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The Game Made From NASA Satellite Data
An anonymous reader writes "Kickstarter's helped start all sorts of indie games, but few as unusual as Lacuna Passage, an adventure game set on Mars with a vast open world that's been painstakingly recreated from NASA satellite data. You're able to explore twenty five square miles of the Red Planet in all its barren glory as you attempt to solve the mystery of the first, vanished, manned mission to mars. A new piece today on the making of the game — which is being made by an elementary school teacher and a team of a dozen volunteers — looks at how it came about, and why their quest for authenticity led to even urine analysis being included in the gameplay."
Am I the only one who read this as: "The Game Made From NSA Satellite Data"?
This game was about to get interesting!
It's funny: we know the shape of the surface of Mars with better accuracy than that of Earth.
Which part of the computer do they expect us to pee into?
We have radar that can penetrate vegetation to create topological maps of the land, but the oceans are still largely aqua incognita
I noticed that there was an oxygen meter and it got me wondering how good CO2 scrubbers have got in modern space-suits. Does anyone know how long oxygen will last in a space-suit, with the help of a CO2 scrubber, based on current space walks?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's excellent to see the NASA data about the surface of Mars being used to model the terrain for a game. I'm personally a big fan of software that gamifies real data. NASA itself has "Eyes on the Solar System which is an open world flythrough of the solar system with accurate 3D models and telemetry for satellites, planets, moons asteroids and exoplanets.
Disclaimer: I work on the NASA software.
... never been to Maahzzz!
The Supreme Ruler series has used NASA maps of earth for like a decade.
Unfortunately it's still the same maps as they were using a decade ago, I've been trying to persuade the lead programmer to get higher res maps, but that creates system requirements issues.
Which is why we created a Unreal Tournament mod using NASA Data over a decade ago.
The best thing about the game is their dedication to implement good Oculus Rift support, which is perfect for a game like this. Too many games haphazardly slap Rift support onto them and it becomes a mess trying to deal with menus designed for monitors being displayed on the Rift and other things that makes the Rift experience real poor. These devs, however, realize the obstacles with Rift support and are willing to put the extra effort into making it worthwhile.
Haven't games been using NASA data for a while? Maybe not to the extent of this game, but I played one a while back that looked like it used quite a bit of NASA data; http://rumorgames.com/press-release-voyager-grand-tour/
You used to be able to fly on mars with X-plane. Not 25 square miles...the whole f'n planet. This isn't anything new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on1n5EPEIp0
Lacuna Passage looks terrible when compared to Take on Mars, and that only has 10 guys working on it. I'm pretty sure that uses real Mars data.
Making a game based on the data from the SDSS (i.e. a universe's driving licence). The more data they get, the bigger your (our real) world. What I do not know is whether it would be legal. I suppose it's a matter of navigating in the ocean of open licences without drowning in order to find out (if only drowning was instantaneously and not after a few years...).
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