Tau Ceti (video game)
| Tau Ceti | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Developer(s) | CRL Group PLC |
| Publisher(s) | CRL Group PLC |
| Designer(s) | Pete Cooke |
| Platform(s) | Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, IBM compatibles, ZX Spectrum |
| Release | 1985 (ZX Spectrum), 1986 (Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, C64), 1987 (IBM PC compatible) |
| Genre(s) | Action, simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Publication | Score |
| CVG | 9.5/10 (average) |
| Sinclair User |  |
| Your Sinclair | 9/10 |
| Crash | 94% |
| Your Computer |  |
| Zzap!64 | 93% |
| Award | |
|---|---|
| Publication | Award |
| Sinclair User | Sinclair User Classic |
Tau Ceti is a science fiction themed computer game first published in 1985 by CRL for the ZX Spectrum and later converted to several other platforms. It was designed and programmed by Pete Cooke. It was groundbreaking at the time for its extensive use of 3D graphics, shadow effects and its large gameworld set on a small planet, Tau Ceti III, orbiting the titular star. The planet also has a realistic day and night cycle (much shorter than our own).
An enhanced version (known as Tau Ceti - The Special Edition) was released for the 128K Spectrum and Amstrad CPC in 1987 featuring extra graphics and a large amount of accessible library data about the gameworld and the game.
A sequel, Academy, was released in 1986.
The origins of Tau Ceti and its game engine came from Cooke attempting to work out how the spheres in the game Gyron, released by Firebird Software for the ZX Spectrum in 1985, had been created:
I finally twigged that they must have used a table of line widths, and I thought about it a bit, then realised I could split it three quarters and a quarter, and then it would look like a shadow.
I just went away and played with that for quite a long while and got it so that I had the sun in the sky and the shadow in the right place. And it sort of came from that, really.
Having created the basics of a game engine, Cooke had to decide on a scenario for his new game:
And I thought 'Right, it can't be Earth because it looks a bit barren for Earth, it's got to be another planet.' So I looked round for nearby stars that might be inhabited and Tau Ceti had a nice-sounding name.
Cooke was also inspired when writing Tau Ceti by the works of the science-fiction writer Larry Niven and the space-simulator Elite.
Humanity has spread out and colonised nearby star systems but a plague in 2150 led to the colonies being abandoned and left to their automated robotic maintenance systems. While several of these colonies have been successfully re-inhabited, the colony on the planet Tau Ceti III (orbiting the star Tau Ceti) has been uncontactable since a meteor smashed into the planet. A mission sent to Tau Ceti III in 2164 landed on the planet but broadcast a mayday message followed by silence. Experts decided that the planet's robots were running amok as a result of the meteorite impact. The only chance, it was decided, of successfully stopping the defence systems without destroying the cities already there is to send a single pilot in an armoured Gal-Corp skimmer to the planet's surface with the task of shutting-down the central reactor in Tau Ceti III's capital, Centralis.
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Wikipedia