Same friend who introduced me to Harry Turtledove's Wroldwar series talk to me a lot about Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Also I've heard a lot about Asimov's "three laws of robotics and generally how he brought robots to everyone's mind. So I started reading and got through books, all of them. I've started with this: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/what-order-should-asimovs-foundation-series-be-read-in, basically all of the robot stories then all of Foundation stories and finally the rest of 101th "mystery" short stories and novels. Nice thing about Asimov's novels is they are almost all "mysteries". If you are like me born 50 years after most Asimov's work was published and don't have "mystery" in your genre list, it's broader term for crime/detective story (or "krimić" in Croatian). Broader in the sense that it doesn't have to involve murder or any crime but still develops as a regular detective story, something not fully described happens and protagonist spends 500 pages collecting clues to reveal the big picture. That mystery part is the reason why his novels are so addictive.
Robot stories
Back to robots and the famous three law of robotics. First thing first, Asimov's robots are not what we call a robot today, at best they are androids (not Android but lower case android, as robot with human form) and they have very human-like way of thinking. Second thing first there was no Internet nor proper transistor powered computers back then and it shows in his work. When you see a word Multivac (also described as large as room or whole building) you'll know how little he thought about the future of computers. Back to robots and the famous three law of robotics. In Asimov's novels "robots" are metal humans with three mental restrictions. Aside from those restrictions they have normal human hopes, desire to get free from oppression, have fight or flight instinct and whole slew of human characteristic that you'll not find in modern military drones, mining equipment and mine sweeper robots. Also Asimov didn't invent any true laws of robotics, just wrote a stories that introduced reader to metal humanoid beings (MHB further on) with three particular mental restrictions and then played with what ifs. What is this restriction was taken literally, what is there was MHB without that restriction, what if there was MHB with this or that ability and so on.
In the end, despite having all technology depicted wrong (oh I have to rant about it even if it happens in the middle of the sentence like this, in one story the author postulates that is more feasible to control machinery on Mercury with special brain on Earth then to land a computer on Mercury and then believe the reader won't ask whether 25 minute lag would be a problem), robot stories were fun to read. Those where MHBs are not object of "what if" are even better and those that are prequels to prequel to the Foundation series are golden.
Foundation series
Which brings as to "great man theory". The Foundation series is more about people that defined fictive future history of mankind then about how famous psychohistorians' plan for the whole galaxy developed. Similar to robot stories there is a path the humanity is supposed to follow and author throws various what ifs that derails it but this time protagonists and objects of "what if" are humans. And each such human is an epic thinker that accomplishes great deeds through careful observation and planned action. End of the series is a bit weak, Asimov kind of went hippie there but as I've learned recently, he planned to write more, didn't have right inspiration and died. Other authors continued his work. I'm a bit skeptical but I might give them a try.
What Asimov had inspiration for was more great man stories so he wrote prequels to the Foundation detailing the life of the first psychohistorian. Who was in love (platonic, no sex, please no Hollywood crap here) with a robot, ups, MHB (at some point in robot stories MHBs became so sophisticated that some are hardly distinguishable regular humans), "mathed" his way out of deadly dangers, ruled the galaxy for a while, laid the way for new galactic empire and helped certain MHB with "zeroth law of robotics".
Robot series
Which brings as back to robot series. There were great men too, Susan Calvin (didn't say all are male), Elijah Baley and I'd include even MHB R. Daneel Olivaw. I've found stories centered around Elijah Baley most fascinating. In the first there was a murder which means mystery, in the second there was a clash of vastly different cultures, then a story about a third vastly different culture and finally a story about evolution of galactic proportions going from subtle to global. And there are toilets, vivid, detailed description of a toilet in each culture. On the serious side worth mentioning are differences in how families function, on the one side are our normal mother-father-children groups while on the opposite end is absolute separation of children and parents.
Other stories
Other stories cover so many subjects, from classic "somebody died, who is the killer?" detective story to an old lady trying to remember a street name. Some stories are weird with assumption that humans would resent going
outdoor which was probably work of author's claustrophilia. And there are puns. I'm not American, English is not my mother tongue so I don't find them funny (pun gets lost in translation) and some I didn't get before looking up because they referenced some song that was popular in bygone century on the other side of the planet. But most of the stories are good read. It also helps that Asimov studied biochemistry. Golden egg goose is golden.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Master of Orion II - missiles
Master of Orion II is an old, old game. It was released in 1996 but people still play it and await for worthy successor. One reason why fans still play MoO II is a deep and meaningful customization. Like in AAA "RPGs" (quotes because role play games get confused with "whatever has experience bars and level ups"), before the game starts player can spend an hour picking traits for his/hers race and empire. Many traits add or remove game mechanics such as lithovore: race doesn't need food or telepathic: empire can mind control colonies. When the game starts every few turns, depending on empire's research output, player has to choose one of the two or three mutually exclusive technologies (or take all is the empire has certain trait). This choices heavily influences which tools will player have at his/her disposal, much like deck building in CCGs. And finally, player can design combat units. I can't even start to explain how much game defining it is and considering the topic I presume you, dear reader, have played the game and are familiar with most of it's feature. If you haven't played it, please do, you can get it from GoG.com for 5$.
Every now and then I find new "build" I haven't tried so far. It sounds unbelievable considering that I play the game for many years (I'm not disclosing how many :)) but I was noob back then and only used one strategy, playing turtle until I got all technologies and then unleash invincible fleet on everyone. Last few years I was trying new stuff, diplomatic race, spy race, uncreative race, empire with heavy money generation bonuses, limiting my self to only the smallest ships and so on... Recently I've tried limiting my self on using weapons other then beams. It was surprising, I had no idea interceptors are so strong in early and mid game. So in the last game I excluded special weapons too, only missiles and bombs were allowed. It was fun and tense at first but AIs were not developing well so it became too easy. They managed to keep pace with armor upgrades but by turn 350 nobody managed to get anything beyond class I shields. Still, I managed to experience new stuff. Having no beam weapons leaves ships free from beam enhancing equipment and frees up nice amount of research points. I've used those points to speed up research of chemistry (better missiles, armor and ship range) and construction, to get automated repair sooner. You see where I was going, high quality armor and self repair equals invincible ship. Unless enemy has ion cannon and it so happened that AI was good enough to get it and bad enough get any better beam weapon for a long time. I was invincible in ship to ship combat but assaulting planet required some fancy footwork in order to have shielded part of the ship facing star base when it was about to fire ion cannon.
After reaching the end of chemistry techs, I've switched to power in order to try out torpedoes. Torpedoes are interesting weapons but in my opinion too high in tech "tree". Antimatter torpedo is OK, easily accessible for mid to late game. By the time proton torpedo becomes usable the game is almost over. Same holds for plasma torpedo that is very last technology in power field. As I said I was facing underdeveloped AIs so it was not fun upgrading torpedoes when antimatter was more then enough for the job. One the bright side, researching torpedoes gives player opportunity to get energy absorber which is great addition to ships designed around taking hits instead avoiding them. Combine it with hard shields and damage reduction will be so high that all but late game weapons would become ineffective.
I've finished the game by attacking Antares and I did it twice, separately with torpedoes and with missiles. Those two roads were very different. Torpedoes were reliable on doing the job given enough time, in fact I had to attack Antares twice with torpedo ships because I reached turn limit first time. I did some bad moves and star fortress managed to shoot down 5 out of 6 ships and the last one didn't have enough fire power to destroy it within 50 combat turns. I could have brought more ships but I wanted to give some chance to Antarans :). Anyway, going with missiles was a gamble, missiles can be destroyed before doing damage and the ammunition is limited so it was possible end up in situation where ships have to retreat because they can't attack any more. I brought extra ships, just in case. With missiles it's either overkill or stalemate and aside from EMG they aren't that interesting. Unlike torpedoes, missile have no twist, they just do damage and higher missile technologies are simply damage upgrades. That is somewhat spiced by EMG, a missile modification that applies damage directly to target's engines if it's shields are down. Unlike armor, engines have very few hit points and if they are destroyed the ship self-destructs. To balance that EMG greatly increases missile size. But AI was not challenging enough to give me opportunity to try it out...
All in all there is material for another playthrough. Maybe this time with smaller ships and no creative trait. Yep, Master of Orion II is still play worthy.
Every now and then I find new "build" I haven't tried so far. It sounds unbelievable considering that I play the game for many years (I'm not disclosing how many :)) but I was noob back then and only used one strategy, playing turtle until I got all technologies and then unleash invincible fleet on everyone. Last few years I was trying new stuff, diplomatic race, spy race, uncreative race, empire with heavy money generation bonuses, limiting my self to only the smallest ships and so on... Recently I've tried limiting my self on using weapons other then beams. It was surprising, I had no idea interceptors are so strong in early and mid game. So in the last game I excluded special weapons too, only missiles and bombs were allowed. It was fun and tense at first but AIs were not developing well so it became too easy. They managed to keep pace with armor upgrades but by turn 350 nobody managed to get anything beyond class I shields. Still, I managed to experience new stuff. Having no beam weapons leaves ships free from beam enhancing equipment and frees up nice amount of research points. I've used those points to speed up research of chemistry (better missiles, armor and ship range) and construction, to get automated repair sooner. You see where I was going, high quality armor and self repair equals invincible ship. Unless enemy has ion cannon and it so happened that AI was good enough to get it and bad enough get any better beam weapon for a long time. I was invincible in ship to ship combat but assaulting planet required some fancy footwork in order to have shielded part of the ship facing star base when it was about to fire ion cannon.
After reaching the end of chemistry techs, I've switched to power in order to try out torpedoes. Torpedoes are interesting weapons but in my opinion too high in tech "tree". Antimatter torpedo is OK, easily accessible for mid to late game. By the time proton torpedo becomes usable the game is almost over. Same holds for plasma torpedo that is very last technology in power field. As I said I was facing underdeveloped AIs so it was not fun upgrading torpedoes when antimatter was more then enough for the job. One the bright side, researching torpedoes gives player opportunity to get energy absorber which is great addition to ships designed around taking hits instead avoiding them. Combine it with hard shields and damage reduction will be so high that all but late game weapons would become ineffective.
I've finished the game by attacking Antares and I did it twice, separately with torpedoes and with missiles. Those two roads were very different. Torpedoes were reliable on doing the job given enough time, in fact I had to attack Antares twice with torpedo ships because I reached turn limit first time. I did some bad moves and star fortress managed to shoot down 5 out of 6 ships and the last one didn't have enough fire power to destroy it within 50 combat turns. I could have brought more ships but I wanted to give some chance to Antarans :). Anyway, going with missiles was a gamble, missiles can be destroyed before doing damage and the ammunition is limited so it was possible end up in situation where ships have to retreat because they can't attack any more. I brought extra ships, just in case. With missiles it's either overkill or stalemate and aside from EMG they aren't that interesting. Unlike torpedoes, missile have no twist, they just do damage and higher missile technologies are simply damage upgrades. That is somewhat spiced by EMG, a missile modification that applies damage directly to target's engines if it's shields are down. Unlike armor, engines have very few hit points and if they are destroyed the ship self-destructs. To balance that EMG greatly increases missile size. But AI was not challenging enough to give me opportunity to try it out...
All in all there is material for another playthrough. Maybe this time with smaller ships and no creative trait. Yep, Master of Orion II is still play worthy.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Harry Turtledove - Worldwar series
About three years ago a friend recommended me the World War series. Setting is SF alternate history where aliens with modern day human's technology are invading Earth during World War II. The twist is that aliens have serious shortcoming in their character, they are very conservative, slow at accepting change and expected that humans are too. Much like Stargate TV show where humans start underdogs and work their way among big guys, the World War setting instantly grabbed my attention.
It took me some effort to find the books and it took even more effort to read them. There are eight of them! To be exact World War on it's own is quadrilogy (four books) but there are four more books (Colonization trilogy and Homebound book) that continue in the plot and it make more sense than not to include all eight books to consideration when talking about World War. So, are the books any good?
World War grabbed my attention very fast. Aliens are well thought out and their perspective on the matter is very interesting. Their culture, psychology and biology are all thought out and consistent within the story. Human plot lines are mixed bag, most are very good and few are boring though those boring ones have moments of shine. Among good stuff are political intrigues between Russians, Germans, Poles, USA and aliens. Harry Turtledove is experienced alternate history writer and student of history so it's no wonder that those are good parts. What Turtledove is not good at are religious subjects. Since the author is Jewish and first part of the story is set during the World War II, the subject of Jew is more than forced upon the reader while other religions, if mentioned at all, are depicted in bad light. Vatican has sided with alien invaders because they supposedly prefer monarchy and got nuked with a comment that they deserved it. Mind you, the Pope at the time was Pius XII who today (June 2014) holds the title of Blessed which is one step before being Saint. Even though he didn't do much to protect Jew at the time, I feel as if the author was expressing the hate against him. On top of that Colonization series depict Muslims as nothing but violent mob, so hate speech against them is there too. Why I make so much fuss about that? Because probably the strongest point of the books is unstereothypical depiction all (most) groups of people. There are good Russians and there are bad Russians, there good, grey and bad Americans. There are good and bad Nazis too, one Nazi solder even saves city full of Jews from German nuclear bomb. But the author fails to do that on groups of people and groups I can relate with: Catholics and Croats. For some reason Croats are just evil, without much explanation. Google fails me there and if anyone can enlighten me, please drop the comment. All in all Worldwar scores 7/10 for me and don't get me wrong about Jews, they get interesting when they start standing on their feet.
Colonization covers the events 20 years after Worldwar, when alien colonists came to populate what was supposed to be conquered world. Even though they are same species and nation aliens from the first wave (conquest fleet) and colonists didn't simply get along. The Earth and humans changed aliens as much as they changed humans, they had to learn to adapt, to trade and to recognize other nations than their own. Colonists on the other hand came fresh from civilization that had only one nation and didn't do any action until it was thoroughly analyzed. Sounds like good drama material but somehow this trilogy left me with the least memories. Most scenes were static where people lives played out and nothing of importance happened, there were some forgettable characters and I was eager to read the final book. On the up side, political intrigues were still present, there were a few plot lines that made up for the boring ones and alien perspective although predictable was still interesting. All in all 5/10.
Last book in the series was so full of potential. I wish Colonization was two books shorter and Homeward Bound at least a book longer. Homeward Bound covers multiple time periods starting from about 10 years after Colonization series and ending in near future where humans develop "warp drive" and technologically surpass the aliens. Like previous books it also covers a lot of topics, politics, cultural differences, how each side adopts parts of other's culture, how humans continues to progress while aliens stagnate but all of it compressed to a single book. I'd like to read more about the alien emperor's perspective and how aliens would fare with invention of FTL technology. The story has to end somewhere and it feels like the author wanted to end it there, still if only Colonization was shorter and Homeward Bound longer. 7/10.
It took me some effort to find the books and it took even more effort to read them. There are eight of them! To be exact World War on it's own is quadrilogy (four books) but there are four more books (Colonization trilogy and Homebound book) that continue in the plot and it make more sense than not to include all eight books to consideration when talking about World War. So, are the books any good?
World War grabbed my attention very fast. Aliens are well thought out and their perspective on the matter is very interesting. Their culture, psychology and biology are all thought out and consistent within the story. Human plot lines are mixed bag, most are very good and few are boring though those boring ones have moments of shine. Among good stuff are political intrigues between Russians, Germans, Poles, USA and aliens. Harry Turtledove is experienced alternate history writer and student of history so it's no wonder that those are good parts. What Turtledove is not good at are religious subjects. Since the author is Jewish and first part of the story is set during the World War II, the subject of Jew is more than forced upon the reader while other religions, if mentioned at all, are depicted in bad light. Vatican has sided with alien invaders because they supposedly prefer monarchy and got nuked with a comment that they deserved it. Mind you, the Pope at the time was Pius XII who today (June 2014) holds the title of Blessed which is one step before being Saint. Even though he didn't do much to protect Jew at the time, I feel as if the author was expressing the hate against him. On top of that Colonization series depict Muslims as nothing but violent mob, so hate speech against them is there too. Why I make so much fuss about that? Because probably the strongest point of the books is unstereothypical depiction all (most) groups of people. There are good Russians and there are bad Russians, there good, grey and bad Americans. There are good and bad Nazis too, one Nazi solder even saves city full of Jews from German nuclear bomb. But the author fails to do that on groups of people and groups I can relate with: Catholics and Croats. For some reason Croats are just evil, without much explanation. Google fails me there and if anyone can enlighten me, please drop the comment. All in all Worldwar scores 7/10 for me and don't get me wrong about Jews, they get interesting when they start standing on their feet.
Colonization covers the events 20 years after Worldwar, when alien colonists came to populate what was supposed to be conquered world. Even though they are same species and nation aliens from the first wave (conquest fleet) and colonists didn't simply get along. The Earth and humans changed aliens as much as they changed humans, they had to learn to adapt, to trade and to recognize other nations than their own. Colonists on the other hand came fresh from civilization that had only one nation and didn't do any action until it was thoroughly analyzed. Sounds like good drama material but somehow this trilogy left me with the least memories. Most scenes were static where people lives played out and nothing of importance happened, there were some forgettable characters and I was eager to read the final book. On the up side, political intrigues were still present, there were a few plot lines that made up for the boring ones and alien perspective although predictable was still interesting. All in all 5/10.
Last book in the series was so full of potential. I wish Colonization was two books shorter and Homeward Bound at least a book longer. Homeward Bound covers multiple time periods starting from about 10 years after Colonization series and ending in near future where humans develop "warp drive" and technologically surpass the aliens. Like previous books it also covers a lot of topics, politics, cultural differences, how each side adopts parts of other's culture, how humans continues to progress while aliens stagnate but all of it compressed to a single book. I'd like to read more about the alien emperor's perspective and how aliens would fare with invention of FTL technology. The story has to end somewhere and it feels like the author wanted to end it there, still if only Colonization was shorter and Homeward Bound longer. 7/10.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
IKON: human oriented JSON look-alike
So, yet another DSL/markup but please take a look:
(Brief) history
Before unleashing language/notation specifics allow me to tell you a little about brief history of IKADN and IKON. DSLs (domain specific languages) have a tendency of cropping up in almost every project. A year ago I decided to rewrite the Stareater, a strategy game and a rather big project of mine and since it was rewrite I knew that I'll need not one DSL but three: one for settings and save file, another one for assets (statistical data about game objects such as how much they cost and what image present them) and yet another one for localization. Most of developers would simply pick XML, XML and XML. I find XML too heavily oriented on describing data organization instead of data itself. It's good for some purposes but it's overkill for my needs. JSON, YAML and plain INI were options I considered but at some point I figured what I was really looking for is something that can adapted to a specific problem. Settings file would work OK general markup language such as JSON but localization files would work better with text oriented solution. For instance there is no need numbers and arrays in localization data while simplified syntax for single line text is very useful. So, I decided to make my own solution that satisfies specific needs.
The solution I came up with are IKADN, an abstract notation that can be used for making other markup languages and IKON, a general purpose language. The rest are technicalities but I'll mention that I'm actively using IKON and two IKADN derivates in the Stareater project for a year and improve them regularly.
About IKON
As said before IKON is general purpose solution so, much like JSON and YAML it features three classes of data:
About IKADN
The sexiest part of the solution is an abstract notation that simplifies implementation (and to some degree design) of your own notation. Projects wiki page https://code.google.com/p/ikon-library/wiki/IKADN contains more details but in short IKADN syntax consist of following rules:
How to get it
Official project web site it at Google Project Hosting: https://code.google.com/p/ikon-library/. There are source code, wiki pages and most recent build for .Net. Build is also available through NuGet.
Here is an example how to use the library. Let's say IKON document from the top of the post is in input.txt. This the code that would print the name of the star:
using System;
using System.IO;
using Ikadn.Ikon;
using Ikadn.Ikon.Types;
namespace IKON_example
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var reader = new StreamReader("input.txt");
using(var parser = new IkonParser(reader))
{
IkonComposite star = parser.ParseNext().To<IkonComposite>();
Console.WriteLine(star["name"].To<string>());
}
}
}
}
Parser can read form any TextReader subclass so if you want to read from string instead of file, use StringReader instead StreamReader. Also parser implements disposable patters so you can use it with using statement to ensure that input stream is closed after use.
Notice To<T>() method, it's the helper method for converting objects and the alternative to usual C#'s cast-and-get (cast an object to target type and then call a getter method). In the first case IkadnBaseObject is simply cast to IkonComposite (table type). The second case is more complex and shows true power or the method. Instead of type casting, underlying IkonText (textual type) returns it's contents as .Net string. Which types can be requested depends on the underlaying IkadnBaseObject subclass. For example, in the case of IkonNumber (numeric type) valid conversions include most native .Net numeric type (decimal, int, float, ...). In case of IkonArray (array type) one can ask for T[] (native .Net array) or IEnumerable<T> if array elements can be converter to T.
If you have any questions out the project, feel free to drop a comment. If you have a feature request or bug to report, you can file an "issue" on the project site too.
{ StarLooks like JSON. So why make up another language? Well, unlike JSON this one isn't designed with Javascript compatibility first, instead it's designed with human editor in mind. In general case IKON (Ivan Kravarčšan's object notation) looks like JSON with less double quotes but it can be expanded with domain specific syntax. Need shorthand syntax for matrices? No problem, plug it in. And even more customization can be achieved by extending IKADN (Ivan Kravarščan's abstract data notatins) but more about it later.
size = 12
x = 9
y = 4
name "Alpha Centaury"
planets [
{ Planet size = 100 }
{ Planet size = 120 }
{ Planet size = 10 }
]
}
(Brief) history
Before unleashing language/notation specifics allow me to tell you a little about brief history of IKADN and IKON. DSLs (domain specific languages) have a tendency of cropping up in almost every project. A year ago I decided to rewrite the Stareater, a strategy game and a rather big project of mine and since it was rewrite I knew that I'll need not one DSL but three: one for settings and save file, another one for assets (statistical data about game objects such as how much they cost and what image present them) and yet another one for localization. Most of developers would simply pick XML, XML and XML. I find XML too heavily oriented on describing data organization instead of data itself. It's good for some purposes but it's overkill for my needs. JSON, YAML and plain INI were options I considered but at some point I figured what I was really looking for is something that can adapted to a specific problem. Settings file would work OK general markup language such as JSON but localization files would work better with text oriented solution. For instance there is no need numbers and arrays in localization data while simplified syntax for single line text is very useful. So, I decided to make my own solution that satisfies specific needs.
The solution I came up with are IKADN, an abstract notation that can be used for making other markup languages and IKON, a general purpose language. The rest are technicalities but I'll mention that I'm actively using IKON and two IKADN derivates in the Stareater project for a year and improve them regularly.
About IKON
As said before IKON is general purpose solution so, much like JSON and YAML it features three classes of data:
- Scalars (atoms of data such as numbers or texts)
- Tables (key-value pairs)
- Array (much like tables but with values only and values are ordered)
About IKADN
The sexiest part of the solution is an abstract notation that simplifies implementation (and to some degree design) of your own notation. Projects wiki page https://code.google.com/p/ikon-library/wiki/IKADN contains more details but in short IKADN syntax consist of following rules:
- Each data type starts with a specific character (such as "=" for numbers in IKON or "[" for array),
- Notation designer defines how data it self looks like
- White spaces between data are ignored.
- Logic for reading stream
- Handling of unexpected end of stream
- Deciding which data type to read
- Helper methods for reading, skipping and substituting characters from the input stream
- Helper methods for writing nicely indented IKADN document.
How to get it
Official project web site it at Google Project Hosting: https://code.google.com/p/ikon-library/. There are source code, wiki pages and most recent build for .Net. Build is also available through NuGet.
using System;
using System.IO;
using Ikadn.Ikon;
using Ikadn.Ikon.Types;
namespace IKON_example
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var reader = new StreamReader("input.txt");
using(var parser = new IkonParser(reader))
{
IkonComposite star = parser.ParseNext().To<IkonComposite>();
Console.WriteLine(star["name"].To<string>());
}
}
}
}
Parser can read form any TextReader subclass so if you want to read from string instead of file, use StringReader instead StreamReader. Also parser implements disposable patters so you can use it with using statement to ensure that input stream is closed after use.
Notice To<T>() method, it's the helper method for converting objects and the alternative to usual C#'s cast-and-get (cast an object to target type and then call a getter method). In the first case IkadnBaseObject is simply cast to IkonComposite (table type). The second case is more complex and shows true power or the method. Instead of type casting, underlying IkonText (textual type) returns it's contents as .Net string. Which types can be requested depends on the underlaying IkadnBaseObject subclass. For example, in the case of IkonNumber (numeric type) valid conversions include most native .Net numeric type (decimal, int, float, ...). In case of IkonArray (array type) one can ask for T[] (native .Net array) or IEnumerable<T> if array elements can be converter to T.
If you have any questions out the project, feel free to drop a comment. If you have a feature request or bug to report, you can file an "issue" on the project site too.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Mouse click and drag
This is a little bugger I coped with recently. In Windows forms dragging (holding a mouse button and moving the mouse) produces mouse click event after the mouse button is released. That's OK when a program is interested in only drag or click events but when it has to handle both events, each with different logic then there has to be a way to differentiate between those two events. Let's start with simple case where only mouse click is needed (C#-ish and .Net-ish code):
void init(){
control.MouseClick.Add(clickHandler);
}
void clickHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Click logic
}
Now let see simple drag handler:
Point lastPos = null;
void init(){
control.MouseMove.Add(moveHandler);
}
void moveHandler(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (lastPos == null)
lastPos = e.Location;
if (e.Button.HasFlag(MouseButtons.Left))
{
Point change = (e.Location - lastPos);
// Drag logic
}
lastPos = e.Location;
}
There is no need to handle the situations when mouse leaves or enters control's area because once mouse is pressed over some control, only that control will receive mouse related events. That greatly simplifies the code for handling the mouse movement. Only overhead is checking if last position has been initialized. I hope it work the same on Linux and Mac OS with Mono.
If those two pieces of code were combined, mouse drag that ends inside starting control will trigger click handler. One solution is to simply track how far was mouse dragged:
Point? lastPos = null;
double dragDist = 0;
void init(){
control.MouseClick.Add(clickHandler);
control.MouseMove.Add(moveHandler);
}
void clickHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (dragDist > 0)
return;
// Click logic
}
void moveHandler(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!lastPos.HasValue)
lastPos = e.Location;
if (e.Button.HasFlag(MouseButtons.Left))
{
Point change = (e.Location - (Size)lastPos.Value);
dragDist += Math.Abs(change.X)+ Math.Abs(change.Y);
// Drag logic
}
else
dragDist = 0;
lastPos = e.Location;
}
Well, Euclidean distance would do too. I used Manhattan distance because the line of code is narrower and has less chance of being broken to multiple lines in your browser. Neat thing about this solutions is that border between click and drag can be adjusted to tolerate some mouse movement.
void init(){
control.MouseClick.Add(clickHandler);
}
void clickHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Click logic
}
Now let see simple drag handler:
Point lastPos = null;
void init(){
control.MouseMove.Add(moveHandler);
}
void moveHandler(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (lastPos == null)
lastPos = e.Location;
if (e.Button.HasFlag(MouseButtons.Left))
{
Point change = (e.Location - lastPos);
// Drag logic
}
lastPos = e.Location;
}
There is no need to handle the situations when mouse leaves or enters control's area because once mouse is pressed over some control, only that control will receive mouse related events. That greatly simplifies the code for handling the mouse movement. Only overhead is checking if last position has been initialized. I hope it work the same on Linux and Mac OS with Mono.
If those two pieces of code were combined, mouse drag that ends inside starting control will trigger click handler. One solution is to simply track how far was mouse dragged:
Point? lastPos = null;
double dragDist = 0;
void init(){
control.MouseClick.Add(clickHandler);
control.MouseMove.Add(moveHandler);
}
void clickHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (dragDist > 0)
return;
// Click logic
}
void moveHandler(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!lastPos.HasValue)
lastPos = e.Location;
if (e.Button.HasFlag(MouseButtons.Left))
{
Point change = (e.Location - (Size)lastPos.Value);
dragDist += Math.Abs(change.X)
// Drag logic
}
else
dragDist = 0;
lastPos = e.Location;
}
Well, Euclidean distance would do too. I used Manhattan distance because the line of code is narrower and has less chance of being broken to multiple lines in your browser. Neat thing about this solutions is that border between click and drag can be adjusted to tolerate some mouse movement.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Coco/R and parsing strings
Writing a parser for Stareater with Coco/R as parser generator was easy. Despite requiring slightly different way of thinking (all terminals "return void" so output is done through method parameters with keyword out) overhead imposed by Coco/R was minimal. And then I wanted to test the parser. I figured unit tests would be appropriate and while writing first unit test I got stuck at scanner constructor. The scanner is the part that converts input to tokens (lexeme) and default Coco/R scanner can be constructed either by providing a file name (or relative path) string or the Stream object. The problem was my parser was intended for in-memory strings.
Quick googling showed that string can written to memory stream with few lines[1]. If you want to be quick and don't mind bloat you can stop reading, here your solution:
var stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(text));
Parser parser = new Parser(new Scanner(stream);
Why do I call this bloated? Because:
Under the hood default scanner implementation wraps stream with buffer. The buffer does what the name says, buffering, plus conversion of bytes to characters. I'm not going to discuss their design decisions like why didn't they use BufferedStream. When implementing IKON reader for .Net I opted for TextReader as a base class
Both Coco/R parser and scanner are based upon a frame file. Those files are sort of blueprints, a C# code interleaved with placeholders for generated code. When generating parser and scanner, command line tool must be supplied with those files along with grammar specification file though they don't have to be explicitly named if they are in the same folder as grammar file. By customizing scanner's frame file parsing bloat can be reduced. Below are steps for making a frame for a scanner that only accepts string as input.
Buffers can be ditched altogether since in-memory string is already buffered and converted to collection of characters. Feel free to completle delete Buffer and UTF8Buffer classes from scanner's frame but keep in mind that generated scanner's code depends on Buffer.EOF constant. I prefer to hide it as static private nested class inside Scanner class even but it's valid to just leave original Buffer as is.
{
public const int EOF = char.MaxValue + 1;
}
Next, make an reference to input string and initialize it in constructor.
public string input; // scanner input
public Scanner (string input) {
this.input = input;
Init();
}
Than clean up Init method. Aside form initialization, that method detect whether the stream is encoded in ASCII or UTF-8. Since new scanner works directly with characters, encoding detection can be omitted.
void Init() {
pos = -1; line = 1; col = 0; charPos = -1;
oldEols = 0;
NextCh();
pt = tokens = new Token(); // first token is a dummy
}
And finally modify NextCh method to raise "end of file" when end of string is reached.
void NextCh() {
if (oldEols > 0) { ch = EOL; oldEols--; }
else {
pos = charPos;
charPos++;
if (charPos >= input.Length)
ch = Buffer.EOF;
else
{
ch = input[charPos]; col++;
// replace isolated '\r' by '\n' in order to make
// eol handling uniform across Windows, Unix and Mac
if (ch == '\r' && input.Length > charPos + 1 && input[charPos + 1] != '\n') ch = EOL;
if (ch == EOL) { line++; col = 0; }
}
}
-->casing1
}
That's it! In case you want to support both strings and streams you could do similar modifications with TextReader instead of string. I haven't tried that yet since the idea occurred to me while writing this post.
Quick googling showed that string can written to memory stream with few lines[1]. If you want to be quick and don't mind bloat you can stop reading, here your solution:
var stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(text));
Parser parser = new Parser(new Scanner(stream);
Why do I call this bloated? Because:
Under the hood default scanner implementation wraps stream with buffer. The buffer does what the name says, buffering, plus conversion of bytes to characters. I'm not going to discuss their design decisions like why didn't they use BufferedStream. When implementing IKON reader for .Net I opted for TextReader as a base class
Both Coco/R parser and scanner are based upon a frame file. Those files are sort of blueprints, a C# code interleaved with placeholders for generated code. When generating parser and scanner, command line tool must be supplied with those files along with grammar specification file though they don't have to be explicitly named if they are in the same folder as grammar file. By customizing scanner's frame file parsing bloat can be reduced. Below are steps for making a frame for a scanner that only accepts string as input.
Buffers can be ditched altogether since in-memory string is already buffered and converted to collection of characters. Feel free to completle delete Buffer and UTF8Buffer classes from scanner's frame but keep in mind that generated scanner's code depends on Buffer.EOF constant. I prefer to hide it as static private nested class inside Scanner class even but it's valid to just leave original Buffer as is.
{
public const int EOF = char.MaxValue + 1;
}
Next, make an reference to input string and initialize it in constructor.
public string input; // scanner input
public Scanner (string input) {
this.input = input;
Init();
}
Than clean up Init method. Aside form initialization, that method detect whether the stream is encoded in ASCII or UTF-8. Since new scanner works directly with characters, encoding detection can be omitted.
void Init() {
pos = -1; line = 1; col = 0; charPos = -1;
oldEols = 0;
NextCh();
pt = tokens = new Token(); // first token is a dummy
}
And finally modify NextCh method to raise "end of file" when end of string is reached.
void NextCh() {
if (oldEols > 0) { ch = EOL; oldEols--; }
else {
pos = charPos;
charPos++;
if (charPos >= input.Length)
ch = Buffer.EOF;
else
{
ch = input[charPos]; col++;
// replace isolated '\r' by '\n' in order to make
// eol handling uniform across Windows, Unix and Mac
if (ch == '\r' && input.Length > charPos + 1 && input[charPos + 1] != '\n') ch = EOL;
if (ch == EOL) { line++; col = 0; }
}
}
-->casing1
}
That's it! In case you want to support both strings and streams you could do similar modifications with TextReader instead of string. I haven't tried that yet since the idea occurred to me while writing this post.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Binary Domain and C-evo
It was almost to months since I wanted to write about this and there was always something in the way. I've seen first impressions of Binary Domain video game on Cynical Brit's YouTube channel and although the guy on the channel was not impressed by the game, a friend told me it was good and I was intrigued by the plot. I downloaded the demo version and what should have been fun was an agony. The controls were disaster! You'd understand my shock if I told you that I do not and never had owned a console and the game was ported from console meaning, among the other things, it was designed for a game pad instead of mouse and keyboard. On top of that I played quite a number of first person shooter on desktop computer back in '00 when they were blossoming genre there. My expectations were WASD movement, space for jump, shift for sprint, C or control for crouch, E for interaction, R for reload and mouse for aiming and shooting. Binary Domain being console port did this it's own way, WASD was there but space was kind of everything else button, sprint was some random letter (F or something like that), shift just turned character's facing direction to the left. That looked silly :). To rebind the keys you had to exit the game and use separate application. All of that would be bearable if there wasn't a lot bigger issue, aiming with mouse. When I moved mouse slowly aim kind of jumped few degrees at the time making it hard to "aim for a head", when I tried to make sharp turn, fast mouse movement was dampened to slow turn. Shooters are known to have an issue with mouse acceleration but this was opposite, mouse deceleration. Why??? Was it just on my machine or are there more players that think the game was never tested with mouse? I tried to find a quick workaround but except "use gamepad instead mouse" there was nothing. That's preposterous measure that I'm never going to take to just play a game.
After I stepped back from computer to calm down and eat lunch I figured that only reason why I wanted to play that game was a story and what is natural medium for story telling? In this case it's video and there are a few "let's plays" on the Internet for this game. "Let's plays" are something that big companies don't like and they may even be legal issue if they are monetized. But why people demand such content if video games are there to provide fun in the first place? Some games fail to deliver a fun, some games are broken, some cost more than they are worth and some people are plain lazy so they want somebody to play a game for them :). Binary Domain is broken and probably kind of game that is one time experience, once you play it through that's it, no more new stuff to do. Basically a 25€ movie, thereby it more fun to watch it than play it. What games aren't one time experience? I'd say most strategies (especially grand strategies such as Civilization series) and every game with healthy multiplayer. Out side the world of video games, chess and poker are great examples. It basically boils down to having big enough uncertainty factor and allowing player(s) to influence the outcome.
Watching a video didn't exactly fulfilled my need for interactive fun so I browsed through my good old library and decided to play a game of C-evo. C-evo is polar opposite of Binary Domain, it's PC native, can't be played without the mouse, it's turn based strategy and as most grand strategies has high replay value. I had that game for a few years and played it through about couple dozen times. It occurred to me that I never experimented much with the map size in C-evo. In grand strategies large maps tend to prolong the gameplay while not really adding to the experience, small maps on the other hand tend to be more aggressive. Peaceful expansion is concluded much sooner so wars start sooner. I opted for the smallest map, about half the size (1/4 of area) of normal map with a little bit more land. The game turned out to be easy, there were only two tiles I had to fortify in order to prevent other player from peeking and colonizing my territory and during the second session I had enough technological advantage to steam roll opponents. But the game didn't end there, oh no, it was the time form something more. It took me at least five more session to complete my plan. I could have achieved victory condition with very little effort but instead I chose to something else, something I've tried to do but never managed to pull off before, to cultivate whole planet. Since the map was small and I had almost hundred engineers (special units that can cultivate land) due to disbanding poorly placed AI's cities, it was doable. A little tedious but not to much.
That's what I expect from a game, to be a medium that can surprise and please more than once, to be significantly different experience over multiple playthroughs and to allow experimentation.
After I stepped back from computer to calm down and eat lunch I figured that only reason why I wanted to play that game was a story and what is natural medium for story telling? In this case it's video and there are a few "let's plays" on the Internet for this game. "Let's plays" are something that big companies don't like and they may even be legal issue if they are monetized. But why people demand such content if video games are there to provide fun in the first place? Some games fail to deliver a fun, some games are broken, some cost more than they are worth and some people are plain lazy so they want somebody to play a game for them :). Binary Domain is broken and probably kind of game that is one time experience, once you play it through that's it, no more new stuff to do. Basically a 25€ movie, thereby it more fun to watch it than play it. What games aren't one time experience? I'd say most strategies (especially grand strategies such as Civilization series) and every game with healthy multiplayer. Out side the world of video games, chess and poker are great examples. It basically boils down to having big enough uncertainty factor and allowing player(s) to influence the outcome.
Watching a video didn't exactly fulfilled my need for interactive fun so I browsed through my good old library and decided to play a game of C-evo. C-evo is polar opposite of Binary Domain, it's PC native, can't be played without the mouse, it's turn based strategy and as most grand strategies has high replay value. I had that game for a few years and played it through about couple dozen times. It occurred to me that I never experimented much with the map size in C-evo. In grand strategies large maps tend to prolong the gameplay while not really adding to the experience, small maps on the other hand tend to be more aggressive. Peaceful expansion is concluded much sooner so wars start sooner. I opted for the smallest map, about half the size (1/4 of area) of normal map with a little bit more land. The game turned out to be easy, there were only two tiles I had to fortify in order to prevent other player from peeking and colonizing my territory and during the second session I had enough technological advantage to steam roll opponents. But the game didn't end there, oh no, it was the time form something more. It took me at least five more session to complete my plan. I could have achieved victory condition with very little effort but instead I chose to something else, something I've tried to do but never managed to pull off before, to cultivate whole planet. Since the map was small and I had almost hundred engineers (special units that can cultivate land) due to disbanding poorly placed AI's cities, it was doable. A little tedious but not to much.
That's what I expect from a game, to be a medium that can surprise and please more than once, to be significantly different experience over multiple playthroughs and to allow experimentation.
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