Strategic Primer: Computer version progress

On Wednesdays I write about my strategy game, Strategic Primer.

Since my last progress update there has been little visible progress. The new client still isn’t usable yet. But I have made several improvements.

First, I changed the protocol to support different types of clients and handle them using different API servers. This should make supporting new kinds of clients significantly easier and will simplify the architecture of the server tremendously.

Second, I created a wrapper around a client’s connection to significantly simplify using the protocol in the program. Instead of having to explicitly put every message on the wire, wait for a reply, and ensure that the reply actually fits the protocol, the program can simply call a method that calls the server.

Third, I created a class to serve as a cache for the client’s view of the map, so the client doesn’t have to fetch every visible tile over again every time the player changes the view, let alone every time the screen refreshes.

One of the primary challenges right now is how to let the server interact with the client on its own initiative. One primary use of this functionality would be to tell the client when its cached version of the map is out of date, but it could also be used to update the user interface to reflect whose turn it is when that changes, for instance.

Shine Cycle Background: Reignalmia

On Mondays I write background essays on my fantasy series-in-preparation, the Shine Cycle.

I began the last segment of the outline by mentioning the “Reignalmia incident.” Today I’ll describe the world that the story calls Reignalmia.

Best Books: The Allegory of Love

Mythopoeic fantasy enthusiasts and Christian apologists sometimes forget that their areas of interest were a mere sideline for C. S. Lewis, and that his field was medieval and Renaissance literature. But we should not neglect his work in his chosen field: he literally wrote the book on medieval allegory. That seminal work, The Allegory of Love, is the first book in my list of books everyone should read.

While quite scholarly, I, a moderately well-read and literate student, found it quite accessible. My three semesters of Latin and one of British literature (the first half) in college certainly helped, particularly where he quotes from the originals (in Latin, Greek, and pre-spelling-standardization English) without translation, but not much—and context makes enough clear that I could pick up plenty of salient and penetrating insights even without understanding a word of a text. (The literature course helped by familiarizing me with the literature of the period, and with Chaucer’s language, but I had only read even parts of one of the works he covers.) I consider a thorough, thoughtful reading of this monograph essential to a real “liberal arts” education, particularly for anyone hoping to become an author.

But even for those with less literary inclination, I think that the first two chapters are absolutely necessary for a basic education. In those chapters, Lewis traces the development of allegory and of the idea of courtly love from their beginnings. Skim the difficult bits if you must; this is essential background for contemporary culture.

This book—the second chapter in particular—is what sparked this list. I read the first few chapters for a discussion in our chapter of the Mhythopoeic Society, and his discussion of courtly love utterly changed my thinking about romance and poetry. It’s hard to tell from my archive because I’ve mostly posted poetry from my backlog, but reading Lewis’s history of courtly love created a substantial change in what sort of thoughts I let myself be guided to write in poetry.

The first two chapters of The Allegory of Love are a mandatory primer for contemporary culture; no one should consider himself or herself educated without reading them. The remainder is a delightful but essential introduction to the works from which the culture originally sprang, when writers thought more deeply, for would-be men and women of letters. Read it.

“Approaching Harvest”

Each Friday I post poetry from my archive, until I run out.

The boughs, heavy-laden with fruit, hang low;
We see the fields are harvest-white in truth
As well as metaphor, and every day
We pluck more produce from the drooping vines.
For all this bounty, graciously bestowed,
We give God, our Provider, thanks and praise.
Yet one more harvest still remains unripe:
Two thousand years ago God gathered in
The first-fruits of that harvest, “them that sleep.”
How long, O Lord, must we more loved ones sow?
Put forth your strength, through us or angel hosts,
To swiftly ready this your planted field
For your command to bring that harvest in.
Oh, that you’d sound that trumpet! Hasten, Lord!
Yet, Lord, if you will grant but one request,
Let it be this: Let me not be a tare,
But, rather, let me be a fruitful seed,
One gathered in your garner when you come.
And, more, O Lord, no will but yours be done.

This is another more recent poem, written less than a month ago. As always I welcome your comments, critique, suggestions, or any other feedback on this poem or any other part of my work.

Also posted to Google Docs and WEbook.

Strategic Primer: Assistive programs progress

The suite of assistive programs for the players of my strategy game, Strategic Primer has progressed significantly since I last wrote about it. All progress has gone into the first program, the character management application.

First, as mentioned, I implemented reading of characters from file. This means that the program is finally usable by players, who (with “admin mode” disabled) cannot edit the characters themselves.

Second, I improved the interface. Before, the program launched with a blank character, and opening an existing one created a new window. There was also no way to create more than one new character in a session. The interface now places the various characters, whether loaded from file or new, in tabs of a main window. I’ve also designed the user interface code with an eye to generality, so that when I begin work on another module it can be another set of panels in the same application, and even share the file (opening, saving, closing) interface.

Third, I began working on adding levels in Jobs to characters. The file format supports this, as does the program internally, but I have not yet figured out how to represent levels properly in the interface—though I have had a few ideas that I haven’t had a chance to try out yet.

Once Jobs are working properly, I intend to switch from hard-coded Jobs to a solution where Jobs and their effects are loaded from file, like PCGen. After that I intend to add Skills, then equipment. Eventually I hope to be able to import data from PCGen format files, so I won’t have to enter data from the over 250 existing characters manually.

Shine Cycle Outline: Second Arc, Part 2

On Mondays I write background essays on my fantasy series-in-preparation, the Shine Cycle. This is the fourth post in a series giving a general outline of the series; last time I began the second arc of the series.

Best Books?

Last year, I started a short series of posts listing the books that I thought everyone ought to read, whether for edification or delight. (It stretched through four posts: the first, second, third, and fourth.) I’ve reached the point where I can’t think of enough more to merit another post listing such books, but I’ve also realized that for some of them it’s not immediately obvious why they belong on such a list.

In the coming weeks I plan to reprise the series in more detail. Each post will cover one book, giving a short review and explaining why I think it belongs on the list of books everyone should read. This series will begin next week, and will likely be the most common topic for Saturday posts for a while (read more about my posting schedule here), but will not appear every week.

But, to start discussion: Which book from my list should I cover first? And what books do you think belong on the list?

[For reference: When this post ran on Facebook, a friend commented:

How about "Diary of A Young Girl" by Anne Frank and J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series? I would also include the "Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin" series by Patrick O'Brian (but that's just my opinion). :-)

To which I replied:

I don't know about the diary of Anne Frank, never having read it. I've considered adding the first few Harry Potter novels, for "delight"---and more importantly because they provide the minimal background needed for the vast universe of Harry Potter fan fiction, some of which is far better than the original in both "sentence and solace"---but certainly not the whole series. Rowling is simply too *sloppy* a writer.

I reproduce that conversation here because going back through Notes on Facebook was time-consuming enough once.]

“On Falling In Love”

On Fridays I post poetry from my archive, until I run out.

It is like an epiphany.
One moment there is nothing beyond
Ordinary, earthly, commonplace beauty
To attract me to her. Then,
In a flash of light or insight
Some portion of the glory of the Lord
Descends upon the temple of the Holy Spirit,
Burning into my mind so fiercely the image
That even every memory is tinged
With the radiance
Reflected from the heavenlies.
The arbitrary spiritual theotokos
Becomes as the messenger of the covenant:
Every word bound up in glory,
And she is now one I delight in.

I probably wrote this the spring of my freshman year of college. It was sparked by an experience I had during Epiphany of that year.

As always, I earnestly welcome your comments, suggestions, critique, or other feedback about this or any other part of my work.

Also posted on WEbook and Google Docs.

Strategic Primer: Sixth turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its sixth turn.

The trends outlined in last turn’s summary continued; food harvesting for the first year is winding to a close, and nearly all players are substantially increasing their industrial output.

Players are finally starting to delegate administrative responsibilities to their workers, causing a (so far limited) chain of command to form. Most human players now have at least one worker assigned to management duties.

One new player has joined the game; I’d still like several more, and despite my fears the game has not yet reached the point where adding more would cause trouble.

Other than those items, nothing really notable happened that would have reached the other players (since these turn summaries are basically a global rumor system).

Some statistics: Populations vary from 12 to over 45, and food stocks vary from one hundred pounds of food to over two thousand pounds.

Alternate Histories and other quests

One of the segments of the first arc of my fantasy series-in-preparation, the Shine Cycle, is the “Alternate Universes” subseries. It is so called because much of it will take place in various “alternate universes,” worlds different from the world of the Shine Cycle and from our own.

This subseries is somewhat open-ended and fluid by design, so that I can add more stories as they come to me, but here’s what I have so far.