Skip to main content

Relativistic Space Game

This is an experiment in the interactive portrayal of special relativity, exhibiting phenomena such as length contraction and time dilation in a "fun" game-like environment.


David Kamensky
(dmk)

Gameplay: The goal of each (randomly generated) level of this game is to pilot a spaceship through an asteroid belt and collect several artifacts while avoiding shots fired by any alien ships that may teleport into your sector. When you have collected all artifacts in the current level, you must return to the starting area. The visuals are meant to portray the effects of special relativity in 2+1 dimensions, showing the current contents of the player ship's spatial plane. Processor time corresponds directly to the player's proper time.

Controls: The arrow keys are used to accelerate the ship in a way that corresponds to a sensation of constant acceleration along cardinal directions in the player's frame (until the player reaches some very large fraction of the speed of light (for numerical reasons)). The escape key is used to quit the game.

Other remarks: Look at the README.txt file (included in the distribution) for additional information on running and playing the game. All materials (artwork, source code, etc.) are in the archive linked to by "Source URI". I have only tested this on Ubuntu Linux, but have no reason to believe that it will not work on other platforms.

Changes

Links

Home Page
http://www.pygame.org/project-Relativistic+Space+Game-1948-.html

Releases

Relativistic Space Game 0.1 — 25 Jul, 2011

Pygame.org account Comments