NASA Celebrates Curiosity's Fourth Year On Mars With a Game (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Engadget: In honor of Curiosity's fourth year on Mars, NASA has released a game. Engadget reports: "The glitch that shut down Curiosity in July was thankfully a temporary issue, else NASA would have mourned its loss rather than celebrating the rover's fourth year on Mars by releasing a game. It's simply called Mars Rover, and it's probably your only chance to pilot Curiosity. Mars Rover has a pretty straightforward gameplay -- you just have to press arrow keys to drive the vehicle and find underground pockets of water -- but it's harder than it seems. The virtual rover's wheels crack and break if they slam hard against rocks or heels, and when they do, it's game over. NASA derived these mechanics from Curiosity's actual mission and experiences on Mars."

Comments

NASA should shut down

[elcor]

So that its engineer can go organic farming, or raising koalas and making cute mobile games.

Re:NASA should shut down

[rtb61]

It's called marketing. For NASA to release games is about helping recruit new employees, children who plan their future around joining NASA. Promoting public interests also reassures citizens of value for their investment into a future in space.

This game however is not very good in that regard as it is not very sciency, NASA shoul endeavour to ensure the games they release to promote interest, promote interest in science, in space exploration and space settlement.

So say, managing a space station, supplies and people up and refuse down etc or space travel in terms of plotting trajectories based upon take off points and desired target destination or designing a moon base. The games should not just be gains but should engage those who will be the future of NASA.

No

[burbilog]

People used to test their shit in multiple browsers. Now people just assume that if it works in Chrome it's done.

No. People used to test their shit in IE 6.0 and assumed that all screens are 1024 pixels wide.

Nothing changed, really.

Re:Sick Of It

[tlhIngan]

FF does nothing.

Works fine in Firefox, actually, I was playing it there. Had a few scripts you had to enable (I use NoScript) but there was nothing particularly sketchy about the ones you enabled...

Moon Patrol?

[Mister Transistor]

This looks almost like William's Moon Patrol arcade video game! It used to be one of my favorites from the 80's...

Re:Moon Patrol?

[Solandri]

You can still play it.

Re:Moon Patrol?

[antdude]

Yeah, but no cool music, shooting, UFOs, etc.

Mars and the Furious

[geekmux]

"...but it's harder than it seems. The virtual rover's wheels crack and break if they slam hard against rocks or heels, and when they do, it's game over. NASA derived these mechanics from Curiosity's actual mission and experiences on Mars."

Well that's certainly one way to crowdsource the next Dominic Toretto to work for NASA.

How fast can you go from zero to Enders Game...

Permissions

[ggendel]

Why does a game like this need to have access to all your contacts? I'll load it when I can block this kind of nonsense.

Re:It's on Devon Island, not Mars.

[nintendoeats]

Oh. Good.

Re:Sick Of It

[Anonymous Coward]

People used to test their shit in multiple browsers. Now people just assume that if it works in Chrome it's done.

Nah, we still test in Internet Explorer and other browsers people actually use.

Firefox's basic problem is two-fold: first, its shrinking market-share, and secondly, its just compatible enough with Chrome that it's not worth testing specifically in Firefox.

The basic process these days is "design in Chrome, test in various IEs, ship." If it breaks in Firefox - who cares? The remaining Firefox users are the types who likely have another browser installed they can - and will - use instead. They're the types with NoScript installed who are used to the web randomly breaking. If it breaks in Firefox, let the few remaining Firefox users find and report the bug.

It's just not worth the time testing because the chances are high enough that it'll work in Firefox if it works in Chrome and the number of people using Firefox is small enough that it just isn't worth seeing if you found some edge case where stuff that works in Chrome doesn't work in Firefox. You probably haven't, meaning that 95% of the time, testing in Firefox is wasted effort to support some tiny fraction of your user base.

But there's a third problem that seals the "don't test in Firefox" decision: their decision to try and be more compatible with Chrome. Doesn't work in Firefox but it does work in Chrome? You can just blame Firefox itself.

It only fails if you turn it on

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The virtual rover's wheels crack and break if they slam hard against rocks

Really? That's the best wheel your NASA money could come up with?

Re:It only fails if you turn it on

[hackertourist]

The problem is more complicated than that sentence makes it sound. Over time (Curiosity's been there for ~4 years now) the wheels accumulate damage when they drive over rocks. This accumulation is faster than they'd predicted based on years of experience with Spirit and Opportunity, because of the larger size and weight of Opportunity and because it's being driven over much rockier terrain than the earlier rovers.
Based on the accumulation of damage after 1-2 years they had to alter the mission plan somewhat, changing the route to more sandy places.
The problem is the weight of the wheels is highly constrained. They were already close to the maximum possible mission weight so there was very little scope for improvement. Making the wheels heavier would have had knock-on effects. The rover was stowed in a folded state and had to unfold just before landing. That unfolding involved dropping the wheels through an arc without any damping. Making the wheels any heavier would have made that drop induce more force on the attachment points than they could handle.

With the benefit of hindsight, they could have built more resilient wheels. But that would have meant redesigning half the rover. Deep space exploration is just that, exploration. You will come across circumstances you could not have predicted. Live with it.

Latency

[colinrichardday]

How well does the game model the latencies between Earth and Mars? It takes at least ten minutes for a signal to travle from Earth to Mars. Or are they using subspace?

Re:Latency

[colinrichardday]

Earth to Mars and back, sorry.

Where's the source?

[Paul Fernhout]

As a US taxpayer, I helped pay for this. Where is the source code so I can learn from it or make it better/different? NASA and other US government agencies have a long track record of paying a lot for programs made by third-parties that are not made available under FLOSS licenses.

Down The Link Hole

[crow_t_robot]

Why post a link to an article that talks about the game when you can just post a link to the fucking game and save everyone some time and sanity?

Re:Down The Link Hole

[RockDoctor]

You know, that's exactly what I thought. But this being slashdot, and me being about 3 days behind on my reading, I expected that someone would have provided the link. Instead of just complaining about the lack of a link. So, here's the link.

WTF Controls?!?

[Keybounce]

So let me see if I understand this game:

1. Left/right do not move you left and right; they tilt your front up and down.
2. Up and down do not tilt your front up and down, so you can maneuver around rocks and potholes; they move you forward and backwards.
3. Although the real rover is driven slowly, and you can pause and think, this is an arcade game, and as soon as you start moving, you have to maintain at least 55 MPH or you go kaboom.
4. Your forward vision is artificially restricted to barely a second of motion so you can't even be aware of problems in advance.
5. The real rover can turn. But instead of a "rover-eye's view", showing you a field that you could turn left or right in, all you can do is straight, or slow down and die, or run fast ahead and crash.
6. The actual map is constant, so it's a matter of memorizing when to lift, when to speed up, when to coast, etc.
7. It has more in common with managing your way through Scramble's later maps, at higher difficulty levels, than with piloting a real-life rover
8. And ... I had to enable how many things from NoScript before I could even get to the game, and then a bunch more to play the game?

Sheesh.
Did someone post a link to Moon Rover?

Re:Moon lander

[Coren22]

Moon lander had moving platforms pitching in the ocean? I must have missed something.