Shpaget

I don't mind Steve, but I hate bacronyms. Steve (high altitude thermal vortex) is just fine. Steve (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) is puke.

We need a pirate version!

So, no more Hohmanns?

Not related to Voyager 2, but her sister, Voyager 1 (which launched after Voyager 2). It's getting closer!!!

It was for syncing multiple motors, so tolerances were quite forgiving, but when you test and optimize your code for a 286, but end up running it on Pentium 133, you get noticable issues. While it's true that you don't need coding to make a 3D model, you'll be hard pressed to integrate that model in a game without some code. A few days ago I was told by an ISP tech support guy that I was old too... And I even lied about my age!

Every aspect of the game, be it 2D or 3D art, models, shaders, sounds, even dialogues require code. The code is the magic stuff that brings all those aspects into a coherent and sensible product. Without code that dictates when and how a piece of music plays, it's just a mess. Can you believe it that I've never even seen Pascal in person? BASIC was all the rage in that elementary school class. As for bad habits in BASIC... More than once I did a for loop without the "for" bit, using go tos. Nobody told me those things even existed. When I found out about them I thought they were witchcraft. Arrays? Why bother with those? I can always make more variables, right? Then I needed some timing code for synchronization (robot behaved poorly) , but didn't know how to do it properly, so I figured I could just let the computer do some random unnecessary math to occupy it for a while... Worked fine, until the competition where I ended up having a (much) faster computer. Had to find a solution on the spot, with the jury approaching.

Ok, some constructive guidance, based on my personal experience, just so you can appreciate what it takes to learn to program. I started playing on computers when I was 6. It was on 286s and similar stuff. No programming yet, just messing around. At age 11 I started with Logo and BASIC. I enrolled in a school sponsored class as an extracurricular activity and spent the next 4 years doing mostly simple robotics. At 15, in high school, we didn't have a strong computer class, so I was left to my own devices, so I picked up Arduino. It was a rather new thing back then. That meant I had to learn C++. I spent countless hours going through tutorials and examples, botching and splicing together pieces of code I found in various places and making it do what I wanted it to do. I also played around in various stuff. Did some web stuff like forums, blogs, website (Wordpress, Drupal etc) stuff, CSS stuff for web based games etc. I was all over the place. In college, again I had the opportunity to enroll in a serious computer class, where we did mostly C#. Let me tell you, in one week of those classes I've learned more than in a year of my own blundering. Now, I again meddle with Arduino, C++ and embedded electronics, this time mostly for work. And you know what? After almost 25 years of learning various programming languages, techniques and platforms, I still do not consider myself a programmer and do not feel competent enough to embark on such a game making mission, because I know what it takes. My advice to you is to go here and start and just follow the instructions there.

Do something yourself, show some progress.

You clearly do no appreciate and have no understanding of the work and effort required to develop a piece of software as complex as even a simplest of games. The game design, story, decision on artistic style etc, while important are just the tip of the iceberg. Actual coding is what takes the bulk of dev time and money. When you asked for help with game production, you're not asking for help, you're asking "Can somebody spent hundreds of hours of their time so I can sell this thing and get rich off your work. I can't really pay you anything, but once the game becomes a huge hit and sells like hot cakes, I'll make it worth to y'all. In the meantime, I hope you have enough of money stashed around that you can survive for a few years working without pay." Yes, it's possible to make a game on next to zero budget, but only if you yourself pick up a book and start learning a programming language.

No thanks. Judging by the past threads on this and other forums, I always had an impression that it was the other way around. The idea guys are abundant, while programers, especially those willing to work on an extended project for free, are particularly scarce.

Ninja'd I came here to post this! Very interesting indeed.

So why not provide more details in op? What kind of game? What engine? What artistic style? You can't hope to find serious help without providing those.

Do you have the design document?

But it is. Using the best of our current and near future realistic materials, SSTO is just marginally possible. Multistage will always give better payload fraction. That's just math.

Heh, I too was drooling over those things for ages, and then I found out about Lensbaby. However, just a few months before I looked, they seem to have stopped selling the Control Freak I was gunning for. Just as well. I would have bought it, even though I don't need it. Now, I've discovered this thing: http://www.araxfoto.com/specials/tilt-shift-35/ So, I'm slowly getting into the "I'm broke again" mood even though I still don't really need it. What I could find more use for is a small metal lathe, but those things easily cost 5 times more, and then all the tooling and accessories. Decisions, decisions... So many toys out there, so little money and time to play with them.

While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept, the energy densities required are still too high for anything practical. Edit: The idea is not new, though. Heinlein wrote about it in 1960s.

Both my parents fell for it. It took them a few months before one of them said: "Hey Shpaget, could you have a look at all these SMS I'm getting. They're annoying." So, I unsubscribe the phone and explain how expensive it is. That's when the other parent quitly gives over the phone. Hard to tell how much they lost, but the service was around $0,80 per message, one or two messages per day. I think they fell for it by doing some online IQ test. Oh the irony. Well, I guess the test itself is valid, as long as it deduces 20 points for providing your phone number.

Thanks guys. You've given me some data to start digging. WinkAllKerb, what are you going on about?

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but this is what I need: For my workplace I'm investigating an option of something like IP phone or intercom system, mostly for "in house" communication. We have 4 locations that are somewhat removed from one another, two of them being in the basement where cellphone reception is mediocre to nonexistent, so communicating with guys that are down there requires someone to walk over there and back. The other two locations are currently covered by a regular landline and wireless handsets that have intercom feature. We get our connection to the rest of the world via an optical cable that brings in phone, internet and TV. We would like to keep these services and preferably have the option for phone calls on all four location (both incoming/outgoing and call transfer and conference). We have our wired LAN stuff on all four locations. It is my understanding that IP phone system would meet our in house comms need, but I'm not sure how does that work with outside calls. We don't need VoIP, we have regular phone line for that, so this system would only need to deal with local phones. How does IP phone setup work in that regards? Do we absolutely need a service provider, or can we use our own local PC to do the server thing? Help, I'm really clueless. Now that I think about it, handsets are an option too, but for the two basement locations the signal would need to penetrate several >1m thick brick walls diagonally (20-30 m distance). I'm really not sure if the ones we currently have are strong enough. I'll test it tomorrow, but in any case, these particular ones don't support more than two handsets.

Do not reply to spam and don't click unsibscribe links on iffy emails (the legit mailing lists you actually subscribed to yourself are fine)*. It only confirms that your email is a valid one, making it more valuable and leads to more spam. If you do want to have some fun, reply from a burner email account.

I'd say the main goal is to get stuff up there as cheaply as possible. Number of stages and reusability are not the goal in itself. It's a method of reducing cost. If it's cheaper to make a new rocket than to reuse one, then any sane businessman will make new rockets, not waste money reusing old ones.

Why am I crying for a robot? Damn you pretty pictures and useful data that made me unreasonably attached to a lump of metal. So far Cassini had given us a huge amount of data, but it's not done yet! Even on its way to inevitable destruction it will give us more. September 15 added to calendar.

Wind is important, especially if there are obstacles in the vicinity and the direction of the runway. Flaps are quite tricky beasts and climb rates are quite affected by them.

1. What are you talking about? They clearly display the words I posted (granted, not verbatim) and the video of incident where F9 fell apart, implying that the cause of that incident is the complexity of multistage rockets. And no, I do not think that's the only launch failure in the history of rocketry. Where did you get that notion? I commented on their choice to present that one particular failure as an example of what having multiple stages leads to. 2. We're not playing KSP. Whatever you think is or is not possible in KSP has nothing to do with this proposal or my comment about the way it is presented to the public. In fact, my comment does not even address the possibility of their, or any other SSTO proposal. I am commenting on the way they are misrepresenting the current state of multistage rockets and their place under the Sun. 3. So? How does that make ARCA's pitch any less dishonest? 4. Watch the video. Of course. But one could make the same connection about rockets that have engines. As a matter of fact, every single rocket that failed during the launch had at least one engine.

The video seems a bit dishonest. Complexity and cost of multi stage blah blah... then the video of F9 RUD that had nothing to do with staging. Lightweight composite materials... whoa! They're using those? Why did nobody else think of that? The fact that all orbital vehicles we've ever built are multistage should be a good indication that there is a certain benefit of having them multistage, as opposed to SSTO. Also, full throttle main engine while docking to ISS.