Stuff I've read lately

The Rising: Volume 1 of the Flight Engineer (James Doohan and S. M. Stirling) - Why do we eat twizzlers? You see the bag, you know they aren't very good, but "mmmm... twizzlers", you get them. Then you eat them all. Then you think, "That wasn't very good." And they're not good for you. Some books are like that. Any Star Wars book not by Timothy Zahn, any Star Trek book - this book. I like twizzlers, so I read this book. I told myself, "Maybe Stirling will keep the quality high." I was fooling myself. I mean, mining antimatter from a planet! Why? Why? Ah, well, I'll let you know how the next one is :)

Speaking My Mind (Tony Campolo) - I have spared the zero readers of this blog (I don't need to read it, I already know what's here...), and posted this review on my Faith blog.

Fixing Star Wars - Episode 2

Wow, were in the home stretch now. I think it was about 2 in the morning at this point... :)

Episode 2 is in pretty good shape. Mostly trimming for time and tempo, and patching to fit in the other changes we've made:

• Cut Obi-wan's bartender friend, and reduce the library search. It slows everything down. Remember any scenes of Jedi training should have them older than five years old.
  
• Remove the factory fight (and flying R2). It adds nothing.
• Shorten the interrogation of Obi-wan and monster arena fight. The action doesn't climax until after the Jedi arrive, and then the stormtroopers arrive. This leads to some amount of saturation.
• If that isn't enough time savings, the asteroid chase can also be removed. It adds little, and Obi-wan can still need Anakin to relay his message (Ben's ship is too small, or has a random failure).
  
• Put in some conflict between Anakin and uncle Owen. That had to be the easiest connection back to the original trilogy, and Lucas dropped it on the floor.
• Remember that Count Dooku is Darth Maul (per Episode 1). This can help to maintain the suspense on whether Dooku is good, evil, or just independent.
  

That is most of the changes. I will put together all the changes for 3, 4, and 5 into a final post.

We Come in Peace!

We come in peace.
We come in peace.
WE COME IN PEACE.


New orders: KILL KILL!

do do doo to do doot

Fixing Star Wars - Episode 1

(See the previous post: Fixing Episode 6)

Flush with success, we asked ourselves: "Could episode 1 be fixed?" It seems impossible, but let's look at the problems:

1. Gungans
2. Confusion in the final act (four disparate settings)
3. Amidala, the eleven year old politician
4. Anakin, the five year old love interest
5. Slow start (the fate of the whole galaxy rests in trade negotiations at a backwater world?)
6. Darth Maul -> Count Dooku issues
7. C3PO (a protocol droid) built by a five year old for his enslaved mother?
8. Light treatment of slavery on Tatooine
9. Midichlorians (or was it mitochondria?), 'nuff said
   

Ok, that's a lot of issues. But we can tackle them one-by-one.

1. One, two, and five are somewhat related, and can be solved together. I think everyone can agree the treatment of the Gungans falls somewhere between atrocity and poorly done. More subtly, they slow down the story at the beginning, and overly complicate the story at the end. It seems Lucas was trying to show that the rebellion includes metropolitan and rural interests. This can be done better by reducing the footprint of the Gungans to a minority population in the cities (on top of cleaning the material). This quickens the introduction, and eliminates one setting in the finale. A handful of Gungans can help Amidala to retake the palace.
2. Handled mostly above. Also improvement needed in how Anakin influences the battle.
3. Amidala needs to be either: a beauty queen (like American idol for a position more like England's queen, i.e. public relations) or the daughter of a more senior politician. She should also be older, maybe early twenties. This gives a lot of room to play a smart, rebellious youngster against older politicians.
4. Ok, I think Anakin was supposed to be closer to ten; but you put him next to Liam Neeson, and he's going to look tiny. A lot of the problem is Lucas is very fuzzy/odd about the Jedi order. From episode 4, Luke is "too old". He was about twenty. But Anakin is "too old" too! Clearly, you have to be about three to be a Jedi! That's kind of creepy. Actually, that's a lot creepy. Combined with 3, Anakin can be about 16. Say 13 is the cutoff.
5. Handled mostly above. The pod racing scene also could be reduced. Time savings should be converted into deepening characters, settings, and politics.
6. The Count Dooku issue will raise its head again. But the first step is to stitch together Maul and Dooku. There are supposed to be two Sith (master and apprentice). Instead we get master, old apprentice, new apprentice, and robot apprentice (General Grievous). The solution is to make Maul the mask for the public figure of Dooku (you can even keep both actors). Hmm, now you can't kill Maul at the end of Episode 1, but that's ok. Maul kills Qui-Gon, knocks out Obi and makes his escape.
7. C3PO is clearly part of Amidala's staff. If you want to show off Anakin's skill, he can create a robot we don't see in the late trilogy (or one we know less about).
8. There is room in Episode 1 to deepen this. But resolution should probably wait until 2 or 3.
9. I said 'nuff said!
   

Ok, that was painful. But we made it! Epsiode 1 is fixed! Now finish them!

New Stars Status

I used to tell John how a certain GUI feature was only a handful of lines of code in Tcl. He would always come back with, "Yea, but it takes you a whole day to write those lines." It's true. I would look through man pages, and experiment with the console, then finally write a line or two; and modify another line or two.

The latest changes have had me thinking a lot. I need to add waypoint tasks when the user changes the waypoint task drop down. I realized the first step was to add the code to find the planet a fleet is in orbit of (or deep space).

That is finally done. Compare these two screen shots to an older fleet view:




Part of the trouble was I no longer have access to a Visual C++ compiler. The key was to use -mno-cygwin on g++ cygwin. But then I had to rebuild the whole tool chain...

Next step is to add the code to the waypoint task updater.

Laugh til your ribs hurt!

It's not often something makes me laugh until my ribs hurt. Laughing so much, you cannot get air, and it becomes painful. The clearest time I remember, was watching Mytery Science Theater do "The Attack of the the Eye People" (two the's). It was just after Joel said, "It's not really much of an attack. More like, the minor vandalism of the eye people."

More recently, it was the Daily WTF: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Unsolved_Murder.aspx

Not sure why exactly. Maybe something I remember from college, "It is an honor to die for my employer!"

Stuff I've read lately

Mirror Dance (Lois Bujold) - Another quality Vorkosigan book. About as good as "The Vor Game". Better than Komarr.

Ruled Britannia (Harry Turtledove) - It is a shame Turtledove has decided to sacrifice quality for quantity. The idea of a revolution hinging on a play is just weird.

A Song of Stone (Iain Banks) - I like the use of the second person ("I go this way and you go that way"). You don't see that very often. For the plot, all I can say is "Very postmodern." The main character is so weak and conflicted that he takes six pages to die.

Snowman!

I made me a snowman!

Stuff I've read lately

Jarhead (Anthony Swofford)(audio) - I wouldn't normally talk about an audio book, since I don't really count them. Going in, I was thinking, "How serious was the first Gulf War, really?" (for Americans) But, I forget, that at the time, it was deadly serious. In the end, it wasn't very serious (Swofford was in all of two "battles", and never fired his weapon), but it still affected the men involved. It was, of course, deadly serious to the Iraqis killed.


The Vor Game (Lois Bujold) - Another quality Vorkosigan book.


The Faded Sun: Kesrith (C. J. Cherryh) - Ahh, Cherryh. This book is classic Cherryh. 'The People' start the book with having been decimated from millions to maybe thousands. By the end, there are two...


Stanger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein) - Coming from a UNIX background, I already knew 'grok'. So I wasn't sure what effect it was supposed to have on me. Otherwise, this book is supposed to be one of Heinlein's best. But I didn't see anything special.

Infinite Improbability

Hello all! Not sure how many readers I have left (after chasing off most in the comments section...)

The Way of the Master radio is particularly vocal on proving the existence of God. I've dealt enough with atheists that I am skeptical.

Let me try to do their argument, and you can counter in the comments.

Thanks!

God is infinite. (definition)

The universe had a beginning (entropy, background radiation, expansion, etc.)

The creation event requires an infinite - one or more of:
infinite regression (turtles all the way)
multi-verse (infinite probabilistic universes)
infinite, uncreated, creator God

Thanks again!

Fixing Star Wars - Episode 6

So, a co-worker and I got to talking, and we decided to fix Star Wars. I mean, everyone likes Star Wars, but with just a little fixing, it could be great!

We started with Episode 6 (Return of the Jedi). An episode with a lot of good stuff, but showing the beginnings of Lucas' mad ego trip. A trip ending in the horror that is the prequel trilogy...

Ok, what problem(s) are we solving?

1. Two death stars (episodes 4 and 6) are just silly and irritating


2. The whole Luke-Leia brother-sister thing is kinda icky


3. How dangerous is this whole rebellion thing, if no major characters die?


4. Ewoks should of been wookies

The solution set is like this:
For #1, Episode 4 should probably keep its climactic ending. So, something big needs to blow up. Might as well leave it the Death Star, as originally filmed. The Empire should realize one, big capital ship is less useful than many (the whole "systems slipping through the fingers" statement). The project in Episode 6 should be a fleet of super star destroyers (probably best to remove the SSD from Ep 5). Or you could keep the Death Star in 6, and have Luke help to knock out a Star Destroyer using the force.

For #2, simply remove it. There are ways of resolving a love triangle beside declaring one leg illegal. More in point 3.

#3, kill Han. Probably at some point in the shield generator mission. This doesn't mean that Luke and Leia have to be together. It's ok for Leia to feel some grief and not be with anyone...

#4, 'nuff said.


That is on top of a lot of minor fixes. All the characters need de-cardboarding. The construction site makes no sense (a no-tech world in the middle of nowhere - should be a ship yard some where). We are not concerned with fixing, or remaining consistent with the books (most of which were terrible). You can keep Leia's encounter with the cute ewok as a young wookie.

New Stars Status

I've fixed the economics page. The last page of the race wizard is also done:



I still need to connect the "All expensive tech start at level 3" button to C++ (there was an engine change needed). And to add the drop down for "Spend extra points".

I've started adding the GUI elements for cargo load and unload:




I need to take changes in these elements back into C++, and add the ability to create these orders from scratch.

Musical Interlude

Everything you know is wrong!
Black is white, up is down, and short is long.
And everything you thought was just so important
doesn't really matter at all.

...

Just as the floating, disembodied head of colonel Sanders
starting yelling,
"Everything you know is wrong!"

New Stars Status

I fixed the oddity in the ship designer.

Here are the next pages of the race wizard:






Still need to connect some of the economic spinners to the C++ code. Then I can finish page 6, and the race wizard will be done!

New Stars Status

Here is the current status of the race wizard:




Steps 1 and 4 are done. The point calculation code is done. I need to fill in the other pages.

New Stars Status

Woohoo! Ship designer is mostly done...



Moving from slot to slot does not work (you have to discard, and re-add). There are also some oddities in the interface after finishing a design off a blank hull.

I will try to fix the oddity before polishing off the race wizard.

New Stars Status

Made some more progress on the ship designer today. The component button brings up the list of components, and the available hull types button brings up the list of hulls. This uncovered a bug in the engine; there is no function to determine if a particular player can build a given hull. This is currently stubbed to always true. I haven't looked into the enemy hull code yet...




Next step is to enable the copy button.

Shocking Interview

I was poking around on the Way of the Master Radio website, and I found this clip. Make sure to watch it all the way to the end, or skip to the end if you've had enough...

New Stars Status

Here is the next screen shot:



We can see: the planetary environment display under the ship designer, the planetary build queue, a packet in the space display, and the ship designer dialog.

The ship designer dialog still needs a lot of work. It will currently display existing designs, but it cannot separate ships and starbases. It will not display enemy designs.

I have the drag and drop code for doing new designs, and I need to plug it into the "Copy Existing Design" and "Edit Selected Design" buttons. I also need to transmit the drag and drop commands back to C++ so that the new design can be saved.

That brings us up to date on the New Stars GUI. I will hopefully make some progress now :)

Stuff I've read lately

Perelandra (C.S. Lewis) - These middle of Lewis' space trilogy. I like Perelandra. It presents a very interesting view of the early fictional view of the solar system (with habitable Mars and Venus). Mars represents the old way, with angels directly guiding people. The intended system on Earth is fuzzier, due to its lead angel rebelling against God. Earth then becomes the place where God is made flesh (in Jesus), for the salvation of all. Venus is the newest creation. The Adam and Eve of that planet are free to choose, but two representatives from Earth are sent to fight over them.

That Hideous Strength (C.S. Lewis) - The last of the space trilogy. I didn't like the ending so much. It did kind of remind me of Stross' "Atrocity Archives" some.

Have Space Suit - Will Travel (Robert Heinlein) - A fun book. I think he could of taken a more serious turn to it, but it is targeted at a younger audience.