Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space
Buzz Aldrin 's Race into Space (short: BARIS ) is a turn-based economic simulation (or a turn-based strategy game ) by Fritz Bronner and Michael McCarty in 1992 for the PC. In the game, players take on the role of the head of the U.S. space agency (NASA) and the USSR with the aim to achieve a manned flight to the moon before the counterparty.
- 2.1 versions
- 2.2 released as freeware and the source code
Gameplay
The game begins in the spring of 1957 and runs from approximately instance, a round lasts just a half-game year. Before each round, the player is informed of a television program about the current state of the race into space, in addition to current information is also briefly touched on world events from the respective time.
The tasks of the player owns the procurement of material ( such as rockets, spaceships, satellites, etc.), research into new technologies and improving existing equipment and the recruitment and training of astronauts / cosmonauts. In addition, the player has to plan every single space mission. Through these missions, gaining its own group experience and prestige, which is reflected in budget increases. At the end of a round, the actual space mission is presented to the player. The game calculates whether a mission was successful, on factors such as level of training of astronauts and safety factor of the components used. The aim of the game is to be the first nation to land on the moon.
Realism
The game puts a lot of emphasis on realistic as possible to implement the space in its infancy. In addition to the original astronauts name the game also used countless photos and videos from NASA and Soviet archives. At the missions the player can on real space technology to fall back as the Apollo spacecraft, the Atlas V and Saturn V rockets, satellites such as Sputnik or Ranger. Similarly, the astronauts and cosmonauts under well-known names of each real space programs: Gagarin, Khrunov from the Soviet lunar program or Glenn, Slayton from the U.S. Apollo program. In addition, some vehicles are included in the game that were not used in reality: the Jupiter capsule or the Russian Lunar Module Kvartet. Thus, the player is given the opportunity to perform alternative moon landings ( Direct moon landing, moon landing with the help of a space station ).
The game continues with the missions on milestones, it must before the first docking in space only take place a manned mission. Does not happen, there are stiff penalties on the safety factor of the spacecraft, what the mission ( and the lives of astronauts ) at risk.
History
Fritz Bronner developed in 1989, the board game LIFTOFF! with Task Force Games and had a vision of a computer game implementation. Since the Task Force did not have the rights, Liftoff! as a computer game implementing to Bronner decided to do this on its own. In November 1990, he recruited the then 22 -year-old Michael McCarty as a programmer and founded Strategic Visions. The original development plan called for the Amiga before as the target platform for which a demo was compiled and published in June 1991. In September 1991 Strategic Visions came to the conclusion that the Amiga market shrank; it was decided to upgrade as the target platform on the IBM PC. In August 1991, Strategic Visions signed with Interplay Entertainment as a publisher since May 1992 as the release date. At this time came the eponymous Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, as a counselor in the project. One of the results was the introduction of Astronaut skills and morale, which could have an impact on the mission starting now.
Versions
The floppy disk version, published in 1992 was criticized by many players due to their high level of difficulty and numerous bugs with the patch 1:01 therefore the difficulty level has been reduced and corrected most of the errors. In 1993, Interplay published a CD- ROM version, which included more than 500 MB additional videos of missions and archive material. In Germany, this version was published by the TREND -Verlag in the journal series of best-selling games.
Released as freeware and the source code
The two developers, Fritz Bronner and Michael McCarty had with her publisher Interplay Entertainment, a contract term, the relapse of the rights to the game to it provided if this bankruptcy are or would no longer sell the game. After the Interplay bankruptcy in 2004, 2005 gave the two developers, the game itself as freeware free and could thus get from the state abandonware. To allow further development and porting (eg Pandora ), they have also provided the source code of the user community under the GPL. The source code of the now Race Into Space ( short RIS) mentioned further development project is hosted on SourceForge and 2011 has reached version 1.0. The current version is v1.1.
Reception
Although the game by Interplay and others as suitable for children had been advertised up to 10 years, there was criticism for its extreme difficulty. The Guardian criticized the game as " pretty lifeless ". Away from the came the game in general good, it was 90/100 of PC Gamer UK, was a finalist for the COMPUTE! Choice Award in 1993 and remained popular years, the 2005, the original developer of Strategic Visions gave the game as open source to the fan base.