As covered by Frank at Gearthblog.com and Stefan at the Ogleearth.com Google Earth Blog, an Intel Development team released a ‘prototype’ game for Google Earth called ‘Mars Sucks’. It is essentially a geography quiz with alien blasting fun. One of their design criteria was to build the user interface internal to Google Earth. They’ve released the art and source code so read on for our review and a chance to play it yourself via the Destinsharks.com server.

The game is quite simple - using clues posted on your ‘dashboard’, find the invaders and blast them with your laser ray. The game is handled via the use of network links and dynamic KML content generated on a webserver (in our case hosted by DestinSharks.com). Response is a bit slow, but the game is a good example of exploiting the KML 2.1 network link structure - something we’re also using in our EarthNC Marine Charts for Google Earth. The shooting response is automatic and based on checking between the current view center and alien location. This check occurs each time you stop moving the map - so to take extra shots you need to move the map a touch and stop.

Play the Game

To play, we recommend the latest version of Google Earth 4

1. Open our Mars Sucks Game Networklink in Google Earth

2. Read the clues and search for the aliens (you’ll need to be below 2400 miles to see them and they don’t seem to appear prior to the 2nd clue)

3. Center your cross-hairs over the UFO and you will shoot automatically. To shoot again, move your view just a touch and stop. It takes 4 shots to destroy a UFO.

Enjoy! - be forewarned, we reserve the right to stop the game if our network or CPU usage gets out of hand!

Related Posts:

NOAA Wrecks and Obstructions in Google Earth

West Marine and Boat US Store Locations for Google Earth

Offshore Super Series Destin World Championship Google Earth Race Map

Google updates Google Earth 4 Beta with New Features on Nov 1st!

Tide Stations and Tide Predictions for the US via Google Earth

This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 11:10 pm and is filed under In the News, Google Earth Maps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.