11 posts tagged with bbc and game.
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"Very grateful sentient tomatoes busily working on their third opera"
Halfway through the third book of the Hitchhiker's Guide series, there is a throwaway reference to a doomed starship, one whose incredible splendor was matched only by the cosmic absurdity of its maiden-day annihilation.
But the story didn't end there. Unbeknownst to many fans, this small piece of Adamsian lore was the inspiration for an ambitious and richly-detailed side-story: a 1998 computer adventure game called Starship Titanic.
Designed by Douglas Adams himself, the game set players loose in the infamous vessel, challenging them with a maddening mystery laced with the devilish wit of the novels.
The game was laden with extra content, including an in-depth strategy guide, a (mediocre) tie-in novel (and audiobook) by Terry Jones, a whimsical First Class In-Flight Magazine, and even a pair of 3D glasses for one of the more inventive puzzles.
Key to solving these puzzles was the game's groundbreaking communications system -- players interacted with the ship's robotic crew through a natural language parsing engine called SpookiTalk, whose 10,000+ lines of conversational dialogue spawned 16 hours of audio recorded by professional voice actors, including John Cleese, Terry Jones, and even Douglas Adams himself in several cameos (spoiler cameo). Want to experience the voyage for yourself? Then pick up a $6 modernized copy of the game on Steam or GOG, watch this narrated video playthrough... or peruse this spectacular MetaFilter comment from developer Yoz Grahame, which touches on not just behind-the-scenes trivia and unknown easter eggs, but the most remarkable story of accidental online community you're ever going to hear. [more inside]
Virtual Pepsi Blue
BBC Holds Interview on Upcoming Video Game Watch Dogs Legion Within the Game Itself [BBC Click] “Here's something you don't see every day. Marc Cieslak, reporter for BBC Click, has conducted an interview about Watch Dogs Legion from within the game's virtual London. The journalist paid a visit to Ubisoft in order to speak with creative director Clint Hocking, but in a brilliant twist, the pair carried out the interview inside the upcoming sequel. Cieslak and Hocking, after both undergoing preparations for full performance capture, have a brief conversation about the game while appearing to be on Legion's near-future London streets. It's pretty cool -- check it out above. According to the BBC, it's a world first, and we can't remember another example of this.” [via: Push Square][Watch Dogs Legion Game Trailer]
The dawn of an era, available and emulated in your browser to play.
A few months ago there was a list of links to classic video game emulators posted. Very recently, I'm pleased to report, those links all came true. The Internet Archive bespoke upon aforementioned consoles, computers, and mileposts on our way to the tech utopia of today, (seriously, where's my flying car?) and they asked us to do something: Imagine every computer that ever existed, literally, in your browser. And it was so.
I have absolutely no affiliation with jscott, btw. Thought I should disclose that.
Only Puzz
PuzzGrid is a lightweight, fast game of forming associations, which is, ahem, "based on" the BBC's Only Connect. Hundreds of grids to play and you can submit your own, too! (The BBC site has a few dozen more, in a fancier, louder flash app.)
Learnding
Questionaut is a charming flash application from the very talented Amanita. Kotaku jokingly calls it a 'Juvenile Timewaster', but how juvenile is it?
Where am I?
CDX: great Flash adventure by BBC History (in association with Preloaded) for their "Ancient Rome" series.
What did one ghost say to the other?
Get A-Life - an interesting read on artificial life and evolutionary computation, from the game of life (playable applet), through core wars, tierra and on to genetic programming. This approach has recently borne fruit to genetic programming pioneer and inventor of the scratchcard, John Koza, who last year patented his invention machine, actually a 1000 machine beowulf cluster running his software, which has itself created several inventions which have been granted patents.
[See also: BBC Biotopia artificial life experiment, another odd BBC evolution game, Artificial Life Possibilities: A Star Trek Perspective]
You are here. Do you have your towel?
The 20th Anniversary Edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure is online, and the BBC has jazzed it up. A bit.
seamonster
seamonster [note" flash]
Geeks without Borders?
Chasing the Wish was one of those websites that people suspected of being everything from another 8march2003 to another Push Nevada or Cloud Makers. What it turned out to be however was a announcement for a free ARG or Alternate Reality Game as hosted by such groups as the ARGN, Unfiction, Collective Detective, to name a few.
Mentioned in this BBC article and this NYT article, as potential ways to study collective problem solving dynamics, it would seem that this type of crossover treasure hunting could yield some very real world knowledge.
I bet the folks at Princeton will have an eye on this one. It's already spawned a funny parody site too.
Shredding with Auntie.
Shredding with Auntie. A snowboarding game from the BBC. I'm stoked. Are you stoked?
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