Stratolaunch Systems

What do you get if you take a Scaled Composites carrier craft (like WhiteKnightTwo), scale it up and strap a variant of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket beneath it? The answer is Stratolaunch Systems.

Stratolaunch Systems is a new company founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan famous for his Voyager which was the first plane to circum-navigate the globe without refueling and as the designer for SpaceShipOne which won the Ansari X-Prize by launching from a carrier craft and suceeding in crossing the Kármán line into space.

To put the sheer upscaling of the carrier craft into perspective, it will be the largest plane ever flown. With a wingspan of 385 feet, it’s almost three times the wingspan of WhiteKnightTwo (140 feet) and significantly larger than an Airbus 380 (262 feet).

So how does it compare against Virgin Galactic’s sub-orbital WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo. While a SS2 will max out at an altitude of 110km, with a cargo of 2 crew and six passengers, Stratolaunch Systems will go much higher delivering 6100 kg to LEO. Compare that to the Falcon 9 which will put 10450 kg into LEO and you have a very practical and viable extension of the WK2/SS2 premise. As a fully orbital launcher, it will be able to deliver satellites into orbit or deliver payloads to the ISS or future stations such as the Russian OPSEK (a mixture of Russian modules detached from the ISS and new modules) or Bigelow’s CSS.

Perhaps more importantly however it would be able to put manned capsules into LEO, which could open up some very exciting opportunities for space tourism especially if it’s cheaper than a traditional launch. While it won’t be putting heavy communications satellites into geostationary orbit or heavy modules into LEO (something we’ll leave to Delta IV Heavys and hopefully in the future Falcon Heavys and maybe SLS), with the current reliance on putting people into space in Russian Soyuz capsules, putting alternatives into the market (and alternatives to the exciting COTS/CCDev2 plans) will only aide market competition and flexibility to the client.

With the names and contractors attached to this project, Stratolaunch Systems is one to watch.

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This is my first post on space flight, so please let me know if there are an inaccuracies or incorrect conclusions.

DodgeFoot Released

My first Facebook game, DodgeFoot, has just been released. I’ve been working on it the last four weeks part-time with a couple of friends from University. It was the first time we’d made a game for Facebook and it was also the first time we’d made a game with the Unity3D game engine.  It was a great experience and I will be releasing a post-mortem very shortly, but in the mean time:
Please check out the game

Notepad++ ToDo – A Simple Task Management System

There are dozens of methodologies for project and task management, with focusses ranging from behemoth software solutions which are several years between major releases and social games with very high iteration and weekly releases. This article is not intended for either, however if you find at times keeping track of your work on small projects is most efficient with pen and paper or in notepad then you may find it of interest. It is easy to initially overlook its simplicity as a flaw, but I think in certain cases it presents itself to be extremely advantageous.

Unlike complex task management systems which create a good deal of overhead I try to emphasise simplicity in my task management of small projects and make use of Notepad++ for storing them. I group tasks into four categories:

1. Done – Task is complete
2. Parole – Task is believed to be complete, requires testing to ratify its completion
3. Pending – Task is not started or is not complete
4. Obsolete – Task is now longer considered required

D2K+ Toolkit Released

Over the past several years I’ve been slowly revese engineering an old favourite RTS, Dune 2000. The experience has been a real eye opener to dealing with file formats at the binary level. Before undertaking the project I’d never heard the phrase little-endian, didn’t understand the sheer usefulness of hex editors or used disassemblers and decompilers like IDA/HexRays.

For those of you that haven’t heard of it, Dune 2K is a sequel to Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis by Westwood which preceeded C&C, WarCraft and StarCraft and established the archetypes for the genre. Despite its name, Dune 2000 was released in 1998 and principally developed by Intelligent Games under the management of a Westwood

Much of my focus has been on reverse engineering the game’s mission files so that modders could modify and create new campaigns, but I also reverse engineered about another half a dozen formats in the game. Recently I finished reverse engineering the mission files to the point where I completely understand them except for their AI sections and have now released an early editor. All my work has been part of the D2K+ Toolkit project, a project who’s goal is to release a suite of tools for moifying the game. The first release includes four new tools I have released as well as a campaign map editor that someone has contributed to the toolkit. With five new editors this has now opened up an unprecented level of modification for the first time in the game’s 13 year history and I look forward to seeing what modders can now achieve.

See D2K+ Toolkit

Helicopter Game – Some User Play Data

Something I’ve been looking into recently are games that are highly addictive but extremely minimalist, a classic example of this is the now infamous (and scourge of office efficiency) Helicopter Game. It’s a procedurally generated one button game, where the player must click to lift the helicopter and let go to let the helicopter descend, avoiding both the canyon floor, ceiling and regular obstacle blocks.

I was particularly interested in the consistency and similarity of different people playing the game. I asked 11 people to record their first 10 results. The samples were aged between 19 and 25 and the majority were male. Complex conclusions should not be drawn from these results nor should they be over-analysed, however the results are indicative of the variety in all player’s scores but the similar range that they tend to share.

On the image below each colour represents a different person, the last result for each person is at the top and the first is at the bottom. The bottom axis is time measured in seconds (time = score/28).

Click to Embiggen

Graduation

So I am now officially, as this photo of me in a silly hat will attest, a graduate. Four years of my life and eighteen years of contiguous formal education are now at an end. Being at university was the most fun I’ve ever had and while there were a fair share of good points and bad points during that time, I feel that attending is one of the most worthwhile choices that I have made so far. The time I’ve spent on my course and on work placements/internships has confirmed that I have chosen a path that is right for me. I’m looking forward to a career in the games industry and the challenges ahead.

Oh, and shaking Patrick Stewart’s hand was awesome.

Mass Effect 2 Complete

Mass Effect 2 is the most enjoyable game I have yet to play this year. A significant improvement over its predecessor there is comparably little to actually criticise but much to praise. ME2 scores well in so many areas, beyond being visually thrilling, boasting a well written involving storyline and a soundtrack that fits perfectly, the core game is gripping and well executed. As I’ve said previously, for a game whose core is combat, the combat holds up to extended playing and customisation very well. The objective system now means that it’s trivial to find your bearing when you’re lost. Perhaps the biggest selling point of ME2 is the control you have other the events and their game-changing ramifications.

Your interactions and actions really matter, even down to the more passive choices that you make such as who you choose to take with you on a mission causing a diplomatic incident. With many games there is a single ending or a handful of endings which depend on a small number of factors, in Mass Effect 2, the ending is much more complicated and I suspect rarely exactly the same for players. All right, that’s not something which is new but the quality in the execution is what makes Mass Effect 2 a gripping game where you care about what you say and what you do. Mass Effect 2 creates an emotional connection that creates a really deep experience. I’ve never considered buying DLC before, but Mass Effect 2 has convinced me to buy a couple of the mission packs, something GTA 4 really did not make me want to do. Interestingly by contrast, previous to GTA 4 I loved the series and it took me three years to complete that game. I hated Mass Effect 1 and it took me two weeks to complete Mass Effect 2.

Well done BioWare, I look forward to buying the DLC and ME3.

Mass Effect 2

After becoming very frustrated with the first Mass Effect game it is refreshing to play the sequel which addresses many of the play-breaking issues. In my eyes, the predecessor suffers from an awful combat system and terrible level design mixed with unfathomable objectives. The combat is now much improved, with recharging weapons thrown out in favour of traditional ammo. There also seems to be increased variance in the weapons you can take on and a use for every gun depending on the situation (something which ME1 lacked.) The combat is now much more entertaining and while perhaps still a little generic survives extended play well.

The level design seems to be much improved and the ability to bring up an objective marker by pressing a thumbstick fills a gap which left ME1 exasperating at times. There is no fun in not knowing where you’re going. Strangely I find one of the minigames quite addictive, in the same way that I found the Brotherhood assassins minigame addictive, ME2 lets you go into orbit around unexplored planets then scan them for resources using a graph which resembles a spectrum analyser, launching probes where you find strong signals. I suspect some of the appeal is in the form of tactile response as the controller shake indicates the strength of resource. I’ve not yet finished ME2, but unlike many games I play I have no doubt that I will. Mass Effect 2 does something to me which few games seem to these days, it makes me not want to put it down. After playing it for the last 7 straight hours (a real rarity for me) it is clear that BioWare have taken stock of the faults of the first and made a very good game to succeed it.

Achievement Unlocked: First Class

17 years of formal education has come to an end and what a road it has been. With university over the close friends I’ve made over the past few years are disappearing to the four corners of the country (and possibilities of further afield) it looks like for most a mass exodus has begun. I’ll miss all the friends I’ve made and the many laughs we’ve had (like everyone’s time at university there’s been a fair share of memories which I have a feeling I’ll keep for the rest of my life). I’m especially thankful for the lecturing and guidance of Andrew Crampton, John Turner and Dr Zhijie Xu who demonstrate how important it is to have a passion for what you teach.

So on to bright, sparkly things.

Finished GTA IV (after 3 years)

After buying GTA IV at midnight launch (I was third in the queue, yay) it has taken me just over three years to complete the game. As a once die hard GTA fan (I spent many of my teenage years running GTA fan sites, modding the games and playing the various multiplayer mods for VC and SA) I think this says a lot about the direction that GTA IV took. There is no doubt that when GTA IV was released it was considered a pretty game and as one of the first titles to leverage NaturalMotion’s animation tech character movements were far more realistic than the canned loops which were very visible in the prequels. Both are nice, I guess, but like most people I’ve never played GTA for its graphics or for the quality of its animations. I played it because it was the ultimate in sandbox action games, I consider Vice City to be perhaps the best game I’ve ever played and San Andreas is also a fantastic game once you get into it, GTA IV took all that away.

Vice City not only offers better core gameplay in its story, it exceeds in every possible way, from the perfect setting to the epitomal 80s soundtrack, vast ranges of fun and beneficial side missions and great vehicle options. San Andreas takes away some of the great elements of Vice City and adopts a setting which in my view is nowhere as good as 80s Miami, but despite this it presents great new game mechanics, weapons and vehicles that compel you to carry on and see what’s next and all in all is a great game nonetheless. IV takes all that away in favour of a much more realistic adventure, it does not feature jetpacks, Harrier jump jets, hovercraft, tanks. Instead the missions are rarely more diverse than simple car chases and rooftop gun battles, they do not compel you to carry on playing because you know that the next mission is just more of the same.

When I played Just Cause 2 last year, it was as though I had found all the sort of gameplay that should have been in GTA IV, from the offset Just Cause 2 is like having completed Vice City or San Andreas and having the best vehicles and weapons to cause havoc. These are games that you want to keep playing even after the main story arc is done – clearly boasting strong and rich designs.

With IV, Rockstar obviously focussed on changing their formula in favour of increased realism, I can understand the reasons why they went down that road, but I think it is evident to all that their formula was already pretty damn good. I think this is fair to say and I believe that most the guys at Rockstar will agree. From what I’m told, the last IV expansion pack introduced actually fun gameplay, so it looks like the problem is recognised and being resolved. I wouldn’t be surprised if GTA V goes back to its roots and I have high hopes that it will be a great game up their with Vice and San An.

I’ve now bought Portal 2 and borrowed Mass Effect 2. Having played about an hour on each so far. Portal 2 seems good so far, the frequency of load times seems to be as bad as in Half Life 2, but that’s a small gripe really. So far I’ve not seen much difference to the first Portal, but I expect it will come into its own in due course. I didn’t complete the original Mass Effect, while I really liked some of the story elements and cinematics I found the game too frustrating. The combat system was shit and the objective system was non-existent, I was constantly unsure exactly where I was meant to be going. Mass Effect 2 seems to have addressed the problems that prevented me from playing ME1, it’s story seems strong and the visuals are fantastic. They also seem to have dialed back on the RPG’ness which is good for me as I don’t really enjoy RPG gameplay. I’m excited about playing both games and I’m sure they’ll live up to their hype.