I like exploring in computer games, music, cricket, drawing and pizza and sharing those with people. Oh and I also inherited the name Sleepydwagonman too ! The site is a work in progress at the moment but it's getting there, features will come in over time !
We spent Friday last week at the top of the world. Well, nearly 😀 The northernmost point of this cruise is Alta, at 69 degrees 58 minutes North. It’s quite far North. Sadly not much in the way of Northern Lights for most of us (too cloudy) but the group that went out and about did catch some good lights. There will be more about that in a later post …
More about that little one later. Actually, let’s rewind a bit further and give another special mention to photographer Geraldine, who is part of the expedition crew. I mentioned Orcas earlier, let’s see if this Facebook Post Linky works … Hopefully that’ll take you to a page with pictures of whales on.
It was good seeing the pod of Orca swimming alongside us for a little while. I was able to catch sight of them but wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to get the camera up in time for a picture. However, there should be plenty behind that link. Plus the MS Maud page has more of the various pictures from this fortnight’s cruise. Go take a peek :-D.
Norway has waters that are warmed up by the same Gulf Stream that keeps Britain warm, so the Orca and other whales like to visit.
(Note – there’s a very sleepy vibe going on in the Explorer Lounge at the moment …)
So – Alta !
Alta grew into a city a few years ago, which also meant they needed a bigger church too. Cue the Northern Lights Cathedral of the picture. Good place, it also serves as a community centre as well.
The textured sides that you might be able to make out in that picture are actually titanium plates, which are slotted together to provide the shell of the building. They reflect the mood of the environment around the building. For our visit … that meant grey and cloudy :-D. Oh well, no Northern Lights for the town that day. But there are several microclimates around Alta, so the group that went out and about hunting for clear skies were given a treat.
However, we had a treat of a different kind … With the explorer group going for a building of an impromptu snow person. Norway doesn’t seem to go in for building snow people. Perhaps it’s because the trolls don’t like the snow people and bop them all on the head while everyone is sleeping. It’s another curious difference between Norway and the UK.
There we go. Almost complete. I’ve been staying quite wary of my back and legs, so I was just doing the spectating thing and taking pictures. (it’s a bit cold, I’ve been needing to defrost a lot and conditions were treacherous)
And there we go ! The members of the expedition crew (not searching for Northern Lights) proudly presenting their new snow person. I think it might be still there too (this was from Fri 17th) and also gained a friend.
As I type though, I’m really struggling to stay awake 😀 (It’s a very quiet, chill, sleepy vibe up here in the Explorer lounge) So it’s time for me to retreat to the cabin after taking just one more picture of a lovely sunset.
(I’m cheating this was Monday 20th). Later everyone, have a wonderful rest of the day.
I know I’m slipping on the posting lately again but this could be one of the last posts …. from the UK ! More on that later.
Bags packed, time to be on the road again
Yep. The wanderlust has hit. It kinda started with the space trucking in Elite, being guided by either the trades in the big ship …
To the moon !
It’s interesting going to new places and seeing new things. Everywhere is different and it has its own charm. Even Middlesborough. Been there. Escaped and survived. (It’s ok, it’s just one of those towns without enough investment to make it a more tourist trap location like Warwick). Where did the Middlesborough reference come from ? That was weird, sorry people who live there and love their town.
But yeah, I did enjoy the traveling aspect of Elite. Trading was a good guide there, to go from port to port sampling the scenery and bringing the goods to those who need them. A few years ago, I was seriously thinking about checking out work as a person working in a Harbourmaster Office. They’re the people who run the access to ports and marinas and now the world is opening up again, there will be an increasing amount of traffic coming by sea to and from those ports. So, new ships, new crews, new cargos coming and going.
That’s kinda fascinating. I was wondering if I’d be able to visit some of the ships too, as either a formal type inspection or just being welcoming. Getting a reputation for being friendly and welcoming brings the people back for more later.
No smuggling though. Cos smuggling is bad. Wonder what’ll be a good opportunity for going across the border to Cardiff again.
I haven’t been playing Elite much lately though, I’ve had the attention drawn more by virtual trucks instead and quietly become addicted to European Truck Simulator 2.
Tractor tractoring truck tractor
ETS2 is built around you doing contracts and taking cargo ferrying jobs. So you’re going from place to place on the compressed map of Europe, visiting the cities as you’re delivering items like the digger in the picture. The current Steam sale means that I acquired the expansions that make the map stretch to pretty much all of Europe now (except Spain because not much discount yet) and there are some lovely sights along the way. It is game-ified though, so lots of time and distance compression. Traveling 1600 miles from Zurich to Istanbul took 2 and a half hours real time. Going into and out of places like London is kinda blink and you miss it.
But (oh no cliche time) it’s also about the journey. There are 81 achievements for the game, I have 14 so far and I’m pretty sure it’s one of those games where I’m going to try for the completing the achievements. I’ve been enjoying (and being a bit addicted to) the chilled out journeying to all the places. After visiting virtual Istanbul, I’m going up the coast to hunt another of those achievements, finding places I never knew existed.
Crewing on a ship doing the trades would be a curious proposition. Ships are a bit slow though, you’d go from place to place but it takes a good while in between. Same for barges. Canals used to be the arteries of trade in the 18th and 19th centuries before the internal combustion engine was a thing … but they’ve been supplanted by the ease and speed of trucks now.
So … abandon ship and become a truck driver ? Maybe not. It’d be good to satisfy the wanderlust but trucks still go on the road which means having to interact with other drivers. And ETS2 is very good at simulating the limitations that trucks have. I’ve never towed a real trailer before, so that was an education … And the power to weight is vastly different. It takes a while for 20 tonnes of truck to get up to speed.
Give trucks (and buses!) more space ! It’s a tough job in the cabin there. We car people need to make it easy for them.
About those bags though … I occasionally watch the reality TV things like Deadliest Catch (Bering Sea conditions would eat me alive) and Ice Road Truckers but some that really caught my eye were shows like Ice Pilots which had small planes keeping the trade and travel going in the frozen areas of Canada or Alaska.
Am leaving, on a prop plane …
Must listen to that song again, it’s a great song.
Yep. Not Alaska (bit cold there). It’ll be Australia for me. The language is just about right, I reckon I could fit in pretty easily down there. Just gotta wear the hats, adopt the accent and be prepared for a lot of Pom jokes. Do they drive on the correct side of the road ? Must add Outback Truckers to that reality show catch up thing.
Anyway, the picture is from Microsoft Flight Simulator and it’ll be a great initial training aid for …
BECOMING AN AUSSIE OUTBACK BUSH PILOT !
Talk about getting out there, going from trade to trade, passenger flight to destination and seeing that wonderful country from the air. I haven’t done much in Flight Sim so far (fired it up yesterday, was too tired to do much with it though …) but flying is a really enjoyable sensation.
Feel that breeze
Space sims have it easy, 6 axis control makes landing trivial. Atmospheric flight though, needs the wings to interact with the air in order to make the lift. So unless it’s a special aircraft like the Harrier which overcomes gravity by brute force, the aircraft needs to be going forwards to make the lift to make it not drop from the sky.
It’s a special, interesting kind of challenge which I want to relearn again. I used to play flight sims a good while ago, the last good one was Falcon 4.0 from the mid 2000s.
And as an outback bush pilot, you get to go from place to place, seeing new things, meeting new people and experiencing what’s out there from the most spectacular viewpoint.
Should be fun.
Fly safe everyone !
(Post April 1st addendum – this is of course, an April 1st post and you should always be wary of what you read on this day. However … most of this is true ! Except for the emigrating to Australia to be a bush pilot.)
Has it been a week again since last time ? Time’s flying by at the moment isn’t it …
I’ve actually been out amongst people, although it was just a run into the centre of Bristol after a necessary trip to do some recycling. (Too many plastic bottles) A Lego McLaren nearly came back with me … although at £160, it feels a bit pricey for me. That’s one thing about watching the build videos, you get an impression of what’s in the box before laying out the money. It has some smart bits in there for the suspension but … I think it’s a hype kit more than a wow kit to be honest. I also had my eye on the Globe but at £175, that’s a bit rich for me too.
Thumbnail for post ?
Someone mention pizza ?
There’s been a 3 types of Pokemon meme going round at the moment which people have been borrowing and adopting and that creativity part of my brain sparked into making the picture above. It’s felt good that those creativity ideas have been coming back in and I’ve mostly had the physical stuff to make them happen. 2 things there :
I think my creativity was being heavily damped down by the Work Stuff that was going on last year. It was a rough year, despite getting stuff done. Or perhaps we were getting stuff done despite the new guy who came in. That’s in the past now though, the new role has been building into something that should also be getting Stuff done while being enjoyable. But I won’t talk about that too much here.
I’ve been having physical issues again … It’s part shoulder, part arm plus some digestion issues in there as well. Nom trouble aside, the physical issues have been limiting game time at the same time as that more active creativity side wants to do gaming. I think I’m finding somewhat of a balance with it and using a controller for driving games will help. I managed to do a fair bit of Elite flying again since Thursday … Let’s see :
Behold the Herald
Thanks to lucrative trading opportunities in Elite, I had just about enough to cover the acquisition of one of the big Fleet Carriers. These aren’t ships you fly about in direct control like the rest of the ships, they’re more like small mobile starbases. The flat section disappearing off to the right has the landing bays. It has 8 big enough to accept the big Tiamat’s Chariot, 4 medium sized and 4 small. One of the opportunities with these ships is to make it far quicker to haul the commodities needed for the community goals. So instead of making 5-6 jumps to go from place to place (maybe 30 minutes round trip), I could park it near a station and just have about 5 minutes round trip instead if that. They’re a pretty powerful tool but they cost 5billion credits to buy and have a steady upkeep.
Tiamat arriving
That’s Tiamat’s Chariot heading into the Herald of Bakunawa (that’s the name of the carrier). Where did the name come from ? I figured it had to be something suitably epic and I wanted the dragon theme to continue as well, so I went to a name list for mythical dragons. The name Bakunawa stood out (wiki link). Bakunawa is a Philippine Dragon God, believed to be responsible for eclipses. I.e. a dragon god that eats the Moon. Perfect. And Herald seemed right because the fleet carriers mostly spend their time hovering in orbit around moons.
A good few sessions in Elite over the past few days. It has massive flaws and I keep spotting more (like terrain errors around an engineer base and shadow errors) but it’s been good to have there as a chill out space trucking game. It does help that Tiamat’s Chariot is an after end game level ship that combines massive cargo capacity with defences and armament that can take on nearly all comers. (I run if a fighter gets involved).
Ermm …
When you see something like that coming out of an inkjet printer, it’s usually followed by an “oh bugger” because it’s the main sign that you haven’t been using it enough, the jets have clogged up and that’s usually terminal for the printer. What makes it worse is if the built in cleaning processes kick out a test page which has pretty much nothing on it. However …
I think he’s eyeing up that book
Ahhh the relief that I hadn’t killed a printer that’s just 6 months old :-D. The book on the right is the next book. It’s the second of three in the Dahak sequence, which starts with Mutineer’s Moon where Colin the astronaut finding himself in the middle of a 51,000 year mutiny where the mutineers have been exiled to Earth from a starship that’s actually Earth’s Moon. Oh and the ship has become sentient over that time as well.
Armageddon Inheritance starts up straight after Mutineer’s Moon and covers the other threat … There’s an apocalyptic sized battle fleet that circles the galaxy wiping out all intelligent life in its path and it’s almost back to Earth. And so Colin, Dahak the Moonship and the collective resources of Earth have to try and survive in the face of that threat. There’s some epic stuff in the book, like the aliens getting so fed up with how resilient Earth’s defenders are that they essentially give up on conquest and just throw one of Jupiter’s Moons at the planet.
I thought it was good enough for a re-read. That Moon thing was a big a OMGWOW book moment as the Project Orion starship reveal in another book. That’s not the lander type ship which is the current Orion starship. It’s the cruiser propelled by nuclear bombs. Super cool concept, achievable (maybe) with current technology, incredibly nuts. Here’s the wiki page. Hell of a concept.
Anything else ? I enjoyed a little more Forza. I have a Pikachu Lexus in that game now and I was enjoying the dirt racing far more than I thought I would. I was even getting smooth and fast race driving going on my flawed (50% travel gives 100% output) controller.
Time for book now though. I try not to game too late in the evening nowadays … although Skyrim mod testing happened yesterday. I’ll be restarting my game again there as the last character was saddled with mods that aren’t completed and have a fair few issues. So I’ll reset with the defeat mod replaced by another that ties into a mod called Caged Followers. It’s a curious one, if your party is defeated then instead of Game Over, stuff happens to your character like being ransomed for money or becoming a prisoner of vampires. With Caged Followers, your companion gets taken off somewhere and you have to rescue them. That’s going to be an excellent excuse for exploring the Skyrim world more …
Must go back to Horizon Zero Dawn, finish off the Car Mechanic Simulator achievements and enjoy the other games too. They’re a good chill out and let me block out the world for a little while. Like books !
I thought I’d been back to posting more ! Oh well. Been a bit distracted by seeing what the new graphics card can do and going back to Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Prague has got prettier …
Prague by day
I’ve never been to Prague so I don’t know how real the map of the city we have in game is or how it compares to the real thing but … the architecture they show off in the game is super pretty. The police get a bit of a drubbing in comparison but they’re a hostage to the increasing rhetoric the game has about prejudice against augmented people.
I’ve taken the opportunity with the new graphics card to turn the pretty options up to maximum (with two exceptions …) So with the not long ago rained level of water on the tarmac, there are all sorts of amazing reflection and even better lighting.
5 Ravers raving ?
This is one of the side quests where you’re investigating a drug that kills augmented people. Side quests in these games usually involve getting loot and experience which makes your character more powerful in the long run. I’m playing a permadeath run where if my character dies, it tags the save game file so that it can’t be opened again. I’ll get all but 1 remaining achievement for the main game in this run, the bank robbery mission lets you save your boss later but you can’t do that and the mission for the achievement I’m missing.
It’s always good being back in these games. Instead of being all guns blazing, you can tackle the game in super stealth mode, slipping through unnoticed and leaving no trace. (Which gets you bonus experience as well). It’s possible to go all the way through the game without firing a shot, although it’s much easier to just knock people out so they don’t raise the alarm while you’re grabbing their stuff.
There are issues though … I had a false start where the game was crashing quickly when I had all of the graphics turned up to maximum. Here goes – search engine optimisation bit :
If Deus Ex Mankind Divided is crashing your graphics card driver, turn off the MSAA and VSync. The MSAA is an Anti-aliasing technique that smooths out any jagged lines and VSync stops the image tearing as you move around. Since turning those off, I’ve only had one crash to desktop during this playthrough, which I’ll put down to the game being slightly less robust than the first Adam Jensen game.
In terms of what’ll come next after Deus Ex Mankind Divided, I have a couple of options.
It’s highly likely to be Mass Effect Andromeda, as I like Sara Ryder as a character and it’ll let me push those graphics options up to maximum as well. This one can be a really pretty game although there is literally too much you need to do in a single playthrough.
The Outer Worlds is another one that has more to give than I’ve seen before … I bounced off this game though without finishing it. Got bored, didn’t like the characters except for Parvati.
Control is a more recent one that has a lot of new graphics techniques that have come to the new cards. But … I look at it and then back to Deus Ex MD and the older game is just a far pretty game compared to Control’s drab environments and repeated enemies. Yep, Control has some incredibly daft full motion video flavour stuff around its story but … while I own it courtesy of Humblebundle (didn’t buy it, just did the old sub), I have no interest in playing it.
Engines to maximum
This was me checking out the Tartarus black hole and having the happy sight that black holes, were indeed not broken in the latest expansion to the game. I’d visited another one and didn’t have all the lovely lensing that you see in the picture there, where the extreme gravity bends the light in wonderful and weird ways. You don’t get the full splendour of it from the static shot, when you’re moving around the black holes you get the stars in the background dancing around.
I’m still on and off in Elite. It’s a sad case where the game is perfectly playable now, although frame rates are really bad when you get close to the surface. The performance is far better since my new card arrived but it’s the 5th best nVidia card you can buy right now. It should be good. However I know that the performance will drop off again when I get back to the populated areas … as that’s what people have been reporting.
It’s gone to a “we’re not angry, we’re just incredibly disappointed”. The latest attempt at a fix came out on Thursday and it apparently brought a bunch of fixes with the logic that runs missions and other things in the game but … it’s done nothing to fix the graphical bugs. Those are the ones that cause the really bad frame rates that make it dangerous to fly low level, the ones that cause massive pop in of terrain* and the one that really frustrates me, the massive change in lighting as you near the surface of planets which turns Pretty And Interesting Screenshot into either bleached out white or everything’s lost in the dark.
*Terrain popup is where you’re flying towards a mountain range or a cliff and what you see of the ground keeps rising in front of you. It’s where you thought you were heading just above the crest of a cliff but instead, more ground pops up and you’re heading for the cliff.
Camping at Abeonas Blessing
It’s still a pretty game though and the Kamd site is giving me some tasty waypoints to check out, although not all of those are actually translating to the features still being available to look at in the game. I’m also using my own rules to find nice places to stop at. I’ll be looking for ringed gas giants with moons orbiting them that you can land on. Planets you can land on with thin atmospheres are a particular favourite for stopping at. But it’s mostly a question of whether I can set up a pretty screenshot with something interesting to look at.
Oh and they’re going on to Instagram as well now. The world needs more pretty pictures to look at.
I am suffering a little though … My dodgy right arm has been complaining again both from the shoulder end and the wrist is giving me the messages as well on a “be careful” level rather than the actual real pain level. It’s one of those cases where the pain signals I get from it are ignorable without painkiller support but it’s a warning that if I keep going with the piloting and the spy games, I’ll have trouble.
You know what that means …. less game more book !
I think that’s enough for today.
PC upgrades are working nicely – temperatures are well under control, the graphics are pretty and I’ve been enjoying visiting an old friend again.
Shop !
Yep. Visited Entity again. She isn’t in the game very much, with her appearance being limited to a shop in a location you only travel through once. I adore the character though. She doesn’t have much to say but she’s fun and very realistic in what her situation is. She’s in the ghetto because she couldn’t do her old job any more and she knows that it could either be running the shop or being in a brothel. It gives her a flirty attitude which also reflects the “need money by any means in order to live” situation.
I managed to get an opportunity buy in at lunchtime today … There I was, finished with the usual Twit/book scan and there’s a little bit of time left before switching the work brain back on again. And one of the vendors has a 3060Ti card for £470. They didn’t last long, disappearing within about 10 minutes … but I’ve got one coming tomorrow. £470 is more than double what I thought was an acceptable price for a graphics card 2 years ago but things have changed there. I’m hoping for a good few years out of this one.
Don’t panic !
The picture is from someone else but the Pocket Dragons copyright has always belonged to Real Musgrave and co so that’s who I always credit when I nab a Pocket Dragon picture.
Anyway … upgrades have happened today in preparation for the graphics card arriving. I’ve had a couple of components for a good long while but have held off on fitting them for a few reasons. I’d always been able to get by on hard disc space with the 1.5TB drive that was in there before. It’s split 1TB for a data drive that has my games and more on it and 500GB for what got used for video creation. The new drive that’s gone in is a 3TB drive, so I’ll be able to fit in more than double the space for the games drive.
This is kinda important when being able to go for the newer, flashier games because they take up a huge amount more space … I’ve had to manage how much they take up by uninstalling a few as I go for different games. One I’ve had my eye on for a while is Horizon Zero Dawn, a game set in a future with a mix of bows and arrows and machine animals. It’s a fantastic game … and Meltdown hasn’t had the graphical power to handle it until the 3060Ti comes. But it also takes up 100GB on the hard disc which is a lot.
Meltdown is the name of the PC by the way, after it was being rather too hot when it was built on what felt like the hottest day of 2019. And it was getting pretty toasty … This was the situation in February this year when it had been running science sums for a while.
Toasty
That was getting a bit too warm and I was getting concerned enough to stop the machine running the Asteroids at Home software which for some reason I haven’t figured out, makes the processor 10 degrees C hotter than the other science sums. 88 degrees C is getting close to the thermal limits and it’s one reason why I stop the machine doing sums over the summer. I don’t need that kind of heat in the room.
Anyway, that’s with the stock cooler that comes with the processor. How about an upgrade ?
What name now for Meltdown ?
The new cooler that’s gone in is a Coolermaster MA610P. It’s a hefty lump, almost too big for my case and it comes with a pair of fans blowing air through it. 33 degrees C for an idle temperature is really good. It’s around 20-25 degrees cooler than the stock cooler was on idle. I haven’t worked the system hard much yet. Not feeling like gaming this evening so I’m watching FuzzyFreaks play Deathloop (Twitch Link stream’s finishing now though). Back to reading after I publish this post. I did do a quick test though :
What do you call something that ain’t melting ?
I have to say here that the AMD processor isn’t as clever with showing temperatures as the Intel processors. I’m currently on a chip that has 2 compute units, each with 3 cores within that can run 2 threads each. Whereas the Intel processors show you the temperature on each core, the AMD processor only shows one temperature for the whole chip. It’s not a big difference but the Intel way would tell you if one part of the chip was running hotter than the rest, which would tell you perhaps if the thermal paste was missing. (Thermal paste connects the chip to the cooler)
That 52 degrees C temperature is from Climateprediction’s set of sums. They have a nice long deadline on their sums, the rest of the sums people only give a week or two to get results back, so when you download the work you’re kind of obliged to send it back. That temperature will probably go up to 60 ish with Asteroids at Home. But that’s a test for another day.
One thing the graphics card change will do is let me turn the graphics options up again … Shinier pictures !
Ride the light
There we go. Searching for Pixels, visiting a nebula with a neutron star at the centre. Another stop on the way to the Core regions where the stars like to come out to play.
Stopping at Sacaqawae
Nice random assignment of landing pad there with the 07. That’s become text code for a salute around the internet. Picture the o as someone’s head the the 7 being an arm bent in salute. People like the symbology so if I get given pad o7, I’ll usually take a screenshot opportunity. This is one of the planetary bases between our bit of space and the Colonia region, which is 21,000 light years away and a bit West of the galactic core.
No idea what’s happening there!
As the caption says, I have no idea what’s going on here :-). I think it might well be another of the lighting bugs that are still in the game. One of those times where you see something odd so you stop and take a picture.
Is there tea over there ?
This is where I stopped in this particular session. It wasn’t a main base but one of the additional settlements that have popped up with the Odyssey expansion. It’s good to see a bit more variation coming in. I think this was a Biological site with the buildings in the distance there being greenhouses. Perhaps they were growing tea for the local bases. Or coffee. Coffee is life.
I think that’s it for me for tonight, struggling to put the new cooler in, taking it out to connect the fans, putting it back in again has wiped me out. The thing gave me a scare because I dropped it but all seems good still. It’ll be good to be able to turn the graphics options up with the internet spaceships. I’ve been on a hybrid of medium and high settings, dialing it back from the Ultra that it was on before Odyssey. There will still be frame rate issues in places but the new card has around 4 times the parallel processing capacity of the last one and over double the memory. That means it can handle more complex environments and the parallel processing all goes towards creating the images.
It’s been a while since the last post ! I’ve had a couple of weeks away with work up in Scotland. Somewhere pretty :
No one prepared me for this
The usual rule applies with work related stuff, I don’t say what I work on here or what it’s about. Which also means being careful where the camera is allowed to point cos when it’s on the internet, there’s no control over it whatsoever. I’ve got a couple of pictures with features that would localise where I was to very little margin of error and from there, you just align it with the dates and you get what I was working on and who I work for.
Always have to be careful with that kind of thing because it can attract attention from people you don’t want attention from.
Suffice to say though, great bunch of people up there for the fortnight. Enjoyed it, got stuff done, learned new things. And it was incredibly sunny too ! We were really lucky to have such lovely benign conditions for our testing.
Oh ! I also injured my knee right at the start, twisting it as I was getting into my seat on the plane up. And then I did 80k steps on it over the fortnight. That’s down to an emergency buy of a knee support and being ultra careful not to aggravate it. I had visions of the knee snapping out sideways if I put too much power through it or if I landed on the leg the wrong way.
Almost better now though. It was good to be out and about though.
I did nearly post while I was out there, even going as far as copying over some Elite screenshots to the laptop. It was definitely a case of throwing everything into the daytime stuff though, not leaving much energy over for the evenings.
(Looks at last post) Erm, yep. Been travelling since that last post there …
Basking in starlight
It’s always curious seeing new things too. Like comparing what I have in the internet spaceship to what we have in reality. I have a pretty decent control thingy now in the X52 Pro. Could be better, could be worse. (It’s a bit too sensitive around the middle due to game settings I can’t influence). It’s things like I have full 6 axis control in the spaceship. That’s pitch, roll and yaw that rotate you around the 3 axes. And a throttle for forward and back plus an up, down, left and right thing for translating around the 3 axes. So 6 axis – 3 see you turning in place, 3 see you moving around. The spaceship doesn’t interact with its environment as atmospherics are minimal in the game, although you do have to fight gravity.
Think of a car though and you don’t go up or down and you’re constrained by where the wheels want to go. An aircraft has to keep moving forward to make lift or it falls out of the sky. Unless it’s a special one like the Harrier or F35 Lightning II that can do Vertical Landing. (Or helicopters). Sea side stuff saw me around boats, which have their own special way of interacting with the environment to make them move around.
I still want to do that thing where I move away from the house and on to a boat. Lots of work to do on the house before I can even contemplate that though.
That’s one thing about the away trip, it forced me out of what feels like it’s become a comfort zone into a far more active mode. And I enjoyed that, partly due to a sense that we were getting stuff done. I’ve gone right back into that comfort zone since coming back though and need to break out of it again. Cos, you know, running low on snacks.
Mint Choc ahoy !
The voyage of the Searching For Pixels continues, looking for the special sights around the galaxy to see if there’s been much change since the Odyssey expansion. That’s one of the ultra rare glowing green gas giants, with this one being the Viridian Dreams system. One sad thing about this picture is that as I was descending from orbit, the planet was a gorgeous sapphire blue. That would have made for an amazing contrast. Sadly though, when I got much closer to the ground, the Odyssey graphics took over and bleached out the planet. Oh well. It does still make a nice piccy though doesn’t it ?
I got to another one of these as well later, which I’ll pop into a future post. It’s actually where I am at the moment and there’s a few more screenies to come first.
Oh, one casualty of the fortnight is one of the hard discs in Meltdown. It’s the ancient 250GB conventional drive that’s been grimly hanging on for the last couple of years. I turned Meltdown back on when I came back on the middle Friday to have a surprise of “it’s been a while, no Windows yet?” and it’s checking the drive for errors. I guess it probably couldn’t handle that time of not spinning and when the time came to reactivate, it couldn’t spin up. It’s no real loss, I’d pulled the data off a while ago because I knew the drive was failing. I do need to transplant in a new 3GB drive though.
Pixels on approach
Looks pretty, this was checking out a planet in the Conflux area. It’s a few thousand light years out and there are some abandoned settlements here.
Anyone home ?
Now that we can walk around, I had to check. Nobody home this time and the doors were locked. I wonder if they left any tea or biscuits ?
I need to go shopping real soon. I’m running low on biscuits !
They put a ring on this one I think they liked it
I think that’s it for screenshots for tonight. I need to post more and catch up !
Good couple of weeks away. There’s a few completely unconnected things that were bubbling up in the mind too about things that have been happening in the world. Like seeing the racism feature around the cricket. There’s an increasing problem in the English game with racism. Yorkshire are getting the headlines at the moment but it’s wider than that. People of Colour aren’t getting the opportunities at the higher levels of the game that they used to. We need them in the game. Personally, I love cricket and want more people to enjoy the game, which means getting the opportunities to play it at the level they’ll enjoy and succeed at.
It’s fantastic to see Haseeb Hameed back in the England side and it’s always great to see Moeen Ali in the team. For Hameed, it’s part because he’s come through a trial in his game worse than pretty much anyone who plays the game. It’s great to see him beat that. It was even better to see his joy at being back around the England team. Like how Monty Panesar would celebrate when he got a wicket, it was pure absolute joy.
It’s great to see people like that enjoying the game. (I want to see Jofra Archer back in too, he’d be playing if not for his poorly elbow). But it’s becoming rarer now and a lot of that must be down to something filtering the players who make it to the higher levels. We had it in Lincolnshire where I played my earlier cricket. No one scouted our team. Ever, even when there was this young tearaway guy (me!) taking more wickets than anyone else in the team in just half a season, getting my name in the paper every week and contributing to a side that was winning most of the games and climbing up to second in our league. No scouting.
That’s not an axe being ground away by the way, I got a back injury that season too which restricted my bowling for the next year or so and then the shoulder injury came in a couple of years after that. The real axe to grind would be the university team. Performance in the bar was far more important there than performance in the nets.
I don’t want to be grinding axes though.
Good couple of weeks away. Great people. Good to be back and letting the leg heal up. Need to get out and about again and not just in the internet spaceship !
Immediate squirrel moment after realising that when one of the standy up legs fell off the keyboard, I put it back in the wrong way. It wobbled. It doesn’t wobble now that I’ve fixed that.
Hmm. Curious way to start ? Just a random squirrel moment. Keyboard’s doing fine actually. It’s a little stiffer than I got used to with the Steelseries keyboard but it’s been good since I got it. One big advantage is that whereas the Steelseries keyboard was essentially a closed unit, the ADX keyboard has unenclosed keyswitches so you could clean the dust out with an air blaster.
Outside of the work, I’ve been enjoying a few games … Elite is still a big one :
Set the controls for just around the sun
That was me setting off from the extreme Eastern Edge of the galaxy. I’ve set course for the south now, reaching the end of the white dotted line below.
Helm ! Follow the green course
The white dots are where I’ve been. It still includes an earlier trip to the Galactic Core and a couple of speed runs there. Those are the white lines to the centre of the map, plus another going off to the East a bit where I wanted to see some different things on the way back. My galactic circumnavigation course started by going to the West, diverting off a couple of times where the Kamd site told me there would be fun things to look at. It then goes North, following a spiral arm, while diverting off a couple of times to see more fun stuff. Up at the top is Galactic North and the systems Beagle Point and Salome’s Reach, which are the most northern stars that can be visited in the game. Off to the East is Magellan’s Point, the most Eastern star we can visit in the game. I had to divert around the end of the spiral arms to a point where there are enough stars to jump around. And then the green line shows where I’m needing to divert around another gap between spiral arms.
More pictures to come later and Yay ! Managed to figure out how to get ED Discovery to present this as a good looking map instead of the colour regions that it defaults to.
Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear
That was where I started off on Thursday, on a mad dash to fix something I’ve been missing for a little while.
The Nye’s Bow Tie System
This is one of the systems on the way, the Nye’s Bow Tie system, so named after a celebrity scientist who likes his bow ties. There are two close entry stars here that we see on the left. The yellow one is a normal main sequence star (Our star is a main sequence G class star) like our’s. The blue dot underneath with the streamers is a neutron star, a star that has exploded and collapsed into the smallest stellar object, but without the extra mass to collapse it further into becoming a black hole. We use these in game to jump longer distances, my jump record is now 304 light years in one hop. I used a Star Trek calculator to work that out (curiosity and geekiness) and apparently it is around Warp Factor 570 on the old The Original Series scale. (I don’t like the new scale, it doesn’t make sense to me).
But on we go again, I’ve kinda entered crazy travel mode in Elite now. I’ve been on this trip since November and want to do something else in game now, especially with the walk on planets expansion coming relatively soon.
Camping by the stars again
This is where I left things on Sunday, having remembered to give the buggy the neon red paint pack again :-D.
There has also been Motorsport Manager going, I’m closing in on winning the GT car championship which will be the point where I jump into the Endurance racing championship. It’s a great game, development stopped on it a few years ago and they’ve gone back to making mobile games. It’s a shame there hasn’t been a Motorsport Manager 2 on PC, although they did such a good job on this one that it is still an incredibly good game of its rather unique type. It’s my go to game for when I’m not feeling great and want a game I watch more than play.
XCom2 has been a fun one, although I think I’ve hit a point where the challenge is going out of that campaign. I haven’t hit the end stage main campaign enemies yet but I’ve eliminated all but one of the specials from the expansions. And those special characters are pretty silly, unless you know what to do and what not to do. Games like XCom tend to be a bit chess like, especially since the remakes came out. There are timers to speed you up on the missions but you need to apply a fair bit of patience, or your people get caught out and then bad things happen.
Mission : Destroy Base. Almost there !
The aim of this mission was to destroy the alien facility … I think we were mostly there already. Grenades are fun in this game, although you get moaned at for using them because it means less loot to carry away. The currently selected character is Katie Petersplays, another one named after a streamer I started watching about a month ago. Her specialism is mind powers.
The A Team
That’s the top team that will build into being the end of game team. I’ll do a full roll call when I finish the campaign but from left to right, we see :
Colonel Luperza, Spaceviking. This one is modelled on the lovely Margaret Krohn who is making the Ashes of Creation game as well as being one of the driving forces behind Roll4it and all round lovely person who I had the pleasure of meeting at Roll4itCon 2018. Oh ! Luperza’s job in this team is to run around and chop things up with a sword.
Colonel Crendor, Skittles in the bright yellow beanie and blue armour. Crendor’s job is to be the team medic. I’ve been enjoying watching his various Blood Bowl 2 games.
Colonel FTL, Dr Feelgood. This character is for Josh aka GamingFtl, who I also met at Roll4itCon 2018. Lovely fella, with a great voice that he can turn into Deep Evil at the drop of a hat or turn of a tache. Specialist FTL’s role is master hacker. If the enemies turn up with robots, he’ll hack them and turn them over to our side. The nickname this time was randomly applied by the game and it just felt perfect. Oh ! When he’s not being at the centre of chaos in tabletop games, Josh is helping create the game Clone Drone in the Danger Zone.
Colonel Freaks, aka Spiderqueen. FuzzyFreaks is our sniper on the team, a crack shot with the long rifle and the pistols. She’s also one of two streamers who I will watch whenever she’s on, whatever she’s playing. She’s a fun one and also lovely person (Another meeting at Roll4itCon 2018!)
Magus Petersplays, aka Shark. Katie is a pretty new addition to the team, joining as the psionics expert. I picked up on watching Katie as part of a Roll4it table top show and have been having huge fun watching her streams as well. (She’s west coast US though I think which means late late streams for us in the UK)
Major Cyberkitten, Truthseeker. Probably a Colonel in the game by now. Truthseeker is the grenadier, who will make the aliens pay if they cluster together at all by sending little packets of Boom over. Also has a very large gun. Cyberkitten has been a very good friend for a couple of decades now.
All the links there will take you to their Twitch channels (not CK!) which should point you to more of what they do. Cyberkitten’s link will take you to his blog, which is always good to catch up on. They’re all fantastic people, which is one reason Brain went towards customising a character for them. Check ’em out.
Yeah ! XCom 2 definitely still has that “Just one more mission” factor still. It’s a tough game, it can really punish when you leave a person exposed. It’s a long game though, so I won’t play it again for a while after this campaign.
You’re probably thinking – isn’t it a little weird to name the characters that way ? I find it actually makes me enjoy the game more. I’ve got a selection of name lists that I’ve acquired from places, like Mass Effect names, Yogscast names, Totalbiscuit’s old name list … It’s good to see the names pop up and the interpretations from other people. I’m also running a decent amount of mods in there for more customisation. I’d rather have Colonel Luperza or Colonel Tashnarr (another sword character) than the randomly generated names. There’s more of a connection to the characters, albeit you have to remember that it’s a completely artificial connection.
It’s been fun making up the character bio stories too and there has been a few chuckles when I’ve posted them. I’ll put out a full roll call at some point.
How have I been doing ? Weekend was rough honestly. I think my brain was steadily frying towards the end of last week and then on Saturday, I moved a few things around in the house which I think led directly to massive dust inhalation and trouble breathing. Saturday’s sleep was Real Bad. Sunday’s sleep was better.
I’m out and about tomorrow though, which should mean lots of fresh air hopefully. It’ll be good to head out again.
And I’d better hit post and sign off there !
Be well everyone, stay safe. Enjoy what you’re getting up to !
PS I just started my pre-publish check, saw the galaxy map picture again and thought “It would be a great idea to go up one spiral arm, cross over to the next and return on that one.” Hmm.
Didn’t really mean for it to be a week and a bit since the last post but there we are ! Oh well. A couple of things to mention from the last post … it was one of the more obvious April Fools posts but I had enjoyment typing it up and doing the simple (and not so simple) modification for the Dwagon in Black pictures. I did do the thing you’re not supposed to do and cut a watermark off one of the pictures … But that was someone claiming a copyright they don’t own. The Pocket Dragons are the copyright of Real Musgrave and their now defunct organisation (link to wiki), so someone else putting a watermark on them is the equivalent of the people stealing art for the new Non Fungible Token fad.
Credit your artists wherever you can, hopefully that means they get a little bit more back for their art which means they can afford the expenses that goes into making that art which means they make more art.
I’ve been off work this week, needed a break and some time away from it. I’ve been mostly in the games although I am enjoying watching the end of the Masters today. There’s also been lots of stream watching … a lot of it blurring into the early morning. Oops. Mind you, there’s been a bit of Mars Horizon addiction feeding into that too.
Will this be the thumbnail today ?
Yep, Elite’s happened as I steadily make my way around the galaxy. I’m in a curious spot at the moment where I need to make my way around a gap between the spiral arms of the galaxy …
Helm, Set the Satnav
That’s the path needed to get where I’m headed … You can’t bridge the gap between galactic arms by going direct because there aren’t enough stars there, so I started picking up the advanced planning at the left circle. The map above is from the Neutron Star Route Planner, which is giving lots of waypoints to go between. I’m mostly not going by that … although I have been using it as a guide. There’s another change coming as well because I’ll stop off at another carrier along the way. (The other tabs there are EDSM Elite Dangerous Star Map pages with my waypoints plus there is one for the Neutron Star Plotter, EDDB’s Stations page and my current location)
Putting a ring on it
Seeing the sights along the way too, although I kinda want to be doing other things in the game now instead of travelling. I’ve been doing that in the game for quite a while. Oh and there’s an expansion coming soon as well, I have very little interest in the Scifi Space Shooter aspects that have been brought in (more on that later) but it will be good to get out and walk on planets instead of just taking the buggy.
A quiet campsite
That’s where I left things yesterday. Still lots of travel to do, this is at the lower part of that path where it started going to the right.
Talking of satnav … I did a bit more out and about in the car on Thursday. The main objective was to do something about the empty plastic bottles that have been getting out of hand … I take these to recycling bins but the usual one got taken away. (There’s another one, sorted !) And I wanted to get hold of a magazine about remote control cars too, to learn a bit more about those before I look into actually shelling out cash on them. You know, figure out what you should put the money towards and learn what to avoid spending money on.
That’s a future likely hobby again. I could do with having a place to work on them (too much junk taking up space that I need to throw out !). This is kinda sparked off by the new Lego remote control buggy … Lego’s great but I don’t have much confidence in it staying together as a buggy going over jumps. It’s time to go for something a bit more sturdy there. But which one ?
One thing I did see on the roundabout route back was an empty skating park … Brain saw that and thought it would be ideal place to play with a remote control buggy at. Will have to do more research there.
It was good to be out and about in the car, learning more about it. Handles nice, although I did manage to wake up the traction control on there. (I was behaving … mostly) The mpgs were going up steadily too. I’ll look to be out and about more as the lockdowns steadily lift. One curious thing, it’s odd to be hearing the rattles of the bus in front (it had a badly malfunctioning turbo I think) as you’re going along at a little under 40mph.
To Mars !
Yep. Been playing Mars Horizon again. It’s still a wonderfully addictive simple game to play and I hugely enjoy it.
The colony grows
I had a little look at Planetbase again last week too. This is one of only a few games where I have all of the achievements. It’s a simple one to play, with external objects like power generators (solar panels and wind turbines), power batteries, water collectors and landing pads. Inside the base are botany farm domes for food, production domes, sleeping domes, canteens and exercise areas, labs and medical domes. It’s strength is also a weakness … if you can see the signs, then you can make the decision to stop the colony dying out due to lack of food or other crisis. But you can also have things happen like all your medics die because they were going outside in a solar flare storm which leads to radiation poisoning which doesn’t end well if you aren’t making the medicine because that’s coded out of the AI.
Yep. Game has issues … but I could understand them, play within those issues and still enjoy the game. Whereas something like Banished would suddenly murder your colony in a death spiral for which you would have no understanding of the cause. (May need to look at Banished again).
Colony builders are usually nice chilled out games and good for a bit of relaxation. I should get back to Per Aspera and Surviving Mars at some point, plus Aven Colony was on my wish list for a while, I now own that courtesy of Humble Bundle.
Talking of more travel …
It’s one small step for gaming …
I’ve been enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda again, in its early stages. It’s a fun game, probably goes on a bit too long though and I’m a little frustrated that it gates your progress. The reason for that is in spoiler space but the brief summary is that as you go on, the planets become more habitable and you can reach places you couldn’t before. Like quest markers that are literally 10 feet beyond where you can go. That’s frustrating …
But as said, it’s also a huge fun game and I like the various characters. Especially Sara Ryder. It’s a much more fun themed game than the earlier Mass Effect games, definitely not taking itself particularly seriously. The Mass Effect trilogy remake is coming later in the year. I have mixed feelings about that but might well get it anyway. I hugely enjoyed the world set up in the first two Mass Effect Games, I didn’t enjoy seeing that get torn down in Mass Effect 3.
Anyone seen my ship ?
Early days. Looking to enjoy the game more. The graphics can be better … I’ve been kinda holding off on playing the prettier games like this until I could put a graphics card upgrade in. Those are in incredibly short supply at the moment as demand has vastly outstripped supply. As in, you cannot get graphics cards of any kind at the moment outside of paying massively over the odds to people who lurk in the supplier websites and then resell for a profit.
Other games have included :
Stellaris – I’m nowhere near as much a fan of this as in the early days. Not sure. It’s got too many bugs in there now and I just find other games more satisfying and enjoyable to play.
Motorsport Manager – I’m closing in on winning Phase 2 of my Win Every Championship campaign. My manager is 61 years old though, I wonder if there is an upper enforced retirement age limit.
XCom 2 – a little … a couple of fights happened but I’ve been in Motorsport Manager and Mars Horizon more.
Music has happened with a Morcheeba album, an old All About Eve concert cd and Christine and the Queens appearing. I’ve been enjoying those.
But I can hear that dinner bell going off now so I think it’s time to (check what I’ve written for a change) hit post.
Good restful week off, there’s been a few headaches along the way (probably need more fresh air), did get out and about … missed the cheap leftover Easter Eggs, lots of games, lots of stream watching to enjoy.
Hope you all had a great week, stay safe, be well.
This last week seems to have gone in a bit of a blur ! Let’s see … the Daytona 24 hour IMSA motor race happened, that was a good one to have on in the background. The IMSA racing series is pretty strong because they have a nicely varied set of fields and they get their balance of performance spot on. There’s also been book, lots of Mars Horizon and as always, music on in the background.
Zoom
I caused some amusement at work this week by saying that my car is in some ways, on a par with the racing cars … The IMSA series has a couple of Lexus RC F’s entered and they were doing pretty well in the races that happened last year. The RC is a coupe conversion of my IS but the RC has a much bigger 5 litre V8 engine giving 472bhp. Mine has a much more modest 2.5 litre straight 4 engine plus the hybrid bits giving a combined power of 220bhp. However, the motors mean it has much more torque than that suggests.
Wot dat mean ?
Maximum theoretical speed is much lower in mine, 125mph ish compared to probably limited 160mph ish (the Lexus site isn’t cooperating in my data mining efforts). Plus when the hybrid batteries drain, it won’t be able to sustain that 125mph.
Acceleration is much closer … because that depends on torque. Plus the way the transmission works, it holds the engine at the most effective revs for what you’re wanting to do. Acceleration holds the engine at max torque, cruising holds it at just above idle developing just enough power to counteract 70mph drag.
I then caused much more hilarity by saying that the high spec race bred cars you can buy are actually more powerful than the cars in the races … This sounds weird doesn’t it ?
One of the changes that will happen between a Porsche 911 RSR coming out of the factory and being race prepped is that they’ll strip the nice bits out of the inside and reduce the weight as much as they can. Safety features will be added, as will the mandatory systems that the race organisers demand. That’s including things like race information displays, numbering systems, transponders, radios … However there is also the Balance of Performance.
That’s how the races end up being so close. The organisers will continually look at how well each car is doing and required adjustments are made in order to even everyone up. An inlet for the supercharger or pressure for the turbo will be limited to cut power slightly. Aerodynamics will be adjusted to even the cars out in the corners.
It doesn’t lead to “My car is better than your car” type stuff but it does make the racing incredibly interesting. Although the scrutineers can get it wrong sometimes like when the Aston Martins qualified unexpectedly well and the Balance of Performance adjustment meant they were maybe 10mph down on top speed compared to the others … at Le Mans with the super long Mulsanne Straight. Oops.
Yay poochie !
Oh to have the kind of cash that would see me being able to get one of the more powerful cars. Although, to be honest, I’m happy with the level of power in my current car and more power is kinda wasted on UK roads. We’re limited to 70mph on the fastest roads and slow people spoil the fun on the twisty roads. There are also insurance conditions which restrict using the cars on track days.
It is good to watch the racing though.
I was going to write about more stuff ! Listening to a Cardigans song followed by a The Staves song popped a thought into my head that I should do a music post sometime. Book first …
Book 5 of the year was Exile by R.A. Salvatore, the second in the origins of Drizzt series. These three books suffer somewhat in that being released after the Crystal Shard book which introduced him, that backstory is already known. The author does a good job of fleshing it out in the books. I’m currently at the beginnings of the third book, Sojourn. I’ll read something different before diving into the next in the series.
Down boy !
I’ve actually listened to all the songs in my library again and I’m hungrily looking for more again … A couple of those albums are (with lots of youtube links) :
I talk about The Cardigans a lot but it’s tough to call up songs from them because a lot of them are really, really dark … Algebra is a good one and it got included at an especially apt moment in the series Haven.
And then there’s also Communication with a wonderful animated video. The internet is being a very helpful thing at the moment, keeping us in touch with each other.
Oh dear. I’m singing along again. The neighbours will be worried … This calls for … Run To The Hills !
Another one who I think I need more from is Lisa Miskovsky. I have her Falling Water album which has wonderful songs in like A Brand New Day but there are several more albums I don’t have.
Thinking of Algebra, one thing about Mars Horizon is that success, failure or better success in that game is determined by mathematical counter based puzzle games. Little Boots did a song about Mathematics …
Next album up is one by Norah Jones, she has an album out as well that I don’t have yet. This lady has done some wonderful songs over the years too. Here’s one that makes me chuckle, Man Of The Hour.
Lovely Scruff
I do miss the dogs. That’s Old Man Scruff from half a lifetime ago. A very faithful companion. Edie Brickell sang about a few dogs too … here is the joyful Woyaho! (looks like the only links are copyright theft links, not posting that)
It’s probably getting near time to wrap up and post though but there’s a couple more songs that want out … Agnes Obel surprised me with a lovely voice and haunting songs, her albums are on the list too. Here is Close Watch.
Oh ! I also managed to watch all of Star Trek Lower Decks. Rather funny, most definitely the consistently craziest that Trek has ever done. I’d give it a try.
I think that’s it for now. Couple more ? Kate Bush has always been a favourite, here is Wow.
Oh and I also acquired Katie Melua’s Ultimate Collection pretty cheap … Here’s Nine Million Bicycles.
Have a great rest of evening everyone. Stay safe, be well.
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.
Kaboom
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 …
A Tomb to Raid. Oh wait …
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 …
Zoom in for Zoom Thing
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 :
Nice
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 ?
Beep beep beep
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.
A bit bigger
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.
Bit slow in Moon Attempt
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.
Almost thereDragon on the Moon !
But they made it in the end. One curiosity …
Kinda looks familiar ?
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.
