "Beeeeeeeooop!" noise that, in the wee still hours, was likely to wake anyone else in the house. And in that particular house anyone else that was awakened by a piercing "Beeeeeeeooop!" in the wee still hours was likely to be unamused and downright get-out-of-my-house-ish. So it evolved that hitting the backspace key also earned you a vicious smack to the head from anyone else playing. Of course, that did nothing to quiet the noise and additionally caused everyone to nearly die choking back snorts of laughter, and man, I never wanted it to be said that I died in a snorting fit but I came close.

Actually, I can't think of any games we played that didn't have some sort of physically violent repercussions evolve from them one way or another.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:33 PM on July 30, 2008

Gotta go with Kattallus. I have working copies of both Starflight and Starflight 2

Who doesn't! Next you'll tell me that not everybody has working copies of all the SSI gold-box games in the original boxes.
posted by Justinian at 4:42 PM on July 30, 2008

Gotta go with Kattallus. I have working copies of both Starflight and Starflight 2, and you think the original is fantastic but the second loses nothing from the original and improves on it a lot.

The reason I picked Starflight over the sequel is the originality factor. It's also the reason it blows Star Control 2 away. It's one thing to refine an already great game and make it marginally better. It's quite another to innovate and create something new, and Starflight in my mind gets massive bonus points that make up for the marginal improvements in Starflight 2.

It's like, sure, the guy who invented a written language with both upper and lower case letters improved upon the first language with only one case, but the leap from no written language to a written language with only one case is orders of magnitude more important than refining the language to two cases.

note: no, I don't actually think languages work this way.
posted by Justinian at 4:47 PM on July 30, 2008

I really wish these games (Dwarf Fortress, Survival Crisis Z, Transcendence, Cortex Command, etc.) had network multiplayer.
posted by Pyry at 4:52 PM on July 30, 2008

Who doesn't!

SF1? Really? It wasn't available in a PC-compatible format for a dog's age. At least until the famous fan page (geocities!) provided it, AFAIK.

I do have a couple of pristine copies of SF2 in original boxes. I fought the greed-monster a couple of years ago and didn't snap up every copy I saw.

marginal improvements in Starflight 2.

I guess when your baseline is SF, SF2 has "marginal" improvements. But really, trading didn't come into its own as a game feature until SF2. Antimony? 120MU. Silicon? 160. Anyone who doesn't bow before the magnificence of "Ah, the running fungus. I see you are a trader of distinction" is not fit to play these games.

This is an exaggeration. Also, please no one mention Starflight III or I will have to stab you with my surprising utensil.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:05 PM on July 30, 2008

Joking aside, you're right of course. The original SF was a staggering achievement. But if I could only play one, it would definitely be the sequel. It's just that I didn't recall how much better it was until I played them both again.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:22 PM on July 30, 2008

SF1? Really? It wasn't available in a PC-compatible format for a dog's age. At least until the famous fan page (geocities!) provided it, AFAIK.

They show a picture of the PC version right there at the top of the geocities page. It's the first picture under the group shot of the Binary Systems team. I have the original PC 5.25" discs.

Now ask me if I have a 5.25" floppy drive lying around.

So I guess "playable copy" is subject to interpretation. Theoretically I can play my copy if I dig up a 5.25" drive and run a hugely sensitive slow-down program. Most go to like 99% and that wouldn't be nearly enough. I think my paid copy of MoSlo will go slower than that.

It always pissed me off how much better the Amiga graphics looked than my PC graphics. Those beautiful ranbow gradients! I had THREE FUCKING COLORS. And not good colors like red, blue, and yellow. No, I had to play with Cyan, Magenta, and uh.. yellow I think. Magenta? Why in god's name was one of my three colors MAGENTA?

Good times.
posted by Justinian at 6:59 PM on July 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Just when I think I'm out they pull me back in.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:44 PM on July 30, 2008

You gotta be kidding me. I went years without because I thought the version I had was the only one? Argh.

Oh well.

Now I'm thinking a Thrynn for communications, android for engineering...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:15 PM on July 31, 2008

Microsoft haters are the coolest people on the planet, aren't they?
posted by Zambrano at 7:32 PM on July 31, 2008

Thanks to this discussion I got to play the fan resurrection of Star Control 2. Neat game, that's quite some serious voice acting for a game that old. And fun story. The constantly exploring new planets is awesome, at least until you figure out it will be the exact same thing every time.

SC2 finally made me appreciate all the jokes in Wierd Worlds: Infinite Space. The space combat is very muich like SC2 but the exploration stuff is narrowed down to a very simple core. Fun game.
posted by Nelson at 7:58 PM on July 31, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]