Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Oct 4, 2006

Filed under: Random 17 comments

This Criminally Weird post reminded me of this post from Den Beste about how space warfare might really work. (The very short version: Probably not as colorful, exciting, or as interesting as in the movies.)

One thing about this that really kills the drama of space warfare is that fact that even if we had energy shields and phazor-beams and neutronium rays and quantum torpeoes and whatever other ridiculous gibberish space heroes use to battle space villians, people still wouldn’t fight in space because there is just no reason to do so.

We would need some sort of resources to fight over. The other planets in our solar system are worthless from a strategic standpoint. What if some rogue nation launched fleet and declared that they owned all of the space from here to Jupiter? Meh. Who cares? If they claimed Venus, what would we do? Fine, it’s all yours. We won’t intrude on your space. Have fun funding the forces to patrol it. For no reason. Humans aren’t any more likely to fight over space than they are to fight over Antarctica. Less, in fact, since fighting in space would require all new technologies and tools and would be preposterously expensive.

(And of course, claiming planets is pointless. I never understood why Star Trek portrayed the bulk of Earth’s defense as being positioned on Mars. That’s only useful if Earth and Mars happen to be on the same side of the Sun, and the bad guys go to the extra trouble of passing by Mars on the way in, instead of entering at some other angle. In defense of Starfleet, the bad guys do exactly this. They always blast their way past Mars Defense on the way in to Earth. Very sporting of them, really.)

Before space warfare is possible we would need something worthwhile to do there.

Personally I think we should take the Starcraft route: First we build huge orbital platforms. Then we load up the platforms with valuable resources. Presto! Now we have something over which we might wage war. Then we can build fleets and fight over the resources on the platforms. It’s a bit of a hack, and it is still unclear who would restock the platforms after each battle, but it might get the ball rolling. Perhaps the UN would be willing to do the restocking.

It’s either that or wait for aliens to invade. I’m beginning to worry that I might not get to pilot a spacefighter or even a mech before I die.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Fullmetal Alchemist, The Movie

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 3, 2006

Filed under: Anime 33 comments

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I see I misunderstood the purpose behind Fullmetal Alchemist – Conqueror of Shamballa. I watched it assuming the movie was intended to finish the story begun in the series. It does accomplish this, but it turns out that the primary purpose of the movie is to deliver highly concentrated doses of fanservice.

Not that sort of fan service. I’m talking about in the more general sense of giving fans what they want. The plot isn’t so much a story as it is adhesive used to bind the various situations and images together. They started with a wishlist from the fans, and built their tale around it.

BEHOLD! Armstrong is still hilarious. I’ve never been able to figure out how he gets his shirt (not to mention his jacket and tie) off in one clean motion like that.

The result is fun, but the story makes not the slightest bit of sense. There is a gate between parallel worlds: The world in which the main series took place, and our world. In our world the date is sometime in the 1920’s, between the two world wars. The seeds of World War II are being sown around them, and the protagonists get caught up in it.

The gate between these two worlds becomes the carpet under which all of the unanswered questions are swept. What happened to Al’s memories? How did Ed get his metal arm back? How can Ed speak German? How did envy become a dragon? What made the normal human soldiers in suits of armor into these invincible superthings covered in black goo? Ummmm… Must be the gate!

Fullmetal Alchemist: Roy Mustang and Alphonse

The alternate world also gives the chance for main characters who died in the original series to make a cameo appearance. Their “other” selves appear quite often as common folks who bump into Ed for no other reason than the fact that it would please the fans.

There is no reason in the world for people to watch this movie if they have not seen the show. The plot is gibberish, the villian is cut from the same cloth as Gauron, and the technology makes no sense. However, for fans of the show this is a must-see. The good guys kick Nazi butt, all the loose ends are resolved, and we get to see the mega-happy ending.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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DM of the Rings XII:
NPC Non Grata

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 2, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 43 comments

 DM of the Rings XI:
Failure to CommunicatePrevious Post

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Let's Not go There 

Lord of the Rings, Player Apathy, Rivendell, Meeting Girls, Powerful NPC’s

Some notes about writing a campaign:

It’s great that you took the time to come up with “Count Devron Masuvius Beldamor the III, High Magester of the Realms of Greeenwood”, but you need to realize that the players are just going to refer to him as “that wizard guy”, or simply, “Mister fancy-pants”.
If you send along a high-level NPC of great majesty and power to accompany the party, you need to realize that the players will treat this character like a bazooka: The NPC will become a weapon used to solve a problem in the bloodiest and most expedient manner possible, and then discarded without ceremony.
You may be a group of unsightly men sitting around a card table on a Friday night, but your players will still be looking for chances to meet girls.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Failure to CommunicatePrevious Post

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Let's Not go There 

43 comments

Best Console Shooter

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 2, 2006

Filed under: Game Reviews 13 comments

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Next PostDreamfall: First Impressions 

Cinneris comments on Halo:

I'm not a huge Halo fan but I do think it is one of the best console shooters out there.

Which is how I feel about Halo. I will add, however, that being one of the “best console shooters out there” is not very high praise. This is akin to being the world’s cutest cockroach, or the world’s sexist leper.

I’m mystified that people are still trying to capture the first-person experience using a television and a joystick. Consoles are ideal for many types of gaming experiences. In fact, often times a console is the only way to properly experience a game. But first-person games belong to machines that can connect to a mouse, and anyone who tries to do it with a d-pad sould be whipped.

Check out some of the other links in that post: The link to the Yu-Gi-Oh! parody is pure gold, even if you’ve never seen the show. Anyone who’s seen some anime should get it. Many familiar anime tropes are delightfully savaged.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Introducing: Clutter!

By Shamus Posted Sunday Oct 1, 2006

Filed under: Notices 9 comments

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A side note: I found Ernesto Burden when that site linked to me. I then relized that in many cases I don’t really “find” sites – they find me and I discover them via trackback. I also realized that I was not helping things by hiding the ugly trackback / permalink stuff in small print at the bottom of the individual post, off the front page, where most people never see it. I dislike this visual clutter, but it does make the blog more useful.

I’m still not happy about this. I dislike the new clutter, although really I’m not wasting screen space. The place where the permalink / trackback stuff is was always empty space before.

As an engineer, this is a familiar tradeoff. Ugly and functional vs. attractive and inaccessable. I really need to stop being such a prima donna and go for functional. I’m starting to act like a Mac user*.

* I only said that to annoy you.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Link to Someone New

By Shamus Posted Sunday Oct 1, 2006

Filed under: Links 5 comments

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Ernesto Burden is another person who has dicovered the fun of using Comic Book Creator.

Seth Godin has a bunch of statistics over at his blog. Fun stuff like:

31.4% of Americans don’t have internet access.

(I assume this means ‘don’t have internet access in their homes’)

And…

90% of the people in France have not created a blog.

Which is a pretty good set-up for a joke. The exercise is left to the reader. The rest of the statistics are interesting as well.

Here is the thing about this guy’s blog, which ties in with what he was saying with all of these statistics: I’ve never heard of Seth Godin. I spend every single day bouncing around blogtopia and I’ve never stumbled across his site. He’s in the Technorati top 100, and almost 6,000 people (!) have linked to him. At #39, he’s in the top 0.002% of all blogs*. He has a bunch of books. Yet I’ve never heard the name, seen the face, read the blog, or saw one of those books.

This reminds me of the post I had a while back on finding good blogs within the long tail. I keep trying to think of blogs in familiar terms – like books or movies or TV. If a book is in the top 0.002% of all books, then we’re talking about some universally recognized books: Treasure Island. The Bible. Catch-22. Not everyone has read them, but good luck trying to find someone who never heard of them. In the same way, the top 0.002% of all movies would be stuff like Gone With The Wind and Citizen Kane. Everyone in the English-speaking world has heard of those. But a blog that is in the top 0.002% can still be virtually unknown, even among avid blog readers. The world of blogs is so diffuse it defies old ways of thinking about fame and recognition.

* This is assuming there are 1.5 million blogs out there, a number which is just a guess. When my site was new and unlinked, it was ranked 1.5 millionth, and I’m assuming new blogs start at the bottom. This is also assuming Technorati rankings have meaning. Note that lots of blog-style sites that do not use proper blogging software are omitted. For example, I don’t think Chizumatic appears on Technorati. So, all of this might be useless and a waste of your time.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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5 comments

White and Nerdy

By Shamus Posted Saturday Sep 30, 2006

Filed under: Nerd Culture 12 comments

 The MotivatorPrevious Post

Next PostBattlestar Galactica 

Just hilarious.

This is sheer brilliance. Aside from the words – which are already pretty funny – the thing is packed with little visual jokes. This YouTube version is a bit grainy and lo-res, but the one on google video is a little crisper. At one point we see Al buying what looks like a bootleg copy of Star Wars, but in the higher resolution version you can see he’s getting a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Clever.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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