Project 17: #NafYoFuthMo

It's November, so the Social Internet has turned to its habit of either doing or whining about #NaNoWriMo, in which people write a novel in a month. I don't have time to write a novel in a month and I do have a thesis to finish (related points).

via GIPHY

Therefore, I am going to do #NafYoFuthMo, National Finish Your F*ing Thesis Month. I'm not going to be able to finish everything this month, but I have enough stuff that I could do right now that it's a good time to give myself a big push and get closer to the line.

I have 3 big chapters I can finish, I'll consider it a win if I can have significant progress on each of the three. In the smaller scale I'm going to shoot for a new word target of 750 average each day.

I'll update on twitter regularly and occasionally here.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 12

The second volume of Mouse Guard was as good as the first, and possibly even better. I don't read a lot of comics, so while I feel like the pace of the story is a little slow, that might just be par for the course. The art is absolutely phenomenal.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 11

I finished the 10th Anniversary Audio Book version of American Gods last night (staying up way too late again). It was a fantastic read and I feel a little in awe of (and inspired by) just how wonderfully Gaiman writes a story. I enjoyed every single moment of it, I loved the characters, and the world, and most of all I loved how the characters, and the world harmonized with the story.

I also find it really weird (but interesting and cool) how similar Gaiman and Stephen King's stories feel.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 10

I've probably started reading Mouse Guard a half dozen times. This time, I finally actually finished the first volume. I enjoyed it and I'm curious now what goes into the following volumes.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 9

At Christmas last year, I kinda forced my loved ones to all exchange books. Which I think mostly worked out for the good. I especially enjoyed getting A View From the Cheap Seats (the hardcover is beautiful). Neil's writing is engaging and warm and funny and the only problem with the book its it contains a lot of introductions to other books, so now my reading list is longer than when I started.

I also made it to 12 books in 12 Weeks. Mostly Audiobooks, but I'm quite happy. I'm going to keep going and see how many books I can read in the remainder of the year.

Project 16: Covert Action in Space: Update 2

I've been working on my Covert Action in Space project and reached the point where I wanted to be able to see a graph of the spaces I'm generating. Particularly, when I was working on my first system, it was difficult to get a feeling for how the spaces work (or if they worked). At first I had been thinking that I’d look and find a simple algorithm to draw a graph and then implement that in something simple like Processing. Fortunately, poor google-fu prevented me from finding a good algorithm and instead I found GraphViz.

I'm not sure I want to work here, but I'd look for their industrial secrets.

Despite that tweet, I managed to keep my wits about me and realize that I don’t need to create my own graphing system, I just want to see a graph of the space layout. So instead of spending time learning a graphing algorithm and dealing with all of the problems that’s likely to create, now I just need to output a simple text file and let the magic happen.

GraphViz is great. It’s capable of doing a lot of stuff of which I only need it to do a little bit. To output, I need to make a list of all room connections and put it in GraphViz’s dot format. Internally I’m keeping this information in a map so that each entry has all of the rooms that a room connects to. This produces duplicates in the list, but using the strict keyword GraphViz automatically ignores those.

The code to generate the dot file works out to be quite simple.

And the dot file for the graph up top. Again I'm not particularly stressing GraphViz.

As I said, this makes it really easy to look at how spaces are connected and how those spaces work. I’m really glad I was able to get this working without needing to spend too much time on it.

The next job from here is to start laying out an actual floor plan based on the given space. I have a rough plan, basically starting with a default shape for each room and then expanding them to fit together. I can probably come up with something more complex, but as with the space generation, I’d like to start simple.

Project 16: Covert Action in Space: Update 1

I spent quite a bit of time working on my first approach to procedurally generating spaces. I based a lot of what I did on [this paper] and ended up with a system that worked, but that ended up pretty complicated. It had a system for creating an arbitrary hierarchy of spaces, as well as an arbitrary rules engine, which provided systems for determining how rooms were connected to the outside and each other.

I had already finished that work when I first posted about the project and I thought I'd keep working with that system. I realized, though, that solution was overbuilt and over complicated. So I ended up spending a quick evening rewriting it. The arbitrary hierarchy was very difficult to maintain and creating rules that abstractly described space was frustrating, so I dropped all of that and went back to figure out what I needed to make a minimal viable product.

If my goal is to play with guard AI, then I need space for the guards to guard, furniture to play hide and seek in, graphics to see what's going on and some AI. Plus possibly an interface to play.

The new system was a little messy, but thanks to a timely beer with a friend who had just been reading Uncle Bob, I came out with a nice clean system. I now have:

• A model which describes how to make a space:
• Model rooms which include a room name and a probability that the room should be on the space. 
• A space that includes:
• A list of rooms and a map 
• A constructor that builds a space based on a given model 

The first question I had was would it still be interesting. And I think (at least for limited test situations) it is. Using a basic model of a Hall (with probability 1.0), Office (0.75), Storage Room (0.6), Lounge (0.5) and Bathroom (0.25), it has provided an interesting set of rooms and connections that, I think, could each provide an interesting encounter in a game.

At this point, I’m just producing the text outputs of the system, but I think the above sampling produces something “interesting”. My evaluation for “interesting” right now is: Can I imagine how an interaction between my spy and a bad guy would go down in that space. For the samples above I think I can, and I think with more models, I can expand the interest of the space.

My system has a known bug right now in that it isn’t guaranteed to produce a fully connected graph of rooms. I think that’s a quick thing that I should fix in the near future. Other than that my next step is to put together a quick graph viewer to show how the rooms connect. Once that’s finished then it’s on to expanding the graphs to physical space.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 8

When I was a teenager, Stephen King's nonfiction ruled my world. His fiction too, of course but there's something I always loved about the way he writes and the way he projects himself in his writing. Listening to On Writing again, I was struck that while I still love his style, I have a lot more perspective on his approach to writing. Still he hits the most important point, I think which is if you want to be a writer, write.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 7

I'm not sure I enjoyed The Player of Games, but I sure did stay up later than I meant to finish it. Machina ex machina, describes it the best I suppose, which leaves me a little unsatisfied with the story as a whole. On the other hand you can always get my attention with vague descriptions of game play.

Project 16: Covert Action in Space

Sid Meyer has a rule, the Covert Action Rule. The Covert Action Rule basically says don’t make Covert Action.

So the next big thing I want to make is basically a recreation of Covert Action. Covert Action in Space.

In covert action you play a super spy (or super agent … or super counter-agent … or something). Each month you’re given a mission and some basic clues. Then you have to stop the bad guys from doing whatever they’re doing. If you succeed you get a clue about the current mastermind plotting the crimes. Once you’ve figured out who and where the mastermind is you can grab them and wrap up that crime spree. Then some other mastermind starts up again the next month.

Now, I’m trying to finish a PhD, so it’s a really stupid time to take up making a game, but that’s where the Covert Action Rule comes in. Basically the point behind the Covert Action Rule is that it’s hard for the player to remember what they’re doing when they have to keep switching between generally unrelated minigames, so make sure that your player always knows what they’re supposed to be doing (XCOM also falls into this territory).

My thought is that given limited time and attention, making a collection of interesting minigames, seems like a good idea. I can work on one minigame when I have time and I don’t have to worry too much about making the whole thing hang together. It should be good practice getting a game made without worrying too much about making the game good.

As for the “in Space” part. I have a sci-fi world sitting around in my head, with a few stories I’d been meaning to write (and a few I’ve managed to put up here). It seemed like a good way to modernize a game that had fallen into abandonware and give it an interesting spin. Rather than having to fight 1990s terrorist across Europe, you could fight space terrorist across the Terran Empire.

The original game had four main minigames; one where you infiltrate people’s offices, stealing their information and possibly arresting them, one where you drive through the city either trying to capture someone or avoiding your own capture, one where you have to swap chips out to trace a car or bug a landline, and one where you have to decrypt messages doing a simple substitution cypher.

I think there are a lot of fun things that could be done after to stretch the game and make it a little more playable than the original. Before that however I want build the original four minigames and get a skeleton basically. Of the four, I’d like to start with the infiltration minigame, and especially with a little bit of fun procedurally generating offices (possibly to do different things) and building up a guard AI.

Due to a mishearing, I accidentally created the mascot for this project. The Flurpin.

I’ve started a bit over the last few months and I have a rough system together that takes requirements for buildings and is able to generate a procedural room graph, that connects all the rooms, but doesn’t actually build a floor plan yet. My next short term goal is to finish creating the floorplans from the graphs. Given that I still have a PhD to finish and this is mostly a “watching TV with the laptop out” activity, I’m hoping to wrap up this the floor plan generation by October 15, 2017.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 6

Well I didn't expect to blow through the Delirium Brief all at once, but it's was really stressful and I just wanted to know what's happening. I'm more than ready to read the next one too, although I think hoping for a happy ending is ... unwise.

As for The Nameless City I've been working on it a little while and just finished. It's a great book and totally recommended.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 5

Suddenly back in, I finished The Annihilation Score and The Nightmare Stacks, one of which took me a week or so to get into and the other of which I listened to straight through (basically). I think these are the two strongest in the Laundry Files so far and both were great (if slightly stressful) listens

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 4

More Stross, more Laundry. More Vampires? Don't be silly, vampires don't exist!

Project 1: The Blog - Season Seven

It’s August again. Which means it’s about that time that I decide what I’m going to do with the Blog again. So let me say “Happy (Belated) Blog Start and End Day”

As a quick reminder this blog comes in two parts, the Blog as Me Talking About Stuff, and the Blog as Project Report. Every year, on August 1, I wrap up a year’s blogging and decide if it’s worth doing it again next year. This way, there’s some concrete point where an ending can come if it needs to.

Last year, from August to the end of September, I blogged in what I’m thinking of as my “standard mode,” which means that I mostly posted Favourite Youtube posts, and kept track of my video game playing. In January I felt like I wanted to get further ahead on my PhD (yeah, I’m still working on it) as well as increase my focus on other projects, so I tried to reduce the amount of standard mode blogging I’m doing.

Each month since January, I’ve tried to keep up to date on my game tracking and then post a favourite youtube video if there’s some extra time. I’m roughly planning to continue the same way for the next year. Ideally two “non project posts” each month.

I have found the game tracking interesting. By the end of last year I felt overwhelmed, and tired, and didn’t want to do it any more. In particular, I had planned to do a few more posts than I did wrapping up the year. Then in January, I found it hard to stop tracking my play and then found that  if I got off my butt and posted the update post quickly each month, they were not too much extra effort.

For the next, I’m trying to get some more other things up and going. By this time next year my PhD needs to be finished. At the same time, I’m trying to take my other project time to get a few other things done. I’m working on same light game dev stuff, mostly teaching myself stuff I’d like to know how to do. I’m also working on some SciComm practice, I think the way my PhD has gone, I’d benefit from spending more time thinking about how we talk about computer science. Both of those should float up to posts in the next few weeks.

I should also mention that I turned ads on for the first time. I did this mostly as an experiment. I was curious how it would work. Additionally I’m hoping to spend more time communicating in a professional context in the future and it feels like if there’s any chance to offset the time I spend on this then I’d like to take it.

But there we go. Season seven, more of the same. Probably an episode where I put on some masks and pretend to be a bunch of different dead gods… wait, wrong season seven. I’ll check in again on August 1, 2018.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 3

Back on the Stross wagon, with the next in the laundry files.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 2

Back on the Stross wagon, with the next in the laundry files.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update

Really enjoyed reading through The Atrocity Archives again. Sadly The Jennifer Morgue is by a wide margin my least favourite of the Laundry Files, so I basically just skimmed it in audio book form.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks

Once upon a time, a few updates ago, I set myself a project of reading more. I've felt lately like I haven't been reading enough, so I'm back in with Project 15, 12 Books in 26 Weeks.

The plan is to read books (for non-research purposes) and enjoy it. I figure at roughly 2 books a month, that should wrap this whole thing up December 31, 2017.

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction - Sector of Interest : Wrap Up

Well, I've managed to write all six of my planned sketch stories. I'm disappointed it took me so long to do what was supposed to be a few days worth of work basically, but it's done. Hopefully I'll revisit a project like this soon and maybe do it a little more like I was originally envisioning. In the mean time, however, I'm really happy to say that I've finished Project 14.

Sector of Interest

“Sector Control, this is Bulk Hauler TMS-M884MXHQ. I am exiting jump-space from gate 5417-a into your zone of control."

"Good morning, Hedge Queen, we have your on our boards. Good to see you again.”

"Thank you Control. My Nav-model has synced, can I get a course to the Loading Station Six?”

"Confirmed, HQ. Sector-Nav will transmit."

“Thanks, control. Anything interesting going on out here?”

“Nope, HQ, you’re not that interesting and neither was the hauler eight hours ago. I’m guessing the hauler in eight hours won’t be that interesting either. Mail courier might be interesting at least.”

“Oh that’s right, I almost forgot. The courier had some engine problems and the Station Master at Hai Shen gave us the mail packets to pass on to you guys here.”

“Huh, good to hear then HQ. Data or physical as well?”

“Both, Control. I can transmit the data once we’re in one-hop range and I’ll get Johny to run over in the tender and pass the physical packet over to you guys. Looks to be about 6 cubic meters.”

“Rodger, Hedge Queen. Sector-Nav will transmit a solution for the tender too. Stand by.”

“Thank you, Control. I’m glad we get to be interesting after all.”

“Don’t hold your breath, HQ. We have a pretty high standard of interesting out here.”

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction - Neighbours

This is the fifth of the six sketch stories.

Neighbours

They sound that fucking klaxon whenever a ship is going to drop. All it does is scare the cows, and let me know that the cows are going to be even more scared in about a half an hour, when a damned space hulk drops on our heads.

The land was dirt cheap. Is dirt cheap. All for 0.8% chance (per landing) of falling debris hitting the farm and just a 0.00013% chance of catastrophic explosion. So now I’ve got a great plot of land, with neighbours that pull a spaceship out of orbit twice a week and then smash it to bits.

Usually they’re pulling down ancient bulk haulers, giant asteroid cages with jump drives that basically fall apart on their own as soon as they’re down well. Sometimes it’s something more interesting, like a tug or  a guard cutter. Every once in awhile they drop something really interesting like a deep space survey ship or a yacht or even a bombardment platform once, but usually it’s just the work-a-day stuff.

It’s more interesting to watch at night, where you can usually see a star come to a stop in the sky and then start getting bigger and bigger. In the day, I just get to wait for a little spec in the sky to grow until it looks like a bird and then a shuttle and then suddenly a giant, hulking, behemoth.

I think it’s the grav-mirrors that upset the cows, but I don’t know why. The mirrors make a high pitched noise that bugs the dogs, but most of the other animals couldn’t care less about them. It’s just the cows. Maybe cows are just adverse to physics defying monstrosities floating in the sky.

If I have the time, sometimes, I’ll walk up to the top of the ridge to watch them. The ship floats down on the grav-mirrors. It’s a little surreal to watch this giant thing that used to move effortlessly through space drop slowly through the air until you’re standing on the ridge above it.  Once they have it positioned, they drop it the last few meters, then they pull the grav-mirrors out and send them back up to hook up to the next ship.

As soon as the ship’s down, they swarm all over it. They run three shifts a day, twenty-four hours-a-day. Whenever they drop a new ship they’re working on it right away. As soon as the last entrails of the last hulk are gone, the next one is dropping right to the sound of that klaxon.

They’re very polite. They’ve dropped “significant’” spaceship bits on the farm four times now. Each time then send a crew right away, hauled off the junk, decontaminate the area and paid me for the crops or the animals killed. Then, six months later, I can go back to using the land again.

That might be the problem actually, herd memory. Sylvie was killed by space junk, heralded by klaxon, so we should all be wary. Mountains shouldn’t float, why doesn’t the human panic? That, or maybe they just really hate the fucking klaxon.