The difficulty in creating this as a game is all about the level of activity for the users. I set the game up to require constant attention. The plants need water and fertilizer, the solar array needs cleaned, the Fuel Cells need recharged, the fish need fed and the equipment needs serviced. If no one logs in and keeps after all this work things fall into disarray. It was my hope that the users would organize a bit and get a schedule for maintaining the colony but I haven’t seen that happen yet. The game will have to be a bit more casual and some of the systems will have to be put into automatic mode in order to keep things working properly. I can’t know when people will jump in and do things so I have to change the methods a bit.

On the reality side, if you don’t water the plants they will die. If you dont keep the power systems running and the hubs warm, the fish will freeze and the plants will die. Having to live in this situation you would be more energetic about keeping yourself alive, warm and fed. Just having to keep after all the equipment would cut way down on the boredom of living in such a hostile environment.

The issue of transporting this extreme living condition to a simple, more or less casual game is one of the greatest challenges a designer will have to face. I can’t force people to log into the game to make sure the generator has fuel so how do I give the user the Mars experience when they are only occasional visitors. Most of the systems will have to be auto-magic and take care of themselves and it would be hard to plan a crisis to challenge the users when the users may or may not log on at any given time and stay for an undetermined amount of time. I am left with offering simple tasks for the user. Go fix unit A, take this load of X over to camp B etc…. As I see it this will get boring rather quick and the game will lose any value after a dozen log-ins.

We will be going through a second phase of testing in the near future to see if we can balance the casual user with some excitement in the colony. One of the tests will be to have things work automatically until someone logs into the game then have “issues” that will require user attention. This will be a delicate balance to code in order to keep things fresh and challenging for the constant users as well as the casual users.

Everyone has settled into a routine of checking the valves on the life support, cleaning the PV array and servicing the wind generators. Job one is to stay breathing and stay warm and we are all aware of the severe consequences of losing either. We got the software running on the main computer now and that has been a great help finding lost equipment, keeping track of the weather and communications.

The farm has provided a lot of work for the crew. Trying to balance the soil nutrients has been a bit of a challenge since the Martian dirt has no inherent value to a plant. The agriculture team has started to produce food now so that is a good sign. It seems the biggest issue we have there is making enough organic compost to keep the cycle working from seed to food and produce enough seed to plant the next round. We are using human waste mixed with plant material and some chemical seasoning to make our own fertilizer. We can’t forget our little friend the worm either. This little ground dweller has been our best friend. They really grind up the soil and finally someone found a recipe that makes them taste like chicken……

It took quite a while to get the fish tanks full of water and an even greater challenge to keep the water warm enough to hatch fish. One of the Hub units we call the Bio Lab is a magic place indeed. We have two tanks with fish and frogs to provide the colony with something other than salad. So far that is working well as long as we can keep the water from freezing. It takes a lot of power to keep that much water from being a block of ice. The Bio Lab is also home to the mushroom farm, the worm beds and some medical plants. We decided to keep the plants and animals separate for a couple of reasons. If either of the units failed in the early stages we would at least have a source for food with the other one and since this is such a closed system of air circulation we wanted to control any contamination that might occur.

The Mine Hub is where we keep all the drilling and mining equipment. There is a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometer in this unit that we use to test core samples. There are two ground penetrating radar units, two core drillers and two mining augers as portable equipment to gather samples, and extract minerals. This unit also houses the ore processing unit with a kiln and material separators. For now we have the machine shop set up in the west wing of this Hub since the production Hub equipment got destroyed during landing. We hope to have it online sometime this year or next depending on parts.

The shuttle pad will be finished soon and we can’t wait for care packages from home. As you might guess the mail here is rather slow. Everything from Earth is routed through the main colony then when and if we can get a shuttle up this way we can get fresh supplies.

The Main Hub is where we sleep and play when we get the chance. This unit is also home to the repair shop for most of the equipment. All the pumps, condensers, valves have spare parts in the Main Hub so it is a busy when things break. There is a Rover garage in the service module on the East side for fixing and or patching up the Rovers. They are strong little buggies but our colonists are determined to break them. One of the exciting events we have is the Rover Races. When all the work is done and we have some spare time we like to see who can get from point a to point b in the fastest time. Boys being boys are always up for a little challenge.

This may seem like a fictional tale but most of this is being done right now by the testers in Mars Colony Online. www.hyperkat.com/MarsOnline.html Yes all this is real. We have a online colony with around 50 users and they are building this colony. Every week we try to add new systems for testing and the gang at Hyperia Base go to work running the equipment, searching for ores, growing food and performing the general maintenance required to keep the colony going. We have had a few mishaps but for the most part the software is working well. I would like to thank the testers for the many hours they spend on the planet to help make this Simulation realistic and fun. Join the forums at www.hyperkat.com/litterbox and read up on the adventure.

This is all a reasonable fiction of how this would be done and what equipment we would need to have to make the modules habitable. Now I have to write the code to make it all work. We have the objects in place and the math behind balancing flow rates and conversion rates has to be applied to the objects so the system will do what we expect. Cut off the pumps and the water tank in the separator will empty depending on the conversion rate of the separator. When the tank is empty the separator stops producing oxygen. Users inside the module breathe oxygen and the levels of the oxygen tank will diminish. All this is a delicate balance of code and math and takes time to get the values up to a level of realism I require for the game.

It would be easy to just do the video game thing and say turn the machine on and breathe but my goal for MCO is to add a level of realism to put it a step above what is out there. Having said that I also believe this can be used to make a more realistic simulation that we can use to test the ideas of sending people to Mars and have them survive. You can draw all the pictures you want and engineer all the ideas but you never know just how things will work till you have to walk through it and live with it.

Well the code and the math are in place and we have done 2 online tests with people from all over the globe. The game characters mount the EVA gear and wander outside to check the equipment, drive the rovers and enjoy the view. Rovers run out of fuel, EVA packs run out of oxygen, users have to eat and drink and use the bathroom. I watch their actions and I am amazed and how they adapt to this alien world and the restrictions of having to survive here.

If you are interested in joining us on Mars go to www.hyperkat.com register on the forums and have your say. We welcome game players and engineers to help build this colony. We have room for 30+ colonists so don’t be shy.

Having said that, what are the advantages of having a dedicated server and 30+ users in the simulation at the same time? The biggest one is the social aspect. Many online games have a draw due to the interaction with other real people. They make friends and form social groups, hang out, tell jokes and make the interaction a form of entertainment. When we go to Mars and form our first colony the social aspects will be an important part of our survival.

So is this version a simulator, a game or an educational tool? Short answer is it can be any or all of the above. It will be a simulator in as much as we are trying to replicate what you might face having to be on Mars and having to face the fact that your existence is totally dependant on how well you manage the resources.

It will be a game because it has an objective of survival and we want to add in an economy where each player can earn credits and the colony as a whole can earn credits. The game part of it will also face the possibility of failure. This will be a new model for online games where the entire server can fail. If the colony fails to survive the server will reset the game back to the start. 

The educational skew of the game will come in the form of the sciences. The Psychology of the social activity and who will be boss and who will get sent back to Earth because we just can’t stand them anymore. Team management comes to bear here as well. Who will do which job and when and how do you cover your ass in case someone fails.

Farming and the agricultural science will be a big part of the game. Users will have to plant seeds, water and fertilize the soil and maintain a suitable growing temperature in the greenhouses to produce plants that can be used for food.

Geology and Mining will be required to find minerals we need for survival and we can convert the raw rock into a product to make game credits.

Since we are in the early stages of development we can offer to educators and scientists the possibility of altering a version of the game to suit your needs. The game has a SQLite database system and that database can be setup to extract any data you would want. This would be a great classroom activity that students could run at home and discussed in class. The architectural layout of the habitation, farm and mining modules can be altered to test different theories on what this colony should look like and how humans would react to the confinement.

The first colony is being built right now. We have the modules on the ground and the advanced mission crew is busy hooking up all the equipment. Come join us and be a part of the first Mars Online Colony. You can get more information by joining the forums and following the web pages. Go to www.hyperkat.com and stay in touch. See you on the surface……

If the colony is a dictatorship or monarchy, not much will change in the day to day activities so why would it matter what your position in the grand scheme of things would be? People will get moved to different jobs as needed or promoted to easier jobs and manage others more effectively due to experience. Why does a persons’ position in the pecking order mean so much to us? The dictator would have to eat and breathe just like the rest of us and the delicate nature of our existence on Mars would make the big boss less of a tyrant and more of a leader.

Can we have a democracy in the colony? Yes, we can. But what would it look like and how would it work? We are used to voicing our opinions, voting and standing up for our rights as citizens here on Earth. How would this work on a colony where almost everything you do has consequences for sustaining not just your life but the lives of others? You can’t just quit working on the only oxygen separator because you are pissed off about not getting enough internet time. In a remote colony we won’t have many of the things that allow us to tolerate the day, but humans have a way of adapting to dire circumstances. What are the rewards for our hard labor in the colony? If we don’t have something to look forward to after our work shift is over then we are nothing more than slaves or tools. What will be fun on Mars? What will we do to make living there tolerable?

I worked on a game in the late 90’s called Everquest for Sony. The company had a great game idea and a masterful crew to make it a reality. Of course Sony looked at the game as a product for sale since they were in the business of making games to make money. The game was a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG . Users from all over the world logged into this game for hours and days at a time and still play to this day. The game is of the swords and sorcery genre, but beyond that it lies a society of people from all over the planet interacting in a fantasy world. I play the game as well and I am amazed at the social interactivity that goes on inside. For the most part gathering up a team of adventurers and running into a dark cave and getting our asses burned of by some fire-breathing dragon is what I like to call fun. But there is a dark side to the online games. I have seen people leave their spouses and move to another state to be with a person they met in the game. I have seen good friends get mad at each other over looting some virtual sword out of turn. Cursing, bitching, complaining, and crying are all prevalent and yet players have to log in every day and get their fix.

Version 3 of our Mars Colony Simulator will be about a persistent online colony. We are going to create a virtual Martian colony and test its viability as a commercial product. Like all games there is an obstacle to overcome which creates a positive result. The goal will be the same, but the challenge for this venture will be the survival of all colony members. Food, air and water will be the primary goals for the activities presented, but we want to discover how much more entertainment we have to add to make it fun enough to bring people back. I am interested in the psychology of the simulation from a business standpoint. Can we make the simulation compelling enough that users will want to play a lot? is a question but there is a more serious lesson to be learned here. What is going to happen when we get 20 or 30 people I have never met start playing? How can I control my colony? What is to prevent someone from grabbing a rover and running amok? This is a golden opportunity for a Doctor of Psychology to jump in and observe the action. Watch a society degrade into anarchy or survive the storm and become a productive new world order. Either way it will be an interesting experiment and I think this aspect would be of interest to members of the psychological vein of study. The first test colony will be online Q4 of 2009 and we will keep everyone posted on the status of the colony.

Now that we have access to liquid water we can stay planetside for an extended period of time. It is our hope that the rover crews find materials we can use to sustain the colony. We need to find material for fertalizer such as Phosphates, nitrates and potassium based chemicals. Everything we have or produce needs to be recycled. Unused plant material and waste products can be composted and used to treat the soil. The chemistry of the soils we find there will have to be modified to promote plant growth. The challenges we face to alter what we find to provide what we need will be difficult but I think we are up to the task.

Mission 2 will have a water scrubber to clean some of the contaminates that may be present. This scrubber will provide clean drinking water for the crew to drink and to water the plants in the greenhouse. The water scrubber will also be used to extract oxygen from the water for the crew and help balance the oxygen levels in the farm unit.

We learned from mission 1 that there are frequent storms on the surface. The solar panels only provide power during the calm. The wind speed tests we did in mission 1 tell us we can suplement the power requirements using wind turbine generators. These generators should meet or exceed the power requirements of the farm. The biggest issue will be heat for the plants. We can’t afford to let them freeze and die. Our earth bound testing provided us with hearty plants that can grow in cold temperatures and will require less power to maintain. The crew of mission 2 will have to monitor the farm constantly until we find the magic combination that will provide a sustainable source of food.

We will set up an algae growth system in this second mission. Algae will provide food, some medicines and a small oxygen supplement. Earth researchers have discovered that algae is not really a food but we can use it for food for fish that we may bring, grow and eat . There is alot of interesting research on algae and the crew of mission 2 will be busy.

The rover we send for mission 2 has been named Hercules. It is a small truck rover that will carry two passengers and cargo. It will be powered by a methane / oxygen turbine to charge the batteries with a Photo Voltaic panel for chargeing the batteries while out at the work sites. Hercules is equipped with emergency oxygen and can sustain the occupants during storms. We will need to take enough spare parts to keep it going until mission 3. The plans are set, the mission is a go.

The same methods apply to all the equipment in the simulation. An object that is outside in the freezing weather with dust blowing over it will suffer failures much faster than equipment inside. The other factor that applies here is if the equipment is being used or running will tend to wear out and break faster than a unit not being used. Time will cause mechanical objects to break if they are constantly being operated. So everything that can be used or is affecting some portion of the simulation needs to be monitored and the calculation for failure is dependent on its run time and environmental conditions of operation..

Then we have the “jack random” failures where things just break with no reason. It is part of reality and we try to minimize this issue by building objects with the best materials and engineering practices we have but still things will break for no reason. This can be a difficult mode to inject into the simulation but still needs to be allowed to happen.

Every time we add an object to the simulation we have to decide if it can break, how it will break, what will cause it to break and how do we decide to break it. In a perfect world/simulation nothing will break and we just go about the task of completing the tasks given by the simulation. Most testers we have encountered to this point want the failure modes in the simulation to add more challenge or reality to the environment. Without challenge or the possibility of failure the simulation has no validity and generates a lower interest level.

The general operation of executing the mission orders is another level of decision making left to the user. Mission one is the geology survey and the hopes of finding liquid water under the surface. There are enough tools in the simulation to complete this task and the challenge is to do it in an efficient manner. Situations may occur that alter your methodology so it is up to the users to make decisions on how to accomplish the tasks required by the mission.

The latest version of the simulator we added the oxygen mixture valves. A higher concentration of oxygen will allow the characters to heal faster while a lower mixture will cause a faster loss of health and stamina. We added a failure mode for the oxygen tanks in the COHAB so users are faced with the dilemma of mixture settings. If you are low on oxygen you might want to cut back on the mixture to conserve but you do so at the expense of crew health. Set the levels too high and you do so at a higher consumption rate. We also changed the Photo Voltaic array to be 8 separate panels. Any one of the panels can fail and may cause the batteries to drain faster than they are being charged. You can shut down some systems like the lights to conserve energy or stop using some of the equipment that consumes energy. Again, this is a simulation decision that has to be made by the crew on a per incident basis.

As we add more things to the simulation we also add more challenge in the overall operation of creating and maintaining the colony. The next major phase will introduce food production in the form of algae and plant production in a greenhouse environment. The code is in now to actually allow the users to plant seeds and grow plants, harvest and convert the bio material to food or medicine. Users will have to constantly monitor soil, water and temperature to create enough food for survival.

Good luck to all the testers out there, time for me to get back to writing code……

So, you have decided to travel to another world and create a sustainable colony or at least discover if it is possible. It is kind of like moving to some remote location in the middle of the frozen tundra in Siberia. You can’t carry all you might need in one trip so how do you decide what you would need and how many trips it would take. Your plan would also need to include the order of setup. What would be the order of importance for the items? If you were going to spend the night in your new empty house and you could bring one thing what would it be a television or a bed? I would bring the bed and spend a comfortable first night but others may value entertainment over comfort. This is the dilemma facing the planners for the first colony mission to Mars.

Let’s take a look at what needs to be accomplished. First you need to get supplies and people to the surface. Can you do that in a single vehicle? Does it make sense to use two vehicles? What about the return trip to Earth or is this, a one way ticket?  Let’s assume for the moment we have a method of getting the Lander to the planet, which we can cover in another paper so what would that first mission be?

After landing, you know one of the explorers will have to step outside plant a foot on the surface and utter some historic first words. “This footprint cost 122 billion dollars” or “Can ya hear me now?” Next would be to get the solar array working for power. We may bring a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) for power but the Photo Voltaic cells are a good backup and may even provide a safer power source. Either way I bet there will be PV cells at the first Mars colony.

After the power up, computer systems setup, GPS setup and communication setup we want to make sure there is oxygen to breathe. We brought an environmental system that uses frozen oxygen and hydrogen to create energy and water. The oxygen we pull off to breathe will be recycled through CO2 scrubbers. This system will provide what we need to survive for a limited period of time so we had better find water on the planet and soon.

We know the water is here below ground and we need to find it before we run out of something to drink and air to breathe. So set up the soil sampler and start the planet search. How would you conduct the search? That would be a matter for the mission commander to decide. Do a radial pattern or do a grid pattern, search near to far, search by elevation or what ever way you think would help you find water the fastest.

Ok so you found a source for water, sunk a small well and can pump it out fast enough to supply you with something to drink and something to convert to oxygen, now what? If this is all that we did we have a successful mission. We got here and we found a means to survive here so let’s start gathering information about our new home. We took some samples of soil to find the water and can save that information on a geo map for future missions but we can expand our search some and grid the whole area by taking and testing soil or mineral samples. We might find resources that would be useful or alter future missions.

Another major item for the first trip wish list is an enclosed algae system. The system uses carbon dioxide that we breathe out and sunlight to produce a nice green slime that gives off oxygen and can produce food. That technology could provide us with a constant and therefore permanent method to exist on Mars or any other planet that has sun and water.

If there is room on this first mission I would choose to take a makeshift greenhouse and some seeds to see if we can grow something on the planet mainly because man can’t live on slime and crackers forever. Finding water was important to our basic survival but did we find a good enough source to irrigate some plants is the next question. Another major part of the mission planning at this point is to decide if we want to put the farm at the water source or bring the water to the farm. I would be nice if the water source was near the landing site but we can’t plan on that being true. We can’t plan on the source of water being on a flat enough landscape for the next Lander to be near by so I think we start now and plan on moving the water to the colony and farm.

Now that we have the base camp set up and running our explorers can return home for the ticker tape parade (do they still do that?) and the second crew can drop down with a rover and some construction supplies to start adding to the settlement. Will this second crew be permanent is a good question or should we plan on every two years rotating out the crews with new people? There will be a day when they just stay there because they want to. Personally I don’t see this as a permanent settlement until the first Martian child is born.

Designing the game or simulator is much like making the trip for real. That is a rather bold statement and I don’t want to ever trivialize the efforts of the brave men and women that venture into space for mankind nor the endless hours of work by top engineers to make this happen, but the path is similar none the less.

The Colony ET project is about the destination and not the trip so I will forego the construction of the rocket, the fuel, and the 6 month adventure just to get to Mars and look at this from the point when we crack the hatch at the landing site for the first time.

We have decided to make the trip to another world and now we have to decide how to do it and at what cost. In the game development cycle we try to get a vision of the technical issues to overcome and how long those issues will take to resolve. Time relates directly to money in the case of a game since salaries need to be paid and facilities need to be maintained. In contrast, the companies that have to design and build the parts on a contract basis still have the same types of investments in people and facilities to bring the project to reality.

In the game we have to make the landing zone and paint it to look like where we want to go. That means we make the hills and valleys, put in the sky, the sun and add in the minerals that might be found there. Now that we have a place to exist we have to design the craft that will land our brave souls. The design of the game will draw upon reality in shape and function of what we see in artist conceptions and engineering reality. The landing craft and the first habitat module will probably be the same object and will have a place to sleep, some equipment for exploration, a way to generate power, oxygen and something to eat or a way to make food.

In reality, the engineers need to make the landing craft out of a material that can withstand a landing on the planet, will protect the travelers from storms, and form a mostly air tight seal to provide a safe atmosphere. It will have a door to get outside or a “sally port” double door system to protect the interior atmosphere. The craft will probably have a portal or window to see outside, floor, walls and a ceiling.

The game has mostly the same requirements. When the artists create the structure they have to be sure the space is air tight even though we don’t have actual air in the game we can detect small cracks in the geometry by using light to find the holes but the requirement is the same for both simulation and reality. The skin for our game craft is just polygons and texture. I could add in the ability for our simulation to cause damage to the skin over time from a corrosive atmosphere but we have to make the decision of what is important to the simulation. For Colony ET we want the users to experience the day to day problems facing the explorers to set up a permanent presence on an alien planet and not the microscopic level of reality.

So the big decision by the simulation creator is how much it too much?  How much is not enough. We are giving the user a graphical interface for equipment like a soil sampler. The user will put the sample “here” and press the “sample” button and wait for the result. We could make the user fire up the spectrometer, weigh the sample etc but that might be too much detail for some users and yet not enough for others. The getting of the sample from some location on the planet, the mechanism to test the sample and the data derived from the sample is enough to approximate the activity for our needs. Unless someone wants to pay us to code things down to the nth level of reality I think this will be enough for now. The Colony ET project will have plants that grow over time, drilling machines, wells, photo voltaic cells, batteries, spectrometers and as many other “real” things as we can add to the simulation. We want the users to get the feel of being there and having to deal with the realities like “did someone bring the battery? Krap, Bob how bout you run back and get a battery, oh and bring an extra pv panel while yer at it.”