exploration
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Japan sends Kounotori 2 spacecraft on suicide mission to study re-entry process
An unmanned cargo ship built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is set to go up in flames tomorrow in the name of interplanetary research. Along with a load of space station junk, the Kounotori 2 spacecraft is packing something akin to a black box, also known as a Re-entry Breakup Recorder (REBR), that will collect and transmit data about the ship's final moments. The space station's crew will activate the REBR before Kounotori 2 begins its final assignment. As soon as it starts showing signs of re-entry, the sensor will begin to collect data including temperature, acceleration, and rotation rate, and will then break away from the craft for a final free fall to Earth, at which point the REBR will dump its findings. Scientist hope the device will help answer questions about exactly what happens when things fall apart during re-entry. If all goes according to plan, the REBR will plunk down in the ocean sometime later, but its host will never be seen again... farewell, Kounotori 2.
NASA forced to abandon plans for 3D camera in next Mars rover, James Cameron not losing faith yet
Among the many great feats of his career, film director James Cameron counts the rather unorthodox achievement of being able to convince NASA to use a stereoscopic camera on its next Mars rover project. Unfortunately for him, us, and the hard working folks over at Malin Space Science Systems, technical snags have been encountered in the integration of the jumbo mastcam (pictured above) with the rover's hardware and the resulting delays have caused NASA to nix the idea altogether. You might think that 3D visuals of Red Planet gravel will be no great loss, but the MSSS cams also had zoom lenses attached, whereas the research project will now be returning to tried and true fixed focal length imaging. Ah well, such is the bumpy road to interterrestrial enlightenment. NASA's rover, titled Curiosity, is set to begin its voyage in November of this year, while Cameron and co remain upbeat about the future, saying they're "certain that this technology will play an important role in future missions."
EVE Spotlight: An interview with EVE Travel's Mark
EVE Spotlight is a bi-weekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Every two weeks, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE to highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. At the start of this month, the folks at CCP Games updated their Facebook page with a link to a fascinating blog. The aptly named EVE Travel serves almost as a holiday brochure for the many interesting places to visit in EVE. I'm sure some players would look at this as a waste of time, but to me it underscores everything that's great about EVE and sandbox games in general. The number of viable ways to play the game is constrained only by a player's imagination and motivation. Mark and the guest contributors on EVE Travel are all highly motivated to explore the visuals and lore surrounding every interesting thing you might come across in EVE. Where we see a pretty shipwreck, they see an ancient battle with its own motivations and politics. In reading EVE Travel, I shared in Mark's sense of wonder and excitement about a vast universe that I had taken for granted. That sense of awe, of being lost in the deep and having to learn all about everything for the first time, is something a lot of us have lost over the years. When we run missions or complete exploration complexes, many of us just see the numbers involved -- how much damage we can deal or tank and what rate of ISK per hour we can generate. We look at these areas through the eyes of a player gaming the system, but EVE Travel shows them to us through the eyes of a true explorer. I was even inspired to set out on my own exploration adventure, delving into the lore of places I'd taken for granted and seeing them again for the first time. In this edition of EVE Spotlight, I talk to blogger Mark from EVE Travel about exploring the collossal sandbox of New Eden and what can be done to help the storyline of EVE come alive.
NASA's MESSENGER begins orbit around Mercury, will start beaming back science early next month
Mercury, the innermost planet of our humble little solar system, is getting itself an orbital friend. The MESSENGER space probe (known as MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging to his nearest and dearest) is concluding a six-year sojourn through the dark void of space with an elliptical orbit around the tiny and otherwise inhospitable planet. Systems are about to get turned on and fully checked next week, before the data-gathering phase kicks off in earnest on April 4th. Science, isn't it beautiful?
Masthead adds exploration rewards to Earthrise, hints at player-crafted vehicles
It's patch time for Earthrise, and the sci-fi sandbox from indie developer Masthead Studios is looking to put the hurt on a few of its early-release gremlins. The patch notes for version 17045 indicate that players should notice a substantial reduction in lag and an overall increase in server and client performance. The patch has also added keybinding functionality to the world of Enterra as well as animation tweaks for strafing and walking. Exploration rewards have also arrived in Earthrise, and players "will now be able to salvage materials and use them for either crafting or personal advantage." The dev team isn't stopping there, though, and producer Atanas Atanasov drops a couple of tasty hints regarding upcoming updates. "We are actively taking player feedback and requests into consideration for future releases, and have extensive developments planned for completion in the next few months, including the addition of territorial conquests and player crafted vehicles," he said via press release. %Gallery-48760%
EVE Evolved: Losing yourself in EVE Online
Of all the things EVE Online has to offer, exploration is perhaps its most attractive lure. With around 7500 solar systems to visit and seven years of history enshrined amongst them, EVE offers players a very real and tangible universe to explore. There's something inherently attractive about getting lost in the depths of space and being absorbed into the stories woven around those thousands of little points of light on the map. While the official storyline of most MMOs can be seen all across their respective worlds, the sandbox nature of EVE adds significant player-determined influences to the usual developer-created storyline. In the colossal sandbox of New Eden, key battles and events have drenched areas of the game in a player-made lore that's ripe for discovery. In the past, several players have capitalised on EVE's potential for exploration in order to craft for themselves a truly unique gameplay experience. In 2006, a new player by the name of Innominate Nightmare went on a roaming tour of EVE's lawless nullsec regions. In his travels, he talked with the locals and reported on daily events as they unfolded. The intrepid explorer soon discovered a New Eden fraught with war but at the same time bonded by it. Every space station and alliance-claimed system held stories of the blood spilled over its liberation, the good times pilots had together there, and the monumental efforts alliances had undertaken to carve a home for themselves out of the void. In this week's EVE Evolved, I immerse myself in some of EVE's most unique exploration experiences and look at how you can become lost in New Eden's awesome sights and stories.
Simulated Mars mission simulating return to Earth as we speak, astronauts genuinely overjoyed
We thought the Hundred Year Starship initiative to strand aged astronauts on Mars by 2030 was depressing, and in comparison the European Space Agency's Mars-500 project is little more than a walk in the park (a very small, confined, and extremely monotonous park). Essentially Bio-Dome re-written to simulate travel to Mars and back (without that lovable scamp Pauly Shore), the project bills itself as "the first full duration simulation of a manned flight to Mars," with astronauts conducting a 640-day voyage to the red planet and back -- all without leaving the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP). Members of the crew "landed" on Mars on February 12th of this year, returning to the craft on February 24th. As we speak, they should be entering into a spiral orbit away from Mars, and with any luck they'll be back just in time for their ticker-tape parade on November 5th (hopefully that part isn't a simulation). A joint experiment by the European Space Agency, Russia, and China, the $15 million project studies the complex psychological and technical challenges encountered on long spaceflights.
The Game Archaeologist goes to Earth & Beyond: The highlights
For this month's Game Archaeologist expedition, I deliberately wanted to look at an older MMO that was -- for whatever reason -- no longer with us. After voting on a handful of these titles, Massively readers selected Earth & Beyond for March's focus, and I have to say that I'm intrigued. Personally, I prefer science fiction over fantasy nine times out of ten, even though most of the MMOs that grace my desktop (with the exception of Star Trek Online) are fantasy games. Sci-fi has had an awfully difficult time making headway into the field of MMOs, with plenty of underperforming or canceled titles littering the way. I've heard it explained that the fantasy genre is easier for the common person to grasp because it uses elements of our past -- primarily the medieval period -- to provide a familiar baseline, whereas sci-fi's futuristic setting requires world-building from scratch. Whatever the case may be, Earth & Beyond never really caught on the way that EVE Online did, and its miniscule population (GameSpot reported 20-25K subscribers six months before its shutdown) was not enough for Electronic Arts to keep it running. But between 2002 and 2004, Earth & Beyond reached for the stars and gave its own spin on how a sci-fi MMO could work. Let's take a look today at what made Earth & Beyond unique, what it gave the industry, and how it may help upcoming space MMOs avoid a similar fate.
Visualized: the fate of the most ambitious Soviet-era space exploration project
Project Buran was the USSR's answer to NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia. Unlike its highly decorated American counterpart, however, this child of the 1970s produced only one unmanned space flight during its operation and was ignominiously shut down by Russian authorities in 1993. The remains of this most ambitious (and expensive) effort are still around, however, and have now taken on a layer of rust, weeds and general decay that would make any post-apocalyptic set designer swoon with admiration. It's as beautiful as it is sad, this gallery of failed human endeavor, and you can see it in full at the link below.
Rise and Shiny recap: Uncharted Waters Online
Uncharted Waters Online by Netmarble is one of those games that I have been meaning to get around to taking a much deeper look at, but I never seemed to find the time. I knew that the game would require more concentration and chin-scratching than I was used to in many games, so I was a little worried. I also knew that a week would be seen as "not nearly enough time" to cover the game, but then I remembered my promise of covering the newbie experience for this column. I don't care which game we are talking about; they all deserve a look at the first few levels or days in game. UWO was surprisingly easy. In fact, the hardest part about the game was figuring out exactly what it was that I needed to do in order to move forward, but honestly even that was probably covered in the 34-year-long tutorial. Every time I broke down and asked the chat denizens about a certain item or quest section, they would give me the answer. When I asked them where they found the information, they would simply say "the tutorial." I believed them -- the tutorial is long and filled with information that I quickly forgot. In fact, if you decide to give the game a go, do yourself a favor and pay close attention to the tutorial. It will more than likely tell you everything you need to know. Besides my issues with listening, I found a lot more inside the world or pirates, exploration, and trade, so click past the cut and let's talk about it.
Flyff's Rise of the Muran expansion now live, complete with catgirls, achievements and more
When it comes to the free-to-play business model, US-based early-adopter Gala-Net has certainly raised a few eyebrows with its light-hearted fantasy MMO Flyff. Also known as Fly For Fun, Flyff has now had its doors open for several years and is showing no signs of slowing down. The game's latest expansion, Rise of the Muran has just gone live, bringing players a whole array of new content and gameplay just in time for Christmas. The expansion raises the game's level cap to 139 and includes a new third job evolution system, introducing eight new classes to the game. Players can now take on the roles of Templar, Slayer, Harlequin, Crackshooter, Force Master, Seraph, Mentalist, and Arcanist. Also included for players is a new guild housing system, in which high-level guilds can bid on huge shared buildings. As if that wasn't enough, Rise of the Muran opens a new area of the game for exploration -- the lost region of Kaillun. It's here in the safe city of Eillun that a new race of friendly cat-like creatures known as the Muran live. With all the new content to explore, new classes to try out and a brand new achievement system coming in, there's sure to be a lot for Flyff fans to do while wrapped up warmly in their houses this winter.
NASA makes 'astrobiology discovery,' schedules press conference for Thursday to discuss alien life
So NASA seems to have made some hot new astrobiology discovery, but just like the tech companies we're more used to dealing with, it's holding the saucy details under embargo until 2PM on Thursday. That's when it's got a press conference scheduled to discuss its findings, which we're only told "will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." It's unlikely, therefore, that little green (or brown, or red, or blue) men have been captured somewhere on the dark side of the moon, but there'll definitely be some impactful news coming within only a couple of days. NASA promises a live online stream of the event, which we'll naturally be glued to come Thursday.
EVE Evolved: Group PvE in EVE Online
EVE Online is often thought of as a strongly PvP-based game, with player conflict and competition at the heart of practically every activity the game offers. Competition for resources, power, and notoriety routinely drive players to disintegrate each other's ships, but this effect isn't limited to just PvP. Miners compete with each other for ore on a daily basis, for example, and traders fight for market supremacy. EVE's competitive sandbox element is such a headline feature that PvE often takes a back seat in discussions about the game. EVE's combat-based PvE comes in the form of repeatable agent missions, hidden exploration sites, and deadly Sleeper encounters. While most of these can be completed solo by experienced pilots with a well-designed ship, they're often much faster and more fun when done in groups. The lack of a limit to how many pilots can be brought on PvE expeditions even makes it feasible to take newer players along to tough missions, something that doesn't happen in most MMOs. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at why EVE's PvE is so inherently soloable, which types of PvE encounters are well suited to group play, and what the future holds for EVE's possibly neglected group PvE content.
The Witness makes low-key debut at PAX
The first public appearance of The Witness, a new game from Braid designer Jonathan Blow (and a small team of independent designers), almost went unnoticed. Its presence at last weekend's Penny Arcade Expo wasn't announced by an enthusiastic press release or trumpeted by a flashy trailer. It didn't even have a sign. "PAX is a huge show, with tons of stuff to see everywhere; if the game could hold peoples' attention under those conditions, purely on its own merits rather than by hype or pedigree, then I would know that it was really working," Jonathan Blow wrote on The Witness blog. "Happily, the game worked very well - despite the fact that the visuals are still in an early prototype stage. People tended to play for a long time, and they liked what they played." Kotaku's Stephen Totilo compared the first-person exploration and puzzle-solving to Myst. The game's beautifully lit and serene world hides abstract enigmas, such as boards that require you to trace the correct route. What's most interesting, however, is that there don't seem to be any prompts or instructions for the player -- making this understated PAX reveal seem very appropriate indeed.
Wasteland Diaries: Passing the time
With what looks to be a brand-new combat system on the way, there is a lot of anticipation for the next few incarnations of Fallen Earth. Well, I'm anticipating them, anyway. Dave "Archangel" Haydysch himself says the team will be "gutting" the combat system, for one. There are bound to be some major changes to Fallen Earth in the coming months. These changes include, but are not limited to, the combat system, factions, and PvP objectives. Not to mention that Icarus has verified that we will be getting PvE group instances to romp around in. There's a lot of goodness on the way, but it's still several weeks or a couple of months off in the future. We will know more with the September state of the game announcement. In the meantime, many of us are at the level cap (I have three level 50 characters myself), and many of us are running out of things to do. Even with PvP-flagging, which allows PvP anywhere, there is very little endgame PvP. Most of the action seems to be in sector 2. I blame the combat system for that, but that's another story. With Deadfall looking like a ghost-town, sometimes the apocalypse can be a lonely place, at least for those of us who have hit the level 50 brick wall a couple times. After the cut, I'll throw you some ideas to pass the time until the next content update.
NASA set to send Juno 'armored tank' spacecraft to Jupiter
NASA is gearing up to send an "armored tank" spacecraft called Juno to Jupiter this month, after several delays and reschedulings. The environment that Juno is to face will be one of the most treacherous any spacecraft has ever endured -- so Juno has all sorts of special features, such as a radiation vault, a protective shield to protect it from Jupiter's insanely radiation-heavy environs. An invisible force field surrounds Jupiter (a less powerful one also surrounds our own planet) which is heavy with high energy particles to shield it from highly charged particles which shoot off the sun. The mission will result in Juno orbiting Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, for 15 months. Scientists have also devised a route that should shelter the craft from spending extended periods of time in the harshest zones. Juno's trip will also be the first ever solar powered mission to Jupiter.
Dan Stahl highlights more of Star Trek Online's future direction
Star Trek Online's Dan Stahl has been fairly vocal since he took the executive producer post at the beginning of last month. We had our own chance to speak with him recently, where he discussed everything from the then-upcoming Season 2 content to the rumors about the game adopting a free-to-play model. His most recent interview at ZAM covers several of the same pieces of territory, but as one would expect with the time elapsed and the release of Season 2, there are several new pieces of information within. The weekly episodes are one of the major points of discussion, with the first one premiering in late August. Stahl discusses the episodes focusing around the Deferi, a race with ties to both the Federation and the Klingons, but not explicitly allied with either. He also discusses plans for an overhaul to exploration, likening the current system to "a small box where you fly around and go through random doors," something that the team is planning on changing for Season 3. The full interview is well worth a read for what it contains -- nothing earth-shattering, but more signs that Star Trek Online's direction is getting progressively stronger.
STO celebrates six months of interstellar conflict in the latest State of the Game
While Captain Kirk and the original crew of the Enterprise had an initial five-year mission to explore the cosmos, Star Trek Online players have had a mere six months to do the same. In this span of time, a lot has happened for STO -- some good, some bad, some controversial, and some radically different. As the game heads into its second six-month tour of duty, executive producer Dan Stahl threw open the doors for STO's Season 2.0 update, entitled "Ancient Enemies." In the latest State of the Game report, Stahl looks back at the additions, changes and accomplishments of the STO team since launch. The bullet point list he lays out is impressive indeed, listing 32 big ticket items that have been implemented into the game. He then looks at the immediate present with the launch of Season 2.0, which Stahl sees as a direct response to player requests and demands. "Season Two is filled with additional features and updates that you asked for, and in some cases even helped us design, specifically minigames," Stahl writes. Finally, the State of the Game looks at the future of the title and the many improvements that are slated for delivery, including an upgrade to ground combat, more ship options for both factions and rethinking exploration. You can read Dan Stahl's full State of the Game report over at Star Trek Online's site.
The Classifieds: She'll be coming 'round the mountain
The Classifieds brings you weekly news from around the WoW community, including your shout-outs to perpetrators of the famous Random Acts of Uberness. Have you ever wondered what lies on the other side of the mountain? What's going on down there below your flight-path flyover? Wonder no more: The Glitch Hunters have arrived to show you the unspoiled areas of vanilla WoW in all their pre-expansion glory. Contrary to their name, The Glitch Hunters explore entirely on live servers with no exploits or trickery. They use simple tactics to gain access to difficult-to-reach areas, including Levitate, Slow Fall, vehicle mounts, Death Grip and the liberal use of pally bubbles. "We're traversing the continents and documenting all the weird and unique landscapes and borked terrain before the Cataclysm revision hammer destroys them for good," explains Glitch Hunter Alyssa of Dawnbringer (US). Explore the entire series -- now some six episodes deep -- on The Explorers League YouTube channel. If the scenery of classic WoW leaves you feeling nostalgic, wander through our growing collection of galleries devoted to zones that will soon feel the sweeping hand of the approaching Cataclysm: Undercity, Scholomance, Eye of Eternity, Shattrath City, Sunwell Plateau, Azshara, Tirisfal, Redridge, Stranglethorn Vale, Western Plaguelands, Quel'danas, Trial of the Crusader, Deadwind Pass, Teldrassil, Tanaris, Blackrock Mountain, Thunder Bluff, Feralas, Mulgore, Moonglade, Ironforge, Westfall, Darnassus, Thousand Needles. Vanilla WoW holds many charms -- but if it's more current news you're after, let's crack open The Classifieds!
EVE Evolved: Exploration -- Top tips
Over the past two weeks, I've been giving an in-depth look at EVE Online's exploration profession. Exploration is one of the many PvE elements that players can get involved in right from their first week in EVE. By concentrating on astrometrics skills, a new player can be a more-than-competent prober within a week. Although some sites may require the help of an older player for the first few months, it's still one of the most fun PvE elements a new player can get into. In the first part of this three-part guide, I went over the basic equipment and techniques you'll need to scan down hidden complexes. In last week's second part, I went on to look at the different types of hidden site you can discover, what loot you can expect to find in each of them and what kind of challenge you'll face. Since the exploration system was launched many years ago, I've picked up a few tricks and tips that can help any explorer. In this final part of the EVE Evolved guide to exploration, I run down my four top tips for budding explorers.
