Stuff I've read lately

"Remnant Population" (Elizabeth Moon) - meh. The story of an old woman contacting an alien civilization is just kind of weird. What really bugged me was a universe with both STL sleeper ships and FTL. It made me want to break out GURPS Vehicles and try to come up with an economic situation where that could possibly make sense.

"The Exemplary Husband" (Stuart Scott) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

"Once a Hero" (Elizabeth Moon) - This looks like a mil-SF book; but it's more like a drama set in a military background. I'll probably read one or two more in this series to see where she is taking it. That's three Elizabeth Moon books in a short span, I still like "Speed of Dark", but I'll probably take a break.

New Stars Status

Not much progress the last month.

I created a command line version of the client. It just loads the C++ New Stars Tcl library, and issues a bunch of commands. A lot of them use information eye-balled from the files. Here is a sample from orders2400.tcl (which updates the first turn file):

#### copy the colony ship
set colShipId -1
for {set i 0} {$i < $::numHulls} {incr i} {
   if {[newStars $::ns_hull $i $::ns_getName] eq "Colony Ship"} {
      set colShipId $i
   }
}

Another file is applied in 2403 to give the load colonist, move to planet, and colonize orders.

Here is the final screen shot:




I had to fix the server to properly update client object ids to server ids (I didn't see this before, because the client actually generates the turn through the client data - that's a bug...).

I also had to fix the client to properly use GUI load commands (otherwise you need another turn).

The mining rates are probably off. There is an oddity in the battle engine, in that the colony ship and star base try to fight. I need to add lots to the client to get a better feeling for how much ships cost and how long they will take to build.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Speed of Dark" (Elizabeth Moon) - I liked this book a lot. On the surface, it is a book about autistic people. But it is also a book about being different. About trying to fit in, being pressured to fit in. Not just fit in, but to be like everyone else.

And everyone knows the speed of dark is faster than the speed of light (Neverending Story 2). That's why it's dark until light gets there. Dark got there first!

"Misquoting Jesus" (Bart Ehrman) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

Gianormites of the World Unite!

Gianormous has made it into the dictionary! Except the dictioneers (who else compiles dictionaries?) misspelled it! Everyone knows it's giant-enormous, not gigantic-enormous. Their spelling (ginormous) looks like "djinn-or-mus". Blech!

So everyone needs to start using gianormous. Then the dictioneers can get it right next edition.

New Stars Status

Ok, more progress. We almost have a game:



Here is page 2 of the New Game Wizard. I recreated the race from the colonize test (Ugly Ducklings), and made a tiny sparse game for them by themselves.

Here is the first turn in the client:



I've added 30 factories and 50 mines to autobuild. I had to fix the code to handle this. It would try to build the factories, see no G, and then skip to research. It now works. Here is 2401:



18% growth rate. 20 resources, mines are 5 per. Autobuild shows 0% done for all.



Next turn. 23,600 * 1.18 = 27,848. 23 resources gives 2 factories, and 1 at 30%. Mining rates may be off... concentrations are 80, 76, 20. I forget how to calculate it right now... Original G must of been 15 or 16.

I need to repair the regression. Lots of them have uninhabitable home worlds. The old code was more forgiving of this...

I'd also like to develop a command line version of the client (for regressions to insert player commands).

Then I will add the intervening turns to colonize test, to make it a new game -> first world colonized test. Then I can check the numbers.

Stuff I've read lately

"Igniting the Reaches" (David Drake) - This is the first book in the trilogy continued in "Through the Breach" and finished in "Fireships". I would say the quality is consistent through all three books. Also, each book stands fairly well on its own. Still, I would of preferred to read them in the proper order.

"In the Grip of Grace" (Max Lucado) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

Stuff I've read lately

"Paying the Piper" (David Drake) - This "Hammer's Slammers" novel is classic Drake - plenty of action, punctuated by brief breaks.


"The Purpose-driven Life" (Rick Warren) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

New Stars Status

I actually got a lot done the last month. I have integrated my old universe generation code into the main engine. While I was there, I fixed a bug in the tech research code, and in the colonization code. Now, the colonize test works; and I have added it to the regression. I discovered an oddity in the way planets are handled for players (separate objects), and I will probably rebuild it into a single true object with per-player data views.

Here is the new game wizard:




Only page 1 is done. Page 2 is the race list (the normal wizard has a third page, with victory conditions). Currently, it always saves the game to newFile.xml. I will add a save dialog shortly. The main thing is to update the struct UnivParms to include a race list. Then, update the engine to pull in the races. Then I can add them to the gui.

If you do 'newStars -n newFile.xml' it will generate a universe according to your parameters (to stdout). But there will be no players. We also need to work on random seeds.

Stuff I've read lately

"Fireships" (David Drake) - This is the third book in a Sir Francis Drake-like future setting. The second was "Through the Breach". I will have to read the first. It was very good. I usually consider Drake to be light on characters. But the characterization was very well done. The ending is tidy, without feeling contrived. And Drake continues to pull off the "history repeated" without damaging suspension of disbelief.


"Essential Truths of the Christian Faith" (R. C. Sproul) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Independent Command" (S. M. Stirling) - It's a shame the trilogy has come to an end. Stirling had finally come to grips with the universe and characters. This book is a big improvement over the other two. It has a good treatment of an alien culture and first contact scenario. The ending felt a little rushed and pat, but I have seen far worse. About forty pages from the end, I was thinking, "I need a gianormous space battle right about now." There were plenty of opportunities, but Stirling didn't go there. Not sure why.

"Drawing Near" (John Bevere) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

New Stars Status

Things are moving, slowly but surely:


Here I have taken the colonizeTest (turn zero, player one file) and removed the colonize order. I then added it back through the GUI and saved. A diff of the files yields:

$ diff guiout.xml colonizeTest_P1_Y2402.xml
246,247d245
< <NONPLAYERFLEETDATA>
< </NONPLAYERFLEETDATA>
295a294,295
> <NONPLAYERFLEETDATA>
> </NONPLAYERFLEETDATA>

For some reason the GUI places NONPLAYERFLEETDATA before the universe planet list, while the newStars -r command places it after. Not sure why... But that is close enough for non-technical people...

Next step is to add starbase designs and create new game. Then let the bugs commence!

Stuff I've read lately

"Privateer" (S.M. Stirling) - I found this book to be much better than the first. Perhaps Stirling is settling into the material. It is still very campy, but I think that is the target audience. The main issue I have is with Stirling's battle balancing. He takes somewhat fair conditions, then throws in radical elements to make it wildly against the heroes. Then he has to pull out crazy saves for the heroes. I'd much prefer to just see a straight-up fight.

"Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer" (Myles Munroe) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

Musical Interlude

Put down that chainsaw and listen to me!
It's time for us to join in the fight.


It's time to make a mountain out of a molehill,
So can I have a volunteer.


Buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet,
Then party 'til your broke and they drag you away, it's ok.

New Stars Status

After much delay, I have load and unload orders working. Here is a clip from the load unload test:



Here we can see the idle fleet has been changed to move to Beta 9 and unload its colonists. I need to fix the text for the order in classdef.h. I also need to fix the engine to understand all the various Stars! cargo orders. But first I need colonize and new game generation. Then the game should be playable.

Stuff I've read lately

"Through the Breach" (David Drake) - This is a classic Drake military sci-fi book set in his "sidereal-bubble" universe. It has a almost overwhelming age of sail feel, but I think he manages to pull it off. The science is hard enough to maintain my suspension of disbelief, and the universe has a lot of character. This one seems a lot harsher than I remember Drake's books being, and the impact on the characters psyche is very well done.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Dawn of Amber" (John Gregory Betancourt) - I liked the original books by Zelazny, the world was unusual and the characters well done. This one didn't seem as good. Not sure if I am no longer as interested in that world, or if Betancourt is still warming up.

"Judas and the Gospel of Jesus" (N. T. Wright) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

Ruby.new chunky_bacon

Do you want to learn Ruby? Do you want a bookful of random stuff? Better random stuff than I can write? Lots of chunky bacon? Check out "Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby".

Word is C++ is dying, and everyone knows Tcl has never been more than a zombie. So I need a new language. Is Ruby it? Please don't suggest Java, I know I need to learn Java, but I refuse. :)

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