NovaSilisko

$7, I think? From more or less immediately before the game became paid.

On a more serious note, the Tesla Roadster would be my dream car. Fast AND environmentally friendly!

Peel P50

New post. In Orbis Parvum

Nah. I've never really read SCP much, myself.

Go ahead, long as you say where it's from and provide a clear link to the site.

I believe the latest in-development versions of it do. Not 100% sure of the version currently being used but we do want to move to the indev versions later on (or possibly when the indevs are whittled down to a stable release, that probably would be better)

Probably more open, actually. Only the core functionality of the game will be hardcoded in C++, the rest (parts and part functionality, generation parameters, balance parameters, etc) will be coded in python, and can be opened to screw around with.

All right, some good questions here. I think what I'm gonna do is give short answers to questions here, and then, later on, make short blog posts going into more detail about a selection of them... So, let's start the Q&A. hotmailcompany52: Who's in the dev team? - This will be covered in a blog post soonâ„¢, but both are known to the community... Whats the dev plan? - Hah! Plan. No but seriously, right now the plan is to build a few gameplay/mechanic prototypes before consolidating them and crafting a roughly playable version of the full game. Will the early versions be free? - Unknown. It's certainly a possibility but I think it's far too early at this point to say. How much will the full game cost? - Unknown. Again, I'd like to wait to see what the future holds then decide. Will there be awe inspiring music in the game? - Yes. I have a plan for how music will work in the game. Actually have already written a short blog about that, just waiting til I have a batch of stuff to post together. Could I have an estimate of when a playable demo will be released? - Eeeehhh... not really. Give it a couple months and I might be able to give you a vague estimate. Although that said, I might release the original unity prototype as a teaser of sorts. miracmert: Are you using Unity or another engine? Or are you coding another engine? - The first prototypes both used Unity but now it's being rebuilt with Panda3D. The nice thing about this is P3D comes with audio and physics libraries among others, and is totally free and open source. So, that means any problem with the engine can be smashed, and any amount of new stuff can be added in without having to have it tacked on top. When did you start working on the game? Or are you just at planning stage now? - The first ideas and prototypes came up around... august, I think. From there it was pretty on and off until the New Initiativeâ„¢ started later last year, and has continued somewhat steady ever since. If you started working on the game, then what stage are you at? - Presently it's in the planning, concept, and engine work stage, with a couple early assets made. The big thing right now is to get the terrain prototype working... that might be released as a free download for people to play with, because I have to say when it's done it is gonna be cool. That's being done by one of the other guys though, he's going to make a big blog post about it when it's farther along, so keep an eye out for that. Krevsin: Will this feature orbital mechanics for ship movement like KSP, or will we be able to simply move ships around in a 3D enviroment? - Yes, though it won't function too much like KSP in practice. All planets will exert gravitational force on you, which makes orbiting a bit... weird. It's best not to trust something floating in space to remain in a good spot for very long. Will the game feature a storyline, or will it be a pure exploration sandbox? - Exploration sandbox, but with various goals that can be provided to the player, by the government, corporations, or various universities, etc. The existence of the MEA, while officially denied, is somewhat of an open secret. astropap1i: Will we be able to build our own spacecraft KSP-style, or will we have to use prebuilt ones? - Yes, ships are built from scratch. Start with an empty frame, fit it with various things like computers, fuel tanks, engines, sensors, etc. I've been drafting up concepts for how construction will work and think I've got it pretty solid now, so hopefully yet another post will cover that. What kind of control mechanics could we expect? - Very similar to KSP (WSADQE for 6DOF rotation, tenatively the numpad for translation in the case of vehicles that actually have that capability), with pulsed engine thrust usually. As in, holding down shift turns your engine on, releasing shift turns it off. Later, fancier engines can be throttled via other hotkeys, or a slider on the UI, and then pulsed at that new throttle value. What might be some cultural aspects of the society that is launching those ships? - The ships are launched from Earth and shoved into a space hole into this other, tiny universe. This space hole is located just outside St. Louis, so I guess you could say that's the culture in question. What would be the game's currencies (like KSP's money, science, and reputation)? - $dolla bills ya'll$. Like NASA, pretty much everything ends up costing money, be it parts, research (the inner workings of research are still TBD however so that may change!), or whatever. Not sure if you can consider this a "currency" but you have resources such as, say, gold, which can be sold and transformed into the aformentioned $dolla bills ya'll$. What's your favorite pie flavor? - .. I'm not sure I've ever eaten pie. You've just made me realize this, and now I'm having a crisis. -edit: actually I believe I may have had a bit of some form of apple pie a family event but it was awful and was not a good impression of what pie can be. I also recall crafting a delicious ice cream "pie" of graham cracker crumb crust, filled with vanilla ice cream and covered with chocolate sauce and I'm hungry now.

2/10 I know what your avatar is and I know what Sweden is.

Wow, I'm surprised how few of the really early people are still around...

re: Delta IV Heavy vs Falcon Heavy For what it's worth, DIVH has flown several times, while Falcon Heavy has yet to have any hardware shown (modified F9 cores for boosters, decoupling mechanisms, etc). That and the full 53 mt version won't debut until later - the initial version will have similar capability to the DIVH (at much lower prices I should add though). re: Gemini It would've been grand to see Gemini one day expanded into BIG G http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gemini That state does not exist, especially in spaceflight. To think otherwise is to invite disaster.

So, I feel like writing up some things about the game, but am not really sure what to write about. I'd like to do a Q&A sort of thing, so maybe everyone can post questions and I can do a big blog post answering a selection of them.

Well, such things could certainly be done to asteroids/"comets"... with varying effects (Highly Eventful Terraformingâ„¢)

It is rendered out then added onto, not in game (as much as I wish I could say it was ) Yes, you will be able to fit it with better equipment, like improved communication systems. There will be free-floating chunks of rock not bound to a gravitational core which can be attached to and moved around. Not sure what you mean by "move other planets via gravity" though. It would certainly be possible to build an elevator. Lets say you've got a spacecraft on the surface of one body, and fire a harpoon up to a nearby smaller body. If the harpoon's been upgraded with a winch, you can then raise yourself up into space without using any fuel. Or, if you go all the way to the other body, you can detach the harpoon, flip around, and land, then repeat the process to get back to the first, still using much less fuel than a normal transfer would.

New concept posted, 52 minutes after the aforementioned "today" passed: http://www.scienceofthespheres.com/new-concept-entryway/

No cutscenes, apart from maybe a little flavor scene when you start a new game, and maybe something for a game over screen in the event you screw up bad enough. That image is the intended effect of either an excessively vigorous mining operation, or a high-velocity comet impact.

New concept should be finished by the end of today...

Funny you should mention that... one of the "maybe"s floating around is having the rare occurrence of a discworld in the microverse, working off the same terrain system just in a different shape (and with inexplicably linear gravity)

That's the interesting thing about this mission - the human presence is so unnecessary. It's not like mars or the moon where you have a large open landscape to explore and many many potential things you might see, that a robot would miss. Everything they've shown has the bag being opened up in a small patch, rocks plucked off, and photos being taken... a robotic mission could do that very easily IMO. Even if humans come back to it multiple times, there's still not much in this situation that I can see humans doing that robots couldn't do, which is actually somewhat surprising given how much more efficiently humans tend to do field science.

I don't think it's really congress becoming interested in space themselves for the most part. It's congress realizing that some of their constituents care about space, and, therefore, if they support space, they have a better chance of getting re-elected.

I remember hearing a while ago that NASA was actually about to start a competition through various commercial providers to pick their new launch vehicle, when congress butted in with NO USE SHUTTLE COMPONENTS Specifically, the congressmen who would have those shuttle components built in their districts...

Must've been. I'm surprised they aren't publicising it more (maybe they are in Japan?) I forgot about the SCIM... the fact it's going to be recorded while shooting an asteroid is gonna be so damn cool. By the way, the original post-Apollo plan for mars exploration was 1985, not 75 (I think). Stephen Baxter wrote an excellent novel about this possible scenario http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_%28novel%29

I saw a 2014 launch date for that, but haven't really seen much news on it... last I heard it had begun construction, but that was only late last year. Seems unlikely that they'd be able to launch this year, not without rushing the process (and potentially damning the probe)

Well, there seems to be some interest so far. The primary response I'm getting looks to be "when can I play it", which I THINK is a good sign.