Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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Video Game Science
January 26th, 2010
I was just thinking of, or trying to think of, video games with good science that teach a little science. As usual, I tend to think of physics and astronomy, and the things that occur to me first are usually down this line of thinking. I know that I’ve missed a lot of PC games and console games and thought I’d ask for help. What games have good science, particularly in terms of physics or astronomy? I’ll throw out two from my childhood that I was a big fan of.
Space War. Ships moving in space with impulse and gravity. You learn right away a lot of rules of celestial mechanics, or the star/black hole eats your ship. There is also the issue of 2-dimensional thinking that did in Kahn.
Lunar Lander. Fuel. Action and reaction. Gravity. Good old Newtonian physics:
What else? I know there have been some PC-based space exploration games that use real stars and things, but I can’t remember any specifically by name. Games that get space battles, inertia, mechanics right? Games that depend on evolution? Help me out. I’d like to make a list. A lot of the older games can be found online these days, in some version or another.
Thanks!
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Mass Effect is a fairly accurate sci-fi type action-RPG. It certainly takes its own liberties in order to aid gameplay but the space exploration, while simple, provides an accurate view of how planets might be in other star systems.
Spore uses quite a bit of an evolutionary mechanic to propel gameplay.
Then there are games like Wing Commander series, EVE Online, Homeworld series and Solar, which is an independent game on Xbox Live. Basically you play as a star and create a solar system. It’s been described as a space sandbox game. However I’m not certain how accurate it is in relation to physics and such, but it’s definitely a game worth checking out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt1FfuYvl9M
Footage of the game.
Thanks, Travis, just the kind of response I was hoping for. Solar sounds interesting. I know there are various solar system generators out there for writers and game designers to use, but a game like this has a lot of potential. Hope it doesn’t suck.
First of all there is Orbiter – a space flight simulator. I haven’t played it but have heard good it is quite good if you are into such things. You can get it for free here:
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/
The most recent game my knowledge of orbital mechanics (as small that it is) proved useful was Osmos – an indie game where you use Newtonian physics to move a blob to absorb other blobs. You can find more information about it here: http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/
There was a fully accurate space combat simulator ingeniously named Space Combat, but as might be the case with real life space battles, it was spectacularly boring, at least for me. Right now all I can find is it’s wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Combat
Then there is Pontifex and other similar bridge building games. Although these games give you more insight about engineering than science, they still have a good educational value.
It’s a boardgame, not a video game, but I think you’d enjoy Zendo. See this review of it in particular:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/154012/zendo-as-a-tool-for-teaching-the-scientific-method
Oh, I remember Orbiter! It’s been a long time, but it was cool. Thanks for the reminder and the other suggestions!
Zendo — can you do anything you want at Zendo? 😉
I very much liked the I-War (or Independence-War) Series – it had space combat between corvette sized ships with inertia using particle accelerators and realistic missiles as well as IMHO quite correct solar systems with jump points at lagrange points.
Allthough it had not only FTL travel between stars (Capsule Drive) but also the Linear Displacement drive System which allowed for very rapid in-system travel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-War_%28Independence_War%29
Joerg, thanks for that reminder. I bought the first IW game on the basis of its physics, which sounded great. Unfortunately the game didn’t “take” for me. Don’t know why not. Maybe I was just too busy after I bought it. Sometimes that happens. I wonder if there’s still a way to play it on current systems.
Oddly enough, I was just searching for the same thing
Couldn’t find one, though. I hope, Steam or GOG pick it up soon.
I really loved I-War and played the hell out of it, but the sequel (Edge of Chaos) didn’t “take” for me, even though it was more free-form and had a lot more variety.
World of Goo and Crayon Physics are both fun (and quite beautiful) physics puzzle games.
Yes, Crayon Physics is great! I will have to look into the Goo…
although it escapes a bit the scope of this post, check out GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS 2… its by FAR the best space “civilization/empire” building game (sometimes also called 4x for explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Mike, a very realistic game, in terms of spaceflight mechanics, distances, etc, etc, is FRONTIER – Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters.
They are the successors of Elite, and you can even do gravitational slingshots in them.
Our renters moved out several months ago and left us with a mess to clean up. Not just have been there holes inside the wall, they also destroyed doors, window frames and carpets. They had been very smart and covered up the damage with pictures, posters and curtains so we didn’t realize the extent of the harm until they had been gone. Now we are fixing up the house so we can rent it again. Thankfully, this career is much easier as we have a laptop with wireless capabilities. We’re capable to Free XBOX 360 Games too as other shows so we’re entertained while toiling away. It’s good that the World-wide-web offers points of this nature.