Noctis Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Noctis is a free simulator created by Alessandro Ghignola that started development some time in 1996 and is still being worked on today. It is a space simulation where you take the role of an explorer in a space craft called a Stardrifter, your aim is to explore a huge fictional galaxy and catalogue your findings. This involves travelling between stars, the planets in a solar system, their moons and even exploring the planet surface of worlds that are capable to land upon. Stars, planets and moons can all be named and have notes written about them for future reference.Noctis is DOS based program and with it comes some natural limitations of a program written in that environment, the most obvious of which are the display resolution which is fixed at 320 x 200, and a maximum walking distance from a planetary landing site. These limitations do not apply to the galaxy that is explored, as it contains over a billion stars most of which contain many planets and moons orbiting them. A future version of Noctis tentitavely named Noctis V is currently in development which will remove the current restrictions.
In the release of Noctis IV, Alessandro included a facility to have your names and notes sent back to him and then compiled into a new database of information called the GUIDE. People playing the simulator could then share their findings with others, around which a community of explorers developed.
The game gained popularity in early 2000 after receiving a very favourable review in Home of the Underdogs's list of worthwhile free games, noting amongst other things the magnitude of the galaxy to explore and the total size of the simulator is under one megabyte.
Links
[1] - The official Noctis webpage
[1] - The Fan-Fic Noctis Timeline
[1] - The old forums, home of the photo competition.
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