Hey, I just found this sim in The Underdogs. Awesome piece of software, guys! I'm probably going to be running it background whenever my computer doesn't have anything better to do.
I have three quick questions:
1) Is the sim still being supported? I noticed that the last version came out back in 2002. I read the changes planned for the future, and I'm eager to get my hands on it.
2) If the game is still being supported, what's the status? I know that indie projects (especially free ones) are always on their own timetable, but I'm curious to know how long it will be.
3) Is there any way now to directly control the settlers? I'd love to give my guys orders about what to do. If there isn't, is planned for a future release?
Thanks for reading!
~PF
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Hi. I'll try to answer you questions the best I can.
The project is still being supported. I've been busy with some other things this year and the development got bogged down a while with some significant architectual changes with the settlements. However, most of the development is done on the next release and we're just putting the finishing touches on it and debugging. I hope we'll have the new release out soon.
We've been discussing adding more interaction to the settlement. It won't be in the next version but we hope to have something in a future version.
We appreciate any suggestions on what you'd like to see in the simulation.
I personally dream about the possibility to trigger some events from a list. Mission events (scientific experiments in laboratory, exploration missions ...), or incidents events, (systems failures, rovers problems, explosions, fire, desease ...) and let run to see how the crews react to execute the mission or to solve a problem.
I don't want to act on settlers or vehicles and drive them, but I wish to have a big list of generic missions and events I can choose in.
I will be nice to give Base One the order of exploring zone X, and when the rover come back to trigger a main rover engine failure and to see how settlers will act.
Thanks for that nice piece of dream.
Claude
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Anonymous
-
2004-06-19
I'm new to this sim as well, so if I'm reading this thread right, you don't have any actual control over the simulation. Basically you just set it to run and leave it to its own devices?
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There are configuration files in the conf directory that you can edit to change parameters in the simulation, such as settlement layout, rovers and adding names for settlers.
I would recommend saving a backup of the original configuration file before you change it, though, in case the simulation can't handle the modified parameter.
In the next version (2.76) you can set the job (speciality) a person has while the simulation is running.
We're going to try to add a mission editor tool in version 2.77 that will let the user create and modify rover missions while the simulation is running.
So not much user interactivity at the moment, but you can configure the simulation quite a bit. We hope to have more interactivity in the future.
Hey, I just found this sim in The Underdogs. Awesome piece of software, guys! I'm probably going to be running it background whenever my computer doesn't have anything better to do.
I have three quick questions:
1) Is the sim still being supported? I noticed that the last version came out back in 2002. I read the changes planned for the future, and I'm eager to get my hands on it.
2) If the game is still being supported, what's the status? I know that indie projects (especially free ones) are always on their own timetable, but I'm curious to know how long it will be.
3) Is there any way now to directly control the settlers? I'd love to give my guys orders about what to do. If there isn't, is planned for a future release?
Thanks for reading!
~PF
All is asked.
I hope we'll get any answer.
Claude
Hi. I'll try to answer you questions the best I can.
The project is still being supported. I've been busy with some other things this year and the development got bogged down a while with some significant architectual changes with the settlements. However, most of the development is done on the next release and we're just putting the finishing touches on it and debugging. I hope we'll have the new release out soon.
We've been discussing adding more interaction to the settlement. It won't be in the next version but we hope to have something in a future version.
We appreciate any suggestions on what you'd like to see in the simulation.
Thanks,
Scott Davis
Mars Simulation Project
http://mars-sim.sourceforge.net
scud1@users.sourceforge.net
Thanks a lot for those infos.
I personally dream about the possibility to trigger some events from a list. Mission events (scientific experiments in laboratory, exploration missions ...), or incidents events, (systems failures, rovers problems, explosions, fire, desease ...) and let run to see how the crews react to execute the mission or to solve a problem.
I don't want to act on settlers or vehicles and drive them, but I wish to have a big list of generic missions and events I can choose in.
I will be nice to give Base One the order of exploring zone X, and when the rover come back to trigger a main rover engine failure and to see how settlers will act.
Thanks for that nice piece of dream.
Claude
I'm new to this sim as well, so if I'm reading this thread right, you don't have any actual control over the simulation. Basically you just set it to run and leave it to its own devices?
Yep, that's basically it at the moment.
There are configuration files in the conf directory that you can edit to change parameters in the simulation, such as settlement layout, rovers and adding names for settlers.
I would recommend saving a backup of the original configuration file before you change it, though, in case the simulation can't handle the modified parameter.
In the next version (2.76) you can set the job (speciality) a person has while the simulation is running.
We're going to try to add a mission editor tool in version 2.77 that will let the user create and modify rover missions while the simulation is running.
So not much user interactivity at the moment, but you can configure the simulation quite a bit. We hope to have more interactivity in the future.
Scott Davis
Mars Simulation Project
http://mars-sim.sourceforge.net
scud1@users.sourceforge.net