internet spaceship - Sleepypete's Pillow

Admin and Spaceships

by Sleepypete

January 18, 2021

8:35 pm

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admin, gaming, internet spaceship

A friend posted a great joke pic earlier … I just have to pass it on :

Joke cartoon picture by Cordell. A dog and a man are sitting on a sofa, looking over the back of the sofa and out of the window. The man is saying "Until now, I never understood why you got so excited when someone walked past the house." — I totally get that

Which brings me to the admin note … A couple of people were talking on Twitter about Alt-Text for images last week. I got to thinking … why aren’t I doing that ? Because it’s actually quite an easy thing to do and it massively helps out the partially sighted or blind people who use screenreader software to read out website pages.

Backing up slightly – alt-text is where you write an audio description of the picture. Waving over the picture will make the text appear. Here’s one I made earlier.

Picture - capture from last week's post. It's the cosmonaut standing by a Russian flag on the Moon with a Russian Lunar Lander in the background. Earth can be seen behind. The alt text from the post last week is visible. — That’s …. better

Techie note – I’m putting the words into the alt-text attribute and the Title attribute. I didn’t figure out how to get the alt-text attribute read out but the Title attribute does the trick. Alt-text is only on this post and the last one so far but I have a kinda plan for how I might go backwards and add it to more posts.

If you recall the lady at the cinema who does the audio description advert, that’s the kind of thing I’m aiming for. I’d be curious to see if my word pictures let people properly visualise the actual picture. I don’t think adding the description is any chore at all, I’m actually finding that I’m enjoying doing it.

There’s lots of other admin things still to do. I need to go back through the ancient posts deleting the posts that aren’t actually posts. The proper WordPress import utility didn’t work, I had to go for an alternate one which was a bit too keen. I don’t think I wrote 500 posts in 2008 … I definitely didn’t write anything in 2007, the old blog was on a break at that point. I also need to write the links list (need another addon for that) and I think a glossary is required as well. That’s with alt-text in mind as well.

Screengrab from Steam showing two Mars Horizon Achievements. "Space is Very Hard" 0.2% of players have got this, it means you beat the game on very hard. The other is "Space is Hard", 0.5% of players have beat the game on Hard. — Mars Horizon …

Yep. That happened over the last week in Mars Horizon. I won’t be doing that again any time soon ! It needed a good few attempts and some crazy eyed tunnel vision playing to make it happen, with a few evolutions of path to the finish along the way. There’s an excellent guide in Steam that will give you pointers for how to get that achievement.

Game screenshot : A boxy looking robot buggy with 6 wheels, driving across the red, dusty Martian surface. — Boxy Buggy

I think that one was actually Russian … I’ve massively enjoyed Mars Horizon. It came out late last year (released November 2020) but it’s easily my best game of last year. It’s got very easy gameplay mechanics, where you pick the research, choose the missions from what’s available and make sure you have the rockets available to allow you to carry out the missions.

They’ve delivered a lovely game there. And it’s not just that … it has a Spacepedia included which is a thing of total joy for a space nerd like me. There are entries for our solar system and every actual space probe and rocket made, plus older concepts that didn’t happen and future concepts that are still on the drawing board.

The Spacepedia is worth getting the game for just to unlock the entries for that. I’d actually kinda like to reset it so that I can enjoy reading the articles as they steadily unlock (I rushed through the game first time and didn’t discover the Spacepedia until later) but the game is proving smarter than my efforts there so far … I try and delete the unlock file and it just recreates it. More Thinking Cap needed.

Game screenshot. A very large rocket on the launching pad. It has a large central core and 6 boosters at its base. — Much whoosh potential

I think that was a future Russian rocket concept again, a super heavy lift rocket that was going to take my astronauts to Mars.

Yep. Game is a joy, if you’re interested in space then I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

I’ve been back in the other internet spaceship game today … I’ve been away for a bit due to a poorly back.

Game screenshot. My Anaconda flying away from the camera showing the two big engines. It's flying towards a carrier ship and in the backdrop there is an Earth Like planet. — Hello carrier

The poorly back started last Monday, hasn’t really let up yet. I think I need to avoid Elite again for another week because it stiffened up more towards the end of today’s session. I believe it was caused by sleeping with a twisted back … with the cold getting into it. Oops.

Oh, I’m trying something out with the spaceship pictures. There’s a setting called “Supersampling”, which ups the resolution at which the pictures are drawn. I’m seeing the game at the resolution of 2560 x 1440 that my monitor supports. Supersampling means the game is drawing more pixels and then reduces it down. It should reduce the jaggedness I’ve been noticing. A setting of 1.25 was working ok on my hardware (3200 x 1800) but 1.5 was probably past what my current graphics card could handle. It’s only a 3GB card, I’m on the hunt for a new one but graphics cards are rarer than common sense in the mob at the moment.

Game screenshot. My Anaconda is landed on a dark grey moon, the starboard forward quarter faces the camera. The little moon buggy is in front with its red lighting. — Also buggy

One thing about the bad back though … if I’m needing to avoid playing the games due to the posture that gets me in, that can only mean … reading more books !

I’m on book 4 of this year.

Book 1 was the finish of Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. This felt like a harder slog than it probably should have been. I was kinda expecting an epic finish, picking up from the fantastic vignettes of the second book (Redemption Ark). That second book had a desperate interstellar starship chase and the inexorable march of the Inhibitors as they were setting up in how to sterilize a star system. I was expecting more of the same and bigger. The story went a different way. It’s the story of a starship and his crew …

I’ll be looking forward to reading Shadow Captain and Bone Silence at some point but I have other books to read before going back to Alastair Reynolds again.

Book 2 was Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, the third in the Murderbot diaries. These are very fast and short books but I’ve enjoyed than immensely more than some epicly long books. I didn’t finish Rama II or Existence, I’ll go back to Murderbot after finishing them all. I’ve acquired the fourth novella already … One for later.

Oh ! Murderbot is a SecUnit that’s managed to become self aware. A SecUnit provides security for people. It’s mostly artificial construct but there’s an organic brain in there too. Anyway, all Murderbot wants to do is hide away from people and watch soap opera serials but … life doesn’t work out like that. To adventure ! Whether Murderbot likes it or not :-D.

Book 3 was Light of Impossible Stars, by Gareth L. Powell. This is the last book in a trilogy that stars with Embers of War, continues with Fleet of Knives and ends here. I’d thoroughly recommend trying at least the first book. I like the universe that the author sets up and his technique of swapping between first person perspectives for each character works very nicely.

Book 4 is me going back to some oldies … I picked up the R.A.Salvatore dungeons and dragons books via Humble Bundle a while back and started Homeland, the first of the Drow trilogy, last night.

And I think it’s time to hit Publish (and do the other related buttons) and get back to book, plus Easter Egg Number 1 of the year, plus D&D stream at 9pm.

Drawing by me - A green dragon sitting on the floor holding a book. The dragon has glasses and is smiling as his attention is grabbed by the book. — To the book !

Have a great evening and week everyone. Stay safe, be well.

Reality’s being weird, time for an alternate ?

by Sleepypete

January 11, 2021

9:50 pm

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games, internet spaceship, rocket science, rockets

Hi everyone,

This reality’s being pretty weird isn’t it. Especially in the last year. But I really don’t want to talk about the real world stuff. You’re probably being bombarded with far too much information about that from all sides and most of it is scary. Or feeling like it’s from a really bad Hollywood movie.

Talking of bad movies … The Midnight Sky was a painful one to sit through earlier. It’s not that it’s bad (ok, it has a LOT of bad sci-fi in it), it’s just … boring and depressing. Go watch something else :-D. mind you, i was watching it because I was avoiding playing the more active games after work today due to a bad back. (Bad sleep last night due to pizza consequences)

Alternate reality ?

Game screenshot. A Cosmonaut on the Moon with a USSR flag and a Russian lander module. Earth is in the background. — That’s … different

I’ve been doing another Mars Horizon campaign. I did my first with the Japanese, then did a version of NASA. This time around it’s the Russians. It’s good to see different types of spaceship represented in the game. There’s an excellent Spacepedia in there as well, with many entries about historic, present and potential future spacecraft. After skipping through on my first games, I’ll have to give it a more thorough read.

Game screenshot. In orbit over the Moon is a Russian Soyuz and Lander spacecraft. Earth is in the background. — Don’t forget the flag !

That’s going backwards in the mission a bit, showing what they think the Russian version of Apollo would have looked like. Essentially, a Soyuz with a lander on the top.

The launch vehicle is pretty special too :

Game screenshot. Russian N1 / L3 rocket on the ground on a launch pad surrounded by thinner towers. — Long and pointy

That’s the N1 booster coupled with the L3 upper stage. 4 attempts were made historically to fly this combination, none succeeded. (My alternate reality people did better). The wiki page that I’ve linked there shows a vastly complicated system that we only knew about in the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such was the secrecy of the project.

Another Soviet programme in the game is the Buran space shuttle.

Game screenshot. Russian space shuttle on the launch pad connected to the Energia rocket. Ice is falling off as the engines just fired. — Buran and Energia

Whereas the NASA Space Shuttle was mostly recoverable (was the fuel tank recoverable ?), Buran sacrificed the Energia booster. Mind you, Energia was also a potential very heavy lift rocket that could have lifted other payloads into orbit. Buran flew once, as an unmanned test vehicle. Here’s a wiki link for Buran. It looked a lot like the Space Shuttle, which owes a lot to the requirements in the design. Both needed to fly a certain size of payload and then the wings follow the requirements of needing to re-enter. A major difference with Buran is that the shuttle itself had no engines, it depended entirely on the Energia Booster to lift it into orbit.

Sadly though, Buran only flew the once in 1988 and the prototype was shown at the Paris Air Show (on the back of an An-225) in 1989 before it disappeared into a hangar for the next 13 years. The hangar collapsed in 2002 and that was the end of Buran.

It and the Shuttle were a victim of misguided design, although the Shuttle was flown far longer than it probably should have been. Both spacecraft have superfluous wings, aimed for a cross range requirement which was never used. (They’re capable of going up, going round Earth once and the wings allow them to them land at the same place even though the Earth has rotated beneath them – for sneaky missions). Soyuz has proved to be a fair more useful spacecraft.

I’ve been enjoying an alternate history game with Mars Horizon this time. I’d thoroughly recommend picking it up for its mix of history, competitiveness (the other agencies will keep you on your toes) and I’ve found it a really satisfying game to play. It’s less demanding of my currently limited hand and arm capability. And I’m looking forward to the next game, which will be with the Chinese and possibly an attempt at beating the game on Very Hard.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda space ship is on the left, pointing away from the camera towards a blue and purple nebula shaped like a rotated C. — To the clouds !

And in another alternate history … Elite’s future is pretty grim dark but at least it has easy access to space. I had a little session over the weekend, making my way further around the galaxy. I’m at the top part now …

Website screenshot. A map of the galaxy with a very long green indication showing where I have been. — Follow the green line

I’ve got a bit further since then. The next few waypoints will take me to the top of that map again to Salome’s Reach, 65,647 light years away from Earth. There are a few things to see along the way though …

Game screenshot. The spaceship is coming towards the camera. A large sun is partially visible at the bottom of the image. 2 suns,, 1 large and 1 smaller are behind the spaceship. — Toasty

Sometimes the game likes to surprise you. You go from system to system through hyperspace, dropping out at the most significant stellar object. In this case, the system entry star was the one at the bottom of the picture.

It’s not quite that simple though … As you drop out of hyperspace, you go through any stars that might be behind it. That definitely leads to a wake up call.

Game screenshot. Spaceship facing a black hole. The normally thin galactic ribbon has been spread across the screen due to lensing distortion effects. — Approaching the Gates of Apzu

There’s another black hole there, with the extreme lensing effects.

Game screenshot. We can see the top of the spaceship with a glow for radiators. The background is dominated by lensing effects of a black hole distorting the galactic ribbon. — Knocking on the Gates of Apzu

Of course I took a closer look.

Game screenshot. The black hole is distorting the vision around it again. A dark spaceship is coming towards the camera. — Retreating from the Gates of Apzu

Before enjoying how the lensing effects retract back to normality as you fly away.

Game screenshot. The spaceship is landed on a flat plain with small rocks. The buggy is in front. A planet with a ring is visible centre left. There is a small star top middle right. There is a moon top centre that is just showing a small reflection from the star. — Looking at giants

And then it didn’t take much longer for me to find a suitable spot to end the session at.

Oh ! Been reading books too. Absolution Gap was a bit of a struggle but Murderbot 3 flew by, as is Light of Impossible Stars.

More about the books in a later post. Gonna try and read lots of books again this year :-).

New year, new lockdown

by Sleepypete

January 5, 2021

9:20 pm

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books, internet spaceship, music, skyrim, stayathome

Hello everyone,

I know if I was to start writing about what’s happening in the UK at the moment, it would start an avalanche of ranting. So I’m going to try and avoid that :-). Yep, lockdown again … although personally, I’m not seeing much change there.

However, there are a few things that are getting more urgent that are on hold for now until it’s a bit safer to be around people. I was back on duty with work today, we have the facilities to allow us to work remotely. It did feel a bit weird though. (Could have been the lack of sleep from Brain not wanting to shut down for Land of Nod !)

Thumbnail pic ?

There we go. I haven’t been travelling too far in real life but I have done that travel to far away imaginary planets in the internet spaceship. Some are places that are recommended by the sightseeing sites (https://elite.kamd.me.uk/), some are places that I’ve run across in the travels. I have a few rules (pointers ?) there for places that should be worth a closer look. It’s good to get there in sunlight too …

Light makes the screenies more usable.

It hasn’t all been internet spaceships though, I’m having to somewhat ration the time in the more active games. The shoulder was getting more prone to pain spikes last week. Wrist actually isn’t so bad but I have to watch for unwarranted moves in the wrong angles or I get the ouchies.

I haven’t gone too much further into Per Aspera, although I’m very intrigued by that one and I have a very promising start now with an established growing colony. I had that little look into Prey and will go back when shoulder issues and time allow. I started a new Mars Horizon run as well, this time as Russia with different rockets and a higher difficulty. Mars Horizon is a game that I can see myself getting all the achievements on at some point and then I’ll keep coming back to it for some chilling out times.

I’ve also been back moseying around Skyrim …

Another case for a little bit of light going a long way.

That’s the mine side of Markarth, a towncity built into the side of one of the mountains.

And after a little raiding of the local dwemer tomb. Need to complete that armour set for Lydia there. I’m going for the heavy armoured tank with big sword approach again this time. Stealth archer is another powerful build but I get in trouble with that one as the enemies close, so it’s more a case of letting them close and then chopping them up.

It’s not just games though. I managed to finish Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. It might be a while now before I go back to his books, although I do have Shadow Captain and Bone Silence of the Revenger series lined up. It’s not that Absolution Gap was a poor book, it was pretty well written. It’s just that over 660 pages it didn’t really go anywhere that was of interest. Kind of outstayed its welcome.

You can’t say that about the Martha Wells Murderbot series. They’re expensive … but they get in, tell their story and get out again before you can blink. Cos you’ve probably opened one of the novellas and read it in one sitting. Expensive … but more value in these ones than a lot of longer books.

Not sure what the next one will be, I think later on I’ll start Light of Impossible Stars by Gareth L. Powell to finish off that series.

One thing about Elite, the solar system generations can tend towards moons that are a bit close to each other …

That was my landing spot to finish one of the sessions … perhaps a bit of sulphur in those geysers ?

Here we had a pair of undiscovered water worlds that were orbiting each other close (the tides must have been impressive) and the Steam Horse Nebula in the background.

And that’s where I am at the moment, perched on the edge of a crater by a canyon system with the parent gas giant over there in the background.

It’s a curious counterpoint. In real life, we’re in our lockdown and we’re not supposed to be going anywhere (people are … mutter mutter mutter) and I’m pretty much just heading out for emergency stuff and restocking the food cupboards.

In the internet spaceship game, I’m off on a trip around the galaxy. But even there, it’s a kind of lockdown of its own. Normally in the game, I’d be either mining and going to the best selling station or I’d be on a trading route going from station to station. At the moment, it’s just me and the crew of the ship bouncing from star to star and the only interaction with people offboard is when I visit the fleet carriers dotted around the galaxy. Staying at home, with home doing a circuit of the galaxy.

That one had a nice perch, in the sun too.

Oh ! New music arrived as well with discount opportunities on a certain website I need to find a viable alternative to. Albums from the following have arrived and been enjoyed :

Katie Melua – Album Number 8 and her Ultimate Collection

Ellie Goulding – Brightest Blue

Lisa Hannigan with the hypnotic At Swim

Mike Oldfield with Tubular Bells II

And I thought I had the Per Aspera soundtrack, apparently not ! (I think I was going to evaluate it in game before buying).

Time to disappear into a book now for me. Be well, stay safe.

Advent Day 17 – X Pod Droid

by Sleepypete

December 17, 2020

9:48 pm

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internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

Christmas leave is here … I’m off now until the new year. Yey ! This has been a very strange year … We haven’t seen anything like this in living memory. Hopefully you and yours are all ok.

Advent pic ?

At least I think it’s one of the pit droids from Episode 1, following yesterday’s pod racer.

If you see a couple of spots on the marshmallow there, it’s a Salted Caramel marshmallow and some occasional spots appear from the flavouring. Tis a good marshmallow.

Brain is suffering at the moment (from that just gone on leave feeling) so this one might be a bit shorter … The pit droid made me randomly thought of the X series of games.

I’ve ended up acquiring most of these over the years and they’ve been around for a long time too. The X Gold game was originally released in 1999 as X Beyond The Frontier with the Gold pack including the expansion X-Tension. It was a space combat / trading game that took over from the X Wing and Tie Fighter games as the next space combat type game. It was a pretty dark era for space games as the publishers decided that people didn’t want them.

The game starts with a test of a new hyperjump capability, seeing you in the prototype ship about to go zoom. The test doesn’t go to plan … and you end up in a far off place, in a ship that’s about to explode.

And then the Teladi appear, fix you up and send you on your way.

Although it’s not quite that easy because the Teladi expect to be paid for their help and charge more if you try and sass them. One of the things that sticks in my mind from this game is their description of the Xenon “If you see them you are already dead”, in a translated sibilant voice that makes the menace more apparent.

I have mixed feelings about the X series of games … They kept the space ship piloting genre ticking over for a decade and a half (outside of Starlancer and Freelancer) but I never had much success with the X games. I’d try them out, bounce off them and never stay with the game for as long as I thought I should do.

No Mans Sky was similar there. It’s a game that in theory, has all the ingredients to be something I’d enjoy but I didn’t stay with it.

No Mans Sky pic ?

It has its own particular art style. It’s much more cartoony than Elite and the gameplay is definitely far more arcade simple. I think it was the inventory system that disrupted me on both games.

One thought though is … If you have several games and you’re enjoying your time in one more than the others, play the one you enjoy most. I follow a streamer called Shenryyr, his favourite game in the whole world is Aerobiz, a game that came out in 1992 for the Super Nintendo. He loves it, he goes back to it when he’s wanting a pick me up. And it leads to a chilled out fun stream.

I should open up Moo 2 again some day …

It was Elite again today, making another little step in going around the galaxy.

They’ve opened up a new outpost station today at a place called HIP 58832. It’s a star system 3000 light years above the galactic plane and there are some lovely screenshots coming out of the galactic disc spanning before them. That’s me pointing at the star that they’re at from 36,411 light years away.

I think that’s it for me for tonight though. Time to watch Tashnarr (linky) in the background and read more of Absolution Gap.

Stay safe, be well.

Advent 2020 Day 15 – Guest Battleship Master Dwagon

by Sleepypete

December 15, 2020

8:56 pm

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advent, dwagons, elite, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

I’ve been blessed with something quite lovely today. They’re guesting on today’s Advent pic …

Isn’t it lovely ? Also adorable. How about a better look ?

I love it. He’s a custom dwagon made for me on behalf of a very dear friend, inspired by my own dwagon pics. I was still in work mode when he arrived but now that’s dropped I’m genuinely a little bit emotional :-).

A lovely and very special gift. THANK YOU !

I have been struggling a bit lately, probably because Brain wants to go on Xmas leave already. But Dwagon has picked me right up.

I’ve been doing internet spaceship again over the last few days. The objective was to get to the first waypoint in “The everlasting expedition”. It’s way off to the Western edge of the galaxy. Here’s the map :

The more dense line scrawl to the middle right is where we live in our galaxy and the rest of the scrawl shows where I’ve been since resetting. I’m hoping to circle the galaxy on this outing. Only about 250,000 light years to go. It gets pretty difficult to navigate when you’re on the fringes of the galaxy like that and Searching For Dragons needed another little refit to give her the jump range required.

110 light year jump, without a neutron star

Yep. Long way. And I suspect being off angle like that is going to really upset some people who see this :-D.

It’s an odd sight too, because there are usually many more stars in sight than what’s in that picture.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun. Where is it ?

I think that might be the Andromeda galaxy painted on there in the lower middle.

And that’s us looking back at our galaxy from the extreme edge.

Pretty.

I don’t think I’m going to be talking about the games I intended to mention tonight. (Master of Orion 2). They’ll wait for another day.

Dwagon is such a thoughtful and lovely a gift and I’m still massively going Aww 😀 <3.

That’s where I left the ship tonight. Stay safe everyone, be well.

Advent day 13 ! Republic cruiser, warry Empire

by Sleepypete

December 13, 2020

7:44 pm

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advent, internet spaceship, star wars

Hello everyone,

Day 13 … Gotta admit, the tireds are still with me (4 working days left to break) so this might be shorter. Mind you, I’m also short on screenshots for the games … What’s behind the door today ?

It’s the Republic Cruiser today. I think this is the one we see for a short time at the start of Episode 1 before it has a Rapid Planned Disassembly courtesy of the Trade Federation.

What are the games there ?

Supremacy / Rebellion (different name in UK due to a different game) came out around 1998. I was supremely hyped for this one. I was looking forward to a grand strategy game combining the Galactic War in Star Wars with being able to do the more tactical engagements.

And it may have worked too … ~~if not for those meddling…~~ Nah. It was a good idea for a game but the execution wasn’t great.

You had the galaxy spanning map, broken up into sectors with a cluster of star systems within. You’d have industrial planets, shipyard planets, resource planets contributing to an economy that would support your growing military.

It was an asymmetric setup too, with the Empire having big scary fleets and the Rebels needing to build up or run away. It also had the idea that while the Empire had a fixed seat of government in Coruscant, the Rebel base could be moved around the galaxy.

The game had characters which drove the gameplay in their own ways as well. They could recruit, run bases or ships and execute commando missions.

The game appeared to have the lot. It even had a tactical battle engine the likes of which I don’t think had been seen before in a PC game of this era.

Yet it failed. I gave it up reasonably quickly and moved back to Master of Orion 2. It was bland and boring. And a waste of the concept. A shame too because if they had pulled it off, then it would have been an excellent game.

The other game up there is Star Wars Empire At War. I actually rebought this one a bit later to try it out again. (I couldn’t find the disc !)

There’s another cautionary tale here with the Steam offerings for old games. It does not include the manual in soft copy. You need the manual because it tells you the unit strengths and weakness. This is a game from the Rock Paper Scissors era of strategy, where all of the units in games would be set up as hard counters to the other units.

So as well as not telling you how to play the game, you would be denied access to the info required to win at the game.

The lesson here is to be extremely wary about acquiring old games via Steam. There’s probably been little to zero effort gone into making them run on modern machines. Good Old Games are a decent alternative but they’ve moved away from bringing back old games and on to being a publisher for New Things. Sadly they’ve lost some of their soul along the way, including indulging in some of the nastier marketing tactics around That Big New Game.

Empire at War ?

So it’s another grand space strategy game again, this time with either the asymmetric (Empire strong, Rebels weak) start of Supremacy / Rebellion or more balanced starts.

It had a ground combat layer …

There were a whole heap of new units invented for this because they needed to balance what we’d already seen in the films.

However … I can’t remember why I dropped the game the first time. I might have gone straight back to what I knew and enjoyed, which was Master of Orion 2. It looks like it came out in 2006, which was a really bad time for me psychologically … I’m not going to go into that.

I suspect I went straight back into World of Warcraft !

I do know why I bounced straight off the game when I looked at it again. There was another bad porting issue, where the tutorial phasing had broken. Instead of a slowly flashing red/blue in the tutorial for things you couldn’t do yet, the red/blue flash was ultra quick. The kind of ultra quick flash that can cause head problems …

So after a little research into that, I figured it wasn’t an issue I could fix any time soon and went straight back to Stellaris.

So today’s couple of games, Supremacy/Rebellion and Empire At War, were a couple of games that should have been great but something went wrong somewhere along the way.

Great concept was broken by flawed execution. If I talk about Star Trek Birth of the Federation at some point (it’s on The List), then that game has the same problem to a worse degree.

In other news … I’ve been in the Internet Spaceship again over the weekend, making my way to the edge of the galaxy.

This is the last shot of the Searching For Dragons in the original configuration … The next few bits of the route are going to be a bit awkward so there’s been a small refit to eke out a bit more jump range.

That’s a Herbig Ae/Be type star. Looks pretty much the same as the other stars, there’s a few things that Elite Dangerous doesn’t know how to draw properly yet. That aside, it’s still one of the prettiest games I have.

That’s where I stopped for the day. Body said it wanted a break and the next parts of the trip will be interesting times … if they’re even possible with what I have.

We shall see !

In the meantime, stay safe, be well.

Advent Day 11 – Danger Falcon

by Sleepypete

December 11, 2020

4:38 pm

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advent, elite, internet spaceship, lego, star wars

Today might have been a good day to talk about Falcon 4.0 !

Instead, I’ve brought forwards talking about a different game that you’ll probably recognise instantly. The draft plan had the original game right at the start and the new game at the end but I’ve been swapping things around a little bit as I go.

What’s behind the door ?

At some point, I’ll figure out what arcane combination of thing to do to get the focus how I want it. Or while the Pixel 4’s cameras are better than the Galaxy S7, it isn’t quite as good at doing super close up photos.

Millennium Falcon today ! Venerable workhorse of the series and fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. Home of scoundrels and leader of squadrons.

This ship type found its way into the various games too, not necessarily as the Falcon, usually as the Corellian YT1300 light freighter.

The ship made me think of Elite Dangerous. A ship roaming the known tradelanes, going from place to place looking to make a quick profit while avoiding the attentions of the authorities and casual pirates. Bit like Elite ! Come to think of it, bit like Freelancer as well.

I’m going to do a little side note here though … I’ve been struggling lately. Been feeling the effects of this year building up on me and can hear that burn out clock ticking away again. I’m on duty for work until Thursday evening next week, then off until the new year. “On Duty” ? That’s one thing we’re getting used to with this pandemic. I struggle to call it “in work” if I’m working from home. On duty feels like it covers it better.

Our place has been continuing to work as before, just distributed around working from home instead of in the office. It’s been an odd difference … It’s let me experiment with protobeards (the current one comes off soon, itchy factor is rising) and not having time lost to the trip in to work and out again is very welcome. So work is still fine.

It’s everyone else’s attitudes to the pandemic and other things that is continually wearing. I don’t like talking about that too much here because you get too much of it from elsewhere. We should be handling it far better than we are. The controls on infection rates should be getting put in earlier and stronger. And they should be getting followed by the general population.

I should not be getting double glazing salesmen knocking on the door.

The later the controls come in, the more hold the infection will have taken and the longer it takes for the fire to go out. Personally, I think people have given up on trying to keep a lid on it and are now treating a very serious illness as nothing worse than a cold or the flu. It’s not just here, the England team just came back from South Africa after the cricket tour there was cancelled due to increasing covid infections occurring in a supposedly bio secure bubble which was anything but. The England people gave probably too many chances … yet are now being accused of coming home when they shouldn’t have.

So I’m annoyed at that.

I’m also not angry … but very disappointed at the attitudes around a couple of big games at the moment. One just got an expansion, one is benefiting from rabid levels of hype. People are falling over themselves to play both. Yet the new game is getting its notoriety partly from disgusting marketing methods and the expansion one had everyone coming out in arms about their treatment of a protest.

Yep. Not angry, just disappointed. I won’t ever be playing either of them. Mind you, “not angry, just disappointed” sums up what I think of The Outer Worlds too. It had massive hype … but I found it dull, disappointing and indulging in the laughs through lowest common denominator humour that seems to be a hallmark of Epic Store exclusives.

Elite ?

I’ve apparently gone rather overboard on the screenshots since restarting … That was an opportunity shot after emerging from one of the starter system stations into a rather glorious eclipse.

Since then, there have been many stars.

Many bases to explore. And plunder.

Sadly no buggy on this occasion, it didn’t fit …

Visited familiar places along the way.

Had Outside Context Encounters …

And done a little archeology too.

And there have been some very pretty locations to visit too.

Elite Dangerous has been a great game for me over the years I’ve been involved with it. I’ve hugely enjoyed getting up close to the various astronomical phenomena that have been included in the game.

And it’s expanding soon too with extra features that let you step outside the ship and bounce over the ground on foot. That should be pretty good. We shall see !

It feels like that Odyssey expansion has gone from A Long Time Away to Wow It’s Coming Soon ! I think that’s another sign of how time has gone very strange this year. It doesn’t feel like it’s 9 months since the pandemic situation properly broke out here in the UK.

That feels like it’s enough for today though.

Tired. Hanging in there. Enjoying the games when my body lets me. Definitely enjoying looking back at and remembering some older games. And winter break happening soon.

Stay safe, be well everyone.

To Mars … and beyond ?

by Sleepypete

November 22, 2020

2:13 pm

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gaming, internet spaceship, picture, skyrim, space, website

Hello everyone,

I found a new spaceships game … More like rockets perhaps though.

Before that though … today seems to be not such a great day today. I was having trouble getting to sleep last night (probably dust inhalation affecting my breathing) and I’ve emerged today with a headache. So it’ll probably be a quieter day today with less sources of input. Maybe.

Before I dive into rockets – a small thing about being cautious about how you market … The new blog came with a few things that are either useful or I’m steadily disabling as the truth of what they are reveals itself. The latest is OptInMonster. From its blurb :

“Instantly grow your email list, get more leads and increase sales with the #1 most powerful conversion optimisation toolkit in the world.” and they do this through popups, popouts, annoying things on the site (like an abandonment thing when I clicked on another window). Oh and they want money to do this, even for the free trial. They also appear to be heavily involved in botting, even with one of their bots writing in the name of their CEO.

Anyway, I started going through the “free” sign up suggested by their plugin and hit the close tab button as soon as it demanded a credit card number for the free trial. I then get an email purporting to be from their CEO (the bot) with the details that were in the form but not committed to be sent. If you are not recoiling in horror at that, then you should be. Oh and I couldn’t reply to the bot’s email because their reply-to address was a bad redirect and the content of their email was being flagged by the spam filters. I could not demand a deletion of my data on their system without deleting their email text in my reply.

It’s not a particularly rosy look there. If you’re getting someone to do your marketing for you, think very carefully about the image they are going to give you. You don’t want them to give you an image that you find abhorrent.

TLDR – OptinMonster bad, addon now removed from the site.

New game what’s this ? I’ve gone a little further in the Elite Galactic Circumnavigation quest but that one’s suffering a little due to the pain spikes (and Elite needs a little set up so I can’t munch dinner while playing). I went a little further in Deus Ex Human Revolution too and I’m at the point where the DLC comes in. Still not sure if I’ll play that DLC. Another Skyrim character got started …

There’s my warrior lady in front of the next place she’s going to raid. Skyrim is a beautiful game even after 9 years after release. It’s had some work though, I’m now on the Special Edition rerelease that came out in October 2016 and that’s got improved texture packs and weather mods that make it prettier still.

But that’s not the game that has got me addicted since it came out …

You may need to zoom in a bit to find the thing on the pad. One very nice feature I spotted follows on from something I said about Elite in one of the discords :

The comment on Elite was about some of the neutron stars that are epilepsy inducing. Their rate of rotation is incredibly fast, which means they become nasty flicker on screen. While I don’t have the epilepsy triggers to make me react dangerously to those, it’s still a very unpleasant surprise to come out of a jump at something I find difficult to look at due to the violent flickering. It was good to see options like these in an Accessibility section, even in a game where these effects are very minor.

Disclosure note – before I go on, I would HEAVILY recommend this game with the obligatory disclosure thing being that it is a copy I paid money for on Steam.

So what’s the game about ?

You start off in the late 1950s, as one of 5 space agencies and the aim is to get a manned base on Mars. It’s fairly open ended, although you want to get to the milestones along the way quicker. Cos it’s a game and you want to win, having fun along the way. The agencies involved are USA, Russia, ESA, China and Japan, although you can customise one of those to your liking with boosts and handicaps. My agency is the Dragon Space agency.

You start with sounding rockets and then move on to bigger and bigger things. It feels like it follows other games like the Buzz Aldrin game but it has its own very easy and simple gaming loop. Every spacecraft has an upper stage and booster below and each need to be beefy enough for the job in hand.

This was the first attempt at going to the Moon. The rockets have scaled up a bit since the sounding rocket. Sadly despite the great conditions, this one was also my first rocket to go boom (screenshot above). RIP Computer Astronauts.

One more thing about this game, it’s also teaching the resource management. You have Science, Money and Support as the aspects that let you advance faster. Science leads to newer and better facilities, missions and rockets. You need Money to build the rocket. And increased Support leads to more monthly funding, although you can’t rely on the monthly funding alone.

One thing that the original XCom game and others taught me was that if you spend all the money early on frivolous items, you have to wait longer to do more fun things and waiting is no fun. So my people were a couple of years behind history in getting people on the Moon.

But they made it in the end. One curiosity …

I wonder if the licensing fell through there. As Japan, I’m seeing familiar rocket names appear like Atlas, Titan, Delta. Ariane is available for ESA and I suspect China and Russia have their own distinctive names. That’s something for a later run. There is no Wyvern Heavy by the way and the space shuttle has a different set up.

If you’d like to watch more, what sold me on the game was Aavak’s livestream which he’s uploaded to his second channel (playlist link). He’s a lovely chilled out guy to watch with a very relaxing voice too. Nice fella. Beware, watching those videos may lead to buying of game.

But yeah ! Highly enjoying that one, learning its systems, going through the missions, figuring out optimal play. I’ll definitely be back for further runs because it’s one of those where you can play in a more relaxed style and those fit well with me when my arms aren’t happy.

It’s one that should be a cracker educationally as well for :

The resource management aspects I mentioned before. A close resemblance to historical space programmes. Easy to figure out gameplay loops. A wealth of Spacepedia information that I haven’t looked through properly yet. And it looks nice too.

The same publisher also has a Bush Flight Simulator game coming which I’m going to keep a very close eye on. There’s actually a few really promising looking games coming. Per Aspera will follow on from Mars Horizon by setting you as an AI building the first colony on Mars. Flight of Nova is an aerospace flight sim and there are a couple more I have my eyes on.

Actually feeling a little better now that I’ve done a bit of typing ! Hope you all have a great day, stay safe, be well.

Round the world, round the galaxy ?

by Sleepypete

November 8, 2020

8:37 pm

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futuristic, games, internet spaceship, mental health, picture, sailing, stayathome

Hello everyone,

Me stuff first … I think I’m in one of those slumps at the moment. You know, where you think you should be doing things but the things end up not happening and then you get more disappointed in yourself due to not doing the things and it becomes a self reinforcing issue.

My psychology tends to be like that. I’ll enjoy the times when I’m flying but people with this issue can’t really control when they’re in the slump and it’s really tough to get yourself out of said slump.

Don’t worry about me too much though. I’ve got a good bunch of people around who I can natter to. I’ve got a good focus of things to aim on at work. Having focus is good. It gives you a steer and a direction to go in when your mind thinks you should be doing Things but doesn’t think much of the options on hand. The thing with work is that you’ll usually have a series of things that you absolutely must get done, which leads to that focus.

Yep. Still working. UK has gone into lockdown again but the circumstances for me and my team haven’t really changed. We’ve been working from home, taking advantage of remote working connectivity and skype to stay in touch and keep things rattling along. That’s been happening since the original lockdown in March. The only thing that has changed is that we won’t be doing an away trip this month. The activity is still happening but less of us are going due to the lockdown.

Talking of going places …

It was the start of the Vendee Globe round the world single handed yacht race today. I’ve been looking forward to this since the end of the last one.

That’s Sam Davies of Initiative Coeur waving farewell. The next time we’ll see them will be in about 2.5 months. May they have fair winds and swift, safe sailing.

This is one of those ultimate sporting events. Yep, there’s a lot of technology involved that makes the boats fast but the sailors are all at the mercy of the weather and random objects in the water. Technology like foils to lift the boats out of the water (makes them go FAST) helps but it’s the better sailors who will go out in front. And then there’s no small amount of luck too with the weather and those objects in the water. I follow the Brits especially closely and the site I’ll be following the race on is Alex Thomson’s site (linky).

It’s early days so far and apart from one, they’re all within 23nm of each other. Hopefully that lasts for as long as possible. I’m sure we’ll get an exciting race.

Looking forwards to it.

Part of that slump has involved the internet spaceships as well. I really don’t like the combat in the game and definitely didn’t enjoy the conflict zone community goals. I nearly did a bit more mining but was finding other things to do that were more enjoyable. Like …

That’s Cloudpunk, a game with a very Bladerunner-esque vibe where you play a delivery driver in a futuristic city. There’s an exaggerated pixelated look to the graphics which I think works nicely.

The soundtrack is excellent too. It’s had me chair dancing a couple of times.

And there is a dog AI. I definitely enjoyed my first little session in the game last night. However …

New ship ! And a new mission. She’s the Searching for Dragons, callsign K080LD and her mission is to circumnavigate the galaxy.

There was a bit of preparation work to do first though, including visits to a couple of engineer bases.

Trying out the new paint job there. Looks good. This is a free gift to everyone who owned the Horizons expansion that enabled planetary landings, the expansion has been rolled back into the main game in preparation for the next one coming early next year. It’s an interesting move. I like it, it’s a nice gesture plus it collapses the code base down to one variant which should make for easier and more reliable coding. Or less bugs for us players.

My engineer sense getting the better of me there. One fun thing of the game is looking at the detail aspects. How are the ships put together to make them work as spaceships. So on the Anaconda above, there’s a command area up top, weapons below and it looks like big box shaped areas which will be where the cargo would go. I’m always curious about the landing gear too and how people are expected to embark and disembark. I’ll have a closer look at that at some point when I find interesting planets to land on.

Or you lighten the ship up, put in the big hyperdrive and zoom off around the galaxy. That shot is in the livery I picked out a while ago. Looks good, hopefully there will be a good few screenshots coming in the next couple of months.

Last one coming in a bit … Other things I’m looking at currently are :

Advent stuff – I missed the boat with the marshmallow advent calendar (all sold out) but I have a list of games to talk about with the Advent things. There are many games on the list. I will need to play some of them to get screenshots. I know, tragic.

More upgrades – I’ll probably be upgrading to a nVidia 3070 based card when stocks become available and the price gouging relents. (They’ve gone up 10%+ since announcement). Or I wait for the rumoured but not announced 3060 card. Either one will be a massive upgrade on my 1060 card. I won’t be waiting for the AMD graphics cards.

And house stuff that I should be doing.

Last picture for tonight. That was stopping off at the Iris Nebula Visitor Centre. Found base, not found nebula. Yet.

It was good being back in the game. I dropped The Outer Worlds due to being bored with the story and the gameplay. Star Trek Online has been scaled back to me just playing the episodes occasionally. I’m thinking about going back into Final Fantasy XIV, I need to see how my arms decide to behave.

I am still having to limit things though. I was feeling tightness in my arm earlier which I need to monitor.

Probably need to add mattress to that House List. And a chair ! Mine is getting old and rocks more than it should in angles that it shouldn’t.

Oh well. Getting old, like me. Birthday soon !

And on that note, goodnight everyone, stay safe, be well.

Felt like starships

by Sleepypete

October 26, 2020

7:46 pm

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games, internet spaceship, star trek

Hello everyone,

Been back among those stars again. I had more thoughts too but first … will this be the thumbnail !

Game screenshot. A spaceship with a tubular main hull is coming towards the camera. It has a pair of engines on outriggers at the back. In the background is a small bright white star with two cones emerging. — Tiamat’s Chariot at a White Dwarf star

The pondering is because the thumbnail system seems to have a few Interesting Quirk things to it. Last time, it showed the Star Trek Online pic as the thumbnail, instead of it being the first pic. But I think that was down to the first two not coming out of my Google Photo bank properly. I wonder …

Game screenshot. The Imperial Cutter starship from before is landed on a pad. It has a copper hull and is catching the light from spotlights at the corners of the pad. — Landing at Black Hide

Nope. Didn’t work that time. I added in another widget that lets me choose pictures from that Google Photo Bank without intermediary steps. Looks like it might need more work.

I need to add in a lists widget too so that I can copy over the lists from Blog Mk 1. And I need to tidy up all of the extra things added in with the import. Later 🙂

There may also have been Star Trek happening. I left it last time with the Sylvia Tilly … Since then there’s been the Amna Patel :

Game screenshot. A Star Trek ship is coming towards the camera to exit off the right side of the screen. It has an elongated triangular main hull with 4 warp nacelles at the back.

Watchers of Voyager may recognise that as a Prometheus class ship. The name comes from one of the earlier episodes of Star Trek Online, Amna Patel appears in (spoiler deleted). The latest ship is the Drake :

Game Screenshot from Star Trek Online. A small but powerful looking ship with 4 engines has a large starbase behind it.

Looks a bit ugly doesn’t it … Should be pretty punchy though. This one arrived yesterday and because I’m having to heavily ration my game time at the moment, not much happened with this one.

What’s happening outside of the games ? Bit of catching up with series like Away, The Witcher. Actually watched Avengers Endgame again tonight, it’s just finishing up at the moment. A suitable conclusion to that particular saga.

Plus I’m making my way through Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds as well. That future universe has spaceships too and the biggest ones belonging to humans are the lighthuggers, starships that cross the interstellar gaps at near light speed (faster than light isn’t something they do in that universe). Objectively, it takes years but subjectively, only weeks or months. Hopefully that’s the right way round for the way that works.

Anyway, the lighthuggers feel like they’d look like massively scaled up versions of the Imperial Cutter … a cylinder, tapering at the ends, with a pair of engines mounted on spars to each side of the hull.

Game Screenshot - Elite Dangerous. The Imperial Cutter starship is on the landing pad. We are viewing it from the port side. The ship has a long mostly circular fuselage with two engines aft, extending from the hull to the sides on outriggers. The ship is in the copper colouration and is catching the light from pad spotlights.

There we go from another angle. It’s a pretty ship. The lighthuggers would be scaled up considerably from there. The Elite Imperial Cutter is a chunky 192.6m long. The lighthuggers would vary in size but would typically be 3-4km long, with space for crew, weapons, cargo, parasitic craft (bigger than the Cutter) and room for all sorts of other shenanigans in there too. Way too big for landing on planets like the Elite ships.

One random thought that got in though would be … if I were actually living in these science fiction universes, what would I be doing ?

If it were Elite, I’d follow the player path and start in the cheap loaned ship before making my way up the scale. I’d be living by my wits, travelling from place to place, following the trade and missions. I’d be chief engineer, pilot, captain, CEO. Unless someone came along who would share that captain, CEO role.

It feels kinda like it might if I switched to living on a Dutch Barge here, although I don’t think going from place to place, trading out of a Barge is particularly viable economically any more. Perhaps you might get some niche out of videoing trips and monetising that … but I’m not convinced that would gain a significant enough audience.

In the Alastair Reynolds universe, I’d probably end up as a starship mechanic. I’d be quite happy with that. Same for Elite too, it’d be good working on the various spaceships out there.

Star Trek ? Probably an engineer on a starship again.

One difference would be the connectivity. We benefit hugely in our time from the internet, although even that is perhaps in the last 10, maybe 12 years or so. The internet in its current shape has been around for decades now but the big change for me has been the increase in video and streaming media. Youtube took a while to take off, the oldest subscriptions I tend to see on Twitch go back about a little over 6 years. Netflix didn’t start streaming until maybe 2007.

Things have changed a fair bit. The internet model works for our planet, as lightspeed delay isn’t a factor. But when you have an interstellar civilisation, or even interplanetary, that light speed delay would cut into the immediacy of communications. If the Netflix server were on Earth and you were on Mars, it would be between 3 and 22 minutes for the “I want to watch The Witcher!” command to be received and the same time for the signal to come back, depending on whether Earth and Mars are on the same or different sides of the Sun. Or it would be years for a lightspeed message to go between stars.

Maybe that pilot, chief engineer, captain, CEO set of roles would expand to become interstellar postman.

You’d file a flight plan to say that you’re going through a sequence of interstellar jumps and they’d load you up with the mail, to be sent on at each jump.

Might well work too ! Back to an interstellar equivalent of the Stagecoaches.

On that note, time to dive into book again after hitting publish and doing the necessary on the various sites. (Actually – time to dip into Star Trek Online to do today’s daily mission !)