All things considered, it's not that bad to have arrived "in the pack" in the end, I can still brag about being the fastest delivery truck pilot of the race!
I started playing Elite less than a couple months ago (best unexpected birthday present of the century!), of all the things I imagined I could do in the game, before reading of the Kessel Run on the GalNet I could never have expected that bouncing around stars and docking pads with reckless abandon would have been that much fun
...a big "thank you" to the organizers of these awesome events, and all participants of course! You're an awesome bit of community!
A bit smaller and detached "thank you" to all the (too many) participants arriving ahead of me though
Buckyball is, to me, kind of the soul of Elite. In a game that challenges you to find your own goals, make your own stories, that gives you a massive galaxy and says "You are here.", and doesn't presume to tell you where to go or what to do beyond that, here is an example of something purely created of the players, by the players, for the players.
There's no prize, no tangible reward... We do this because we want to and because we can! And the sense of community we share is a natural one, rather than one created by artificial, assigned groupings like you might see in an MMO. We're drawn together purely because we share a common interest in hurtling ourselves across the stars at unthinkable speeds and courting terrible risks just to see if we can. And because of this...because everyone here is doing this purely for the joy of it, we have the most friendly, genuinely enjoyable group I have ever encountered in an online game.
And it's possible because of a game that is sufficiently open to let us create something entirety our own.
It's not a perfect game, but this is something they got right.
@Rankaze - hats off to you and cmdr Aitken for an outstanding teamwork performance, his voice on the comms had that particular "Apollo mission" vibe to it, probably not intended but to me it made it sound like you two were really up to some serious work
...and many thanks for that tip about binding separate keys for SC and hyperspace, if only I had thought of it before...curse you Nowak Orbital!
*shakes fist*
It's the need for rapid precision that does it, with the voice I mean. It creates a special sort of urgency where you have to be quick and decisive but mustn't rush!
That moment when we were simultaneously realizing we came down in separate instances, and he's saying, "Up, up, up!" and I just automatically hit the supercruise toggle because it's clear he has a plan and we are in that moment where any action, even if it turns out to be the wrong action, is better than inaction, so I don't hesitate, don't question, just do. It is the same kind of decision-making you use in a real-life emergency... decision trees are rapidly pared down in the face of a need for decisive action.
When you have put as much work into something as we had by that point, you don't let it go easily, and that creates a special kind of tension. Sure, someone looking from the outside might not appreciate the weight of the moment... but to us, then, it was critical. Fortunately for us, he made the right call, and I have enough experience with making decisions in critical situations (working in a Network Operators Center for 13 years will do that) to recognize the need to act.
Since now we are in "video upload galore", here's a bit from me too...nothing too thrilling, and no great performance to show off, but for some reason on that last leg of my trip, the music from radio Sidewinder started to follow exactly the on-screen cues, arriving at Mirateje with that accidentally epic soundtrack, even building and silencing at the right times, gave that special feeling:
https://youtu.be/Cp_NZnCtpw0
Heh! I've had some moments when Ifigured iTunes had to be possessed to give me the music it did when it did from a randomized playlist, but the timing on that was both eerie and awesome.
EDIT: I think probably my best random music moment was in my BBRA* run when, after having several odd mishaps (including the graphics driver crash that caused me to take a bunch of heat damage about halfway there), just as I was starting to get settled into my rhythm again, iTunes pops up with Clint Black's "A Good Run of Bad Luck" (one of the very few country songs in my playlist, and one that was absolutely
perfect for the situation), and that set the pace for the next couple of thousand lightyears.
Sometimes I'm not willing to just take what iTunes gives me, though. When I take my FdL out for her first sortie (not counting the trip home from the system where I bought her, even though she's had her baptism of fire already due to an overly-eager pirate in an Imperial Courier), I already know what music I'm going to launch her to... "
Battleship", from the Gradius V soundtrack.
