Thursday, November 24

Tyrathlion Family Estates: 24.11.113 - Time to Talk

"We need to talk."

Nobody said anything else for a moment, as if they were waiting for the words to echo in the room, to remind them that yes, someone had actually spoken those words. Given the sorts of uncomfortable discussions and subjects that usually followed them, as well as the potential fallout, this response was to be expected.

Reppy looked at her briefly, before returning her gaze to the book she had open and giving a slightly moody-sounding response. "About what?" she asked, as if she knew exactly what the answer would be.

"You," Morwen said softly, uncomfortably shifting her weight from one foot to another as she stood in the doorway to the library's study room. "Something's been bugging you lately. I can tell."

Reppy let out a quiet, noncommittal grunt, turning the page of her book as if she were done with the conversation already. Morwen sighed, then walked over and gently pried the book from Reppy's hands, setting it down on a nearby table before settling down onto her lap sideways, legs hanging over one of the armrests. "Don't give me that look," she said as she tried to make herself comfortable. "We promised we wouldn't hide things like this from each other."

"I don't want to talk about it," Reppy said quietly, tone firm. She looked away from Morwen, towards the study's fireplace, the light flickering in her eyes.

Morwen frowned. "Sweety, I just spent a lot of money renewing your license for you after you told me two weeks ago that spending some time flying again would fix things up for you. I really don't mind spending ridiculous amounts of money on things you want, but please don't lie to me - or yourself - about what you want and need, because it clearly hasn't helped enough, if at all, to have been that simple. I'm not the only person who's noticed you've been having a down spell lately, either," she added.

Reppy looked back at her uncomfortably, waiting.

"Saki and Leela are both concerned about you," Morwen explained. She paused for a moment, then continued. "So is my mother. I know she wrote to you after she got home. She told me." She reached over and took Reppy's hands, squeezing gently. "She really likes you, Reppy. And not just because I do."

Reppy responded after a moment, her voice hesitant. "She wouldn't if she knew."

"Knew what?"

"How things started."

Morwen frowned again. "It wouldn't change anything, and you know that."

The reply came back with a suspicious, half-distrustful expression. "How can you know that for certain?"

"This is my mother we're talking about, Reppy. She's more tolerant than I am." Morwen sighed. "Almost to a fault, given some things she's been poking and prodding me to think about doing."

Reppy wrinkled her nose a little, knowing exactly what the so-called things were. "If you say so," she muttered, leaning back in the chair and saying nothing further. Morwen sighed gently, then reached one hand up to stroke Reppy's cheek gently with her thumb, silently tracing the red markings that were all that visibly remained of Cruoris. Reppy closed her eyes, relaxing under the touch. Both of them seemed content to stay like that for a while; by the time Morwen decided to try again, she'd lost track of how long they'd been sitting there.

"Please talk to me, Reppy," Morwen asked quietly. "Tell me what's wrong, and let me help make it better."

Reppy remained silent for a moment, then opened her eyes and nodded slowly.

"Okay."

Sunday, October 2

Review: Latest version of Incarna on Sisi

So, I don't normally do OOC blogposts, but I think the latest release on Singularity merits an exception. I've spent several hours over the last couple days fiddling around in each of the three new CQs taking pictures and looking for bugs and other issues (some not even CQ-related at all), so this post is going to be partly a review of the things that have been added, but also a nice list of things that I need to remember to submit bug reports on! Also, you've been warned, this blog entry is very image-heavy.

So, first things first - the new Captain's Quarters. They are pretty damn well done. As is the smart thing to do, they are tied not to your character's race, but to the 'race' of the station you're docked at. So, if you don't like your racial CQ, you can just pick another station. I'll start the post off with the Amarrian CQ.

Amarrian Captain's Quarters - Welcome to the Gilded Birdcage

The Good: The Amarrian Captain's Quarters are, well, distinctively Amarrian. Gold highlights and engravings on various bits of furniture, an imposingly, impractically long ramp from the capsule gantry to the CQ itself solely for the sake of looking big and important, and the overall feeling that you're a couple pews short of being in a cathedral make this blend in perfectly with the Amarrian station interior. The fact that there aren't any prop-items lying around also gives a sense that *somewhere* there's a slave ducking in and out to clean up the mess.


The mirror fits in nicely with the architecture style, though I think the design on the floor should be the much more appropriate golden Empire symbol (and, perhaps in Khanid stations, the inverted silver version).

Impractical, but imposing.

Climbing back up that ridiculously long ramp, we come to the hangar balcony and capsule gantry. This balcony is pretty similar in design to the Minmatar one, with the most obvious differences being that the floor is safe for the female capsuleers of New Eden (floors without little holes in them are wonderful things when you're forced to wear heels all day because of some lazy-ass "fashion designer"), and a much more compact console.


The Bad: All in all, the things that felt "wrong" with this CQ in particular were fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. For example, the bed is totally not something a capsuleer would sleep on (or, for that matter, an Amarrian) given its appearance of a slab of rock - neither a blanket nor a pillow in sight. And while the lack of props seems fitting with that elusive slave cleaning things up, it does make the room seem a little sparse without any being there.


Noticably missing are the two statues from the teaser video - I assume that there was some issue with them, preventing them from being on the Sisi release. In addition, while I feel the extremely long ramp from the balcony to the CQ fits in with the Amarrian style, without a 'run' command, walking back and forth is going to get seriously irritating after a while.

Next, the Caldari CQ.

Caldari Captain's Quarters - Your Personal Corporate Boardroom

The Good: The Caldari Captain's Quarters are clean and utilitarian, with hard angles everywhere; looking around it becomes clear that this CQ has taken the Caldari design ethos and followed it to the letter. Function over form, nothing present that doesn't need to be there. A few Quafe bottles and cans of Long-limb Roes can be found if you look around a little, but it's pretty clear that this room is kept pretty clean.


The mirror here is nice and simple, with what looks like a small alcove in the wall for your makeup or shaving equipment. Also, the bed looks pretty damn comfortable, compared to what the Amarr and Minmatar CQs call sleeping accomodations.


Apparently the Caldari CQ is the one that CCP and that tattoo designer guy used for a modeling runway. The pillars along the sides of the corridor look nice, and coming back out from the CQ itself you can get a really nice look at your ship through the high ceiling (not pictured). The console on the balcony isn't quite as compact as the Amarrian one, but there's an interesting feature of the balcony's design - the steps to the capsule gantry go *under* the balcony itself.


Just make sure to watch your head while heading down there. It looks like it'd hurt pretty bad. Speaking of which...

The Bad: The Caldari CQ is, like the Amarrian one, pretty solidly done. Most of the issues I found unique to this CQ are not very major. Most prominently, the holoscreens are a little difficult to see against the wall - more contrast would be very helpful here to make the holoscreen pop out more.



See how the Caldari one blends into the background, but the other two don't?

Also, this is a Caldari station. Fuck your Quafe, I want Starsi ads. (Because it tastes like revenge, obviously.)

That just leaves the Gallente CQ.

Gallente Captain's Quarters - A sexy tangent to all of your curves.

The Good: The Gallente Captain's Quarters are made up of curves. Lots of them. Enough to provide a number of calculus pickup lines so great they'd last you a lifetime. (Please don't use them on Morwen in-character; you're likely to get slapped if you do. If you're going to use them on me, at least buy me a drink first, please.) There are little holes in the walls with things stuffed into them - all they're missing is covering panels that slide open and closed. Also, dat mirror.


Oh my god, that mirror. If it weren't for the reflection of the avatar and other things, I would've sworn it was a doorway to another room. It's pretty much flawless. Also, the latex/satin/silk/whatever that is that is used for the pillow and sheets on that bed? Rawr.


This is probably the second-longest walkway from the balcony to the CQ, but it follows the concept art reasonably closely, and looks pretty sweet.


Also, easter egg: if you pay close attention, you might notice that the walkway and balcony are shaped kinda like a penis. Those wacky Gallente!


The circular balcony is nice, and all the transparent green glass is reminiscient of the old transparent headpieces and other doodads the Gallente avatars used to have prior to the Incarna character creator released in Incursion. The console is placed in a way that gives a pretty good view of the pod gantry and your ship at the same time, without having to move around to see through opaque walls and stuff.

The Bad: I honestly couldn't find anything that really felt wrong or out of place in the Gallente CQ, aside from one thing. That pit in the area by the sofa.


Seriously, what the hell is that supposed to be? A Quafe dispenser? A hot tub? A giant holoprojector that'll let you display the 3D starmap from inside the CQ?

As for things that weren't tied to any one CQ in particular, the racially-tinted holograms and console displays were pretty sweet, and I noticed some cool design patterns - for example, allied factions (Amarr/Caldari and Gallente/Minmatar) share the same basic layout of their CQs.

But there were a bunch of bugs that I found.

Many people probably noticed the corporation logo for the station you're docked in over the doorway to the CQ in the Minmatar CQ. It's present in the Caldari CQ, but the Amarr and Gallente CQs both lack it - there's a black square where I assume it would be, though.

Time for a Caldari rave party!

The first nasty one I encountered was that opening and closing the escape menu results in many of the textures simply shutting off, causing most of the environment to go black, aside from what appear to be objects that have their own lights.


Another problem is only specific to certain types of clothing - female avatars with skirts will have clipping issues while sitting on any of the couches.

Double-clicking to move also seems intermittently broken; sometimes using mouse-drive for a second will make it work again, sometimes it won't. Also, there appears to be a range limit for double-clicking in the new CQs - you can move as far as the doorway from the hangar to the CQ itself, but no further, on a single double-click. This is not the case for the Minmatar CQ on either Tranquility or Singularity.

For those who play with the NeX items that have been seeded on the Sisi market and the recustomization tool, there's a bunch of issues here too. For starters, while your skills and assets have all been mirrored from TQ just fine, your avatar's mesh has not, so you will not look like what you do on TQ - instead, you'll be in something resembling a 'default' mesh. In addition, the recustomization tool is missing the icons for NEX items, so you have to click through everything to see what is what; though not critical or game-breaking, it is a little annoying if you can't memorize what shirt was what number. There is one somewhat game-breaking issue I did find, however - the recustomization tool refuses to load and requires a client restart if the player tries to open it after not having finalized a new portrait during the previous time it was used during that login. If you make a new portrait when you go through it, you're golden.

On to the other stuff - next up, ship spinning. Yes, that's right, ship spinning. Our beloved hangars have been returned to us, and as far as I can tell, all of the old functionality is still there. (Plus, the textures on some of them seem to be cleaned up and a little better-looking than before, particularly the Amarr one.)


To access them, it's as easy as walking to one of the two holograms of your ship in the CQ, either on the balcony or by the couch, and selecting the new fifth option, "Enter Ship Hangar." If you're using the one by the couch, you will have to stand up - the option is greyed out if you are sitting down.


To go back to the CQ, just click on the blue button above the undock button, which looks appropriately similar - though pointing in the opposite direction to indicate that the Hangar View is the midway point between being undocked and in your Captain's Quarters. My only issue with the system as it stands is that there is no similar button while you are in the CQ - which I would hope would be implemented as the same blue-colored button, just pointing in the same direction as the undock one - currently you must go to one of the consoles and select the "Enter Ship Hangar" option. There are no right-click options for either direction. Here are the other three hangars, just in case you've forgotten what they look like.




You might've noticed the chat in the window in the last one. More specifically, the new font.

As much as I love the devs who worked on it, I'm sorry, but I cannot stand the new font. I want it to go away just as much as many people wanted to get rid of the CQ when Incarna was first released. It looks terrible and is difficult to read at any reasonable size. Sure, you fixed some of the lookalike issues (I/l/1, O/0, 5/S, 6/G/&, 8/B in particular) but you missed a few (-/~ comes to mind), and several punctuation marks are nearly impossible to see, let alone tell the difference between (colon, comma, period, semicolon - :,.;). The font is poorly spaced, as well - some letters are way too thin (ex: capital L), and others do not space themselves from other letters at all (ex: lowercase r, capital L). Numbers no longer have a uniform width across font sizes, so now those of us using timestamps in our chat will find that they no longer line up - and thus look absolutely terrible and unprofessional. The font doesn't scale properly to parts of the UI, either - when undocked, one of the most obvious cases of this is the target locking progress bar, where the "n seconds" will often protrude outside of the progress bar and look stupid.

I'm not the only person who thinks that even Comic-fucking-Sans would look better than the font that is currently on Sisi. Couldn't they have just fixed the fucking problem characters in the old font and called it a day after adding the whole unicode support thing? Seriously. The new font hurts to look at at any size. Please include the option to keep the old font. It'd make a lot of people happy.

I didn't take any pictures of undocked stuff, but the new engine flares on some of the ships are cool-looking. Nothing like the stuff that was recently added to the Punisher, Maller and Scorpion hulls, but still cool. Also, I heard that there's a new cyno effect, but I haven't yet seen it myself...


The overview/bracket bug from several patches ago has returned - make sure to reload your brackets after jumping and undocking if you're going to be flying around on Sisi a bunch. Also, your HP readout is a lie; it seems to just display a static 66% for hull, armor and shield, which looks really disconcerting with that huge chunk of red on your HUD. And sometimes windows will randomly open even fyou just closed them for the fifteenth time in a row. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Market.

Another issue I found was that when you minimize a window and the little bar appears along the bottom of the screen, on TQ that bar will remain above anything else that is touching the bottom edge of the screen. On Sisi, this is no longer the case - if you have a window that takes focus while there's a minimized window down there, the minimized window ends up behind the window with focus. This is seriously irritating.

Overall, the new font aside, what is on Sisi now is exactly what we should have had at Incarna's initial release. I would've happily taken a couple extra months of Incursion for this to have been the initial release of Incarna, and so would many others. If this had been what was released, I think it's a safe bet to say that there would've been a much smaller mess to clean up this summer - and that perhaps, monoclegate may have caused less of an uproar. Who knows?

In any case, I'm looking forward to this stuff being released to Tranquility - so my heartfelt thanks to the staff and volunteers at CCP who have been working to put this stuff out for us to play with.

Saturday, July 30

Private Video Entry, 30.7.113 - Moving Day

Morwen appears to be resting on her back on one of the couches in the living room of her quarters on her carrier as the camera drone begins recording. She's wearing little more than a mottled green tank-top and matching shorts; given the unkempt state of her hair, she seems to be in a rather lazy mood.

Two years.

That's about how long Goinard has been the primary base of operations for whatever corpoation I've been with. First with the Ghosts, then with Veto.

Something flickers outside of the camera drone's view. It turns, then focuses on a projection of a station for a moment before returning its attention to Morwen.

Goinard IV - Moon 5 - Impro Factory.
VETO's home station since before I got my capsuleer license.

For the last couple of months, we've been on an extended trip to Syndicate to fly with some friends of the directorate, Rote Kapelle. I've known a few of their members for a while; mostly the Nihil family who used to run the Three Sisters bar in Jel. I think the place is closed now, which is a bit of a pity, given how fun it used to be. Would've been nice to take Reppy there at some point, but it's probably a little too late now, even if not for her busy schedule.

The corp took surprisingly well to being stationed in nullsec. Even me. It was... very different from what we were used to, but at the same time, it wasn't different at all. Maybe it was just the subconscious feeling that we had more wiggle room out here. That, a few lingering rules and regulations aside, we weren't bound at all by anything CONCORD had to say.

So a few weeks ago, Ethan made the decision to move us out here properly.

I guess it was a foregone conclusion that it would happen, really. That and my security status recovering, which may have been more of a side effect of getting myself burnt-out on combat sorties. When we came out here, I dived into them left and right. If there was something going on when I was around and awake, I was participating. I suppose I overdid it, because now I can barely stand the memory of what using warp scrambling modules feels like. Probably a good thing, given the amount of time I spend in highsec these days.

But... oddly, the time spent away from the corp hasn't really reduced my stress levels. Stopped them from going higher for the most part, yes, but it hasn't really reduced it any. Over the last two weeks, Nation has launched a steady assault across the area of space I now consider "home". First Sib, and Nohshayess two weeks ago, and Amdimmah this past week. Reppy and I had originally been planning to take that week off, but when Nation showed up on our doorstep, I couldn't deal with the feeling that they were right there and I was doing nothing about it.

So I fought. I spent the entire week in space, cleaning the infestation out of my home. In the end, I was there in Bukah when we took down the Revenant-class supercarrier that was the remote "brains" behind the operations in the Nohshayess constellation. Apparently I'd managed to do enough damage to be considered among the top ten pilots who contributed to the effort that week. It felt... kinda good, I admit, but... still awkward, coming from CONCORD of all people.

But that was last week... and now I'm here in TXW again, waiting for the call to go get into my capsule so we can get this show on the road. I won't say I didn't enjoy my time in Goinard. I really did, for the most part; it was a great place for a number of reasons, and I learned a lot while living there, but... I just can't stand lowsec anymore. I can't stand being an outlaw anymore.

There's another flicker, and the camera drone turns briefly once more to focus on another projected image of another station.

TXW-EI VIII - Moon 8 - Aliastra Retail Center.
Veto's (sort-of) new home, and my home-away-from-home.

That's not exactly kept me a ton of friends within Veto, but to be honest, I never had many in the corporation to begin with, outside of the Ghosts I came here with. Some of the newer people I'm familiar with - Evangeline, in particular, from the modeling contest the other month - and I've made a few friends with some of the other old-timers, like Nadia and Rathera, but... I don't know.

I'm feeling less and less like Veto as a whole is my family, and more of a job that I just want to go home from. Some of them I consider family, sure... Kimmy and the other Ghosts, Kyoko, Demetri, a few others... even Inara, to some extent, despite all the shit we've put each other through... but most of the rest of the corp? No, they've not really given me the "family" vibe. Not the kind that I can relate to and feel comfortable and safe with.

Do I trust them to have my back in space? Absolutely, and I would hope they'd trust me in the same way. But outside of the capsule? No. I don't trust very many of them outside of the capsule. I have a hard time trusting people who are more interested in ISK and profit at the expense of everything else.

Maybe I'm really not cut out to be a pirate anymore. Maybe I never really was to begin with. Hilen Tukoss and the Arek'jaalan Project have entrenched that idea more firmly into my mind than anything else has lately. It's like the opportunity to be in the Accord again, only this time the potential of the project isn't wasted on a fool like Julianus Soter. We actually have the manpower and minds necessary to make something out of the project, if we can keep it alive long enough to properly get on its feet and learn to walk. I dread to think of what will happen if Venal decides to have Ethan interfere with the project. I don't know what I'll do. Whatever it is, it isn't likely to make people happy.

Things at home have been... awkward, may be the right word for it. Reppy can tell something's bugging me as she usually can, but she's having as much trouble asking me about it as I am with being able to just tell her.

But it's hard to bring it up with her. Last time it even got referred to, she laughed it off as if it were a joke - and she was the one who even brought it up in the first place. I know she wasn't laughing at me, but it still hurt. It hurt a lot then, even if I didn't let on. And it still hurts now, as does the thought of getting the same reaction when trying to bring it up seriously.

This is just going to get messy when it does come up eventually - and it will come up at some point, I'm just not sure when - and I'm not really looking forward to it. Unfortunately it isn't something I can just swallow and go back to ignoring it like some other things. It's going to eat at me until it gets dealt with, and at this point it's just a question of which one of us is going to make the first move.

Morwen sighs, then opens her mouth to continue; a soft buzzing noise interrupts, however, and she turns her head towards its source - the door.

... Wonder who that is. Guess I'll have to finish this another time. End recording.

The camera drone deactivates.