Massacred Insect

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[massacredinsect]

The Undiscovered Country

Detail of Temple from The Answer

Contrary to what you might expect, this post isn’t about the Star Trek movie. Rather uncomfortably, the title is a metaphor for my long running project, Glyffe.

Glyffe is a world of texts long and short, static and moving, interactive and not. It’s a world of worlds, all created by players. Or rather, that’s what it was supposed to be.

In practice, I’m the only one who’s ever created any worlds beyond just testing things out. Two of those worlds I entered into relevant competitions. The first one, The Answer, didn’t make the shortlist for the Digital Fiction Writing Competition. The second one, Linear Love, ended dead last in the Interactive Fiction Competition (not linking to the results page here because I don’t want it to get more standing with the Google Index than it already has).

So it’s probably safe to say that Glyffe, both as a world and as a generator of worlds, is dead. I just don’t seem to have gotten around to pulling the plug yet.

I’m not sure exactly why not. Maybe it feels too unceremonious to just pull the plug. Like a burial without a service. Or even without a few words said.

So I’ll say a few words. Glyffe was exhilarating to work on. I remember the night when the server was all but coded and I found out that Node.js was single-threaded. Which meant that every connection would have to be handled by the same processor core, making for a pretty unscalable setup.

In hindsight, that setup would’ve been fine since there have never been all that many simultaneous connections anyway. But that night, dreaming still of massively multiplayer, I was groping around for solutions.

At the time, Node.js came with a module that allowed for duplication of the server on other threads and other cores. But those duplicates were all pretty much self-contained and unaware of each other. Which is fine for a web server that doesn’t need to know which page is being served to one client in order to serve a page to another client.

But it’s not ideal for a server that needs to keep track of where those clients are relative to each other and to other stuff in the game world. That’s when I stumbled upon a third-party module called node-webworker-threads.

While that module doesn’t offer to duplicate the entire server, it does provide for offloading parts of it to other threads and other cores. Which parts? Well, if the goal is to take some load off the main server thread, a good starting point would be the CPU intensive parts.

Now in the textual world of Glyffe, you don’t interact with the world through a parser (like in early text adventures such as Zork) or by pointing-and-clicking (like in later graphic adventures such as The Secret of Monkey Island). Rather, you interact by steering (WASD or arrow keys) your textual avatar into other textual objects.

From that it follows that the server should support collision detection. Every time an avatar moves, the server should check if they’ve collided with another object and if they have, determine the outcome of the interaction. Every check, in turn, should entail comparing the avatar’s new position and size to the positions and sizes of all the other objects in order to see if there’s any overlap. I’d say we’ve identified a CPU intensive part, wouldn’t you?

Okay, so we use node-webworker-threads to offload that part to another thread, and when we need to check for a collision, we just send all the positions to the other thread, let it do the heavy lifting, and get the result back. But wait, how can we send the positions? On my main thread, everything is JSON, the hip JavaScript format that’s human-readable, while node-webworker-threads only accepts String and binary to be sent along. Heck, even my database (the now defunct Facebook Parse) stores everything as JSON for persistence across sessions. So, should we convert everything on the fly from JSON to String and back?

Turns out on-the-fly conversion between data formats would defeat the purpose of using node-webworker-threads, since the conversions are about as CPU intensive as the collision detections. The only way forward, glimpsed through many a sleepless night, would seem to be to switch everything to String from the get-go.

That means replacing all the methods that operate on JSON with methods that operate on String and swapping out the JSON database for a native String data store such as Redis. An added benefit of Redis is that it comes with Lua as a scripting language, which enables me to move some of the operations to the database layer, thereby further alleviating server load.

With this setup, I could start out with just one CPU core for the server (about $20 per month with Google) and just add cores as more clients come online, requiring more threads to handle the collision detections. Except that, as I mentioned earlier, they never did come online in those kinds of numbers.

But putting the numbers aside for a moment, I hope I’ve managed to convey to you, however imperfectly, why Glyffe was so exhilarating to work on for me.

There, I’ve said a few words. I wonder if I’ll be able to pull the plug now.

[massacredinsect]

The Next Generation

Encounter at Farpoint--about 1 hour 22 minutes in

This is a father speaking, reporting from the trenches of education. On October 27th last, in what was our youngest boy's second attempt and our oldest boy's third one, both succeeded in getting into Star Trek. They were hailed with an ending in which a comfortable planetary base turned out to be an accommodating life form held captive by its occupants. Their faces glowed when the realization hit home.

Our previous attempt to watch the double length pilot together had ended in miserable failure. About halfway through, they pleaded with me to switch to something less boring. That was two years ago, and I realized something had to be done.

So, with their mother acting as a censor of sorts (the boys and I fondly liken her to the priest in Cinema Paradiso, who rings an altar bell whenever he comes across a scene he deems ripe for censure), I started them on a program aimed at broadening their live-action horizons beyond Star Wars movies. It consisted of dozens of other movies, most of Happy Days, quite a bit of Cheers and all of Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Missie Aarde. We completed the program amid much bell-ringing (believe it or not, but my wife actually found and began using a bell similar to the one featured in Cinema Paradiso, only red) with a screening of Beverly Hills Cop on October 25th. The next day we embarked on the TNG pilot, reaching the eye-opening conclusion on the night after that.

Encounter at Farpoint–about 1 hour 23 minutes in

[massacredinsect]

Pop Quiz

A Chinese restaurant not too far from our place. It's my wife's birthday. We're having a pop quiz.

Me: "What's the full name of the Enterprise's first officer?"

One boy: "Picard!"

Me: "No. Besides, that's not his full name."

Other boy: "William Riker."

Me: "Correct."

Several rounds later (the winner of the previous round becomes the quizmaster of the next).

Me: "What's William Riker's military rank?"

One boy: "First officer!"

Me: "No. That's--something else."

One boy: "What is it then?"

Other boy: "Commander!"

Me: "Correct."

One boy: "What's first officer then?"

Me: "Uhh..."

Many rounds later (one of the boys insists on quizzing us about Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, like I insist on quizzing them about Will Riker).

Me: "What's the nickname given to William Riker--"

One boy: "Imzadi!"

Me: "No. You didn't let me finish. I was going to say--by Picard?"

Other boy: "Number One!"

Me: "Correct."

Funny thing, correctness.

[massacredinsect]

IntPiPoMo

There's a quote by Roger Edwards that's stuck with me ever since I read it a couple of weeks ago. Terming a phenomenon Overfamiliarity with a Genre, he describes it as follows:

"I have simply seen too many horror movies.... As a result I will never be able to experience a horror movie in the same way I did twenty or thirty years ago.... With regard to horror films, the nearest we can get to reliving a particular movie experience is to watch them with someone who is new to them. This way we can vicariously enjoy their reactions as they jump and scream, with a degree of avuncular self-satisfaction and even a little envy."

This resonates with me because in the past two years I've watched dozens of movies and TV shows with my two boys. More about that later. What concerns me right now, however, is how to get the nearest to "reliving a particular movie experience", as Roger puts it. Because you see, the boys and I have just crossed into the body of fiction that is to me what the horror genre is to Roger: fandom. For me that means Star Trek, and particularly its second live-action television incarnation, TNG.

And as I've been vicariously enjoying the turns and twists, I've been thinking: why not try to get even nearer to reliving the experience by documenting and analyzing it, not only in terms of the actual mechanics, but also as to how those mechanics interact with minds that have no or only a fledgling knowledge of them? If that sounds weird, remember it's Star Trek we're talking about. And while we're at it, my thoughts went, why not post a few screenshots along the way?

And then the omnipresent Belghast--or should I say: Q?--dropped in, hinting at many things hidden, one of them the existence of something called IntPiPoMo, and another that Chestnut from Gamer Girl Confessions is currently running it.

And I was reminded of the good times that were had with Blaugust in August, and how it had brought Roger's blog to my attention in the first place, and I almost fell over myself getting to the sign-up form.

My boxed copy of TNG where the screenshots will be coming from

[massacredinsect]

My pain is a wave of despair collapsing into needle points of agony when we analyze it.

[massacredinsect]

The Prime Elder

"Like a child he makes you stand while he sits"

Photo by Dan Scavino Jr.

Like a child he blunders through old age.

Like a child's his hurt is unmediated. Like a child he hurts you right back.

Like a child he mocks what he doesn't understand. Like a child he won't admit ignorance.

Like a child he tells lies. Like a child he denies.

Like a child he thinks in black and white. Like a child he thinks they're opposites.

Like a child he ascribes agency to things. Like a child he attributes his own motives to everyone else.

Like a child he's drawn to strength. Like a child he hates being vulnerable.

Like a child he doesn't heed advice. Like a child he thinks he knows best.

Like a child he puts the blame outside of himself. Like a child he doesn't look inside.

Like a child he wants it all to himself. Like a child he doesn't want you to have anything.

Like a child he makes you stand while he sits.

[massacredinsect]

The Nine

"The headlights were swimming on the tarmac"

Photo from saleonlinevn.com

Some say the first drops could be felt just seconds after the jet broke through the cloud cover. The wind was reportedly blowing in from the south west. It was night.

By most accounts the runway was wet when the jet taxied to a halt and was converged upon by black vans. As one observer put it: "The headlights were swimming on the tarmac."

Nine ghosts are rumored to have emerged from Terminal E, nine men whose lives were over even as they were seen walking and talking, nine souls cloaked in darkness.

They only seem to show in surveillance footage if at the time of capture they were unexposed to sunlight. In the morning it was still overcast when they made their way to the consulate.

And although they had long been inside by the time the sun came out, they appear to have faded further until only their voices were left, humming to music they alone could hear.

After sundown, they register on airport cameras once more, checking in for their final destination. The wind had shifted to the south. The runway was dry as dust.

[massacredinsect]

Signals

"You could already hear birds leave"

Photo by Russ Taylor

You could already feel leaves cushion your feet when I was still waxing lyrical about the browns and the reds.

You could already hear birds leave when I was still meaning to hang that nest box we'd bought in the spring.

You could already see your breath when I was still reading messages into the puffs of smoke going up around us.

You could already smell snow on the air when I was still trying to decide between a plumber and a heating engineer.

[massacredinsect]

The Picture of Transparency

“ Long, wavy hair the flimsiest screen over your most intimate thoughts”

Photo by Carmen Acosta

You're the picture of transparency.

You're what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

Tiny moles the only blurs in your see-through skin.

Long, wavy hair the flimsiest screen over your most intimate thoughts.

Your eyes as much windows for looking in as for looking out.

The words from your mouth first-hand accounts of life inside.

Your voice their music drifting out.

[massacredinsect]

The Eye Witnesses

“Half the eyes accompanying the spotlight grew round…. One pair was a mix of both.”

It had been raining the day the sun went away. Just like that she went, as if she had no more business there. From one second to the next, the wetness turned to ice.

For decades it stayed that way. From time to time a flashlight poked up some dust. Once or twice there was another pair of eyes.

Then more came, and a spotlight was turned on. It was a strange scene. At one point, the spotlight cast a shadow where there was no obstacle in its line of sight.

Somewhere else, it made a rainbow in the exact spot you would’ve expected if, decades earlier, the rain hadn’t frozen to hail and crashed to the pavement.

Nothing quite added up. Nothing was as it seemed. Half the eyes accompanying the spotlight grew round. The other half squinted. One pair was a mix of both.

At last they went away, taking their spotlight and their cables. The shadow faded to an obstacle. The rainbow unfolded into sheets of rain.

[massacredinsect]

The Two-Storied Chamber

In the hallowed hall lofty words soar and swoop, swoop and soar, forcing plainer ones to the blue and maroon floor.

Over time, those that have consistently imposed are assigned perches in the panel work of the ceiling, where they enjoy sweeping views of both sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile, down on the floor, low-downs graze the carpet and brush the legs of the mahogany desks as they weave and swerve to shake their diving opponents.

And once in a while one of them gets through and makes it to the microphones in the gallery that forms the second story.