By John Walker on January 25th, 2011 at 12:16 pm.
You may remember that Alec was very taken with the Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. Designed to recreate the experience of being in charge of a Star Trek-like ship, it’s installed on a group of networked PCs, and you nerd out flying through space as a team. Today they’ve revealed a big update for the project, which includes overhauling all the art, lowering the price, and most importantly, no long requires LAN.
Now up to six crews can cooperate or conflict via the magical internet pipes, without anyone needing to be in the same room. Obviously this hugely changes the game’s potential reach.
The $40 price tag may still look high, but that’s good for six PCs. Clearly the game is still intended to be played by groups in the same room – while internet play may be more practical for many, it also somewhat defeats the core point of the game: to work on one “bridge” as a crew. However, being able to then take on another crew of three to six people online seems like a crucial step forward for the project.
There’s also new modding capabilities, letting people create their own enemy spacecrafts for the game. According to the team, the update also includes, “All new artwork; new spaceships and a new user interface.”
You can find more details about Artemis here. And you can read Alec chatting with the game’s creator, Thomas Robertson, here.
25/01/2011 at 12:33 Alexander Norris says:
Thanks for reminding me this exists, John. I’d promised myself to find out if any of the London RPS crew were interested in sharing a license when I’d moved, and now that I’m here I need to do just that.
25/01/2011 at 13:13 Alex Bakke says:
I’m up for it, if you’re talking about non-LAN.
25/01/2011 at 13:23 Harlander says:
He’s talking about non-non-LAN.
I could go for splitting this with some peeps who want to get over-the-net Bridge Crew action though. I think it’s like 4 quid each in real money.
(This was supposed to be a reply, but I messed it up after repeated “posting too quickly” errors. Given what it seems to be timing, what, I’m not contemplating what I’ve written for long enough before sending it? Bhlalargh!)
25/01/2011 at 13:44 Alex Bakke says:
Oh, non-non-Lan.
25/01/2011 at 14:31 Jhoosier says:
This sounds like fun, but there seem to be very few people with my taste in games in the same time zone.
25/01/2011 at 22:32 Bonedwarf says:
And what timezone would that be? (-0700 GMT here)
25/01/2011 at 16:08 GHudston says:
This is one of those things that I would absolutely love, but will never actually manage to do.
Obviously I mean the LAN version, I’m not sure this will have the same appeal over the tubes.
25/01/2011 at 19:42 technivore says:
I actually got to play this a couple days ago! I went over to a friend’s place for a movie night and he had this set up and wanted to have a go at it so we went for it. We had 5 or 6 people playing at once and I have to say, while I am in no way a Star Trek fan — or really even a fan of space combat sims at all — it was incredibly fun. Really the game just functions more as an aid to LARPing than an actual traditional video game. We made it through 3 or so scenarios, and I had the navigation station once and the weapons station the rest of the time.
It was definitely in the top 5 nerdiest moments of my life, and a complete blast.
28/01/2011 at 17:07 VFRHawk says:
Did anybody actually get together on this? I’ve got hold of the demo and it runs fine on my HTPC as a main screen, and my main PC as a station, so if anyone’s around the Herts/Beds sort of area and fancies a game, I’m happy to host? Or if anyone else is looking to host a game in the area, I’d be interested.