The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

Two Down (Sort of)

The Long Moonlight

That title was spot on and I finally really got it around Chapter 8 or so. It wasn’t a long book, but I certainly enjoyed it. I also got ‘The Shadow’ vibes, which makes sense, as the author’s a fan. I’m not sure if I’m going to write a full review, yet. I’m not a reviewer and trying to judge the work of a much more experienced and well established writer sounds hilarious, but I’ll at least post what I think of the book in detail once I organize my thoughts. Right now I’m focused on other issues.

The initial verdict is: Great! Highly recommended.

Prinz Heinrich

I was actually very close to finishing the vanilla thrusters when I had a thought that made me scrap the whole idea. The only purpose of having a vanilla thruster system in place was so anyone who loaded the ship in a vanilla world without any of the required mods wouldn’t have a giant brick on their hands. At the end of the day, the Heinrich is designed around two specific mods and shouldn’t even be looked at if those mods aren’t present.

The Prinz Heinrich, the Pandemonium Bunker, and Admiral Hipper

Even if I only kept the passage ways mod and found a way to ditch everything else, there’s no guarantee huge chunks of the interior wouldn’t be loose if the ship was loaded into a vanilla world. The passage ways are extensive. There aren’t going to be that many mods in the final version, so I’d rather keep an up to date version of the modded thrusters the ship was designed for and not clutter up the hull.

Again, I was nearly finished with the vanilla setup, but it was starting to look ridiculous.

I did keep some of the changes the attempt at a vanilla thruster system forced me to make, but only some of them. It’s most noticeable just forward of the hangar doors where the hydra missile turrets have been moved back slightly and retro thrusters were added above and below the turrets. The aft deck airlocks just behind the spaced armor plates also had a staircase removed on each side. I can’t say if it looks better but it puts some space between the airlock and the upward facing thrusters that were added there.

With that, Heinrich’s thruster system is finished. It’s not what I set out to do initially, but the system, vanilla or not, is finished. So I’ll count that as a completed goal.

The trouble now is reining in the controls. The ship has an auto leveling system in place that I’m still configuring. Whether it’s on or off though, the ship has a bit too much momentum during certain maneuvers and can be hard to control. I’m thinking the sources are the three subgrids it uses: the search unit and the two spaced armor plates under the hangar. I could remove all of that, but if it’s possible, I’d like to solve the control issue while keeping the subgrids. So many builds in Space Engineers are ruined by the instability of subgrids, while others find a way to cope. I’d rather cope with the problem than scale the ship back even further.

Fleeing Victory and Lydia’s Golden Treasury

I tried to finish Fleeing Victory #16 today but I wound up crashing from fatigue. My sleep schedule’s been nuked. I’ll try again tomorrow, but as of the 20th, I’ll be finishing up my outline for Lydia’s Golden Treasury Chapter 5 and starting the writing process. It’s not going to be done quickly, but it is going to get done. FV is a lower priority but I’ll be working on those like usual. Hopefully I can still get both FV#16 and #17 done this week. If not, there’s still time.

Blog Articles

I’m heavily leaning toward the Gelgoog J FnF article for one of these. It’s actually already posted, I just haven’t finished writing my ‘personal thoughts’ section for the article or provided a link to the page. That’ll come when it’s finally done.

As for the other article, I’m still not sure. It definitely won’t be a How-to this month. Not unless I have an epiphany or something. I might take another stab at Code Fairy, but otherwise I’ll have to finagle something to meet that goal.

That’s all.

Site Edits and Fleeing Victory Edits

I’m aiming for tomorrow on Fleeing Victory #16.

Today I got held up making edits to previous chapters to bring the style and plot more in line. I’ll be doing the same thing with all the previous chapters but tomorrow the plan is to just focus on getting FV#16 done.

After that I’ll think about other things.

Another thing I’m starting tonight is another sweep of the site’s theme. I found a good contrast for the backgrounds and text that’s more comfortable to read. I want to implement it ASAP, so that’s what’s happening right now. That’s probably all that’s going to get done until morning.

Slight Nausea

Motion sickness. That’s really, really rare for me, but I do use a pretty big monitor.

I was working on the Prinz Heinrich and the Admiral Hipper in Space Engineers. Luckily, I made some progress before my brain decided what my eyes were seeing and body was feeling didn’t line up and something had to be done. I had to drop everything and lie down for a bit. Ugh.

Anyway, I’m almost finished with The Long Moonlight, as well as Heinrich’s vanilla thrusters, so over the next couple of days my January goals are finally going to start getting checked off.

There isn’t much for today though.

That’s a Wrap (Clan Battles)

That should be it for Season Narwhal–or whatever they were calling it–of Clan Battles. Not our best night in terms of wins and losses, but we had a lot of fun toward the end. When you’ve got five of the fastest French ships and an Italian and Russian ship along as filler things can be pretty hilarious.

And they were.

Anyway, with Clan Battles wrapping up, that means my Wednesdays and Sundays will be freed up for work for a while. January has been off to a slow start, but I should be able to catch up on everything starting next week. Around the 20th or so I’m also going to start honing in on Lydia’s Golden Treasury so I can get Chapter 5 done without cutting it too close this time. At the very least Fleeing Victory #16 should be wrapped up by then.

That’s all for now.

Some Good and Some Not Good (M.A.S.S. Builder and WoWs)

M.A.S.S. Builder

I’m checking out 0.8.0 but there’s a lot to cover before I can write anything substantial on it. So far it’s all positive, though.

I’m also thinking of starting a personal project, and if all goes well, I should be able to put the final touches on my Gelgoog J FnF article. Basically the idea is to make a replica of the Gelgoog J in M.A.S.S. Builder and use a photo or two for the Gelgoog J article. Nothing major, but I want to interweave my projects whenever and however possible. There’s no point playing M.A.S.S. Builder right now if I’m not going to be writing about my time with the game or getting pictures for other projects.

World of Warships

The super carrier criticism has begun, and the critics aren’t wrong. I think the announcement came way too early. This is right after another round of submarine testing, so the people who hate the nonstandard ship classes didn’t even get a breather to calm down. There’s also a lot more that needs addressing, including the base game carriers; the shadow of the CV rework is still hanging over everything and the Soviet CVs were only recently introduced. This is way too soon to be seeing videos of jet aircraft crossing the majority of the map in the time it takes a battleship to reload its main guns.

I just hate all the unproductive negativity Wargaming invites to the discussion because of their inflexible development and release schedules.

That and their questionable hires. I don’t have much to say regarding the new community manager Wargaming hired for North America. WG NA is already slightly converged from what I’ve seen, so bringing on a controversial CM with next to no experience with WoWs is probably going to be a drop in the bucket.