Arctic Martian Postcard

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/
University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

I always like an image from space that includes a part of the spacecraft. It gives a great sense of immediacy, of presence. Hence the image above, from Phoenix.

Phoenix has been wiggling its arm, looking around, and shining a laser at the sky. It's all fun and games when you're a robot on Mars - until the ice begins to encroach, at least.

Space Shot: Activate Go!

In space, no-one can hear you swear incoherently.

UNTIL NOW.

For the TIGSource Procedural Generation Competition, it's...

Space Shot
A procedurally generated space adventure with rectangles.
Version 1.0 - Windows - 2Mb
Click here to download!


"Greetings astronaut! Your country needs you! Needs you to be blasted permanently into space! In space you will meet many strange beings! Some are your enemies! Some are your friends! Shoot your enemies until they die! Trade with your friends to improve your spaceship!

You never know what you will find in space! It is a big place! The amazing stories will amaze you!"

Features:

• Hardcore shmup action with an RPG twist.
• 2Mb file is for hardcore broadband users only.
• Randomised encounters with mysterious aliens.
• Realistic binary personality generator creates both obsequiously friendly and ragingly hostile characters.
• Upgrade hard science fiction components such as 'length' and 'width' from their initial, random settings.
• High definition depiction of rectangles is ready for the plasma screen era.
• Incessant swearing.
• Uncompromising realism depicts the monotony of space travel.

---

Includes a tune by The Suit used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, and a tune by Chibibo used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Netherlands license.

Losing the Blues

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This new(ish) Cassini image, intended to illustrate Saturn's cloudtops, demonstrates just how unequivocally not-blue the northern hemisphere is becoming. It's quite a shame, I think, to see the planet lose its colour. Still, the southern hemisphere will presumably be turning blue once its own winter sets in. The Saturnian year is only thirty times longer than ours, so it can't be long to wait...

Ice and Phoenix

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Someone who is feeling very healthy this (Earthly) morning: NASA's Phoenix, successfully landed on the Martian arctic. No ice visible yet: but that's expected to change over the next three months, culminating ultimately in the craft failing due to the intense cold, half-buried beneath perhaps a metre of carbon dioxide ice.

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The operational limit on the Mars Rovers, you may recall, was anticipated to be when their solar panels became completely covered in dust - an event that ultimately never occurred due to frequent gusts of wind. Phoenix is a stationary lander, but its own solar panels are pretty nifty: fan-like things that only gracefully unfurled once the dust thrown up during landing had settled.

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

You may have noticed that Phoenix was pretty quick with the colour images compared to many missions. This is a good sign, but also a bit cheeky. Cheeky because these are 'approximate' colour images. But a good sign, I think, because rushing out some less-than-faithful colour images early shows that the folks behind Phoenix have learnt from the good example of Cassini (and the not so good example of a few other space missions) that it's important to capture the public's interest with striking imagery. Although more scientifically useful data is what will ultimately expand our knowledge (and awe) of the Solar System, it's the way these robots lend us the ability to vicariously experience its sights that makes us so eager to send them out in the first place.

The next big news from Phoenix will be once it has tried sampling the surrounding ice and permafrost, unlocking secrets about the history and habitability of the red planet.

Springtime on Saturn

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

As the ringed planet's northern hemisphere enters spring, it becomes increasingly clear that its former blue tinge (see this image, for example), was the result of some winter process.

The blue top to the planet was a bit of a surprise when Cassini first arrived. No previous probe had observed this effect, and since it is further from the sun than the Earth, Saturn's winter hemisphere is always aimed away from our observatories on the ground, and concealed behind the rings.

I've been in a reviewing kind of mood lately, so I finally made use of my account at the Interactive Fiction Database to post reviews of a couple of games: Kathleen M. Fischer's Masquerade and an adaptation of Metroid.

I am not my DNA

I have to breathe a sigh of relief that religious distaste for mixing human DNA and animal cells has failed to result in a ban on promising medical research - by a huge margin of votes.

Lots of pompous orators have been keen to go on about how this is 'plainly immoral', 'tampering with life' and 'Frankenstein science'. Fortunately, it seems that our MPs understand that mixing unfeeling chemicals and cell structures in a petri dish hurts no-one (except vein-popping anthropocentrists) and may potentially ease the suffering of living, breathing human beings.

"Take that! Ha!"

It perhaps indicates that I've reached that dreaded point in any gamer's life when you realise that it's taking you months to complete lengthy games, but I've devoted a lot of my Wii time to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles this past month precisely because I know that it's easy to pick up and put down. This is a game divided into discrete, bite-size, but inter-related chapters - each of which, while often nicely challenging, can typically be completed in twenty or thirty minutes. Compared to the main line of Resident Evil games – exploration-based with an emphasis on the conservation of ammunition, full of tough boss fights and with save points moderately spaced – this all-guns blazing rail shooter is definitely Resident Evil: The Casual Game. Not that this is a bad thing.

As the title suggests, Umbrella Chronicles spans the events before Resident Evil 4, detailing the rise and fall of the Umbrella corporation from the first grisly events in the Raccoon City forests to its last desperate gambit. Along the way we retread, in rail shooter format, the events of Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 3, before unveiling the previously unrevealed swansong of Umbrella, deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. Completing these chapters also unlocks a number of side-misions, filling in the stories of secondary characters, with an especial focus on unflappable, black-clad Albert Wesker.

Gameplay in Umbrella Chronicles is, on the face of it, very simple. The wii remote acts as a pointer for a set of crosshairs and pulling the trigger-like B button fires your character's gun. The screen takes a first person view, creeping carefully through claustrophobic corridors and devastated streets. Perhaps because this movement is largely out of your control, Umbrella Chronicles does a better job of creating a sense of POV than most first person shooters. At times the characters do seem to be a bit dense in terms of when they choose to look at obvious threats, but typically there's a nice pace to things, as the view sweeps around fearfully, with little clue as to when danger will strike.

An additional layer of complexity is added in the form of special weapons with limited ammunition, and difficult-to-perform critical hits that can allow you to defeat dangerous or plentiful foes with your infinite ammo handgun. There's also a fair bit of button bashing and wii-mote waving to avoid attacks during boss fights and cut scenes; while quickly shaking the wii-mote after a zombie latches onto you will cause your character to pull off a stylish counter-attack. Some of the characters seem to just perform the same boring punch, but Rebecca uses a grenade, Jill tasers and kicks (while shouting "Take that! Ha!" a line I must have heard about a hundred times already), while Wesker and Hunk perform their trademark 'thrust punch' (think The Matrix) and 'neck snap' (a move as balletic as it is brutal) respectively. It's an interesting mechanic in that it shows how a player who is doing badly can both be leant a hand by a game (when it's been a bad day for aiming, I've counter-attacked my way through whole hoards of zombies) and even be given a conciliatory reward in the form of a neat little cut scene (and catchy exclamation - "Take that! Ha!").

As a digest of the story so far (RE4 and RE: Code Veronica notwithstanding), Umbrella Chronicles naturally seems like a good stepping-on point for those unfamiliar with the series, while by fleshing out some of the events taking place in the shadows, there's also plenty here for die-hard fans as well. Similarly, the system of ranks and rewards means that playing for fun, or playing to obsessively hone your skills, are both equally valid approaches to the game. Above all, though, owning Umbrella Chronicles means I can always spend twenty minutes killing zombies with some of my favourite video game characters. Simple, undemanding, engaging, and above all: fun.

Friday Joan Blogging

Joan of Arc.

48 Degrees North

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA-JPL

Eleven days until Phoenix touches down. I'm kind of hoping for a significantly different view of Mars from anything we've yet seen from the ground. Phoenix will be landing at about 68 degrees north, while Viking 2, which provided the image above, experienced the most polar conditions of any (surviving) lander so far, at a relatively balmy 48 degrees north. The white-ish parts of this image are a thin layer of water frost.

And no, it's not just you. Viking 2 landed on a rock, and as such was at a funny angle. Not something that rovers have to worry about, but a big concern among Phoenix's fretful parents, I'm sure.

So, Anyway...

This is what's currently eating up my spare time: my entry for the latest TIGSource competition. It's a genre-defying interactive experience that will push the boundaries of the artform into uncharted waters and punch the sharks of apathy on the nose with hands soaked in fish-blood.

Or perhaps it's just a load of rectangles shooting little squares at one another and changing shape and colour while randomly assembled, barely coherent messages appear at the top of the screen. It is surely a debate that will only be decided by posterity, long after we are all gone.

Ahem

All day I've been thinking about this little idea I've had for the latest TIGSource competition. I've already implemented the basic engine. Watch this space...

Hopefully it's a good sign that this thing keeps making me laugh.

It's Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!

Or, more accurately, it now has rudimentary, slightly quirky AI. That's my bank holiday monday morning out of the way.

TIGSource are holding yet another competition. No idea if I'll even think about participating, but it is very, very tempting...

More on Clockwork Hearts

Since a couple of people have picked up on this now, it might be time to provide an update on Blood from Clockwork Hearts. I have plenty of distractions, so progress is slow, however I'm hoping to keep the game relatively simple, so those two factors may cancel out - you never know. ;-)

Clockwork Hearts is going to be a turn-based strategy game with light RPG elements, set in a fantasy world with Napoleonic-era trappings. Much of the basic engine is done, save for the AI and the event scripting (which are also arguably the toughest parts), so, well... we'll see, won't we?

Graphics modified from RLTiles.

Pastel Winds

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Nifty article at the Cassini homepage about Saturn's five month storm (the bright smudge in this image). It's nowhere near the scale (or duration) of Jupiter's Red Spot, but it's still thousands of miles across, and somewhat likely to turn your umbrella inside-out.

Red Dust

Image source
Credit: NASA/JPL

Opportunity's ageing shoulder is starting to experience arthritis; and it's now only 26 days until Phoenix touches down.

Further Excitement

No sooner have I blogged the teaser trailer for Mamoru Oshii's upcoming Sky Crawlers, Twitch report that the full length trailer seems to have escaped onto youTube.

White Skies, Fighter Planes

Some unexpected awesome courtesy of Emily Short's IF Cover Art Drive: a lovely cover image for Snowblind Aces, which now also adorns the game's page on this rocketship.

The person responsible is, as yet, a mystery...

Leatherheads

I finally got around to seeing George Clooney's Leatherheads on Friday. I know that a lot of people seemed disappointed by it, and sure, it's no masterpiece, it doesn't push the envelope at all, and it's not as witty as the screwball comedies it emulates - but it's still a very entertaining, very well directed film - and that's all I was looking for.

Prepare to get Excited

Normally it's a bad thing to hear that a director is attempting to make a 'more popular' film, but given how much Mamoru Oshii has been in danger of disappearing up his own backside with his more recent films, it's pretty cool to see that his next project seems to be mostly about blue skies and fighter planes...

Here Be Dragons

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Dione - seen here looking especially solid and mysterious - is easily the prettiest of Saturn's grey moons. But it's still difficult to think of a good way to tie it in to St George's Day.

Best. Advert. Ever?

Friday Franchise Blogging

The Resident Evil franchise.

(I am missing a few.)

Our Robot Masters

There's a great - and I'm sure some will consider quite provocative - interview with Lord Martin Rees over at the Beeb. I enjoyed Rees' books Our Cosmic Habitat and Just Six Numbers immensely, and I think he's right on the money when he argues that Europe would be better served focusing on unmanned space exploration rather than chasing after costly and - as yet - unproductive manned missions.

That said, my own wishlist for the European Space Agency would focus more on making them like their NASA counterparts. Visiting the website of a NASA mission - Cassini in particular, but others too - you really get the impression that they're trying to be as open and accessible as they can towards the people who funded them (ie. American tax payers), and by happy extension the rest of us too. ESA, on the other hand, is a more distant organisation, and I always double check their image use policy before posting anything they've come up with - even though it was my money that paid for it.

Or perhaps the ESA robots are just less inclined to be generous towards their squishy progenitors.

Cassini Extended

I doubt you'll be surprised to learn that Cassini's mission - which technically ended in July - has been extended by two years. It's worth checking out the News Release anyway, though, as it has a number of nifty facts about everyone's favourite space robot.

Shhhhhh...

Worn out from playing Wii Sports, I suspect.

Friday Napoleon Blogging

Telephoto Phobos

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

My one complaint is that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter didn't turn its absurdly powerful camera on one of the Martian moons sooner. Presumably some careful conjunction of orbits was required. See the rest of the images here.

Phobos is an almost microscopic 27 km across at its widest point, and orbits Mars in a mere 8 hours. It hugs so close to the equator of its mother planet, that it can't even be seen from higher Martian latitudes.

Hang on, lads; I've got a great idea...

Update: more info here.

Potato Beauty

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

I was going to post this new image of tiny Saturnian moon Janus, since I'm all for improving the visibility - so to speak - of those small irregular moons and asteroids out there. But in the process, I stumbled on this lovely monochrome image of the same moon, as photographed in September 2006. I have to say, I love it when Cassini is able to get these beautifully shadowed images of Saturn's moons in front of their mother planet. You can't help but get a hint of the astronomical sizes and distances involved.

"Gotta find the exit... Gotta find that exit, to Paradise!"

Travis Touchdown, a detached, unemployed loser, proud owner of a light sabre beam katana purchased in an internet auction, suddenly finds himself the 11th ranked assassin in America. Naturally, he's now bent on getting to number one, in the hopes of amassing fame, fortune and girls - and the only way to do that is to defeat the ten assassins ranked above him. So begins No More Heroes, a unique action-hybrid game about slicing people up with a light sabre beam katana and working in dead-end jobs.

There is some controversy over whether great fountains of blood were inserted into the American version of No More Heroes, or removed from the European and Japanese version - but personally, I can't think of anything more suited to my copy of this game than the way defeated enemies disintegrate into a cloud of black pixels, spurting coins from their severed necks. One of the bravest things that No More Heroes does is unashamedly embrace its gamey-ness.

When every other action game is trying to be the same pseudo-cinematic, over-serious Halo clone, it's nice to see something that's full of beeps and boops, pixellated icons and slacker humour. The characters talk in cartoonish quips, the tone varies on a whim, and those silly little things like 'plot' and 'theme' - while they may be lurking in the background - are happily ridiculed and often sacrificed on the altar of good old-fashioned gameplay. When a useful shopkeeper character dies in the middle of the game, he's still to be found in his old spot, as a ghost, just as able to take your money and provide his services - with hardly a word mentioned about it. No More Heroes is a game that puts more thought into any single instance of slapstick humour than into providing an over-arching sense of emotional progression or resolution. And, hey, why the hell not?

The number one complaint that everyone has with No More Heroes is the attempt to integrate a free-roaming aspect to it. Much of your time in the game takes place in the city of Santa Destroy, driving around its streets on your ridiculously over-sized motorcycle and scouring its alleyways for treasure. And this quickly gets pretty boring. It didn't have to be this way, of course - I've happily spent hours just wandering around Liberty City in GTA3 - but the trouble is that there really are only two things to do in Santa Destroy - drive between established locations and search for treasure. On top of that, the city is completely uninteresting - there are no distinctive building or street designs, no real ambience, hardly any sounds except those of passing cars. If Santa Destroy had any kind of character at all, this free-roaming aspect might actually be pleasant. As it is, it's merely bearable.

Where No More Heroes really excels is in its humorous minigames (trying to work a pump at a petrol station, for example, without setting yourself on fire) and its combat. Great use is made of the wii remote for all these things. In particular, I like the combination of button-bashing to pull off basic attacks and wii-remote waving to perform finishing moves. Still, the battles against hordes of badguys are pretty repetitive, and although they're usually over quite quickly, they do get tiresome after a while.

So, actually, where No More Heroes really really excels is in its boss fights. The ten assassins you have to defeat are all extremely unusual, well-defined characters. The conversations they have with Travis are entertaining enough, but the battles, in which they get up to all sorts of neat tricks, are extremely fun, challenging and more-ish. In particular, I think it's great how the assassins' over-the-top personalities are perfectly integrated into the unique style and ambience of each of these fights. There's the girl who prances around in a pink dress in between trying to brutally beat your brains out with a baseball bat, for example, or the guy who changes into a superhero costume and swoops around a television studio suspended from wires.

So, yes, it's flawed. But that's probably chiefly because this is a game with a strong creative streak, unafraid to take risks. Perhaps the best way to describe No More Heroes is as "Quentin Tarantino meets Super Mario". You'll know if that appeals to you.

Credit: Hiddenson
Some rights reserved

As the Olympic torch is a symbol of peace and harmony, so too should it be a beacon of protest against the violence and repression of the Chinese government - and our own governments for their complicity.

A Brief History of Enceladus

The Enceladus Voyeurs

William Herschel

Italy, 1610. The x-ray glasses that Galileo Galilei ordered from the Netherlands have in fact turned out to be a peculiar device for enlarging that which is distant. Turning his telescope towards Jupiter, Galileo observes its four moons, the first objects in the celestial sphere to conclusively be shown to be revolving around something other than the Earth. Some time later, he briefly takes a peak at Saturn, but - confused by its rings - he decides he'd probably be better off observing those burly men rapidly approaching from the direction of the Vatican.

England, 1789. Filled with pride at his discovery of Uranus (though he would fortunately die before it was finally named), William Herschel aims the world's largest telescope at Saturn and discovers two new moons, later named Mimas and Enceladus respectively. Enceladus, at this point, and for the next couple of hundred years, was known as nothing more than a white dot. Some further study revealed that it was, in fact, a very white dot. Strangely, the human race remained unmoved.

Robot Visitors

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

During the latter half of the twentieth century, the great robot exodus began: metal creatures leaving the Earth in droves in the hopes of discovering better working conditions. Voyagers 1 and 2, soliciting employment among the rings of Saturn, took the first close-up photos of Enceladus. Postcards revealed a mysteriously smooth, white world, that was also conspicuously embedded in a diffuse and newly discovered ring.

Could this frigid little ice-ball be geologically active? Is it shooting great gusts of snow into space? How else would its surface be so smooth and crater-free, and where else might this ring come from?

Wish you were here,
Voyager 2

PS. Voyager 1 sends its love.

A Moon's Best Friend

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

As the twentieth century drew to a close, hardier robots with a stronger sense of commitment were sent into space. Rovers crawled over Mars until their wheels fell off, space telescopes went round and round the Earth until they threw up, and one very plucky 'bot was even bashed around by material ejected from Halley's Comet. Chief among these dedicated pioneers was Cassini, a robotic Flash Gordon complete with lantern jaw and Italian-American pizzazz.

Cassini showed that Enceladus was indeed geologically active, shooting plumes of water ice into space from its south pole. If the complicated mathematics wasn't enough to convince everyone, the photos were. If Enceladus was perfectly snow white, it was because it was coated in perfectly white snow.

What Lies Beneath?

Credit: NASA/JPL/SwRI

Attempts to explain such activity on a small, cold moon were now a popular topic in planetary science circles. Was this the result of dry, otherworldly chemistry - or was was it due to more familiar mechanisms involving liquid water? One, clearly over-optimistic model suggested that Enceladus might even have warm, sub-surface liquid water, rich in nourishing organic chemicals.

And then, very recently, Cassini dive-bombed the strange tiger-stripe ice formations on Enceladus' south pole, sucking greedily at the rising icy plumes. It sent whispered word back to its friends on Earth, and just this week we learned that the geysers on Enceladus are rich in complex organic chemicals, and the weather among the tiger-stripes is fine (well, relatively speaking, for a world so far from the sun). The question of whether the processes creating these strange geysers is dry or wet remains a mystery, however - and who knows what further mysteries await around the corner from that one?

This is just one of the countless interesting true stories that took place (and continue to take place) out of this world. We notice it especially because it hints at somewhere we might hope to find alien life, and because it is recent. But it's important not to forget the other stories too. When Cassini, Herschel and I get together for drinks, we find it strange that they aren't more widely known.

A Warm Enceladus Brew

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/SwRI/SSI

NASA's Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby on March 12. Scientists are amazed that this tiny moon is so active, "hot" and brimming with water vapor and organic chemicals.

[...]

"Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life," said Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water[.]"

Read the rest.

TIGSelicious

The Video Game Name Generator Competition has drawn to a close over at TIGSource. I'm kind of glad that I decided not to throw together a last minute entry: there seems to be a high degree of quality and quantity on show.

Also check out TIGdb, a database of indie games courtesy of the TIGteam.

Varied Moon Crowd

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Quite an anarchic little portrait here of large, ringed Saturn, small orange Titan and smaller grey Tethys.

Titan Underground News

I'm sure you've already heard about the evidence for a sub-surface ocean on Titan but here is the Cassini news item and here is a nice article on it at the Planetary Society.

Cat

Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

Clarke said not that long ago that 2001: A Space Odyssey - oft cited as an over-optimistically named novel - really did come to pass, and to a far greater extent than he had expected. But because we used robots, instead of human beings, nobody noticed...

Honey Nut Loops

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

For some reason this image of a certain ringed planet's encircling detritus looks especially delicious.

Snowball Moon, Lit the Long Way Round

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Emily Lakdawalla points out this gorgeous early image from Cassini's fly-by of Enceladus. One thing you'll notice immediately: stars*! Cassini was clearly using a much greater exposure than usual for this snap, but why?

It seems that Enceladus was in Saturn's shadow during much of the fly-by - in other words it was receiving no direct light from the sun. It was, however, receiving sunlight that had reflected off of Saturn's rings, off the surface of three other moons, and also light that reflected off the rings and then off Saturn's nocturnal cloud-tops. It's quite the ballet of ice and sunshine, when you think about it.

*At least, I assume they're stars. Interplanetary photography gets a bit complicated.

Shy Moon

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

As Cassini beams its latest data on Enceladus back to Earth, Saturn's other prominent moon, Titan, already shrouded in thick cloud, disappears behind its mother planet.

Gun Mute: Download Now

Gun Mute
A texty shoot-em-up.

As Mute Lawton, a quick-draw gunslinger in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, it's up to you to shoot your way through the sheriff's posse of mutants and cyborgs until you reach the final showdown...


-Download .t3 file (600kb) [Random mirror]
-Download zipped windows application (1Mb)

--INSTRUCTIONS--

-If you have Windows, you may prefer to download the zipped executable. Just click the link above, unzip the download and double click the application.
-Alternatively, if you're a seasoned IF player, or you're using Linux or a Mac, download the .t3 version. Run the file with an interpreter from this page.

--EXTRAS--

You can find some extras (and some spoilers) here.

--ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT--

>look
Dingy Backstreet Saloon
The air is thick with smoke and precious little light seeps in through the grimy windows. The tables are cracked and uneven - deserted, save one that seats an old, grubby storybot.

A cloaked form leans hunched over the bar, snoring quietly. The bartender, you presume.

>x storybot
A relic from ancient times – a plastic figure vaguely resembling a woman. Its clothes have long since degenerated into rags. You notice a slot in its upraised palm, just the right size to accept a coin. The storybot sits slumped back in its chair, eyes closed.

>inventory
You are carrying a rusted six shooter and a handful of coins. You're wearing a heavy overcoat, a battered pair of jeans and some sturdy boots.

>put coin in slot
You sit opposite the storybot and slip a coin into its palm. It twitches a couple of times and then opens its eyes with a dry click. With the hiss of unhealthy hydraulics, it sits upright and meets your eye.

Its mouth drops open and a recorded voice emerges. "Hello. Would you like to hear a story?"

>yes
"Yeah," you drawl, curious, but not that enthusiastic.

The storybot's mouth flicks open again. "Perhaps you would like to hear the story of Mute Lawton? A quiet man with a passionate heart, he faced great odds with only a six shooter and a steady hand. An execution loomed over him like a black shadow, but his resolve was set."

You look at the storybot more carefully. Could this old contraption have something to share other than the usual fairy tales of the Old World? Did someone reprogram it, or, somehow, did it learn new stories itself? But its glassy eyes stare back at you stupidly. Just a machine. That's all.

>ask about mute lawton
"Yeah," you say, trying not to sound as interested as you really are, "tell me about that guy."

And then, to your great disappointment, the storybot starts to jerk epileptically, its head thrown back, its eyes flicking open and closed. "Error! Story not found. Please download TADS 3 game file or zipped Windows executable as required."

>hit storybot
You hit the storybot's plastic head with the palm of your hand. It ceases moving and slumps back into its chair. Damn it. That sounded like a half-interesting story. You quickly look over the storybot for a way to retrieve your coin, but it doesn't look like you'll be getting a refund. You still have enough change for a drink, though, and that is why you came here.

>give coin to bartender
Sighing, you stand up from your seat and walk over to the bar.

[Gun Mute: a TADS 3 shoot-em-up. Thank you for reading.]

Update: I'm surprised to realise that this game already seems to be all over the Internet. Read more at: Gnome's Lair, Indie Games: The Weblog, TIGSource, the IFDB, Jay is Games and Mobygames.

Click here to read all my blog posts on Gun Mute. (Spoilers!)

Unsuitable Content

Well, I completed the main story of Resident Evil 4, still leaving a fistful of side stories and mini-games to master - and of course I want to play the whole thing a second time with my upgraded weapons. My completion time was 16 hours and 40 minutes (which probably corresponds pretty closely to the amount of free time I've had over the past week or so). I was expecting to get a poor rating, but, hey: no ratings! Which, personally, I think is great. It would be a shame to have such an intricate, expansive world and then encourage players to rush through it.

The, uh, 'not zombies' are fantastic. A heady mixture of 28 Days Later, The Thing and Deliverance - but also very original in their realisation. An intelligent enemy, driven by hatred and manipulated by religion, evoking the unwashed masses of unfamiliar lands, fond of chainsaws and pitchforks, eerily degenerated, prone to obscene transformation... Wish I'd come up with something like that myself.

I particularly love the way RE4 continues the Ada/Leon relationship from Resident Evil 2 (a game I've raved about before). And I liked all the 'good guys', even Princess Useless (or Ashley as she's also known) - although the bad guys were a bit too cookie-cutter for my liking - especially compared to previous Resi outings. Special mention to the two minor male characters: Luis Sera the 'mysterious Spaniard' and Mike the semi-anonymous helicopter pilot.

Like Half Life 2, RE4 also demonstrates once again that there is no excuse for games that repeat themselves (Halo, anyone?). One moment you're barricaded in a besieged house with Luis, the next you're riding a runaway mine cart, or trying to convince a huge monster to stand over the trap door to a molten-iron furnace. You get the impression that if Capcom excluded anything from their brainstorming sessions, they must have been the really out-of-this-world ideas.

The aesthetic is gorgeous - or horrible, rather, but in a good way. Muted palettes, leafless trees, ruin and piled garbage abound. Brilliant use, in places, of dark scenes lit primarily by lightning. The laboratory right at the end (there's always a laboratory at the end in Resident Evil) was nicely grimy, rusted and littered, like a former torture chamber that has since gone downhill.

The game's themes are interesting to boot, like you get the impression the Japanese developers were trying to recreate the neo-con versus Islamic fundamentalist conflict, without realising that neo-cons are mostly fundamentalist Christians themselves. Leon's quip that, "Faith and money will lead you nowhere!" is brilliant, but utterly unlike anything you'd expect to be coming from a clean-cut US agent (although Leon is arguably not so clean cut after his stay in Raccoon City).

Right at the end, though, the sequence after the credits... A game containing, as this does, decapitations, impalements, exploding heads, grotesque mutation and so on - that's all well and good. But right at the end, when Leon re-establishes contact with Hunnigan and tells her she looks cute without her glasses... Absolutely unconscionable. But the game's certainly good enough to overlook it.

Dispatches from the Ringed Planet

A couple of things really worth looking at on the Cassini homepage:

Does Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, have rings of its own? Some Cassini scientists seem to think so.

And as we come up to Cassini's hairbreadth approach to Enceladus, a nice little video (with subtitles) summarises just why this tiny iceball of a moon is so interesting.

Friday Cast Blogging

The cast of Mission: Impossible (seasons 2-3).

Strange Blue Planet, 142 Million Kilometres

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The view from Martian orbit: Earth and its companion as seen by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A good subtitle might be: "We told you the HiRISE camera was powerful!"

Click for the full view. You know you want to.

Landslides on Mars

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter chanced upon this rare image of the Martian environment in motion.

Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who works on targeting the camera and has studied hundreds of HiRISE images, was the first person to notice the avalanches. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years."

The photo has significant implications for the study of Martian geology (perhaps more properly 'areology'), and is damn pretty to boot.

In Which I Join Contemporary Mainstream Gaming

I am now the proud owner of a bouncing baby Wii. Until now, as far as contemporary games go, I've been stuck playing PC games from before the advent of hardware transform and lighting - ie. the most recent games you can play with a typical home PC. I've played Half Life 2, of course, and Sam and Max (though that's edging back onto the indie scene), but it's nice just to have a piece of hardware that can run relatively modern (albeit not as nuclear-powered as those for the XBox 360 or PS3) commercial games without any fuss.

If I'm quiet over the next few days, it's because I'm busy gunning down feral villagers in Resident Evil 4...

Stark Moon, Strange Horizon

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here's a rather stark monochrome image of Saturn's second largest moon Rhea against the western edge of its mother world. A peculiar and evocative portrait, methinks.

"I am a misunderstood robot"

Image credit: mmechtley
Some rights reserved

Cynicism is the lingua franca of the modern videogame industry and it is also a heavy albatross weighing down on everyone trying to push the industry forward. [Independent game developer Jonathan] Mak’s demonstration at [the Games Developers Conference] today is, in my mind, the most audacious thing anyone has done at a platform that large, and, if there is any justice in the universe, it will be a historic event. We’ve become obsessed with technology and hyper-classification as the games industry settles fatly into a console-centric medium. In two minutes Mak reinforced everything that is powerful and beautiful about games, in a way that was more immediate and meaningful than a million cutscenes or a thousand parallel processors crunching a trillion polygons each.

Just what did Jonathan Mak do that was so amazing? Find out here.

Hat tip: TIGSource

Invisible Cloud Features

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Credit: ESA/ MPS/DLR/IDA

I've mentioned that Venus, with its obscuring sepia clouds, is one of the most boring worlds you'll ever see from space. That is, unless you're looking in the ultraviolet, in which case the dazzling complexity of its noxious, high-pressure, thoroughly greenhouse effected atmosphere is plain to see. Read more here.