Quoting: FurorIt's crossplatform multiplayer?

Yes. I got to try it out with my friend playing on Windows this weekend, and we had a blast. I can only imagine the chaos that would come from actually having eight people playing at once!

Some highlights included:

• Grabbing the other person and throwing them off the map (which just respawns you at the last checkpoint, so no big deal, but still hilarious). It seems a bit like Gang Beasts (which I haven't actually played, only watched), where you can control each hand and its ability to grasp independently.


• My friend trying to swing across a gaping chasm on a rope, Tarzan-style…and missing the other end by inches and falling in. :D


• Learning how to climb ledges—there's a really awesome system where you raise your hands above your head, jump to catch the ledge, then look down to pull yourself up. It actually feels like you're the one doing the climbing, not just pushing a button to tell your character to do it. Jumping off a ledge hundreds of feet high and desperately catching another one to pull yourself up on to makes you feel like Indiana Jones.


• Both of us walking together up a pivoting see-saw to jump to a ledge, simultaneously realizing it was pivoting under our weight, and leaping in sync to catch the ledge and pull ourselves up. Just needed some epic music and an explosion in the background to come out of an action movie. :D

I recorded the entire session, so I hope to have a video of the funnier bits up at some point soon-ish.

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Quoting: EikeI don't think so. It's not forbidden not to have competitors - it's forbidden to abuse the powers that come with it.

While I agree with this, from a practical point of view, if you have no competitors it's very easy for anyone to label anything you do that they disagree with as "abusing your monopoly" even if you have no intention of doing so. Keeping a nominal competitor around just so they have someone to point to and say "See? We're not the only game in town!" could be a very pragmatic move on Intel's part.

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Just picked this up for me and a friend to try out this weekend when it went on sale. I'm looking forward to it! :)

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Well, it's taken me a while to get here; I contributed to a number of Kickstarters several years ago* and still occasionally buy an Early Access game, but as mentioned only if I think it'll be worth its price to me now, and keep in mind that it might not ever get updated. (As an astronomer I always keep in mind that a meteorite could vaporize the dev team tomorrow, no matter how much I trust them! :P)

*and had, on the whole, a pretty good success rate with it with a few games I've backed already out (Rain World, Reassembly) and a few more in active development and quite fun to play right now (Parkitect, RimWorld), but one or two in…"indefinite development" have soured me a bit on the idea.

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Quoting: TheRiddickAnd if you look at Earth via a telescope you would think its blue and the surface is blue also. ;)

Which is over 70% correct. ;) But that's a terrible comparison because Mars doesn't have A) vast bodies of liquid water, B) highly-visible and reflective clouds, or C) plant life, all of which make the Earth a vastly more complicated system to analyze.

Quoting: slaapliedjeBesides, from what I'd read it wasn't the ground really that was reddened, but the sky as well. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YXyFj3wFBTY/U9WVMrJT9sI/AAAAAAAAFGU/TIIXmyIQHno/s1600/Slide84.JPG

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2013/03/20/what-color-is-the-red-planet-really/

That photo is flat-out wrong, as explained in the very article you linked, which explains it well: color balance is a pretty subjective thing. Does any digital camera actually reproduce colors as we actually see them? No. It just records photon counts on a CCD through different filters, which we process with software to try to get colors that roughly approximate what we see with our eyes. Process the resulting image and you can make it look however you like, which is what those "blue sky" images are: skewed with a white balance to make the scene look like it would on Earth to help geologists better identify geological features. The article itself points out that the first photo in it—of a reddish, ocher-ish Mars—is explicitly processed to be as close to "what a typical cell phone camera" would take from the same location.

Yes, it's true that Mars doesn't look quite as saturated red as those first Viking images did (which is what the left image in the linked photo is from). But that's entirely due to advances in digital photo color processing methods, not some shadowy coverup by NASA.

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Quoting: Colombo

Quoteand I doubt more than a tiny fraction of other people do

You can doubt that, but you will be wholly incorrect to think it is only tiny fraction of people.

Yeah, in retrospect that was an unwarranted assumption on my part out of pique, and I apologize.

Quoting: ColomboAs we previously stated, X_release > X_supported. So if what you say is true:

X_release < game_price => buy_game, otherwise don't_buy

Which means that the X_release perceived value must be sufficient.

Yes? If a game's not in a state I think I'll enjoy at the moment I buy it, no sale. I'm not going to bank on it changing in the future. If it does, great; more bonus for me. If not, I got exactly what I expected to get.

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Quoting: KelsThe famed "bright red mud" of Prince Edward Island in Canada (excellent potato growing soil) comes to mind as well.

Interesting, hadn't heard of that.

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Quoting: TheRiddickThe Martian surface isn't actually this red, those were/are doctored images by NASA (unknown reasons). No tinfoil, real.

Anyone with a telescope can look at Mars by eye (as I've done, as an astronomer) and verify that it actually is that color. No conspiracy theories needed. :)

You can also visit Mauna Kea in Hawaii if you'd like an example of someplace that red here on Earth (it's the best Mars-analog we have, they test rovers there before sending them to Mars).

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: MayeulC

QuoteBarring some purely fantastic elements that are best saved for a future dev diary, the scientific aspect in Surviving Mars is realistic

* Sees wind turbines in the trailer *
* Facepalm *

I didn't even think of that. Good catch. That was one of the big mistakes in The Martian, when a storm blew the space ship over to kick off the plot. In reality, the Martian atmosphere is so thin that even a 100 mile-per-hour wind would feel like a gentle breeze.

The dust devils also wouldn't be a threat in terms of wind despite their appearance in the trailer (though they'd get dust everywhere, which could present its own problems).

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Quoting: ColomboSo A can be both "true" and "false" at the same time, depending on assumptions of other people. If person X consider A to be true, than A|X = TRUE. If Y consider it false, then A|Y = FALSE. Obviously, from this example, A can be both true or false. You will get global answer if you integrate through all people: A| \int_\Omega.

Y'know, strange as it is to say, I actually understand your point now. Thanks for clarifying. I don't AGREE with your assumption that continuing support is somehow part of the initial price of the game, and I doubt more than a tiny fraction of other people do, but I can see now it's pointless debating it further, so I bid you a good day sir.

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Quoting: ColomboIf there is such expectation, and previously, while Paradox was known for releasing games in state that can be described as open beta, it was also known for eventually fixing all the bugs and people bought their knowing and expecting that, then it is not "free". It is part of the price I bought the game for.

On the other hand, I bought EU IV sometime after it'd had its second expansion. I'd never heard of Paradox before and had no knowledge of their practices; two expansions was usually the limit for most games I'd played up to that point. I therefore bought it "as-is", with no expectation of further improvements (and was perfectly satisfied with what I got, too). Ergo, by your logic, the patches are free for me because I wasn't expecting them when I bought the game.

And here we have a logical contradiction. Patches cannot objectively be both free and not-free at the same time. If a new patch does not cost you additional money at the time of download, then by the accepted dictionary definition of the term it is objectively free. End of story.

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