Artemis Away Team

by Richard Ryley

Artemis Away Team was inspired by and is meant to be a companion to Artemis Spaceship Bridge
Simulator, by Thom Robertson. To download Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, visit 
https://artemisspaceshipbridge.com/.

You can also find more information on both this game and Artemis SBS on the Artemis SBS Forums, 
at http://artemis.forumchitchat.com. Posts on Artemis Away Team will be found in the Off Topic 
forum. 

Installation:

This Artemis Away Team install package is an unpublished (but signed) APK, and so you will have 
set the "Install Unknown Apps" permission to install this game. This can usually be found in the 
Security section of your Settings, although it may be under Apps and Notifications -> Special 
App Access. If you have to choose the app you will use to install Artemis Away Team, select your 
file manager and grant access. Otherwise, you can just turn on the global permission. 

In most cases, you can simply go to your file manager and click on the APK file to open it, and 
you will be asked to grant the required permissions. You will be asked if you want to install the 
app, and then once the installation is complete you can either run it or click "Done". 

If the message "App not Installed" appears, there are a few things you can try. First, go to Google 
Play and turn off Play Protect. Note that usually Play Protect will not flag Artemis Away Team, 
although it may ask you to upload the APK to Google for analysis. You can do this or not as you 
see fit. I will probably be publishing Artemis Away Team on Google Play long before Play Protect 
reports it as commonly downloaded. 

If that does not work, your copy of the APK may be corrupted. Try downloading it again. There should 
not be an issue with free space, as the game takes up less than 30 MB. If nothing else works, report 
that the APK could not be installed on the Artemis forums, and be sure to let me know the brand and 
model of phone you are using, as well as your version of the Android OS. 

To copy the APK to your phone, you can either download it onto your phone, or use a USB cable to 
copy it from a PC. You should keep a copy of the APK so you can share it with your friends. The 
app will be installed in your app drawer, so you will have to manually place the app icon on your 
home screen. 

How to Play: 

Before playing Artemis Away Team, you must either set yourself up as a Host, for the other players to connect to, or as a client who will Join the Host's game. Artemis Away Team requires a wifi connection across a wifi router, although it may be playable via Internet address as well. 

On the atarting screen, choose either the Host button, or type in the IP address of the Host and press the Join button. Once a player has selected to be the Host, the required IP address will be displayed on the Host's screen. If any clients find that the Host is rejecting the connection, try turning off Mobile Data and BlueTooth on the Host's phone. If that does not work, select another player to be the Host. 

Next, the Host should select a scenario for the game, and configure the difficulty level, movement mode, and whether the scenario will take place on a ship or a planet. The latter choice will determine which of the enemy races you will face, and whether you will have allies. Torgoth will only appear on planets or on their own ships, but you will face a mix of the remaining enemies. 

Finally, all players including the Host should select their role. The five roles are explained by the interface. There can be only one player for each role, and you will see which roles are taken on your display. The Host may switch between the scenario and role screens freely, but if he backs out to the start screen, the connection will be lost and everyone will have to connect again. 

The game begins when the host presses the "Play!" button. Any players who begin play before the host will see the game paused. Clients may connect while the host is still selecting the scenario to play. In such a case, the map will be empty until a scenario is selected. 

The game display consists of two parts, the Radar Viewport to the top, and the Control Panel on the bottom. The Radar Viewport is identical for all roles, while the Control Panel is different. Each display is intended to represent a device, like a scanner or a medikit, which the away team member uses to interact with his surroundings. 

Moving the device in the real world will cause the game display to rotate to show the area around the player. The game is meant to be played standing up, although you can sit in a rotating chair or a stool while playing. The players should form a circle so they can communicate with each other easily. In more advanced movement modes, the players can actually walk around in the real world to move around the map. 

Touching an object on the radar display will cause it to be selected. Each player has their own unique target indicator, and all players can see each others' targets. Some players can see information others cannot. For example, the Scout can see information about blaster resistances on his selected target that the Marine needs to select his blaster setting. 

For all roles except the Marine, the button marked "Blaster" will change the Control Panel and put the device into "blaster mode". Blaster mode allows players other than the Marine to fire at enemies and either supplement the Marine's damage, or replace him if there is no Marine available. Blaster mode has only one setting, and does only minor damage compared to the Marine, but can be useful in non-combat scenarios where there are only a few enemies to deal with.

Touching the circular icon on the upper right of the display will bring up the Game Options Panel, which will allow additional control over the game. The game can be paused by the host, and all players can customize the game to their liking. There is no option to mute game sounds, as much of the interaction in the game is audial and not visual. You should use the phone's sound controls to set the volume to a comfortable level. 

A button marked "How to Play" explains how to use the Radar Viewport and Control Panel for each of the five roles. Please consult those guides for more details. The Host should pause the game when the game begins so players can read their guides. The game will automatically pause when the Host opens his How to Play guide. 

Tablet Mode: 

If played on a tablet, Artemis Away Team can be configured to display in landscape mode. This will provide more space for information displays, at the cost of a smaller Radar Viewport. In particular, the Scout and Leader can benefit from tablet mode, as their message panel will display one line per message, instead of splitting each message into two lines. The info panels on the Radar Viewport are also bigger, allowing the text to be more readable for the Scout, Doctor or Tech. 

To use tablet mode, simply hold the tablet horizontally when starting the game. The display will automatically rotate to match your tablet's orientation. Once the game begins, the tablet will be locked to either landscape or portrait mode, so you can hold your phone or tablet flat without causing distracting orientation changes. In tablet mode, the game display can be rotated from landscape to reverse landscape orientation if you wish. This lets you position the tablet buttons or charging cable in the best location for gameplay. 

Some fold phones are so close to square that the control buttons would be too small to be usable. These phones will automatically lock to tablet mode. Messages may overflow the message panel in such a case, but this should not affect gameplay. If a phone is more than twice as tall as it is wide, it will automatically be locked to portrait mode, as tablet mode would have too much empty space. 

Troubleshooting:

Artemis Away Team is intended to be played on an Android phone with both an accelerometer and a magnetic field sensor. If your phone has a gyroscope, the orientation reading will be even more reliable. Note that magnetic fields, such as from another phone or a magnetic mount device, may interfere with the orientation. You should avoid playing in metal structures or cars. 

An indicator to the top left of the screen will indicate that your accelerometer or compass (magnetic field sensor) are unreliable. Cyan is the most reliable, yellow is slightly less reliable, and red is the least reliable. If either indicator has a golden border around it, your phone has a gyroscope. If no indicators are visible, then your sensors have high accuracy. 

If an indicator is visible, try moving your phone in a figure 8 pattern to calibrate the sensors. For best results, move the phone from side to side while turning it face down and face up again. This should cause the indicator to change color and hopefully disappear. If you have no indicators but the screen is rotating unnecessarily, try moving away from metal objects. 

More troubleshooting options are available on the Options Panel in game. Click on the round icon to the upper right to bring up Options. In the middle of the panel, under the Show Arc and Auto Fire buttons, you should see FPS, which should vary between 30 and 50. If it is very low, you may have a network problem that is slowing down the game. The Dir value shows the current orientation angle, which is also displayed at the top of the scanner. 

The next value, Gyro Updates/Cycle, is only available if your phone has a gyroscope. It shows how many updates to the sensor readings it has recieved since the last gyro calculation. This should run between 0 and 5. If it is always 0, your phone sensors may be faulty. Below this line is a second line that shows the accuracy of your Accelerometer and Magentometer. If both are High, your orientation should be reliable. 

If you have a gyroscope and are having problems with your orientation, you can turn off either the gyroscope or the magnetometer. Turning off the gyroscope will calculate orientation only based on the accelerometer and magnetic field. This may result in less drift, but more "jitter". Turning off the magnetometer will calculate orientation only based on the accelerometer and gyroscope. This should eliminate any unreliablity due to nearby magnetic fields, but without the built in compass, the gyroscope will drift. 

Turning off BOTH gyroscope and magnetometer will cause pitch and roll to be calculated based on the accelerometer (i.e., gravity) but the direction will still be determined exclusively by the gyroscope. This may be more steady that just turning off the magnetometer, but there will still be drift. Note that if your phone has no gyroscope, both of these options will be disabled and you will have to use the magnetic compass.

As a last resort, you can turn off the orientation sensors completely, by turning on the Manual option. The screen will not rotate based on the phone's orientation, and you will have to drag the screen with your finger to rotate it. While this would seem to make the game easier, in fact, it can be very hard to track a moving target by scrolling the screen and fire at the same time. You should use the orientation tracking if at all possible. 

Credits: 

Game and UI art by Richard Ryley

Game sound effects were lifted from Artemis SBS

Thanks to the Artemis fans on the Artemis SBS Official Forums, who inspired me to make this game and helped in its design so far. Playtesters will be added to these credits once I have posted it for testing.