Transcendence v1.0

By: Derek Yu

On: March 25th, 2010

Version 1.0 of George Moromisato’s Transcendence was released recently. Transcendence is a real-time space exploration game that draws inspiration from roguelikes and has randomly-generated star systems and items, among other things (there is no permadeath, however – you get a single save slot that can be reloaded after death). It plays similarly to the Escape Velocity series.

The game’s first public release (v0.7) came out nearly 7 years ago, and the game has been in development since 1995!

(Thanks, BellosTheMighty, for the heads-up.)

TIGdb: Entry for Transcendence

Posted in Action, Freeware, Roguelikes, RPG, Windows | Tags: GeorgeMoromisato

Makai

Looks interesting.
I loved the Escape Velocity games, I’ll definitely have to try this out.
MindSnap

Awesome! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time!
Garthy

Had a blast when I last played this. I’m going to have to have another play through now that it’s at 1.0, if only to see what they did with the end of the game.
Alex May

On no…
googoogjoob

HELLS YES
http://www.omni-labs.com rudolf

There goes my spare time!!
Dodger

Now this looks interesting! Well there goes my precious spare time as well. Just when I thought my addiction to Escape Velocity was… escaped. Damn you Space-Sim-Roguelike-Elite-Clone Developers! Damn you!
raigan

gha, I played 0.99c wayyyyy too much.. nooooooo!!
PHeMoX

Being somewhat of a slacker myself last year or so when it comes to games-development,.. what exactly made him take this long?

You know.. curious for the sake of “prevention”. :)
doctorfrog

@PHeMoX: Dude’s got a fulltime job with Microsoft, I believe. I’m sure they keep him busy, plus his main hobby appears to be astronomy.
IjonTichy

I seem to remember that this game used to have permadeath… am I wrong?
michal

Hello,

I haven’t played Transcendence but i’m playing similar game now. It’s called naev:

http://code.google.com/p/naev/

It’s open source game. Currently at version 0.4.2. Version 0.5.0 is in development and will feature (among other things) big systems (systems with many planets).

It has support for lua, so it’s mod friendly.

If you’re interested in such types of games, you should also try naev.
raigan

oh no.. first this, and then I just find out that DoomRL 0.9.9.1 came out a few days ago: NO MORE PRODUCTIVITY EVER :(
raigan

is anyone else getting performance problems with this version? the whole game seems to be chuggy, everything moves at like 20fps..
Coded One

It looks like their site is down. Anyone else seeing what I’m seeing?
raigan

the forums were down a few minutes ago but they seem to work now.. maybe just a server hiccup?
raigan

..to answer my own question: running it with the (COMPLETELY UNDOCUMENTED ANYWHERE) flags /windowed and /directx definitely helps performance
http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence George Moromisato

@Coded One: Looks like reddit is to blame! Site was getting hammered, but it should be up now.

@raigan: Glad you figured it out. If you get a chance, can you run with /debugVideo and send me the Debug.log file (to: [email protected]). Maybe I can autodetect your situation so that the flags aren’t necessary.
meh

Crap controls in this game serve only to make it less accessible and irritating to play.
http://www.klikscene.com/ Radix

Fuck yes. I remember loving this.
Phantom Tollbooth

You had me at “It plays like the Escape Velocity Series”
rz.

What is wrong with the controls, ‘meh’?
Let’s try and use more constructive criticism, especially when addressing a non-existent problem.
Anonymous

I think the controls are crap too. Not intuitive. I can’t move the ship properly.
Zwobot

The only bad thing about the controls is the non-smooth turning of the ship which makes aiming somewhat difficult. I see it as a way to make the game more challenging.
Dodger

Crap controls? Left and Right arrow keys to rotate left and right, Up arrow key is used for forward thrust… I’m confused, this is a classic design for this type of game. Aside from that the other commands are fairly straight forward “D” for docking, “C” for communication, “M” for Map, CTRL is used to fire the primary weapon, and shift is used for Secondary weapon fire… It’s pretty basic stuff if you’ve played other games of it’s type and it has a simpler set of commands than most Roguelikes.

If by crap you mean simple then yes, they are fairly simple controls…

This is no more difficult than EV Nova or Elite for that matter.

If you’re still having a problem I highly recommend you stick with it because this is another great game with a seemingly open-ended world, not to mention every new game is a slightly different experience from the last (and you can change up your play style however you want, much like an RPG).
Jotaf

Wow this seems pretty cool!! Hadn’t heard about it before (somehow!). The graphics are simply superb!
BC

This is incredible. I didn’t know anything about this, like the poster above.

It has consumed all of my time though. I suck at fuel management and keep getting stranded in distant star systems with no fuel and unable to find a fuel depot.

Is there any trick to that? I usually run out of money and can’t afford more fuel rods and/or I buy all of the remaining ones from the shop.

Then again I’m doing a lot of meandering. I guess like any roguelike the key to resource conservation is to act swiftly and decisively, huh?
BC

Btw, this runs flawlessly in wine. The BGM doesn’t play but the rest is intact.

BC, thankful this isn’t a Game Maker game for a change and I can actually run it.
robby

Great game I have been playing it since version .99!