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Topic: Distance in Star Control 2 vs. Real Life (Read 1356 times)
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Muchoman798
Zebranky food
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Posts: 10
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So today I was just reading about the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, when they mentioned it started with the light from Arcturus appearing on the horizon. I decided "Hey! That's in Star Control 2! Let's read about it in real life!"
I looked it up, and lo and behold it's a whopping 36.7 light years from Earth. "That's odd," I thought to myself "It's one of the furthest away in Star Control 2. Maybe all of the selected stars are just really close."
So I looked up Vega, which is only 25 light years from Earth. That does kind of fit, it is closer in game. I looked up Zeta Persei next, thinking that it is fairly close to Arcturus in game, so what's it like in real life? It's 750 light years away.
Of course I understand that the game creators didn't distance stars based upon real distance (hence Alpha Centauri, all 4 light years away, being relatively far in SC2,) but I just find it kind of funny how far away some of them are. Although this way, it is SO much easier to find stars (because of them being grouped by constellations.)
Just thought I'd share.
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onpon4
Enlightened
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Posts: 709
Sharing is good.
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The story explains that the names of the stars in Hyperspace don't correlate with stars in truespace. They just threw the names on random stars, essentially, except for Sol.
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Death 999
Global Moderator
Enlightened
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Posts: 3874
We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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The explanation is given on the starmap that came with the game.
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Steve-O
*Many bubbles*
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Posts: 127
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Of course I understand that the game creators didn't distance stars based upon real distance (hence Alpha Centauri, all 4 light years away, being relatively far in SC2,) but I just find it kind of funny how far away some of them are. Although this way, it is SO much easier to find stars (because of them being grouped by constellations.)
In-game, the explanation is that humanity re-named all the stars based on how the constellations appear in HyperSpace, after having been provided with maps of such by the Chenjesu. So the star "Arcturus" in the game is not the same Arcturus in the real night sky. (At least, probably not.)
In the Real World, the reason the stars in the game don't correlate to real life is because they originally used the locations of stars in-game as the copyright protection. If the game mirrored real life too closely, it wouldn't have protected against copying very well. (This was back in the days when saying "most people probably don't have access to a colour photocopier" was good enough to stop a statistical percentage of piracy =P.) Also, probably, the programmers weren't that pent up about making sure everything was exactly right. =P
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