\nSine Fine is a \u201chard sci-fi\u201d space exploration game from the avid stargazers at Vindemiatrix Collective, a developer based across western Europe. It is certainly hard to get your head around, but also, very promising. The premise is that you\u2019re a lonely, functionally immortal AI, seeking a new home for some meagre frozen embryos in the wake of humanity\u2019s extinction. Labouring across eons, you\u2019ll send out probes to nearby systems and build outposts and communication networks.
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Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe game is played at relativistic speeds \u2013 that\u2019s to say, at speeds great enough for relativistic effects such as time dilation to become significant. It\u2019s also not a traditional strategy game – as currently conceptualised on the developer\u2019s blog<\/a>, at least – in that you won\u2019t have direct and instantaneous control over outposts in different solar systems. Instead, orders will travel outward from the AI core to a target solar system along a \u201cstar path\u201d, while smaller AIs handle day-to-day operations in outposts. This creates a delay between order and execution, with messages to distant outposts requiring more thought to ensure they\u2019re relevant on arrival.
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\nThe smaller AIs are, in fact, envisaged as fragments of the original terran AI. They\u2019re all particles of a decentralised and desynchronised cosmic \u201cpsyche\u201d. Which is pretty fascinating. Also fascinating: the devs are planning to let players further influence and perhaps, enhance the target outpost by routing the star path through a bunch of intervening celestial objects.
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\nOne developer gives the hypothetical example of transmitting the signal through \u2018exotic\u2019 phenomena such as black holes, pulsars and the remains of supernovae to \u201cfocus\u201d the target outpost on research. Or angling it around a \u201cdangerous\u201d area such as a nebula, where the signal might degrade. It\u2019s like the galaxy is a brain, and you\u2019re fiddling with the wiring.
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\nThat would have been quite enough to whet my interest, but Sine Fine also has a bunch of other ideas and prototype systems taken more directly from real-life astrophysics. For example, the devs hope to procedurally simulate the formation of planets around stars, moving through accretion phrases over millions of years. It\u2019s not clear how palpable all that will be to the player, but the research makes for nourishingly nerdy reading<\/a>.
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\nIf all of this tickles your pulsars, the devs have a free early prototype available for Linux and Windows<\/a>. Beware that it\u2019s just a technical test, not a game \u2013 you can poke around the galaxy map and system screen, but it\u2019ll be a while before you\u2019re ferrying any embryos to Alpha Centauri. In general, all of the above may change significantly as Sine Fine evolves over what I hope will be years, rather than aeons. You might want to check out the Discord<\/a> and subreddit<\/a> for project updates.
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