Month: April 2018

Erm… The Satan Bug was Alistair MacLean. [grin]

Book 9 happened over the weekend !

(credit for pic is at this link)

It was Sphere by Michael Crichton. You’ll have watched or read at least something that Michael Crichton was involved with while he was alive. I was a definite fan of the medical drama series E.R. Cracking series. Then there’s the Jurassic Park novels. There’s Congo. The Andromeda Strain and The Satan Bug.

Need to watch/read The Satan Bug. It was one of those films I knew about but have never seen.

To the Sphere ! I watched the film a few years ago but can’t remember it in the same way as I can recall a lot of The Andromeda Strain.

Something has crashed in the ocean and the Navy has gone into investigate what has ended up on the ocean floor. Good people the Navy. At least ours are. This one has the Americans in charge and they’ve called in our man Norman, central character and chief protagonist as the psychologist of the expedition.

As is normal for Michael Crichton fiction, he leans a huge amount on known science. So we have a habitat where he explains the theory behind surviving at 1000ft below in terms hopefully anyone can understand without feeling as if they’re being baby talked. I was similarly impressed with the set up of The Andromeda Strain, indeed it seemed like that film was more interested in the How than the What.

Around the science, most of what this book looks into is perception and imagination. How do we perceive the environment around us. What tricks will our subconscious pull on us when we are exposed to a stressful scenario.

An interesting book. Perhaps a weak story with a rushed ending … but an ending that wrapped up the story nicely. The end forms the impression with which you leave the book. And this one left me with a wish to read more from the author.

And that’s what’s important isn’t it !

One odd thing there though. The book I borrowed was in very poor condition and may only survive one or two more readings before the spine disintegrates (I don’t think I degraded it any more!). I was looking to acquire a Kindle version so I could enjoy the book without opening it and damaging it. You can acquire it on softback, hardback, audiobook … but not e-book. This is very strange. (Can’t get it on Apple’s store either). Same with books like Jurassic Park. Can’t get that in e-book either (English version at least). I could pick up Jurassic World … but not the first book.

This is very odd ! Seems like half of Michael Crichton’s books have been denied sale via e-book.

Commerce is good. Blockage of commerce is bad. I have no idea why they’d prevent people buying a commodity like an e-book when the other methods are available. I could buy it as an audiobook ! But not e-book.

Weird. Very weird.

Next up was going to be a little book of ships but … I’ve been drawn back into the galaxy of The Expanse instead with Nemesis Games. A promising start so far. Time to get back to it while watching a Paradox video on the Battletech game !

I have to admit, this one is a little delayed ….

I’ve been feeling a bit Lego deprived lately and I’ve been eyeing up new kits. But there was that little ship I put together a few weeks ago courtesy of a closing down sale.

What is it ?

Something little. And the fourth one I have of its type …

As with most Lego kits, it starts small and modest. A vague outline of what’s to come.

It begins to take a familiar shape.

Some familiar features start to appear.

And it takes on that instantly recognisable profile.

And there we have it ! Completed Falcon number 4. But something’s missing … We need a pilot ! A mechanic ! It can only be :

CHEWIE !

There’s another big Falcon kit coming. I suspect I will have trouble resisting that one (but we’ll see what the price point is).

Other news – this is a shameless excuse for a gap post :-). I finished reading Sphere by Michael Crichton last night so a mini-review of that one will come later in the week. Next up : a little book about ships.

And dreams of acquiring more Lego.

Film watching tonight !

Book reading yesterday. Book 8 in my attempt at reading 52 books in the year was Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds.

I have to be honest, I nearly gave up on this book before getting halfway through …

There is a huge amount of scene setting at the start of the book to get the various characters into the place where the action starts to happen. That takes up maybe 45% of the start of the book and it was a struggle to get through that. That (and Idle Champions) was probably why it took me so long to get through this one.

Would I recommend it having said that ? Actually yes, because when it does spark into life and get going, it’s an excellent book. The threads set up in that first half of the book combine together at the end for …. dare I say it …. revelations.

What’s it about ? It’s set in the same dysfunctional scifi universe as Chasm City, after that system was wrecked by the Melding Plague. We start off by following a superior archaeologist in his quest to find out what happened to the long dead previous inhabitants of the planet he has ended up on. And that’s not superior in terms of archaeology skill, it’s superior in terms of his attitude to the rest of the world. It makes him a compelling but definitely not lovable character.

There is Khouri, the assassin with an unfortunate past, a definitely superbly murky present and a future ? (Read the book to find out about that future !)

We have the lighthugger (big interstellar space ship) Nostalgia for Infinity commanded by a moribund Captain who is a victim of the Melding Plague, plus the Triumvirate of Sajaki, Ilia and Hegazi along with a few more characters.

And more going on as well ….

A great book when it gets going, I was finding it hard to put down the iPad (Kindle app!) at a suitable time for going to bed. But it does take a long time to get its characters into the place where amazing things happen.

My next book isn’t on the Kindle, it’s a paperback (Michael Crichton, Sphere). I watched the film a few years ago and enjoyed it, I’m very curious to read what the original was like.

Tonight’s film and birthday outing for Cyberkitten (happy birthday for the weekend CK !) was Ready Player One.

I didn’t have high hopes for this one, I thought it was going to be a cash in on the nostalgia of 30+ years of gaming. In other words, not much story and a lot of raiding of other people’s work.

It didn’t feel like a raid, it felt more like a love letter to all of that pop culture that some of us have lived through for all that time, with actually quite a decent story wrapping it all up. It was a joyous trip through this future world as the characters were carried along by the narrative.

A lighthearted tale and one that I will definitely enjoy again at some point in the (possibly near?) future.

There weren’t many people in the cinema though, perhaps people have been turned off this one by its marketing. Perhaps people are avoiding it due to feeling that it might have been a shameless, faceless, charmless cash in (I’m lookin’ at you Pixels and Emoji Movie which I’ve never seen but am commenting on anyway!). It’ll be a pity if people miss out on this one because it was genuinely good fun.

That’s it for me for tonight, since wrenching my shoulder again last week I’ve been on and off with pain coming and going. But I’m feeling ok now. A decent feel good movie can have that effect !

At least,

Will be tomorrow. For now though, it feels a bit :

As far as yesterday’s post goes, yep, that was my now traditional April Fools post. One year, there’s going to be a totally unbelievable but actually true post. Bit like the novel writing post but one that might actually come true and happen.

Yesterday’s post was a good one to write. There were only two things in there that weren’t true … There has, sadly, been no job offer from Paradox although I think it would be a very tough choice if there was one. I’m quite entrenched here with great people around me plus when I move posts in the next few months, it should be into one that is actually quite close to that creative engineer thing. Except not so much on the creative new ideas, more on delivering something special instead of indulging the imagination.

However it was a good excuse to write nice things about the Paradox people and the old Warcraft guild people. The Community Manager Susie who I keep mentioning is a special one, she actually engages with the community around the game. Which is Route One for making the community happy and engaged with the product they’re pushing. I don’t think I’d have pre-ordered Surviving Mars if not for the Susie and Niki streams and I’d have had a warier eye on Battletech … which I’ll probably preorder as well.

Depends on what the prerelease gameplay streams are like. The Surviving Mars ones showed off a well sorted game.

The question is though, why was it not Frontier with what I’ve written about Elite ? After all, Frontier is not too far away (they’re based in the UK). I was actually back in playing Elite yesterday …

It comes down to that community management thing, plus a lot of what the development group do with the game. It’s a very pretty game and gets better looking with each update but …. it’s very empty. And the community managers don’t engage with their community. (The various links I’ve sent over to them didn’t even get clicks plus I’ve heard very bad things about their engagement in general – if you’re in the circle, you’re ok. If you’re out of the circle, you don’t exist).

And I always do like saying nice things about people who have earned it and deserve it.

I have longer arms than that. Honest.

What else has been going on over the break ? Happily not too much. The break was intended to regenerate me out of burn out and hopefully that has succeeded. There’s been :

Lots of music listening (1305 unique tracks according to iTunes);
Huge amounts of video watching;
A certain amount of cricket watching;
Far too much time in game (I’ll count that up in a bit);

Resisting buying laptop or lego;
And a couple of films.

Was Tomb Raider on the Friday I went on leave ? Nah. I left work too late and ended up going to the shops while hungry. Don’t do that folks. Although that did lead to me acquiring enough supplies to see me through the break.

The mob watched Pacific Rim 2 yesterday. The verdict ? They somehow managed to take the uplifting, fun, epic action of the first Pacific Rim and make it meh. A sequel that made some mad sense in itself but …. really wasn’t necessary. John Boyega seems to have been taken to Hollywood’s Heart as the next big thing, a flagbearer for inclusion but …. this movie isn’t very good and he’s playing the character from Attack the Block instead of the son of Pentecost.

There was a bit of reading too, although I’m still somewhat struggling through Revelation Space.

Back to work tomorrow though. It should be a quiet week, although I’m curious as to what was going on last week while I was away.

I better close up, the SpaceX stream just started ! Rokkits soon.

PS The gaming time over the last 2 weeks according to Steam :
9.4 hours of Stellaris – I have a new warrior monk xenophobe race that is already far ahead of the 2 neighbours. Just gotta get the influence to go to war and beat them up.
21.2 hours of Motorsport Manager – my team is now beating all comers so I’m looking to farm achievements. 1.5 seasons to go.
12.2 hours of Skyrim – and the start of a new adventure …
176.3 hours of Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms – yep. You read that right. (I’ve been leaving it running when I go to bed and the champions earn lots of money to make the game easier for the next run). It’s a daft addiction but one that I can have going while doing other things plus the game systems don’t take much effort to learn.
(Which is why hours of Surviving Mars is jut 0.3 !)

Oh yes 😀

Presumably you'll be starting *next* April 1st?

I may have had an offer come in ….

It looks like a dream offer too. Work on games, write for games, help develop the vision for games, be among creatives who will spark off my own creativism ?

Perhaps.

What’s happening ?

A games company called Paradox have taken an interest. Looks like they want a consultant engineer type person to write for them and add solid flesh to some of the lore bones they have in their games. A person to look at a Battlemech and say “That’ll work, that’s sound. But this is WAY COOLER!” So many times a creative project falls down because people will look at what’s been made and it …. just cannot work. The creative engineer’s job is to take those creative ideas and :

Make them work;
Make them cool;
Add in little essential details.

One of the sayings for engineers is that a designer will add the world to a device, the engineer will refine it back until it does its purpose as efficiently as possible. (And then the geekiness of all engineers will kick in and add something quirky again).

So that’s your creative engineer’s role. Steer the artists in a direction that will show creations that look like they could work. Suggest all sorts of additions like vents, intakes, exhausts, sensor blisters, weapon ports, windows … things like that which add in the cool factor and give those gamers something to look at.

Oh and to take the “read all about the cool stuff behind the stuff in the game” a bit further and actually indulge in writing all that cool stuff behind the game. Things like the timelines that would go into Battletech or leading up to Surviving Mars or Stellaris. (Their other games are more historical)

Why Paradox ? They have games that make me want to pack myself up into the crates …

They’ve been quietly taking over my Steam library of late with some extremely good games … Games like Stellaris which I would quite happily play from 11 until 2 (both times in am) and probably beyond. (A poorly wrist and a very unhappy shoulder are putting a dampener on that at the moment though). Hearts of Iron 4 caught my eye too, that one gets very complex. It would be good to be a playtester/debugger on that because to be honest, it needs a little more work because the vast army management and strategy system seems to break in the later game. A shame because Hearts of Iron 4 is another massively impressive game.

Surviving Mars caught my attention early with its concept (right up my alley) and with the graphics too. I really must give it some more attention and time (see comment above ref: shoulder and wrist), although I have been hugely enjoying the soundtrack and the artbook I picked up with the game. You can tell they had people working on it who wanted to touch every single asset included in the game and add a little touch of awesome.

And then there’s Battletech … I started my PC playing days on Tie Fighter yep … but one game that really caught my attention was Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. Curiously, I never really played the other Mechwarrior games much until Mech Commander 2, which I’m actually considering bringing out again due to the hype behind Battletech. Here’s the old game :

That’s from a 1996 game if you want to compare it to the graphics of Skyrim from my last post. Things came on a very long way over the 16 years between the games. Not so much lately though … Anyway, here’s a link to more about the old Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries … And for the new game, here’s a basics of mercenary life video (youtube links) and the story trailer. I’m definitely hyped for that one now.

So many games, not enough time to play them all. (Unless playing them becomes the job, that would be as awesome as the Lego Spaceship guy being told he can build a spaceship).

Yep. That hyped.

It’s not just the games though. It’s the culture. I was very impressed while watching the livestream videos. They seem to have a culture there that’s inclusive and which is steered towards enjoying the work and FUN. And that was going from their CEO coming in to sit in for the livestream looking at doing fun things with the game, through to the people who normally work on the games but who were taking their spell playing on the livestream.

That culture of fun is very attractive.

Oh and there’s a rumour that Producer Niki wants a Chief of Staff, although I think she framed it more as “Manager of People”. There was a strong suggestion that I should bring my black leather gloves, aka Assassin Gloves. Whatever for I wonder ?

But yeah, the first Paradox livestreams I watched were the Surviving Mars livestreams with Producer Niki playing and Community Manager Susie watching the stream comments and enabling the community interaction. I wouldn’t keep watching an hour long set of videos (and prioritising them over others !) if they weren’t fun and enjoyable to watch. And that culture enables Niki to unleash the crazy ideas and to be that free spirit.

There’s a bit more to do though. I’m currently passportless after letting my old one expire (wasn’t traveling anywhere, didn’t need to renew it) and I definitely need to get a new one before the new Brexit passports (made in France) come in :

(click for bigger so you can read the writing)

The GB thing is another factor actually, I’d definitely miss the people here (who would only be a flight away) but the country is steadily going downhill due to shockingly bad leadership. We have no credible politicians at the moment and the ones we do have are bent on self destruction.

Another thing about Sweden though, it’s home to those lovely people from the Violence Reborn guild. The Warcraft period was quite turbulent towards the end of my time with the Mercenaries of Darkness but the mostly Swedish group of Violence Reborn picked me up again and … rehabilitated me into the game ? And one person in particular, lovely Sandra. There was that unforgettable evening where Alex and DT were singing to each other over the voice comms … and they got me joining in at the end too.

They had a crazy warlock too (can’t remember her name sadly) who was very entertaining over the voice comms. She bought all of our souls in exchange for cookies and we were glad for the trade. Old Doomprayer too, he was a good egg although he got a bit caught up in the elitism that surrounded the raiding. Good chap. Oh and Tufflan too.

So many free spirits enjoying life and taking that enjoyment through to the game. I don’t have nearly as many friends on Facebook as some but there are a number from the old Warcraft days who are definitely prized friends.

I should wrap up now though. It would be a fantastic opportunity to work for a company like Paradox.

Counting the days. It might be another 365 if it actually happens.

😀

PS In the interest of disclosure … not-an-ad. 🙂