Ring Scale

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This monochrome Cassini image lends Saturn an everyday solidity that belies its gargantuan scale. Janus, a speck in the centre of the picture just above the rings, is about 180km across, and Pandora, just to the left of Janus (you'll want to click for the full view to see them properly) is 80km in diameter.

Saturn, on the other hand, stretches across 120,000km, and is over a million km from Cassini's wide-angle (ie. not especially telescopic) camera.

Films

Been shopping.

Gun Mute: Version 6 and Extras

Gun Mute: Version 6
Version 6 of Gun Mute fixes a few bugs that you hopefully never saw, but that might have been a bit jarring if you did.

The new files are in the same place as the old ones:

-Windows executable - a zip file containing a simple double-click-to-run file for Windows.
-.t3 file -a file that can be run with interpreters for Windows, Mac and Linux.

And because that's not especially interesting, here's a little something... extra.

Gun Mute: Extras
1.  Design Notes

It took twelve A4 pages to design Gun Mute. Here are the four most interesting ones.


This was my first attempt at putting names to puzzles. In the next such document, the cast was pretty much finalised, but there are a few differences in this one. (Warning: puzzle spoilers!)


Atomic April was originally a lot more complicated than she is now. I had trouble making this puzzle hang together until I decided to give her a 'transparent brain jar'. Now she's one of my favourite characters.  If you can make any sense of the diagram above, you're doing better than me.


I wrote out the Sheriff's speech in one go, during a bout of insomnia. My handwriting is much neater at one in the morning it seems. (Warning: plot spoilers!)


Towards the end of development, I suddenly became worried that the game was too short, and quickly cooked up three extra characters who never made it into the game. The hypnotist would have been called Mesmer the Amazing.

Obviously, you can find additional design notes on this blog, in my Gun Mute category.

2. Deleted Scene


This tutorial sequence was completed but never fully fleshed out. Ultimately I decided that it was completely unnecessary and only likely to interrupt the game's urgent flow towards noon. (Warning: plot spoilers!)

3. Alternate Ending

The game was originally going to end with Mute and Elias riding away on a robot horse, with Juanita tagging along if you had de-programmed her. As I worked on the game, though, it became increasingly more difficult to come up with a good reason why they'd leave town after systematically killing everyone who might cause them trouble, especially after I started adding more friendly and ambiguous characters. Eventually I came up with the ending that the game currently has, which nevertheless went through two or three iterations.

4. Secrets


It really is worth pointing and waving around friendly characters, especially after you've relieved their burdens. I did my best to implement responses to pointing at pretty much every object around them.  Most of it is just small talk, but there are a few mentions of bigger things. It is possible, for example, to get Elias to mention Robo-City Alpha.

5. Feelies

I did start work on a little extra that was going to be included with the game: a tourist pamphlet for the Radiation Plains, trying to appeal to the inhabitants of 'Robo-City Alpha'. It started with a foreword by Sheriff Clayton, talking about his efforts to make the area safe, and then featured three testimonials by happy tourists, including a robot drone looking to relax among the meat bags, a once-human intelligence from the Atmospheric Networks (as mentioned by the plainswoman) who enjoyed reminding herself of the misery of physical form, and a third perspective that I can't actually remember. All this was interspersed with little boxes dispelling common myths about the plains, such as the likelihood of turning into a mutant zomboid.

The chief issue with this document was formatting: I just lumped it all into a crappy html file, and I didn't really have the confidence in it to spend time getting it into shape. The Radiation Plains tourist brochure may now be lost for all time, as I don't seem to have backed it up from my old - now deceased - computer. I wouldn't worry too much, though - it really was a bit rubbish.

6. The End

Well, that's pretty much everything I can think of that might interest you. Please stop playing Gun Mute so that I won't have to fix anymore bugs.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 5

Previously: “Time to move on from Fortress City. But will a hot-air balloon get us past Prometheus, the renegade Sky Spider machine?”

Part 5: Lab Rat Balloon

I sat on a grass verge, looking out into the blackness of night.

“Trouble sleeping?”

“Dreams,” I answered.

Lady Una glided out of the shadows, moving noiselessly over the cobblestone path. “Nightmares?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Memories.”

She smiled lopsidedly – a strange gesture for her delicate features. “Same thing these days. May I sit with you?”

“Trouble sleeping yourself?”

“Always,” she answered, and then folded up in a peculiar and graceful motion that found her seated on the ground beside me, her high-necked, hoop-skirted dress uncreased.

“I think, perhaps... you should consider wearing more practical clothes once we leave the city,” I suggested.

“I know about the Select Committee,” Lady Una responded.

I was unsure how to respond. “Excuse me?”

“I've mentioned that my uncle's library carried copies of files from the Imperial Society, have I not? They really were surprisingly detailed – although, of course, they could say nothing of what is presumably known only by yourself among all humans.”

I shifted uncomfortably. The ground beneath me seemed to have suddenly become hard and uneven.

Lady Una studied her fingernails in the moonlight. “There's no need to squirm doctor. You did what you thought was right. There's no shame in that. I trust you.”

“I'm really not sure why.”

She turned her pale face to look at me. “Will you trust me in return, doctor?”

“Are you doing this to the others as well?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I can't see why you'd single me out for special trust, given what you know. So I suspect you're doing this to Thurlow and Phenice as well, maybe even EON-4. Taking us aside one by one and making an agreement of mutual trust?”

“Maybe I am. Would you like to be the one to turn me down?”

“Hardly.”

“Well then, I'll trust you to help my uncle in his quest. And you'll trust me to dress myself. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, uncertainly.

She leaned back on her gloved hands. “Now perhaps you'll tell me exactly what it is about this view that you find so appealing?”

I looked out into the darkness. There was almost nothing there, just faint gas lamps, moon-silvered rooftops and a sprinkling of stars. “I'm not sure. I just felt the need to get some fresh air and look out to sea. I think I can almost hear it at times, but maybe it's just the blood in my ears.”

She shivered. “It just looks desolate to me. A lot of dirty rooftops and the unfriendly depths of space.”

I laughed. “Country girl.”

She looked a bit bemused at that. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I like the rooftops. It's nice to know there are people behind them, sound asleep. It feels surreal. Like the world behind me is a dream, or this is, and I don't know if I'm awake or not.”

To my great surprise, Lady Una reached over and pinched my arm through my shirt.

“Ouch!”

“Awake,” she stated. “They're both real.”

“Bit too literal. That hurt.”

“I don't know my own strength. But you'll live, I'm sure. How is your rat?”

“Relocated, at least. Still alive, I hope. Certainly finding life harder outside the city than within its walls.”

“Did Prometheus react at all?”

“No. The thing hasn't moved since I first saw it. There's no way to know if it'll react the same way to a hot air balloon with humans in it as it did to a rat tied to a helium balloon. The wind is moving in the right direction, at least. Surprising...” I met her eye. “Surprising that EON-4 managed to get the balloon from Kirkham, don't you think?”

She said nothing.

“I can't keep my eyes open much longer,” I admitted.

“Must be the company.”

“Hardly.”

“Hardly,” she repeated, then, with a twist of her mouth: “I've never flown before.”

“Me neither. There's nothing to worry about though. Flying is perfectly safe.”

“Exactly what are you basing this confidence on?”

“Nobody was ever killed flying through the air,” I answered. “It's falling you have to worry about. Specifically: hitting the ground.”

She smirked. “I should have guessed that was coming. Sweet dreams.”

With another strange and elegant motion, she stood up and offered me a gloved hand to help me to my feet.

*
The following morning we five assembled on the observation post on the top of Fortress City's keep – a rusted, paint-flecked structure that rattled in the wind. Lady Una clutched the railing with one hand, her hoop skirt billowing like a sail. She met my eye and smiled.

When Kirkham's men finished loading the balloon with supplies, they helped us into the basket one by one, and then untied the tether. For a lurching moment, the balloon dropped. And then it buoyed back up, floating on the wind.

Thurlow leaned over the edge, looking down at the charred ruins of no-man's land. “Well, that didn't take long.”

Below us, Prometheus began to extend its jointed legs. With patient deliberation, its inexpressive face turned upwards.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Will our heroes survive the attentions of Prometheus? What horrors lurk beneath them in no-man's land? Check back in a week’s time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

I really can't do anything on Saturdays. I should probably stop planning things for them. Anyway, tomorrow I will hopefully have an update for Gun Mute that fixes a few egregious bugs. I may possibly also be in the mood to drop a few hints about the shape of my next IF project...

Friday Quistis Blogging

There is something about Quistis Trepe. I am not sure what it is.

Further Degeneration

Just in case you thought I'd taken a break from being a Resident Evil fanboy, let me point out that the upcoming CG animated movie Resident Evil: Degeneration now has an offical US website. There's nothing much there at the moment except for the teaser trailer and a promise that more is to come in a week's time...

Another Tiny World, Arbitrarily

Makemake, the second brightest Kuiper Belt Object after Pluto, has officially been categorized as a dwarf planet. As usual, I need to stress that this whole form of categorisation is completely artbitrary, not reflecting any kind of real attribute that these worlds possess or lack. I still think that Asimov came up with the only really valid categorisation for the worlds that orbit a star, dividing them up into gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn et al.) and 'debris' (everything else, including Earth).

But I do like the dwarf planet category, if only because it highlights worlds that might otherwise never make the spotlight. So: Makemake. It's bright. It's in the Kuiper Belt. At 1600 km across, we're confident that it's probably pretty round.

Not about to steal Best in Show from Ceres any time soon, methinks.

Hat tip: Planetary Society Blog