Driving to Another Planet

Episode 5 of Wrong Way Up will be the wrongest way up they've had so far: Splitsie (and a few minutes later Capac Amaru as well) wakes up on Elysium and reality is at a Dutch Angle with Perseii looming above. Splitsie, w4stedspace, and DE jokingly forbid Texfire to do fake accents.

Before the Angry Jalopy can drive on, they need to pick up w4sted's plane from the ground. W4sted exchanges his wheels for modded plane wheels while the others rebuild the scorpion tail crane. DE tests his runway-to-hangar lift and it works "first try"! ;-) In a long concerted effort, they get w4sted's plane on the runway and from there into the hangar.

(0:30) DE folds down the rear trailer's runway and they drive on towards Perseii. They run over trees and past a green smoking plane wreck -- Captain Planet and the Lorax would surely tell them off! The rear trailer keeps phasing through the middle trailer but "it's fine." Over the increasing clanging sounds, W4sted warns it's dangerous to get used to the sounds of explosions.

When they arrive in the treeless polar region, planetary gravity is now 0.92g (and counting down!) and things are about to get "wibbly". Splitsie considers adding parachutes as they watch Capac's Unknown Signal fall *upwards*... When a hostile CLG Warthog plane drops bombs, Splitsie's plane struggles to lift off, so he skips across the ground as decoy. The Warthog gets ground support from a Liam Nissan and DE builds point defense guns. DE volunteers to drive, while W4sted engages the Bots from his plane, and Capac joins Tex driving the Challenger. Splitsie abandons his plane and engages in on-foot combat versus two bots; he fails to take over the bots' Liam Nissan and ends up hiding behind the car without ammo. "How are the boys going to get out of that one?"

Capac notices W4sted is gone. W4sted reports gravity and atmosphere end at 1800 metres altitude... and he is drifting uncontrollably to Perseii. Tex and Capac rescue Splitsie just as the acid rain starts. W4sted reports how his plane is slowly being stripped by Perseii's atmospheric reentry effects...

(1:00) DE mutters about the unrealistic reentry as Splitsie and Tex make it back under the Jalopy's roof. W4sted reports he is stranded without Survival Kit on Perseii. While Tex loads up the car, Capac and Splitsie update the crash counter LCDs manually. While driving on, they spot W4sted's crashsite (GPS label "Flappy") above them -- he'll be safer staying there for now.

As planetary gravity decreases to 0.54g, the rover loses traction, and they frantically build parachute hatches. A hostile plane named Infringed Intellectual Property flies by and Splitsie says it looks like Capac's Orange Baron. When he looks down again, the Jalopy's wheels are no longer touching the ground... They are now at 0.40g and falling... sideways?

DE deploys the runway in an attempt to increase drag. W4sted narrates their doom. Everyone runs to fill parachute hatches. They experience all states of grief at the same time:

> Splitsie: I am not in control of the vehicle. Just a heads-up. (Acceptance)
> Capac: Really... (Depression)
> Texfire: Oh god. (Bargaining)
> W4stedspace: It *looks* like *controlled* flight, what are you *talking* about... (Anger)
> DE: IT'S FINE EVERYTHING IS FINE (Denial)
>
>

They are floating between Elysium and Perseii at 0.3g -- until gravity rapidly increases to 1.1g and they drop like a rock towards Perseii. Only two parachutes open (Splitsie's, in his defence) and Splitsie calls to jettison the trailers. Capac hides in a cryopod.

The Jalopy pierces the ground like the butt end of a fence pole. They find themselves in a deep hole with DE's trailer poking out. Only Splitsie and Capac walk out of the wreckage. They give W4sted their GPS while they inspect the damage. DE had expected a slower, more prepared approach. Splitsie defends himself he didn't know Perseii's gravity would grab them so quickly.

They do inventory: Capac's beach and plane are at the bottom of the pit. The medbay is slowly crushed by falling debris. The drill is detached. The Assembler is destroyed. The scorpion tail is holding the wreck of Tex' vehicle. Steve is still recording a timelapse. They grab on to the ground with the scorpion tail and a new front arm built by Capac to pull the clanging trailer out of the pit. W4sted is 5km away calculating how to speedrun through the SE crafting progression to assemble wheels.

(1:30) W4sted decides to rather attempt to fly to them. In a team effort, they get DE's trailer out of the hole! Capac finds a crashed NPC plane in a crater next to them--apparently w4sted was not the only one who got pulled in by the gravity. They salvage the components of the Jalopy's front and middle parts from the hole and rebuild outside. Splitsie reveals he had expected that they would have to split the Jalopy and jump each trailer over separately, but the situation developed differently.

(2:00) They project an old blueprint to speed up re-building the front part. W4sted reports that his altimeter doesn't work between the planets and his plane has dropped like a stone, but it survived. They deploy the restored runway for the incoming w4sted. The human bots in in-game chat rally their forces to let their other teams know that the Jalopy has crashed on Perseii. Capac teases them about their lack of encryption and they retort "at least we have parachutes." If they keep rebuilding the Jalopy at this rate, w4sted won't even notice it was ever damaged! ;-) In the bottom of the pit, Capac blows up the warheads on the plane he salvaged and never got to fly.

(2:30) This planet is different: W4sted warns them that the climate on the other side of the valley is cold and low atmosphere, and Capac has built an ore detector and detects no ores nearby. Splitsie has experimented with similar planet/moon gravity constellations and others resulted in the transitioning vehicle getting stuck floating at a LaGrange point. W4sted adds that large grid and small grid also have different speed limits in this modded scenario which contributed to the two different outcomes.

Splitsie rescues Steve from the bottom of the pit and gives him a seat on the new rover. Tex sings the traditional folk song "Train's (?) gonna call me but I can't go, I'm down at the bottom of Splitsie's hole." We learn that copying and pasting in BuildVision has only slightly fewer steps than starting a nuclear reaction. W4sted's plane is torn back and forth between the two planets with CLG ground and air scouting vehicles chasing him.

(3:00) The new two-part rover (tentatively renamed Floppy or Loppy) is taking shape, with wheels, cockpit, drill, elevator, factory, cargo, catwalks, hitches, survival kit, programmable block, and foldable runway. They drive off the snow as Bot planes ("6shooter") approach. Kanajashi reveals in in-game chat that he joined the bots. W4sted can't fly under the gravity anomaly and intends to catch up with them a few kilometres away. Capac warns diligently of approaching hostiles ("Hugh Lorry") and DE calls him a Greek chorus of doom before turrets fend the bots off. Without w4sted, nobody set up the wheels, so Splitsie switches off the subgrid script and counteracts the bad handling by rebalancing cargo. Gravity registers as 1.1g but the altimeter is still non-functional. They stop quickly to mine some ice and stone when the bots' Hugh Lorry slowly catches up. Splitsie comments on medical/biomechanical inaccuracies in hospital TV shows.

(3:30) Capac and Splitsie tease each other who's the worse driver and Capac says at least he never crashed so hard that he ended up on another planet. W4sted lands on the runway edge and they inspect his macgyvered plane in awe while Capac fixes the elevator by jumping on it. ;-) Everyone bursts out laughing when Splitsie claims "We actually made it! I mean ... with degrees of qualification..." They all suffer from desyncs, random deaths, and phantom damage. They fend off bots (Kanajashi) and a bot vehicle (Hugh Lorrie) on foot. Capac and Directed Energy argue who gets the looted rocket launcher. For undisclosed reasons, w4sted knows that it's not possible to drop back to Elysium by plane. Capac's Unknown Signal gave him a Policeman Welder so he now can weld policemen. W4sted has to repaste his plane to be able to return. The weather looks like acid fog but no damage happens so Splitsie takes the opportunity to roof over expensive blocks. Splitsie adds a beacon to the runway while w4sted aborts several landings.

(4:00) W4sted needs drag chutes or tyre stacks to be able to brake because the planes built for Elysium are too floaty for Perseii. After Splitsie built a tyre stack, w4sted makes a perfect landing, metres in front of the tyres. Splitsie announces a twist for the following episodes: They are no longer allowed to use automatic turret AI and need to aim manually! Also, next week, Capac gets to sleep in, and Splitsie will be sleep deprived.

## References

1. ↑ In filmmaking and photography, the Dutch angle is a tilted camera shot which was used to depict madness, unrest, alienation, and disorientation in old German expressionist films.
2. ↑ W4stedspace has experience from his Vanguard and Uncooperative Survival series
3. ↑ Splitsie mentions that the community contributed "trees killed counter" mod turned out to not work on dedicated servers.