NetBBS

NetBBS / Door games / Lunar Lander

Precision flying

Lunar Lander

Read the drift. Watch the fuel. Make both feet count.

Available · bundled with NetBBS
See the gameplayGame repository
Play
Solo flights, shared leaderboards
Missions
15 ranked, five historic descents, three dailies and a monthly Program
Achievements
63, eleven of them hidden
Availability
Bundled with NetBBS
Lunar Lander — launch splash
Lunar Lander — launch splash
The game’s own title screen, held under its prompt, at 80 × 24.
The game

A small spacecraft. An unforgiving Moon.

Guide a fragile lander between lunar ridges and onto an illuminated pad. Every correction costs fuel. Read your drift, manage the descent and put both feet down safely, in a landscape drawn entirely in ANSI colour, with a distant Earth hanging over the ranges.

Fly the descent

Control tilt and throttle through deterministic lunar physics. Burn early to slow the fall, cancel sideways drift and straighten up above the lit pad.

Work through the chapters

Start in the training basin, then fly fifteen ranked missions in three chapters, Maria, Highlands and Frontier, from calm mare plains to narrow polar footholds. Three daily challenges give every pilot on the node the same flights and change at the node’s local midnight. At the weekend they become specials: a sample return that lifts off again through the ascent line, a rendezvous beside a parked rover, and a hop between two pads.

Earn your wings

Every safe landing earns a gold, silver or bronze medal, and your career climbs from Cadet to Lunar Ace. Best landings go on each mission’s leaderboard, and with game events on, the node announces promotions, first golds, silver and gold achievements and finished programs.

Fly the month’s Program

Each month brings a season of five to eight missions, the same for every pilot, climbing from a broad sea to the frontier. Practise each in the simulator, then fly it for real, exactly once, from a slightly different start. Choose how hard: Cadet allows any number of simulator runs and a crash loses only that mission; Astronaut allows one run per mission, Test Pilot none, and for both a crash ends the program. Each preset has its own leaderboard for the season.

Sixty-three achievements

Milestones, precision touchdowns, close calls, career feats, Programs, and spectacular crashes. Eleven stay hidden until you earn them, mostly the crashes. The debrief names what each flight earned, and landings flown before achievements existed still count: what your best scores already earn is awarded quietly.

Your Pilot Record

Press P in the flight director. The Career tab shows your rank, your medals in each chapter, flights flown, time in the air and in the simulator, and your personal records. The Achievements tab lists every one, with when you earned each and how many of the node’s pilots hold it.

Race your best

Press G to fly beside a faint ghost of your best run or the node’s record, and W on a leaderboard to watch the leader’s landing. Missions where someone passed your best while you were away are marked. The Grand Tour flies all fifteen ranked missions in one sitting, against the clock, with its own leaderboard.

Fly it differently

Commanders unlock the light, twitchy Surveyor, Lunar Aces the heavy Altair, and a hidden achievement the Hopper, whose cold-gas thrusters never run dry but cut out when they overheat. Instrument landings darken the window to a radar altimeter and a cross-pointer, and the HISTORY tab flies Apollo 11, 12, 15 and 17 and Chang’e 3.

Mission control on the line

CAPCOM calls out your fuel and, low over the ground, your height, sink and drift. The debrief traces your altitude and burn over the flight, and a gold earns a postcard of your lander on its pad under the Earth. The flight director shows who else on the node is flying right now.

At the keyboard

Inside Lunar Lander

Every frame below is drawn by Lunar Lander v0.7.3, the release NetBBS 7.45.0 bundles, flying its own physics. An autopilot pressed the keys; nothing was drawn or edited by hand. The Programs and Pilot Record frames show a sample pilot after a few evenings of those autopilot flights.

Lunar Lander — contact light
Lunar Lander — contact light
Both feet on the pad, the engine cut and Earth overhead: the moment every flight is for.
Lunar Lander — go for descent
Lunar Lander — go for descent
Four and a half seconds before every flight: attitude control online, the descent engine armed, and the mission named. Space skips it.
Lunar Lander — the final approach
Lunar Lander — the final approach
Thirty metres over the lit pad with the engine near full, and the vertical speed reads FAST in red. Burn harder or the landing is lost.
Lunar Lander — the debrief
Lunar Lander — the debrief
A soft landing: a gold medal, a promotion, a new personal best and four first achievements, shown in turn with what each was for. Here, Fuel Miser: land with three quarters of the tank.
Lunar Lander — best pilots
Lunar Lander — best pilots
A mission’s leaderboard. Apart from the pilot flying, these are sample pilots made for this capture; their scores come from real autopilot flights.
Lunar Lander — flight director
Lunar Lander — flight director
Pick a chapter and a mission. The briefing shows the pad, the fuel and your medals so far.
Lunar Lander — Programs
Lunar Lander — Programs
This month’s season has seven missions. A sample pilot on the Cadet preset has flown the first two for real, after simulator runs, and landed both; mission 3 is next, with as many simulator runs as it takes.
Lunar Lander — Pilot Record
Lunar Lander — Pilot Record
The Career tab of the same sample pilot: rank, medals per chapter, flights, time in the air and in the simulator, personal records, and the achievements still hidden.
Lunar Lander — achievements
Lunar Lander — achievements
The Achievements tab, scrolled to the spectacular crashes. They stay hidden until earned; this pilot found Full Tank by never lighting the engine. The right-hand column counts how many of the node’s six pilots hold each, and all six are sample pilots made for these captures.

Play on NetBBS

Open Doors on a NetBBS node that offers Lunar Lander and choose the game. You need a terminal of at least 80 × 24; the flight pauses below that until you enlarge the window. Your best landing on each mission is kept, with your achievements and your Programs, and every node has its own leaderboards.

A little thrust goes a long way.

Choose a mission, then press Enter. W/S or the up/down arrows adjust throttle; A/D or left/right tilt the craft. Controls stay set, so you do not need to hold two keys. Space cuts thrust, X levels the lander, P pauses and ? opens the flight manual.

In the flight director, P opens your Pilot Record, G adds a ghost, I switches to instruments and V picks your craft once you have more than one. On the PROGRAM tab, N starts a program, S flies the simulator, Enter the one real flight, and B shows the season’s leaderboard for each preset.

At touchdown, both feet must be inside the pad, vertical speed no more than 3 m/s, sideways drift no more than 2 m/s and tilt within 10 degrees of upright. The numeric readings and pad lights are your precise references; the lander is drawn larger to keep it visible.

For SysOps

Lunar Lander is bundled with NetBBS from 7.41.0, and NetBBS 7.45.0 bundles v0.7.3, with ghosts, the Grand Tour and weekend specials. Its pilot records upgrade themselves in place the first time the new release launches, and there is no way back, so take a node backup before upgrading. Register it from Content ▸ Doors ▸ Gallery. Pilot records live beside the node database and are included in node backups. The short-lived files that show who is flying, in a live/ folder beside them, are not. The door setup guide has the details, and the game’s repository has its releases and its own guide. Standalone, python lunar_lander.py runs it in any ANSI terminal for unranked practice.

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