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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

hkmaly

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hkmaly last won the day on February 24 2020

hkmaly had the most liked content!

About hkmaly

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    Programming and fantasy. Would like to combine.
  1. Story Wednesday March 19, 2025

    Of course, next arc COULD be 2030. Depending on how they go badly, that might make for entertaining reading, but it's also possible for it to enter into the cringe zone. Or, you know, maybe it will go great and we will have actual progress. Note how smoothly integrating of Diane went.
  2. Comic for Monday, Mar 17, 2025

    We waited almost 11 years for that, since this page. ... you say just when most of the cast is in room outside reality and likely wouldn't be affected by it at all. Besides, Hope wouldn't be affected, Magus and Adrian are currently outside the city and I'm even not speaking about Lord Tedd. You mean the "it may cause magic reset" bit? I don't think she missed this risk is no longer valid. Why? She needs to learn real-world NOW. Agree.
  3. Comic for Friday, Mar 14, 2025

    You are not thinking about the right rainbow. Anyway, I wasn't talking about someone scary BECAUSE of rainbow hair. Just someone scary who also has rainbow hair. Although, if the hair is not fixed rainbow but randomly going through all the colors of rainbow all the time, it may be quite scary.
  4. Comic for Monday, Mar 3, 2025

    People doing illustration for books ignoring the text is not recent ; Pratchett always complained that the illustrators seem to draw the people younger than they are. Smaug having less limbs is unfortunately not the only difference between Hobbit movie and Hobbit the book. Or should I say Red Book of Westmarch?
  5. Comic for Friday, Mar 14, 2025

    What about full-on rainbow? (I might need some time to get used on commenting here again. If anyone will be looking for me, check reddit.)
  6. Comic for Monday, Mar 3, 2025

    I meant EGS time. Thinking about it, we can't even be sure it already happened at this point of main story.
  7. Comic for Monday, Mar 3, 2025

    Lot of parents are making same mistake. One would expect they would remember how it didn't worked on them ... I'm not sure there was time to tell already. How long ago was it? Note, however, that the usual western dragon has six limbs (and tail), which is a trait not shared with any other land vertebrate on Earth and practically impossible to evolve given how limbs of vertebrates are encoded in DNA. Of course, there are several other mythological species with same trait, and it's also common on Spinx (Manticore A-IV) or Pandora for example. And we know the same is true for dragons in EGS, or at least one dragon. PS: I just found out this forum is alive again. Why didn't anyone told me?
  8. Story Tuesday, Jun 9, 2020

    Hey, I was faster by whole minute despite writing more! I don't think she has any issues with it. She just states the fact. ... no? They make lot of sense here.
  9. Story Monday, Jun 1, 2020

    On a rocket, which is what impulse power is, even assuming it tosses ions out as reaction mass, you have 2 unrelated items. You have the fuel that gets the reaction mass up to speed and you have the reaction mass. Modern rockets just happen to combine the two, this is not a requirement. If a rocket is rated to x number of newtons, that is what it's rated to. Adding more power to the part that makes the reaction mass moving should not do any thing. Assuming that the "normal" power supply of the impulse drive is can run it at full power, there isn't any thing you can do by adding more power from the warp coils. Of course, Star Trek impulse drives might be a type of reaction-less drive, like some form of gravity drive, in which case my point isn't true. Given that the "science" of Star Trek propulsion is flaky at best, I'm willing to take it as given that both the super light speed and sub light speed drives on ships are both "magic" in that they can't exist given our current understanding of physics. As I said, I don't really "get" that rerouting power can make the engines stronger. Maybe little for short time as the afterburn if the default power source doesn't already have capacity for that, but not much. However, I do get that rerouting power could be solution when the default power source for them is damaged. It didn't used to be. Seems they solved it in Picard. We did saw them, but MUCH less than we should. There is limit how much power you could route to the electromagnets before you fry them. But yes, the impulse engines seem to be something like that and it explains how you can route power to them at all.
  10. Story Monday, Jun 1, 2020

    I never saw that. I had high hopes for Space: Above and Beyond. Fox's track record of trashing successful shows truly sucks. You need to stop letting TV stations limit what you see. Use the internet. Or, maybe, don't. It's debatable if the show get far enough to be worth it. It showed lot of promise but ... Doing vector math "digitally", either with a calculator/computer or by hand would be way harder that moving a figurine and 2 counters about. The string makes it fairly easy to plot your future location, just put one end on the past location, one on the current location and extend the vector the same length as it is from past to current. Put counter down. Move counter to reflect this turn's movement, then move past to current. Yeah I got it. I got distracted by figures being used for numbers. In the real world, adding more power wouldn't make that much difference in the output of the impulse engines. I assume that that are designed to take as much power as is reasonable for what ever it is that they use for sub-light movement. I suppose the point of that move were not about how fast they will be flying. That's technically true, however note that gravitation is going to move you without any thrust being involved, AND by affecting every atom separately. Meh, they were all designed to look impressive but people who where more artist than scientist. 2001 got space travel right, and at times it is boring; I could not get my kids to sit still to watch it. Star Wars does better that Star Trek in the 'ships look functional' department. The original Romulan war bird, which I believe was only used in one early episode, had a broad flat back so it could display a war bird emblem (because, as we all know, evolution is always parallel down to the nth detail, so of course Romulans had raptors (original meaning; hawks, eagles, falcons, and such)). And so it goes. Every thing about TOS is 'because it looks cool', not 'because we thought it out and this makes the most sense'. Trying to fit a rational scientific framework is after the fact. These ships all bend a bit of space time around them. Wouldn't a compact shape, something like an egg, make the most sense? Presumably, this is the most energy costly thing they do, and would be the thing they need to most optimize. Where would you stick the engine? Maybe dead center, because "Hell, if it fails, we're screwed anyway" and "Might as well give it as much shielding as possible". What you wouldn't do is stick a long spar on the front of your ship that needed would be contained in that warp field, unless for some reason, your entire engine section was lethal and needed to be separate, in which case, what's up with the broad, thick wings? The Discovery in 2020 was long for that reason, but the living section was a ball, and the spar was just that, a long structure for transferring force from the engines way in the back. (basically a tower, if you view thrust as 'down', and it does indeed look like a utility tower) So, I ask you, which of these two scenarios makes more sense: A. The federation thinks that dragging along a bunch of extraneous whatever is good ship design. B. "Hey, you know what would look cool? A saucer. Space ships are saucers, right?" "Nah, it's been done. The Jupiter II was a saucer." "Well, maybe we could have a saucer that's part of a ship." "That could work." "I'll stick it on top." I might design a ship that looked like the Enterprise. It would be much smaller, and you'd drive it from the bottom section. The removable saucer section would be for delivering the pizzas. I'm not saying that the ships they are using are optimal. There is just ONE faction with optimal ships: Borg. I'm saying two things: 1) Even in-universe, it makes sense to include artists in ship design, because they DO have some reserve and all ships being spheres would be bad for psychology. Granted, they SHOULDN'T give them free hand - they should give them strict limits so they don't overdo it ... which I suspect happened in multiple cases in Star Trek, including USS Enterprise A (constitution class). Although frankly even THAT can happen in-universe, it would be unlikely to happen THAT much - or for a flag ship. 2) The compact shape of warp field is not ONLY thing they need to put into consideration. Also, the shape of warp field is not sphere - it's SUPPOSED to be ellipsoid, with the short axis being perpendicular to the warp nacelles, which NEEDS to be somewhat apart to generate the field correctly. The other considerations would include that for combat, it IS useful to have some "small" side you can point to the enemy, but not too small as you need weapons on it. Some ships also ARE supposed to be able to fly in atmosphere, for which the "wing" shape makes sense. And, of course, Romulan ships have a gravitation singularity (black hole) somewhere, presumably OUTSIDE the hull - that's where the D'Deridex shape comes from. I'm quite sure the "fat wing" shape with warp engines near the left and right ends IS the optimal ship shape for ships which ARE supposed to visit atmosphere at least sometimes, while the optimal shape for ships which don't would be, well, saucer - ellipsoid roughly matching the shape of warp field, possibly with "cuts" and warp engines being on SHORT and LONG pylons so they are not INSIDE the ships and are therefore easier to get rid of. Of course, only federation ship which would be at least close to pass would then be the Defiant. And, well, the original Romulan raptor seems to be most logical ship they have. BTW, regarding the raptors ... there IS a thing called parallel evolution. It makes MUCH more sense that Romulans have birds resembling ours than that THEY themselves are looking as humans with pointy ears. The shuttle has field on it's own. What you see is interaction between the fields, like how big stuff is able to get through the cell membrane despite the cell membrane staying water-tight. We see their artificial gravity technology all the time when they are walking in the ship instead of floating. That said, they seem to be VERY bad at changing parameters of that field - it would be much more useful if they would be doing that. Except, of course, in one episode of DS9 where ensign Melora Pazlar turns off gravity in JUST HER ROOM. They were on much more places in ST:Picard, until they were banned. Data was a prototype and Noonian Soong deliberately didn't mass-produced it ; generally, federation didn't have THAT good technology for artificial intelligence, and seems that they didn't liked humanoid robots who don't behave like humans ... ... but you are right that we should see MUCH more NOT-sapient robots around, even if it would be just for keeping the corridors clean. Reroutable power makes enough sense for ships to be worth it, because stuff can break and you then will be far away from any help if you don't have way to fix it temporarily. Remember that those ships are BIG - bigger than your steam plant, probably. Also, speaking about ships ... consider an aircraft carrier with nuclear reactor. Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors, 4 × steam turbines, 4 × shafts. I find very unlikely that if one of the reactor is shut off, the ship starts turning left because one of the reactors powered screws on left side and other on right. No, they can reroute the power. AND they probably can run even with the reactors off, on batteries or diesel generators, still using the some screws. The stuff we don't see due to cost are likely the ones missing most. For having an agenda about social narrative he was quite good in designing technology. Like, not hard sci-fi good, but if you compare it to Star Wars ... of course, I'm speaking about the established technology, not the particle-of-the-week stuff. If you ever see the episodes, you will probably cringe, and wonder how anyone ever watched them. The production values were not up to current standards, and William Shatner's portrayal of Capt. Kirk is notoriously over the top. Mostly, the stories are pretty good, and Early NG is a recap of a few. I did. I'm not sure if all of them, but yes I did cringle and that's why I'm saying it's better to read the books, where I can enjoy the stories without the "production values" stuff. However, I don't think I agree with your opinion on Shatner. Granted, I was able to enjoy Andromeda despite the Hercules in main role. I mean, seriously, he mostly acted the same as in Hercules.
  11. NP Saturday, Jun 6, 2020

    Pandora made it sound like Tedd's glove was a unique invention by Tedd and only usable by Seers. Standard wizards could get the ability to make wands, but it doesn't seem like they could ever have the ability to customize spells, maybe rewriting a spell uses a heckton more power than just plain copying a spell to a wand and only Seer's have access to that amount of power. Pandora also did say that Tedd had the power and mind to bend worlds to their will, after all I agree that the ability to customize spells is unique to Seers - seems normal wizard can only copy the spell verbatim - but I don't think it's question of power. Sure, Seers are very powerful, but that doesn't need to be related. I think it's ability, just like being wizard itself is ability which, for example, Nanase lacks despite being very powerful. That said, that quote from Pandora likely speaks not just about raw power but Tedd's ability to utilize it as well. Actually, if seers are supposed to be able to rediscover magic rules after reset, it seems they are even more powerful than that, able to even discover spell components they never saw (but are somehow similar to what they saw). That's something Grace can't do - all new components she got from the TF gun. Well, the standard "let's use the ability to get as overpowered as possible" path. I would be likely to do that as well. I could also try for something more interesting but I would likely hit the limits of how the creating of custom spells worked ... I mean, seriously, only way they would satisfy MY idea of versatility would be to put a turing-complete programming language into that. Speaking about which, do you know about any game like that? I probably wouldn't have time to play but I would definitely put it on TODO list. Difference between assistant and apprentice is not difference in level, it's difference between looking at Tedd as scientists and looking at him as wizard. Unless you speak about the fact that with Sarah not being wizard, she can't actually learn any spell from him. She's limited to training her magic capacity long enough to awaken and get some spell herself.
  12. https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-164 Turns out Monday comics was NOT finished during the day The quote is from The Die is Cast, said by Chief O'Brien to Doctor Bashir. I must admit I needed to search for that. And it seems the party is very much for Ashley ... well, ok, the movie IS relevant to the magic which is topic of party, but I'm pretty sure everyone already saw that movie. Multiple times. Probably even Susan. And on Elliot's place, I would be at least little uncomfortable with my bisexual girlfriend bonding over romance with someone else like that. Especially considering she CAN have squirrel romance with Grace. Also, I would hope that Ashley's wizard training will be different, but truth is transformations are likely to be important part of it if Tedd is supposed to help at all ... well, at least not the upsetting ecosystems bit.
  13. NP Saturday, Jun 6, 2020

    I suspect that if Tedd "sees" a spell with a line of sight, even if that is miles in distance, he can make a wand that has that range. THAT is practically certain. What's not certain is if 1) he already saw such spell (for example, Nanase's fairy is quite long range ...) and/or if 2) he can do such wand WITHOUT seeing such spell.
  14. Story Monday, Jun 1, 2020

    ... well, "not tied to a (hex) grid" sounds EXACTLY as "too much computing to be practical for game". There is no computing done. It is an analog system the depends on figures or counters to indicate past, current and future location. A bit of string is used to plot your current vector, which places your future location. You then apply your move for the current turn to the future location counter. You then move the past counter to the current location, move the ship figure to the future location, and plot via the string the future location. Weapons then fire... ... oh. Right. THAT kind of figures. And strings.
  15. NP Saturday, Jun 6, 2020

    I suspect Tedd has 2 modes they could put on the wands, touch, which is probably similar to needing to be in contact with a watch, and a beam, which would certainly be based on Ellen's delivery method, whether or not the beam can be made visible or invisible is another matter though, I'd lean towards maybe. Tedd probably doesn't need Ellen - the long-range form may be taken directly from TF gun. I mean, it's uryuom technology, not magic, but apparently they are similar enough - and based on what she says here making it extremely close-range was deliberate decision. Hard to say if those are only two options Tedd has.