Unending
So, it is finally over. With the last episode of Stargate Universe having aired a little while ago, and the movies that were planned, cancelled, the Stargate franchise is no more. It is a sad day in television history.
I have to admit though, that the backstory of Universe sounded more interesting than (most of) the series turned out to be. But in the last half of the second season, it finally started to become really good. And now the show is cancelled, on a cliffhanger no less, with no hope of resolving it in the foreseeable future. Back when Atlantis was cancelled in favor of Universe – the producers basically could choose between continuing Atlantis or starting Universe – I thought it was a shame but Universe sounded like it had potential. Even though Universe had it’s good parts, now I mostly think they shouldn’t have cancelled Atlantis.
But still, SG-1 was the best. Apophis remains one of my all-time favourite villains (though Farscape’s Scorpius has more than a little brilliance to him as well).
Goodbye, Stargate. You will be missed.
Slaapliedje
Een variatie op het bekende liedje, nu in heerlijke foute versie speciaal voor kleine meisjes.
Slaap, kindje, slaap
Daar buiten loopt een knaap
Een knaap die laat zijn piemel zien!
Lust jij ook nog wat lekkers misschien?
Slaap, kindje, slaap
Daar buiten loopt een knaap
Freelancing
Why are there so few good space-based games around?
This is a question I’ve asked myself over and over. A couple weeks back, I did a playthrough of Freelancer for the third time. Freelancer is kind of dated, but it’s still one of the few really good space games there are (plus flying inside a Dyson sphere near the end is just awesome). It has many flaws (they actually referred to slowing down a spacehip (whilst in space) as braking. Ugh!), but there’s nothing quite like it.
Then we have Sins of a Solar Empire. A really awesome real-time strategy game. Unlike most RTS’es, which take place on relatively tiny pieces of land commanding a few hundred units on the battlefield at best (which, compared to any real war, is absolutely nothing), SoaSE takes place in space. We’re not conquering a village, we’re conquering planets. Or solar systems, if you’re playing on a large map (and you are very patient). You get to build pretty big fleets of starships and send them out to level out an entire enemy planet. And then do it again a couple more times. It too, has its flaws (for starters, I always tend to make really really big games with huge maps and lots of players and end up never finishing the game because it takes at least a couple of days to do so) but damn it is awesome.
But that doesn’t take away the fact that there are so few of these awesome space games. For once, I’d love to see a really good game, without the flaws that the current ones have. A few thoughts:
- Please, please, please, bother to read up on some basic physics. There is no such thing as ‘braking’ in space. Or a speed limit (except for the speed of light, of course) – there’s just a maximum rate of acceleration/deceleration.
- Continuing on the first point, planets kind of tend to move around a star. It is incredible how often this is forgotten. In Freelancer, there are ‘trade lanes’ between planets – ring-like structures that facilitate reasonably fast travel. In reality, these are completely unfeasible due to planets rotating around their star at different relative speeds. The same goes for whatever the mechanism in SoaSE is called.
Also, distance between the planet and star vs. the planet being habitable. The distance is a really big factor in the surface temperature of the planet, and thus, its habitability. Planets with acceptable temperatures don’t generally occur close to, or far away from, a star. - Likewise, it is astonishing how often it is forgotten that space is just really really big. In Freelancer, you can fly a circle around a planet in about a minute or so. And planets, for some reason, are only one or two kilometers in diameter. In the real world, a two kilometer rock in space is hardly more than a pebble. Not to mention the distance between planets being no more than about 20 or 30 kilometers.
When I’m looking at a planet from the bridge of a ship, I want to go ‘oh crap, that’s a big rock’. When I look at the distance to the next closest planent, I want to go ‘oh crap, that’s a long way’. - Also, being a little bit reasonable when it comes to building and landing ships wouldn’t hurt. Building huge ships on the ground and launching them into space (or landing them on a planet) is just not feasible; their mass would require enormous amounts of energy to propel into orbit. Instead, space elevators to transport people and material into orbit are the way to go, with shipbuilding/maintenance/docking facilitiets on orbit. Elevators provide a cheap and efficient way of transporting stuff back and forth; launching something into space by other means is (or landing) is really difficult. Likewise, launching or landing is a difficult manouver that takes time. In Freelancer, I’m pretty sure I heard the phrase “see you in space in a few minutes”. Make that at least an hour (even assuming launching right then and there is possible).
- Randomly generated non-player controlled traffic is fine. But when I encounter a trade convoy that claims to be hauling oxygen from a space station to a terrestial planet…
- And finally, a spaceship (especially one that never lands) really has no practical use for wings. Sure, they can be used as weapon mount points or something like that, but generally speaking, aerodynamic surfaces will not do you much good in a (near) vacuum.
We could go on like this for a while, but yeah. You get the idea 