
Latest update to my friend's 19 year side project - redbluething
http://pegwars.blogspot.com/2016/06/screenshot-progress-update.html
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kbenson
Wow. He could probably make some good money off this as is (if that was his
goal), but I imagine if he added VR support, he's probably get money from
everyone that bought a headset.

Projects like this always ended up being more fun for me to play that the vast
majority of released polished games. Part of that is probably seeing updates
happen that actually change the game. There's something visceral about that
feed of updates, and feeling like you're there as something is being made. You
can do a lot to engage a user base that way.

~~~
owyn
Yeah, wow. I backed VoxelQuest which is a kinda famously failed project now
that was just on HN today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904287)

Projects like this can be great because you have direct contact with the
creator. That might also be a huge distraction to the creator...

It doesn't take much patronage to support an artist. Dwarf Fortress is fan
funded. This is probably the original manifesto that started kickstarter +
patreon etc.

[http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-
fans/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/)

~~~
andruby
I would suggest setting up a Patreon account and getting some recurring
revenue that way. A few of the top paid Patreon's are working on games.

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blatant
For reference: [http://pegwars.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-is-
pegwars.html](http://pegwars.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-is-pegwars.html)

Neat to see his project grow and evolve as he did for good bit of his life.

~~~
sndean
> Neat to see his project grow and evolve as he did for good bit of his life.

This genuinely makes me want to come up with some sort of long-term (life-
long?) project. Like the Sistine Chapel... but not as good. :)

~~~
pantalaimon
Maybe something like this? ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez)

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davedx
Reminds me of Infinity by Ysaneya on GameDev.net -- he started building a
space game engine back in 2004, and would regularly post updates over the
years. Eventually it almost-launched as an MMO but apparently there was some
kind of pivot recently.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_(upcoming_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_\(upcoming_video_game\))

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arisAlexis
Id like to play it just because this guy is actually living in that world for
19 years and its facinating

~~~
aavotins
Am I the only one who finds it really hard to fathom that it's 19 years?
Almost two decades. I don't think I can find a single device that I had 19
years ago, but this takes continuity and dedication to a whole new level.

~~~
zimpenfish
I've still got a Casio QV-10 digital camera from 19 years ago (no idea if it
works) but I suspect that's probably the only gadget I've got.

Garmin eMap from 1999 is probably the second closest.

~~~
toomanybeersies
My old man still has his first computer, a ZX-81.

Tried to get it working a few years ago, but couldn't get it to display on the
TV. Wasn't sure if it was even powered on because the thing has no lights on
it, it was prior to LEDs being commonplace. I didn't have an oscilloscope or
the skills to debug it.

Having just finished off 4th year embedded systems I'm probably a bit more
qualified to debug it now than I was in high school.

~~~
zimpenfish
> My old man still has his first computer, a ZX-81.

And now I feel old because that was my first computer too.

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EvanAnderson
I'd be interested to know if the author followed the "alt.fan.elite" newsgroup
back in the 1996-1997 timeframe. There were some discussions on the group at
that time re: multiplayer online Elite-type games. (Specifically, I ended
having a number of emails w/ a guy named Randall near Melbourne talking about
game dynamics, etc, back in late 1996. I'm sure it isn't the same guy, but it
brought back fun memories and caused me to dig out some old backups for a
quick read today!)

~~~
phooool
Nope I'm not randall from Melbourne and I didn't follow all.fan.elite, sorry!
I was playing elite on the zx spectrum around let's see, 1986? And then
frontier and first encounters after that. In 96 that was the golden age of
space sims, xwing and tie fighter...IWar, freespace, starlancer

~~~
EvanAnderson
My Elite experience was on the Commodore 64, but aside from that it sounds
like we had a trajectory through subsequent titles that was similar. Your
screenshots look great and I really enjoyed reading the entire blog.

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mc
I'm a huge fan for space-based games and these screenshots remind me of
Freelancer (2003). Really neat.

~~~
phooool
I love Freelancer! And the Descent series. Looks like the space combat genre
is coming back at the moment, which is great ... it's been a long time!

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rotub
Reminds me of the upcoming No Man's Sky on PS4

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nsxwolf
I noticed that too. Besides the Elite-like premise it has a similar pastel,
day-glow aesthetic.

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avmich
Really cool would be to have processes on planets (and stars) which would
modify them. To be able to modify them at will and have modification
persistent.

Probably quite doable.

~~~
phooool
Care to elaborate? I plan to have modifiable planets but stars? Sounds cool

~~~
QuantumRoar
I'm not sure if this is what you are interested in but here's a short summary
of the variability of stars.

Stars in general are variable on a multitude of scales. The most popularly
known cycle is the recurrance of sun spots, see e.g. the wikipedia page [1].

However, stars in general have their own 'life' from young to old. If you take
a star like our sun, which has -- surprise, surprise -- one sun mass, it burns
hydrogen to helium in a fusion process. Over billions of years it will deplete
its hydrogen fuel and a core of helium will form. This leads the hydrogen
fusion to move to the outer layers of the star which make it blow up. During
this stage it will blow up like a balloon and have a cooler but very thin
transparent surface. Hence the name of this stage: red giant.

During this stage, the sun's radius will become so large that it swallows the
orbit of the earth. However, since its density is very low at this stage, the
earth will keep orbiting inside the sun (though it's a bit warm then). Luckily
we still have another 4 billion years or so until then.

When the sun depletes all of its fuel, it will collapse, and maybe (don't know
about the current stage of research on that) a Helium Flash will occur where
Helium fusion will occur for a brief moment.

During the collapse of the red giant the dense core will bounce back the outer
layers and all what's left is the white dwarf.

It get's even more interesting once you take a look at massive stars which
immediately start burning Helium (or even heavier elements). Their lifetime is
much shorter than the sun's and they end up in different kinds of catastrophic
events called supernovae, which leave high density cores behind. Those are
either neutron stars, i.e. blobs of tens of kilometers diameter consisting
ONLY of neutrons, or black holes.

If you want to model these lifetimes of stars in a crude way, I would start
looking at Hertzsprung-Russel diagrams to figure out the paths which stars of
different masses take [2]. From the main sequence to the terminal age main
sequence, all the way to the red giant stage, possibly a helium burning stage,
maybe a second red giant stage, and what have you...

Once you have a few paths figured out, you can toss a die for the initial mass
of the star and then toss another one to find out its age. Then lookup the
color, brightness, opacity and size.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence)

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imtringued
I'd like to see a shores of hazeron clone with modern graphics.

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Taylor_OD
Looks really interesting. 19 years is an incredible amount of time.

