Terminus is a space-flight role-playing/action computer game by
Vicarious Visions. It was released in 2000 for Microsoft Windows,
Linux, and Apple Macintosh. Terminus won awards in the 1999
Independent Games Festival for "Technical Excellence" and "Innovation
in Audio".
Terminus is outstanding in its implementation of Newtonian laws of
motion, which means that objects are subject to inertia. Once
accelerated, they float indefinitely into one direction, unless again
accelerated into a different direction. This makes steering quite
complicated, but mirrors actual behaviour in free space.
In Story mode, the player chooses one of four careers (United Earth
League military, Mars Consortium militia, Marauder Pirate Clan,
mercenary) and follows Terminus's single-player storyline, set in the
year 2197. In 2000, Terminus was unusual among RPGs in that the
player's actions can affect the ending of the storyline. Failing a
mission, for example, may lead to a different ending than would have
occurred if the mission had succeeded. One unique feature of Terminus
is the story would progress with or without the player. The player
could begin the game in story mode, then go off and do something else
and the story missions/battles would still take place, reaching an
outcome depending on which side eventually wins.
First DL: Hybrid Mac/PC .iso images, compressed with StuffIt 5.5
Third DL: Patch for 1.1 to 1.8
Fourth DL: Demo
Fifth DL: Patch for demo
Sixth-Nineth - Terminus TPE patches
Compatibility
Architecture: PPC x86 (Windows)
G3-300 Mhz CPU or greater, 96 Megs of RAM, OpenGL compatible video
card, OpenGL 1.1.2, 128MB Virtual Memory, Mac OS 8.6 or 9.0, 4x or
faster CD-ROM. Joystick and TCP/IP network connection (for multi-
player only) recommended.
