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▲Moonbase Alpha: That time NASA made a meme video gamespacebar.news
89 points by todsacerdoti 4 days ago | 38 comments
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dmoy 2 hours ago [-]
> which tasked the company with working on updates for "America's Army," the 2002 first-person shooter

30 seconds

Ahhh so they're the ones who made that game less realistic and more modern shooter-y. Which I have no doubt is exactly what they were asked to do, because the original AA game was slow and a lot of people hated it compared to ut or cs1.6

Shame though, it was the only game that kinda had that level of realism, with "rifle from prone while waiting can hit you at 400+ yards, but if you're running around you struggle making hits under 100 yards" that encouraged very methodical play with teamwork and spotting.

gundmc 1 hours ago [-]
I still remember sitting through a legitimate field medic first aid course before unlocking the medic class. That game was something else!
petsfed 52 minutes ago [-]
> Shame though, it was the only game that kinda had that level of realism, with "rifle from prone while waiting can hit you at 400+ yards, but if you're running around you struggle making hits under 100 yards" that encouraged very methodical play with teamwork and spotting.

The original Ghost Recon came out the year before, and the Delta Force series was already well underway. I recall enduring the interminable mandatory training of America's Army, just to discover that it was a flashier, gamey-er version of games I was already playing.

In fairness, I think you can definitely see AA's impact on the design of e.g. Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter on the PC, but hilariously (and true to form) when ArmA came out in 2006, its clear they took not one cue about how to build a playable game.

dmoy 21 minutes ago [-]
Fair, I guess I never played Ghost Recon

I do remember winning a lot of AA games without ever even taking out my rifle, and just using binoculars and telling all my teammates (who were lying in bushes for minutes not moving) where people were moving.

nocoiner 42 minutes ago [-]
Wasn’t ArmA the successor to Operation Flashpoint?
Tuna-Fish 36 minutes ago [-]
Yes. Operation Flashpoint was made by Bohemia Interactive and published by Codemasters, with BI owning the code but Codemasters owning the trademark. When the companies went their separate ways (iirc there was some drama, but can't remember about what), BI had to rename the next installment of the game series.
fetzu 11 minutes ago [-]
Operation Flashpoint having also been spun off into “VBS” (Virtual Battlespace Systems) a military combat simulator whose first client/user was incedentally the USMC. So AA’s was probably arguably the first mainstream (from the heavy promotion and the fact it was free, something out of the ordinary for an “AAA Game” at the time) “realistic shooter”, but certainly not the first.
Bjartr 1 hours ago [-]
Doesn't the ARMA series at least support that level of realism?
Hikikomori 42 minutes ago [-]
Could snipe people at 2km+ in arma 2.
fetzu 9 minutes ago [-]
Which is also (arguably not easily) doable IRL. The most realistic part of it surely being the pacing and “tactical” aspects of it.
lxe 7 minutes ago [-]
This took me on a DECTalk rabbithole.

- Here's a web version (with backend): https://webspeak.terminal.ink/

- Steam thread: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=91936...

- "Modern" codebase and builds: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk/

nahuel0x 15 minutes ago [-]
There was another Simcity-like game called Moonbase for DOS: https://www.mobygames.com/game/25993/moonbase/
blueflow 5 hours ago [-]
aeiou aeiou

brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbr

-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6RbEOlqRo

WhaleClub 6 minutes ago [-]
I hope Elon or someone creates a moon base called aeiou
hakkoru 28 minutes ago [-]
This video (on top of stuff like YouTube Poops) did an insane amount of damage to my sense of humor growing up.
slantaclaus 54 minutes ago [-]
That was what it was like
NooneAtAll3 37 minutes ago [-]
John Madden
spiritplumber 54 seconds ago [-]
football
pimlottc 3 hours ago [-]
Wow, I can see how many people would find this to be a very boring game but it looks amazing to me. Sad that I missed its golden age.
mzajc 5 hours ago [-]
In case anyone wants to play around with DECtalk without downloading the game, there's https://webspeak.terminal.ink/
ryan42 4 hours ago [-]
huehuehuehuehuehue john madden john madden
NooneAtAll3 14 minutes ago [-]
Mamma mia

Pappa pia

Baby got a

Hovertruck 36 minutes ago [-]
My wife and I still say this to each other all the time
ethagnawl 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure why but that is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the internet.
Aardwolf 3 hours ago [-]
Another one is the Microsoft Sam (& co) speech synthesis, it can also produce funny results, like someone making copter sounds with it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_vNhLYW_e4

sdovan1 6 hours ago [-]
Here is my favorite one: https://youtu.be/aFbuSShYKpc
shibeprime 30 minutes ago [-]
kick it in the front seat
5 hours ago [-]
nosmokewhereiam 4 days ago [-]
Obligatory John Madden song clip showing off the speech to text engine: https://youtu.be/ovcTKHupdxo?si=Qh_nsYmkGtwcxrMR
kotaKat 6 hours ago [-]
John Madden? John Madden!
bobsmooth 2 hours ago [-]
Bad TTS is like an inverse uncanny valley where it's so inhuman it's charming.
imchillyb 49 minutes ago [-]
Ben Bova wrote a book: "Welcome to Moonbase."

I purchased that as a kid, in a souvenir shop, on our way out of Cape Canaveral. We were there specifically to see the Space Shuttle slow-crawl to it's launchpad destination. I never got to see a shuttle take off first hand.

That book, though, began a life-long love of space and all things unexplainable.

I love space, science, and the unknown. That love all comes down to a childhood fascination with the Space Shuttle program, and Ben Bova opening my childish mind to the idea of life on the moon, and how different everything would be.

Thank you Ben Bova. And thank you NASA for daring to dream big. You've both made a lifelong friend.

bloqs 1 hours ago [-]
somewhere, deep in my soul, I heard:

"JohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMadden"

"uuuuuUuuuuUuuuuuuUuuuuuuUuu"

scudsworth 2 hours ago [-]
aeiou
dirtyhippiefree 2 hours ago [-]
Moonbase Alpha was the location where the TV show “Space: 1999” was set.

First episode saw the moon permanently leave Earth orbit.

nurettin 3 hours ago [-]
Spent years playing this game. It is the closest thing I've seen to real time chess. Also excellent soundtrack that sets the mood.

EDIT: whoops I thought this was moonbase commander, another NASA sponsored game from another time.

p1mrx 3 hours ago [-]
> real time chess

That would describe Crypt of the NecroDancer.

_bent 2 hours ago [-]
here comes another chinese earthquake ebrrrbrbrrbrrbr
jacknews 6 hours ago [-]
Bah, thought this was related to the classic UK TV series Space:1999.