NovaSilisko

... *smack*

Probably going to make a print-and-fold Ferr-Os box, due to popular demand... I also updated the design of it, to better fit with the time period of the game:

Starting a project with the basic synopsis of "it will be just like ___, but better" is often a good way to set your goal beyond your grasp and fail miserably. As Bill Phil said, what experience do you have in this subject? Not just the technical aspects, but actual game design as well.

Right now, you just press R to enter manipulation mode, then move the mouse around to move the object around. The scrollwheel moves it toward and away from the camera, and holding the right mouse button lets you rotate the object.

Better showcase of how the player can play with physics objects:

The rover control system will be either automatic or manual. As in, you can let it pick which wheels map to what controls, or if you want, you can go to each wheel and specifically map what wheels to what controls. Not sure about tracks. It's a lot of extra and unnecessary mechanical complexity for not too much gain. Dunno about a web build of P0. Are you unable to download or run the standalone versions?

Geysers will apply a small force, yes. Might be interesting to make the small pebbles and dust grains in them damage solar arrays or other sensitive components, too.

I feel like a lot of games with the ability to carry objects are missing the ability to place them precisely, and/or the ability to get a nice, up-close look at them. So, enter today's work: http://gfycat.com/ConsiderateImportantElectriceel While currently intended for use in the headquarters, I'd like to eventually utilize this same method of picking up and carrying things for manned exploration outside the gate.

http://gfycat.com/FilthySmugHarrierhawk Spacecraft will have a pulsed thrust mode. Two pulsed thrust modes, actually. In the first, you would for example hold A, and the ship would begin yawing from a thruster burst. Then release A, and it stops with an opposing burst. In the second, you tap A to get a single burst, then tap D to fire an opposing burst to cancel it out. Some better nebula textures for the showcase. Unfortunately, this method won't be of much use for the final game where you can travel through the galaxy. That will require some fancy volumetric stuff. This is just three large spheres with triplanar mapped additive textures of varying scales, to give subtle parallax. Rover annoying a tree. Still need: 1. better atmosphere shader, 2. normal maps on the terrain (grrr), 3. better trees, 4. better water, 5. a better rover

Making some stuff for a "showcase scene" - a handcrafted solar system showing some of the variety of stuff that's intended to be present in the final game. This will eventually become Prototype One, and even later will become The Demo, which will be pretty much the same thing but with some additional features, and voxel terrain. Also thinking of a new method that planets can form. Specifically, they sort of collect both boulders and dirt onto their surfaces. Some bodies don't collect as many small dust grains (due to proximity to the sun for instance), and end up being big heaps of rocks: I need to come up with an algorithm that lets me realistically place boulders in a stable arrangement, though. I can't just run a physics simulation to let boulders settle in the background every time a planet needs to be generated.

I seem to remember a loooooooong time ago there was something on the downloads page talking about how there would eventually be a torrent download, but beyond that I've never heard a thing about it.

They've more or less decided not to pursue second stage recovery with Falcon 9, because most flights go to geostationary transfer orbit, which makes recovery exceedingly difficult (enough so that they'd have very little payload, which defeats the purpose of sending the rocket there in the first place) The video spacex presented is very outdated, and the second stage recovery presented there was just a rough concept.

It's FAR easier to just emulate martian conditions on Earth (or in a small centrifuge in space, if you need the lower gravity, but lichen don't care much about that) than to pack up, radiationproof, and launch all that equipment to mars.

Well... they can only drive at a few centimeters per second and Curiosity's arm/mast servos work at a similar slow speed. Its laser would be more of an annoyance, and you could defeat the thing by running up to it and kicking it a few times in the right spots. Not really a fair fight.

I have never heard anyone pronounce it as a word and would probably be deeply annoyed if I did hear someone do so

Unfortunately, given all FTL in the real world is impossible due to causality... it's not accurate, at all. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight.php#id--Causality

I believe it's just a kerbal head photoshopped onto some Warhammer 40,000 (fan?)art.

I will happily provide feedback on things, science and otherwise. Like I said earlier, there aren't enough good hard sci-fi films out there, so it would be nice to help change that.

You might also want to perhaps check out the www.nasaspaceflight.com forums to ask around for some information and advice. I'm not sure what subforum you'd have to post it in there, though. Recommendation: give some sort of subtle explanation in dialogue as to how the crew can navigate to return home from the moon without tracking data from Earth, given trajectory calculations usually depend on that.

A set would perhaps be a better idea for the moon. With a quarry you could get lots of little annoyances like small plants that have come up between rocks, footprints, tire tracks, etc. Something I see in a lot of moon scenes in various films is dust billowing around after it's been kicked up - but it doesn't do that in a vacuum. All the dust particles travel in perfect arcs from their point of origin, yielding a very distinctive "rooster-tail" effect, as I believe the Apollo astronauts called the dust thrown up by the lunar rover. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Ap16_rover.ogg

Good luck with your idea, we need more hard sci-fi films! Some thoughts: It might be easier (and much cheaper) to do that with a camera mount that's able to move into odd positions and angles, rather than the potentially dangerous option of having the whole set move around, if I understand your intention at least. I believe that was done for a scene in Apollo 13 where Lovell imagines what walking on the moon would be like. They tied helium balloons to the actors to cancel out 5/6 of their weight.

Did you seriously just use a hashtag on your thread title?

Doing a bit of shuffling of priorities. Development (by me anyway, r4m0n still will be doing some stuff) is on hold until further notice pending hard drive replacement. My boot drive is on the verge of death. Don't want to Luckily all my important stuff is on the data drive, which I will be moving to an enclosure as soon as I get my replacement gear. All the SotS stuff is backed up on its repositories, so there's no risk of anything going away there.

I don't know for certain. I'd like to be proven wrong.

They did indeed test fire it on the ground, but I don't think they ever test-fired the engine while it was integrated with the vehicle, only independent engine units. Surely they should have fitted it into the craft, secured it to the ground, and given it a test fire first, to make sure it didn't cause problems.