Right now I’m wondering whether I’ll implement these changes here, too. In particular, I’m uncertain about the comments. Weeding out the spam used to take a long time, but that vanished when I started with my self-written spam filter. Sadly, that filter is way too strong. It has even killed comments by me at times. So I’m not all that certain about this yet.

Reboot

We live in an age of reboots. Batman, Spiderman, James Bond, Star Trek… take your pick. The makers of Tomb Raider decided to get on board that train and made this an origin story. They also decided to call the game simply “Tomb Raider”, making it very annoying to talk about it. TR Reboot, New Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 9, Tomb Raider (2013)… take your pick.

This game tells us the story of how Lara turned from a meek little girl into the adventurer we know today. This happens by way of stranding her on a pacific island together with a varied bunch of characters (including generic tech guy, generic father figure, generic damsel in distress, Zoe Washburn and Gilderoy Lockhart). She has to figure out an ancient mystery that won’t let her leave, while under attack from the strange island inhabitants. And if that doesn’t feel enough like LOST for you yet, don’t worry, there are also remnants of an old but abandoned research project.

If you read my previous coverage of the game, then you may have realized that I didn’t expect to like the game very much. And I’d say that all the things I criticized and feared are there. But despite all that, and to my great surprise, I ended up really enjoying it. So how does that work?

The Story

The story in itself is nothing special. Lara gets tortured, has to save a damsel in distress (twice), help her friends and get over things like killing a deer or a human being, both of which stop becoming problems for her frighteningly fast.

My first main problem with this was that the game had a story at all. Previous Tomb Raider games had stories, too, but they never seemed really well thought out. In half the games, she causes the apocalypse that she has to prevent in the end. Lara Croft also wasn’t actually a likable character. It’s fun to play as her, but the arrogant rich person wantonly destroying ancient ruins doesn’t exactly feel like someone I’d like to know.

This game managed to turn it around. This Lara feels (and for the first time looks) like a real person, and while I found it hard to take any of the ills that befall her seriously, it’s very rewarding when you see her succeed at something.

The rest of the story is a bit bland, though. Lara’s friends stay boring, and the most they contribute is get into trouble that Lara has to get them out of. It’s clear that Lara cares for them, but not really why. The villain is a very generic villain, with not a lot of redeeming or even interesting characteristics. The biggest issue of the story, though, is something else:

Blood and Gore

This is a game where Lara Croft gets hurt. A lot. She gets pierced by a metal pole right in the first five minutes, and over time manages to get an astounding array of burns, cuts and bruises. The frustrating part is that all of this happens only in cutscenes. In the parts where I’m in full control of Lara, she doesn’t suffer anything. As a result, all these injuries feel fake to me. An annoying side-effect of the injuries is that Lara huffs and puffs like a broken steam engine.

There is one part where, because of severe pain, Lara can’t move fast and any attempt to jump will fail. I love that part, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel that if I had been in control in the previous cutscene, she wouldn’t be in that position to begin with.

Besides that, there is lots of other blood and gore, apparently just there to make sure that the game gets an “18+” rating. It very quickly drops from frightening to silly, especially when Lara falls into a literal underground river of blood. And I though the hall full of severed heads and limbs was over the top. My personal interpretation is that most of this is just clay models and paint, put there by the enemies to spread fear. Otherwise, the maths just doesn’t add up.

Gameplay

But if I want to just watch a good story, I go to a cinema. I play Tomb Raider because I want to play a game, and my big fear was that this game wouldn’t let me. It seems that I was partially right.

There are many, many segments where there is exactly one path to proceed, or the game yanks control from you outright. There are also parts where the game pretends you’re in control, but really, you’re not. For example, when Lara climbs up a radio tower, you press forward to climb. If you press anything else, Lara stops. There’s no way to make her jump off, climb down, or anything else. That is just cheating. The scene is one of the most memorable in the entire game, but since I don’t have control, it doesn’t even begin to approach the fun I had e.g. jumping down the highest mountain in Skyrim.

That being said: The parts where I’m in control are excellent. There are millions of different paths through the environment, different approaches to try, collectibles to gather and so on. There are also nice puzzles, in the form of optional tombs (an odd choice. Will the next Star Trek have optional stars?), although they’re all too short for my liking.

The game has a bit too much fighting, though. Especially during the raid on a temple, there are huge parts where it’s just one fight after the other, with no exploration or puzzle to break it up a bit. Fighting is now cover-based, and you have to aim yourself. I don’t really understand why they need that, but playing on easy, it didn’t bother me too much either.

What I don’t like much is that the game always tries to keep me busy. Collecting an egg somewhere is not a fun little thing, it’s part of an egg poacher challenge. If I hang around too long in one area, the game always tells me what buttons shows where I’m supposed to go next. For every action, I get experience points, which allow me to get skill and weapon upgrades that don’t really do much. It’s certainly a better skill system than Angel of Darkness, but that’s about it.

Multiplayer

The game has a multiplayer mode. I didn’t try it.

Final verdict

The game is oddly split. Parts of it try to tell a huge epic story, and those parts are well executed, but really more a movie than a game. And while they’re good, they’re not very good. On the other hand, large parts of the game are fun open world exploration, something that Tomb Raider should always have had. Those are excellent, and I hope the next game focuses on them more.

The book starts with the death of a councilor of a small town somewhere in England, causing what is technically known as a Casual Vacancy. This causes a major stir, since the town has had a long-running dispute over an unwanted housing project that some perceive as a stain on the beautiful town.

It follows the story of several people who all have their own ideas of how to fill the vacant seat, and their own plans that they want to further - whether it is political or simply to annoy others. It also follows some of their children and their friends, whose relationship to their parents is generally not easy.

I think it’s important to point out that this is not a murder mystery. The death is entirely natural. If anything, it’s like Desperate Housewives; a window into the very messed up lives of various people in what seems to be a nice little place.

As expected, the book is well written. At times, it is very funny, and the description of a black comedy certainly fits. The characters are spot-on; if you live in a small town (or a small suburb), there is a good chance that many of the people here will remind you of someone. The plot is not one big confrontation, but rather lots of small, related ones that culminate in one big problem. Much of it is fun and light, but by no means all of it - there is a lot of drug abuse, a parent who beats their children and worse. The contrast is enormous, but fits, because the characters also have a lot of contrast between them.

Social issues are a major point of the book. The book clearly makes a case that the people living in the housing projects are people too; not better or worse, but worthy of care. But claims that this book is a socialist manifesto are just stupid.

But is it…?

But of course, the main question for everyone is: Is it the next Harry Potter? And the answer is clearly no. This isn’t the next Harry Potter. It’s not trying to be the next Harry Potter. In fact, it’s trying very hard not to be Harry Potter.

In place of the hopeful outlook of Harry Potter and the clear black-and-white morality, here you have a lot of characters who are all defect in their own ways. You can establish a ranking if you have too much time, but there is no hero. Some people are more sympathetic than others, but they still have their negative effects on those around them. There is no fantasy in this book; while it’s fictional, it is describing reality¹. The language is at times trying so hard to be mature that it almost feels juvenile, with lots of sexual references thrown in places where you don’t really expect (or need) them. Where Harry Potter has one point of view character, this book has about a dozen. And where Harry Potter is a series, this book has a clear ending. Sequels aren’t impossible, but it doesn’t look as if they’re planned.

Conclusion

It’s a nice little book. I liked reading it, but I probably won’t read it twice. I can recommend it, but I don’t think it warrants all the hype that the media has been trying to make, or for that matter, the special JK Rowling price sticker.

The thing is divided in two parts: First a 45-Minutes presentation, where a Crystal Dynamics employee plays the game for us, and then a section where we can okay the game ourselves. The part we could play was a subset of the things shown in the presentation.

I’ve already said it on Twitter: It’s a nice movie, but the playable parts in between seem a bit pointless. Of course, I’m exaggerating, but the cutscene density in the first part is beyond good and evil. The happen every few hundred meters. Whenever someone radios something in, or something interesting is visible, or Lara defeated a deer, every time there is a cutscene so we know what’s going on. This is less pronounced in a later part of the game that was also shown, but still, the game takes great pain to ensure that anything interesting happens exactly one way and is shown properly.

The most important thing should be the gameplay, but I have nothing to say here, because the demo was very uninteresting. It seems to play exactly like Underworld for the most part, including the clearly marked climb-here points. The bow is easier to use than one might be used to from e.g. Skyrim, which can be confusing - there we quite a few shots that I instinctively didn’t take, even tough they would have probably hit here.

One part I really liked was in the wreck of an American bomber. Lara has barely made it inside, and now it’s about to fall down a cliff. What to do? Lara takes a parachute and jumps out, then glides a bit over the landscape. It’s cool, silly and entirely logical. This is similar to the last action you do in Portal 2, which has the same properties. But in Portal 2, you do it yourself, while in Tomb Rider, Lara makes the decision. That’s disappointing.

There are only bits and pieces of the story, glimpses into a thing whose interesting parts weren’t shown yet. Lara doesn’t like adventures, but then one happens to her, and it changes. This is a clear case where we have to wait for the full game, though.

Speaking about Lara: She sure is noisy. Whenever something new is on screen, she provides a running commentary, so that the voices in her head (I.e. me) know exactly what is going on. And if not that, then it’s sighs and “uffs” and vague expressions of pain. The game does not allow our own character interpretation: All of Lara’s thoughts are clearly announced by her. I’m not too fond of that, but a great story might justify it. Again: Wait and see.

But what really annoys me is how incompetent and whiny Lara is. Sure, she isn’t the hero yet, but a bit more courage and confidence wouldn’t hurt. As it is, I guess it’s supposed to be sympathetic, but she sure puts the pathetic in there. It does not help that she frequently uses the cutscenes to hurt herself by doing something stupid that a player would have prevented. Yes, it is an origin story and reboot, but neither Batman, James Bond nor Captain Kirk where cowards before they became heroes.

In conclusion: I’ve bought all Tomb Raider games and this has given me no reason to break with the tradition. But I’m not too excited about it.

Currently, it’s three projects. All are for Mac OS X 10.7 (although two might work on 10.6, too). All are available for download in binary and source form. I haven’t picked a license yet, but I really don’t care too much, because none of these tools are that interesting. You will likely not see many big new features, unless they’re necessary to solve a problem of mine, but if you submit a technical issue, I’ll do my best to fix it if I have the time.

Stichwörter

This tool is german only because it was specifically written for three people, all of whom speak german as their first language. If there’s interest, though, I could easily do an english version, too. The goal is to create an index for a book. Yes, Latex might have nice tools for that, but for anything done with real layout programs, you need to create them by hand. This is no fun. This tool presents a simple user interface to take away some of the pain.

https://github.com/cochrane/Stichwoerter

Fanfiction Downloader

Sites like Fanfiction.net offer a lot of bad and a few good stories. I’d like to read the latter kind on my Kindle, but all tools that do that are either on Windows or inconvenient to use. So I wrote my own. The core is a basic screen scraper, which means that I will give absolutely no guarantee for its functionality right now and especially not in the future. That being said, if it were to fail, I’d be annoyed, too, so expect problems to be fixed fairly quickly.

https://github.com/cochrane/Fanfiction-Downloader

Tomb Raider 2 Settings

Since a few months ago, the best Tomb Raider game of all time, Tomb Raider 2 (from 1997), is available on the Mac App Store. That’s awesome, but sadly there is no way to tweak the resolution or set some of the very arcane settings this game admits without manually diddling with Plist files. To make this a bit easier, this tool offers a quick and simple UI for all important and many unimportant settings.

https://github.com/cochrane/TR2Settings

Weißwurst translates to Bavarian veal sausage, a form of meat that is, among other things, known for being white, long and bendy and hence the ideal nickname for the Intercity Express (ICE), especially the class 401 “ICE 1”.

Now, my statistics may be off a little, but I think this may be the first picture of an ICE 1 I’ve posted here. This is a little embarrassing considering how important this thing is for Germany’s railroads. It forms the core of Germany’s high-speed concepts. Generally it has a top speed of 280 kph (174 mph), not that high compared to newer trains that reach 330 kph (205 mph), but a prototype unit (these days referred to as ICE V, original class 410) reached 406.9 kph (252.8 mph), which made it shortly the world’s fastest train. Technologically, though, it’s not that interesting, as it’s mainly a derivate of the class 120, optimized for a higher top speed — and of course with a completely different body style.

This one is driving through Berlin Ostkreuz (East Cross), the station where the eastern end of the Stadtbahn (Berlin’s east-west rail connection) and the Ringbahn (the inner circle rail line) intersect. Ostkreuz is currently being rebuilt and it has a lot of traffic, so it’s extremely chaotic. Oddly enough, it’s also the only station I could find that still has GDR-era signage.

From a more idealistic point of view, however, this is bad: The prefixed properties are supposed to be experimental only. By “blessing” the Webkit versions, Opera is encouraging bad coding practices, and if Opera isn’t 100% compatible with Webkit, then chaos will ensue.

There is an argument that people should simply not use properties that have vendor-specific prefixes in production. But that is unrealistic. The properties are there to be used. If not, browser developers would make it a lot harder to get access to them (for example by supporting them only in nightly builds).

OpenGL extensions

It is interesting to compare this to the situation with OpenGL, another technology where development is driven almost entirely by vendor-specific extensions. OpenGL is a graphics library specification. If vendors (those include mostly the graphics card manufacturers and Apple) wants to add functionality, they can create an extension. All the specifications have a vendor-specific tag in the names of the functions and constants they use, e.g. NV for Nvidia, AMD, ATI, APPLE or INTEL. If a vendor wants to implement something new, all they have to do is write a specification for the extension and then implement it, using their own names¹.

The interesting part is that OpenGL also has two special prefixes: EXT for extensions shared by several vendors, and ARB for extensions that have been approved by the Architecture Review Board and thus become official. ARB extensions often become a core feature in the next OpenGL version. A good example for that is the rectangle texture extension. It was created by Nvidia as GL_NV_texture_rectangle. Because it was useful, other vendors implemented it as well, and thus it was moved to GL_EXT_texture_rectangle. Finally, it arrived as GL_ARB_texture_rectangle. As of OpenGL 2.1, it is part of the core OpenGL specification.² All of this is fully downwards compatible, because while the names have changed, the specification hasn’t, and it is trivial for one implementation to support all historical and new names.

Different vendors can implement different extensions that do the same thing, but are incompatible. The final ARB specification can be different again. As an example, for synchronization, you can choose between GL_APPLE_fence, GL_NV_fence or the standardized, but very different, GL_ARB_sync.

Note that the move to EXT and ARB does not have to happen: Any vendor can implement anyone else’s extension, based on the official specification. It is just very common to move it to EXT.

In CSS

How can this be adapted to CSS? First of all, there should be a shared experimental prefix. I support -ext-, because of the OpenGL background, but others prefer -beta-, which may be a bit more obvious. The second important part is that anyone who has an extension has to write a specification for it, so that other browsers can implement it as well, if they choose to. The specification for -beta- can then state that it is identical to one or more previous vendor-specific extensions.

The end result is very similar to the Alpha-Beta system proposed, but keeps the vendor-specific syntax for experimentation, and offers a way to specifically say that a beta version is compatible with a browser-specific one.

What do you think?

Die Konditionen

Zuerst die wichtigsten Daten: Das Ticket gibt es ab Sommersemester 2012. Der Geltungsbereich ist wie gewohnt: Alles in NRW, und die Buslinien der ASEAG (bzw. im Auftrag der ASEAG) nach Vaals und Kelmis, sowie all die ganzen Zusatzgebiete für das NRW-Tickets. Der Grundpreis beträgt 102,42€ und ist für die gesamte Laufzeit des Vertrags fix. Dazu kommen im ersten Jahr (also Sommersemester 2012 und Wintersemester 2012/13) noch 2,38€ für die Personenmitnahme, für einen gesamten Preis von 104,80€.

Personenmitnahme

Unter dem sperrigen Punkt versteckt sich, dass man jemand anderen ohne Aufpreis mitnehmen kann. Dies gilt Werktags ab 19:00 und an Samstagen, Sonntagen und Feiertagen, aber nur im AVV-Bereich (ob hier die internationalen Buslinien dazu gehören weiß ich nicht. Ich habe einen E-mail an den AStA geschickt, aber dass der noch nicht geantwortet hat verwundert sicher nicht).

Dies ist in der Laufzeit begrenzt bis einschließlich Wintersemester 12/13. Im Sommersemester wird eine Studie über die Nutzung dieser Mitnahme angefertigt; danach kann sich das Studienparlament neu entscheiden (tut es dies nicht, dann endet die Vereinbarung automatisch). Von den Kosten für die Studie trägt die Studierendenschaft ein Drittel, aber gedeckelt auf 3500€.

Unabhängig davon können bis zu drei Kinder von sechs bis zwölf Jahren kostenlos mitgenommen werden, für die ganze Laufzeit des Tickets (Kinder unter sechs fahren eh kostenlos im AVV). Eine kuriose Bedingung die wohl von der FH gefordert wurde, aber für umsonst werde ich mich nicht darüber beklagen.

Die Verhandlung

Im Nachhinein kann man nur sagen: Der AVV hat gewonnen. Das neue Ticket ist tatsächlich sogar etwas teurer als das Angebot, dass im Dezember 2011 einstimmig vom Studierendenparlament abgelehnt wurde (hat dafür aber eben auch die Personenmitnahme). Die lange Begründung für die Ablehnung, die die Allgemeine Fachschaftsliste (AlFa) veröffentlichte und die sogar noch mal ausgedruckt an alle Gäste verteilt wurde, ist letztlich ungehört geblieben. Dass der AVV jetzt etwas weniger Geld durch die Personenmitnahme kriegt (früher waren wohl 5€/Semester im Gespräch) wiegt da sicher nicht so schwer.

Natürlich hatte das Studierendenparlament am Ende keine andere Wahl, wie auch das sehr eindeutige Ergebnis (39 Ja-Stimmen, eine Enthaltung, ein Nein) zeigte, und persönlich finde ich das Angebot auch immer noch sehr, sehr gut für die Leistung. Aber sollten die Listen bei der nächsten Wahl zum Studierendenparlament behaupten, dies sei ein Erfolg für sie gewesen, dann würde ich das nicht so stehen lassen.

Interessanterweise wurde dies auch bei der Sitzung größtenteils ausgeblendet. Bis auf eine Dame (Sorry, ich habe mir hier die Namen nicht gemerkt), die dafür sehr insistierte, nahmen die meisten das Grundangebot als gegeben hin und debattierten vor allem über Sinn oder Unsinn der Personenmitnahme. Die Argumente dafür und dagegen waren größtenteils die selben: Es ist billiger als selbst eine Einzelfahrt (bzw. 3 Einzelfahrten innerhalb der City-XL-Zone), aber andererseits sicher kein unverzichtbarer Bestandteil der studentischen Mobilität. Nur ein MSP erwähnte, dass die Preisersparnis durchaus relativ ist: So lange mir meine Freunde nicht Geld für die Mitbenutzung des Tickets zahlen, spare ich ja eigentlich nichts.

Persönlich denke ich, dass die Personenmitnahme ein unnützer Luxus ist. Auf der anderen Seite: Wenn sie schon mal da ist, werde ich sie auch einsetzen, und ich denke schon dass ich die 2,38€ im Semester wieder raushole. Wenn zum Beispiel meine Eltern zu besuch sind, fahren wir oft am Wochenende mit dem Auto in die Aachener Innenstadt. Mit dem neuen Ticket müssen wir das nicht mehr zwingend tun.

Neue Bahnstrecken

Ein Punkt, der mir am Rande auffiel: Herr Sistenich vom AVV wurde immer mal wieder gefragt, was der AVV denn so für Verbesserungen plane. Abgesehen von sehr vagen Aussagen zu mehr Nachtbussen führte er immer wieder die Bahnstrecke nach Heinsberg und den Ringbahnschluss an. Beide Projekte sind für mich als Bahnfan sehr interessant, aber der Nutzen für Studenten ist eher fragwürdig.

Wurmtalbahn

Die Bahnstrecke Heinsberg-Lindern, auch bekannt als Heinsberger Bahn oder jetzt vor allem Wurmtalbahn ist ein sehr interessantes Projekt der Reaktivierung, besonders da die Strecke elektrifiziert wird. Da aber nur 200 Studenten in Heinsberg wohnen, bringt es nicht wirklich viel. Natürlich wird Heinsberg damit interessanter als Studentenschlafort, aber diese Aufwertung ist nicht die Aufgabe des Semestertickets. Nebenbei liefert das geplante Flügelzugkonzept (zwei Triebwagen Baureihe 425 fahren in Aachen los und werden in Lindern getrennt; einer fährt nach Heinsberg, einer nach Krefeld) mehr Sitzplätze im Abschnitt Aachen-Lindern, aber ob die so dringend gebraucht werden? Tatsächlich klingt die Sitzplatzzahl für mich arg übertrieben; ein 426er (nur halb so lang) sollte es nach Heinsberg auch tun.

Ringschluss

Der Wiederaufbau der Strecke Alsdorf-Stolberg bindet Würselen ins Euregiobahn-Netz ein und bietet die Möglichkeit, Züge von Stolberg über Aachen, Herzogenrath, Alsdorf und Würselen wieder nach Stolberg fahren zu lassen (wo sie die Fahrrichtung ändern müssten für die nächste Runde). Nette Sache, aber man muss auch sagen: Die neue Strecke umfährt Aachen und die RWTH in einem weiten Bogen. Für Würselener wäre die Reise mit der Bahn zum Aachener Westbahnhof bestenfalls genauso schnell wie mit dem Bus zu fahren. Die Strecke dient Leuten, die durch die StädteRegion fahren wollen, aber nicht Pendlern die in die Aachener Innenstadt oder eben zur RWTH wollen.

Beide Projekte sind Sachen, auf die der AVV sicher Stolz sein kann, aber ein echter Vorteil für die Studenten entsteht hier nicht. Im Umkehrschluss heißt das auch: Die Projekte würden und werden auch ohne Studenteninteresse entstehen; es macht also keinen Sinn die Studenten hier überdurchschnittlich an der Finanzierung zu beteiligen.

Fazit

Mit dem neuen Semesterticket hat letztlich der AVV die Verhandlungen gewonnen. Weder auf der Preis- noch auf der Angebotsseite gab es echte Verbesserungen. Die Personenmitnahme ist kein schlechtes Trostpflaster, aber eben auch nicht mehr als das. Mich stört es nicht, denn das Ticket bleibt ja immer noch enorm günstig. Aber letztlich haben Studierendenparlament und AStA nicht die großen Ankündigungen erfüllen können, die es nach dem Ablehnen des letzten Angebots gab.

In my opinion, the last big innovation in the Elder Scrolls series was Morrowind (The Elder Scrolls III). An entire island, carefully hand crafted, a lot of story lines, a very deep interaction and the most beautiful water ever — Morrowind was extremely impressive. With Oblivion (TES IV), they’ve improved and expanded upon Morrowind in many ways. And so did they with Skyrim, always optimizing the interface, the gameplay and the experience. With Skyrim, I think Bethesda has managed to make the perfect Morrowind. Well, almost: They could get rid of the mud crabs. And if you wanted, you could probably find twenty thousand other areas where they could make an even better Morrowind. But I think it is time to think about how the entire concept can be expanded.

Because for all the things that are awesome, all those games are characterized by shared limitations and issues. In some cases, Bethesda has tried to work around that; in others, they just pretend they don’t exist. But there is room for more in the series than just polish and a new country and storyline. Here are some of my ideas.

Make the world our own

One of the greatest thing about all Elder Scroll games is that they are never the same for two different people. How do your build your character? What weapons and tactics do you prefer? What quests do you do and in what order? You can truly make your game experience your own and build your completely unique character. I’d like to see this expanded to the entire world.

Right now, you can buy houses and upgrade them. Morrowind allowed you to build houses, and both Skyrim and Oblivion had a huge destruction of a smaller town at the beginning. But those are replacing one pre-designed part of the world with another. I want to be able to build my own a small farm in the plains east of Whiterun, to construct a bridge over a river or to plant or destroy a forest. In all the story lines, I am the chosen one, so why shouldn’t I be able to form the country to my liking?

People, not NPC

The NPCs have gotten better over time, but that was mainly the interaction with them. The writing has always been quite good. But at the end of the day, they remain simple conversation-dispensers. They do not act, and it is not really possible to build a relationship with them. Actually, all games try to give you a way to connect with them, either with a “likes me” meter, or in Skyrim even by marrying them – and it is all horrible, feeling incredibly fake. Compared to other (admittedly less vast) games such as the Half-Life series, it’s disappointing.

This is a big request, and I don’t know what it would take. Maybe real gestures? Maybe people who do more than just stand around or continue whatever they were doing while talking to you? Maybe spouses who have more than five conversation options and show more care than an employee who says “my love” a lot? It’s difficult, but even though it improved on Morrowind and Oblivion, Skyrim is still not that good at making conversation engaging.

Use physics

Right now, there are two gameplay uses for the physics engine introduced in Oblivion: Make a noise to draw people away, and put a bucket over a shopkeeper’s head so he won’t notice you stealing all his things. It does not have to be see-saw puzzles all the time, but more interesting uses for physics would sound great. The game has magic; why not some telekinesis?

Partly related to that: Ships and water have always been a big part of the Morrowind-like games, but I can’t use a boat or sit on the dock of the bay and watch the ships roll in. I don’t think I could either, given the current game engine, and I think the game is missing out on interesting opportunities due to that.

One of many

In all games, I am the chosen one, destined to rise to the top of whatever organization I join², and for good reason: I am the only one who can actually do stuff. I guess that makes sense: It would certainly be annoying to go on a quest but realize that another random adventurer has already done the job for me (even if he got an arrow in the knee). But it also makes the world empty, and it gets weird when I get a job that involves taking a letter to someone living maybe twenty meters away from the sender. I would like to see NPCs actually traveling, doing things on their own account instead of hiring me to go to the store for them. If I could hire some adventurer to do a boring quest for me, I really wouldn’t mind. In an ideal world, I could maybe even teach other NPCs things and get money for that (or not, if they are my allies. Lydia could really use a better sneaking skill).

Balancing that with the idea that the player should initiate all major actions, as well as the need for key NPCs to be available most of the time (e.g. Shopkeepers, people I need for a quest) will not be trivial. I just don’t think the world feels alive enough as it is.

The inside was outside

Skyrim is based on a clear and distinct separation between inside and outside. Any inside is a new level with precisely defined transitions to other areas and no interaction between them. As a result, if you are inside a house, you cannot expect to be able to look out, and things that happen on the inside have no influence on the outside and vice versa. You can easily flee a dragon attack by going into a house, and you’ll be safe there.

This is annoying in terms of graphics. I mean, what’s the point of having amazing, beautiful vistas like Markarth or Solitude if we can’t look at them from the houses we buy there? But in terms of gameplay, it is just silly. Bandits in a room do not notice if I kill all their friends right outside the door, for example. Those seams may be among the most annoying things about the entire graphics engine. Which, of course, needs to be replaced to make this request work.

The Rest

There are many other things one could want as well. More variety than just “go to a dungeon and kill everything there” for 50% of the quests would be nice. Wildlife that does not always want to kill you would be a plus (they already managed to do so for bandits). But by themselves, those would be optimizations on the current formula, not really something new.

Derer gibt es insgesamt fünf, aber drei kann man ignorieren. Rüdiger Wohltmann (DIE LINKE) ist wohl der größte unter den Kleinen, denn als einziger Goslarer und lange Jahre führendes Mitglied der hiesigen SPD, nicht zu vergessen stellvertretender Bürgermeister, hat er durchaus einen gewissen Bekanntheitsgrad. Die Linke ist aber in Goslar zu klein, um ihm realistische Chancen zu geben. Henning Wehrmann ist Vorsitzender und manchmal denkt man Alleinmitglied der Bürgerliste Goslar, und vor allem bekannt als der, der im Goslarer Rat rummault wenn der Rest sich einig ist. Keinesfalls eine völlig unnütze Rolle. Das er kandidiert ist genauso sicher wie, dass er nicht gewinnen wird. Der letzte Kandidat ist Michael Lieblang (keine Website die ich finden konnte), ein Einzelkandidat und gelernter Bäcker (derzeit wegen Berufsunfähigkeit arbeitslos), der vorher noch nie auf der politischen Bühne aktiv war. Laut der Goslarschen Zeitung ist nicht mal sicher, ob er sich selbst wählen würde.

Es verbleiben also zwei ernstzunehmende Kandidaten: Dr. Christian Eberl, FDP, der von der SPD, der FDP und den Grünen unterstützt wird, und Dr. Oliver Junk, CSU (stammt aus Bayreuth), der von der CDU aufgestellt wurde. Ich sehe eine Reihe von Problemen, die beide lösen müssen.

1. Die Stadt Goslar ist arm. Egal was passieren soll, es fehlt an Geld. Irgendwo müssen also Ausgaben gekürzt werden - keine große Sache, sollte man meinen, denn Goslar leistet sich relativ viel Luxus wie eigene Schulen, ein riesiges Kulturprogramm und so weiter. Auch an der Einnahmeseite kann man schrauben, besonders über eine Straßenausbausatzung, die schon seit Ewigkeiten als Schreckgespenst durch den Rat geistert, weil damit Hausbesitzer Geld für schon vor Jahren sanierten Straßen bezahlen sollen.
2. Gleichzeitig kann die Stadt Goslar aber auch nicht zu viel kürzen. Das Goslarer Schulsystem braucht eher mehr als weniger Geld. Das Kulturprogramm ist ein wesentlicher Punkt im Wettstreit mit Nachbarstädten wie Bad Harzburg, Wernigerode, oder sogar Braunschweig. Die Goslarer Straßen erhalten schon seit Ewigkeiten viel zu wenig Geld.
3. Der Punkt von alledem: Goslar verliert massiv an Einwohnern, teilweise weil Leute eher in Braunschweig oder Wolfsburg arbeiten, teilweise weil sie eher in Neubaugebiete im Harzvorland ziehen. Irgendwie muss Goslar deutlich attraktiver werden, sowohl für Familien als auch für Investoren, und wenigsten dass, was die Stadt hat, bewahren. Das kostet Geld, welches die Stadt nicht hat.

Kein einfaches Problem. Die Webseiten der Kandidaten helfen auch kaum weiter, da beide nur Probleme im Detail benennen, aber keine Lösungsvorschläge machen. Aber zwischen den Zeilen kann man doch etwas erkennen.

Christian Eberl

Man kann es gleich sagen: Wahrscheinlich wird er es. Mit Unterstützung von SPD, FDP und den Grünen hat er nicht nur die Hälfte der Goslarer Parteien auf sich vereint, sondernd auch noch die größten - SPD und FDP stellen derzeit die Koalition im Stadtrad, und besonders die SPD ist in Goslar traditionell recht stark.

In seinem Wahlprogramm legt er einen starken Fokus auf die Wirtschaft, die es zu fördern gilt. Im kulturellen Bereich will er das Odeon, das Goslarer Theater, zu einem Multifunktionalen Gebäude ausbauen, dass auch Teile der Veranstaltungen des Hotels Achtermann übernimmt. Das ist durchaus ein indirekter Angriff auf diejenigen, die gerne ein Gebäude hätten was nur als tolles Theater arbeitet.

Natürlich soll das EFZN (Energieforschzungszentrum Niedersachsen) weiter gefördert werden, wie auch die Schulen, und dabei viel Zusammenarbeit mit den anderen Städten in der Region geschehen.

Oliver Junk

Liebe CDU-ler, die ihr dies lest, lasst es mich mal ganz deutlich sagen: Ja, das Wort “Junk” klingt so ähnlich wie “jung”. Aber im Englischen heißt “Junk” einfach nur “Müll”, was durch das Wort “Junk-Food” für Essen z.B. von McDonald’s doch hinreichend bekannt sein sollte. Man sollte also niemals Werbesprüche wie Goslar wird Junk! verwenden.

Nun gut. Junk kommt aus Bayreuth und hat noch nicht mal von der CSU zur CDU gewechselt, so dass er als Einzelkandidat auf dem Wahlzettel erscheinen wird. Wer daher seine Abneigung gegen ihn Ausdrücken will, nennt ihn den Menschen von der CSU, um so seinen Exotenstatus herauszuheben. Ich persönlich hätte auch lieber einen Goslarer im Goslarer Rathaus, aber andererseits ist im Ratskeller schon seit Jahren ein bayrisches Restaurant, und das scheint auch keinen zu stören.

Eines seiner Hauptargumente ist die Förderung von Familien, wobei er meint dass Schaffung und Erhalt von Arbeitsplätzen die beste Familienpolitik sind. Allerdings erwähnt er Punkte wie Kinderkrippen, Kindergärten und so weiter auch. Mittelkürzungen im Bereich Kultur lehnt er ab. Natürlich ist auch er wirtschaftsfreundlich, natürlich fördert auch er das EFZN, und natürlich will auch er mehr Zusammenarbeit in der Region.

Zusammenfassung

Beide Wahlprogramme sind äußerst dürftig und enthalten vor allem Allgemeines. Lösungsansätze sind Mangelware. Dabei glaube ich kaum, dass es diese nicht gibt; aber wie sie im Detail aussehen, ist wohl noch geheim. Ehrlich gesagt finde ich das etwas frustrierend.

Rein subjektiv betrachtet hat Christian Eberl die bessere Homepage; und dass er direkt von vielen der Goslarer Ratsfraktionen unterstützt wird kann nicht schaden. Dazu hat er auch einen etwas besseren Draht zu den Problemen der Region, da er ja gerade von hier kommt. Eine Wahlempfehlung ist das aber noch nicht; Ich persönlich bin noch unschlüssig, wen ich wählen werde. Keiner der beiden wirkt völlig inkompetent, aber beide haben auch kein Geheimrezept für die grundlegende Sanierung der Stadt in der Tasche.

Das ist unabhängig von der Frage, ob wir den Krieg in Afghanistan (und es ist ein solcher, machen wir uns da nichts vor) gut finden oder nicht. Ich persönlich glaube nicht, dass er uns hilft, und habe große Zweifel ob am Ende ein Afghanistan rauskommt, das langfristig friedlicher und freundlicher bleibt als es vorher war. Aber der Krieg wird nun mal in unserem Auftrag gekämpft. Zwar sind die meisten Deutschen dagegen, wenn man sie denn fragt, aber anscheinend nicht so sehr, dass sich die Meinung der meisten Bundestagsparteien dadurch ändern würde — und wie man an der Atomkraft sah, kann sich diese Meinung oft erstaunlich schnell ändern.

Wir sind im Allgemeinen damit zufrieden, wenn der Krieg hinter verschlossenen Türen abläuft. Was die Bundeswehr da genau tut, ob gut oder schlecht, wird ignoriert. Wir erfahren von Soldaten, die getötet werden, hin und wieder. Wobei das geschah? Man denkt fast, es ist ihre Hauptaufgabe, Konvois durch die Gegend zu fahren, immer schön im Kreis bis etwas explodiert, so vage sind die Angaben. Auf der anderen Seite wäre es auch durchaus interessant zu wissen, wie viele Menschen schon von Bundeswehrsoldaten direkt oder indirekt getötet wurden. Der eine Bombenangriff ist bekannt, aber wie viele Fälle gab es, die als gerechtfertigt bezeichnet wurden und von denen wir nie erfahren haben?

Ich denke nicht, dass unsere Soldaten wirklich die Definition als “Helden” erfüllen. Aber sie machen verdammt gefährliche Jobs in unser aller Auftrag. Das verdient sicher wenigstens ein bisschen Anerkennung, aber vor allem auch viel Aufmerksamkeit von uns. Wir sollten uns genauer anschauen, was die Leute dort machen. Und wenn uns das nicht gefällt, wäre es vielleicht keine schlechte Idee, dies unseren Politikern deutlich zu sagen.

Der Stresstest war ein Ergebnis der Schlichtung: Die Bahn sollte sich einen Fahrplan ausdenken mit 30% mehr Zügen, und dann beweisen, dass dieser in Stuttgart funktioniert, mittels einer großen Computersimulation. Um zu zeigen, dass die Bahn nicht geschummelt hat, sollte die Schweizer Firma SMA und Partner ein Audit des Tests und der Ergebnisse machen. Dieses Audit liegt seit kurzem vor, und schon beginnen die Analysen.

Natürlich meint die Deutsche Bahn, dass der Stresstest bestanden ist, mit offiziellem Siegel. Natürlich meinen die Gegner, dass das vorliegende Dokument dies nicht beweist. Beide Sichtweisen kann man gut begründen. Oder man kann natürlich machen, was man in Deutschland seit Februar immer macht: Ein Wiki öffnen, in dem das diskutiert wird. In diesem Fall heißt das Ding Auditplag.¹ Dieses scheint noch sehr in der Anfangsphase. Fürs erste empfehlen kann ich die Kurzanalysen http://www.rems-murr-gegen-s21.de/files/Offener_Brief_Stohler_110719.pdf, http://www.zukunft-mobilitaet.net/5305/eisenbahn/stuttgart-21-stresstest-download/ oder http://railomotive.com/2011/07/sma-distanziert-sich-von-testergebnis-und-fordert-umsetzung/ empfehlen (alle gefunden via Auditplag).

Ein paar entscheidende Kernpunkte:

• Was ist überhaupt eine gute Betriebsqualität? Die Schlichtung hat das nicht definiert, daher ging DB Netz von der eigenen, schon länger existierenden Norm des “wirtschaftlich optimalen” Betriebs aus. Das heißt vereinfacht gesagt, dass die Züge am Ende des Bahnhofs höchstens genauso viel Verspätung hatten wie bei der Einfahrt.

  Das kann der Bahnhof wohl auch, wie der Test und das Audit belegen. Größere Störungen im Rest des deutschen Bahnsystems kann und soll der Bahnhof aber nicht abfedern. Wie manche der Kritiker schon sagen: Der Bahnhof hat eine “2” gekriegt, keine “1”. Zählt das noch als Bestanden?

• Sind die Vorraussetzungen des Tests sinnvoll? Das ist sehr schwer zu beurteilen. Beispielsweise wirken einige der Haltezeiten der RE-Züge erstaunlich kurz. 90 Sekunden im Minimalfall ist vielleicht in Düren eine realistische Option, aber verglichen mit Großstädten wie zum Beispiel Hannover wirkt das doch sehr eng. Auch die Wendezeiten von minimal fünf Minuten kriegt man vielleicht hin und wieder hin, aber kann man davon ausgehen, dass das immer klappt, wenn es notwendig wird? SMA kann darauf keine Antworten liefern, besteht aber immerhin auf diesen 5 Minuten/90 Sekunden auch gerade da, wo das von DB Netz nicht vorgesehen war.

• Einige Bereiche des entstehenden Systems in Stuttgart werden auf jeden Fall angespannt sein, insbesondere die S-Bahn. Und das ist unter der Annahme, dass diese besser ausgebaut wird, was derzeit so noch nicht geplant ist.

• Es konnten keine sehr großen Verspätungen simuliert werden, wie sie ja im praktischen Leben immer wieder vorkommen. In solch einem Fall muss ein Disponent entscheiden, was passiert. Das lässt sich in einer Simulation nur in einem sehr geringen Maße implementieren, weil das irgendwo auch eine kreative Aufgabe ist.

• Es gab (wie auch vereinbart) keinen Vergleich mit dem Hauptbahnhof, wie er derzeit besteht, oder mit einem der Kopfbahnhof 21-Projekte. Das heißt praktisch: Es ist nicht bewiesen, das Stuttgart 21 irgend etwas verbessert, nur dass er zumindest gewissen Verbesserungen im Nahverkehrssystem Baden-Württemberg nicht im Weg steht.

Zusammengefasst kann man also sagen: Der Stresstest beweist, dass Stuttgart 21 nicht zum Kollaps führen wird. Ob S21 deswegen eine gute Idee ist wird dagegen nicht beantwortet (was SMA sogar noch mal extra betont).

Okay, that’s a bit extreme. The movie is okay entertainment, a nice thing to eat popcorn to. In fact, thinking back, most of my criticism concerns the part of the movie after my popcorn ran out. Make of that what you will. But if you happen to have any of the first three on DVD, in particular the first, then it’ll be much more fun and cheaper to just watch that again.

Epic fail

There are a number of reasons for that, partly centered around the plot, partly the characters. Perhaps most surprising, though, is that the movie lacks epicness. In the old ones, we had varied islands, ship battles, a three-way fight on a moving wheel and so on. Sure, it was over the top, but that’s what you watch those movies for. Number four, on the other hand, starts in a few sets apparently left over from that Sherlock Holmes movie with Iron Man. Then there’s a tiny bit of a plot on some ships where a battle almost happens, but is then cancelled because the movie accountants said no. Finally, everybody reaches the island where Oceanic Flight 815 crashed and stays there until the movie is over.

Now, gregorian London is nice, there are some good sword fights in there and a few larger fight scenes as well, but none of that is impressive enough when compared with the first movies. The jungle of Oahu is great, but after six seasons of Lost, hardly something completely new and unusual. In fact, it appears much more menacing in Lost, and when a TV show manages to make the same location appear better than a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, something went wrong.

Plotting

The Pirate of the Caribbean movies always seemed to think that a strong plot could be adequately approximated with just a lot of plot, leading to a scene in the second movie when the two comic relief characters have to explain what the hell is going on to the audience. Now the plot has been cut down so much that after about thirty minutes, you can understand all parts of it except the plot holes, and damn, it is boring.

New big evil pirate Blackbeard wants to go to the Fountain of Youth because he’s going to die. Old big evil pirate Barbossa wants to kill Blackbeard. Blackbeard’s long-lost but recently rediscovered daughter Penelope Cruz¹ wants to save her father. Cpt. Jack Sparrow gets dragged along because he might know something about the Fountain of Youth (he actually doesn’t) and apparently because he is bored. Some unnamed spanish guys also look for the FoY, because the writers thought “Damn, all those movies we forgot the spanish armada!” and also because they need to act as a Deus Ex Machina later. Finally, there is a romance subplot between two minor characters. Not sure who crowbarred that in there, but it seems incredibly pointless.

What truly bothers me is how little surprise there is. At the start of the journey, Blackbeard gives a plan how the movie will go, and everyone follows that plan and collects plot coupons until they can redeem them for the finale. There are some detours, but at no point does Blackbeard’s party have to change their actions at all.

Pirates and King’s Men

Now, normally I’d forgive a weak plot because the movie is a great spectacle and the characters are awesome. But the movie isn’t a great spectacle, and the characters… well, they fail too. All of their motivations for being in the movie are off-screen, and they might as well say “take my word for it”. Does Penelope Cruz love Blackbeard? She says she does, although we never quite see why, or whether he loves her. Is Barbossa’s quest to kill Blackbeard important? Well, Barbossa seems to think so, but since we never saw their first meeting, we just have to take his word for it. Weird considering how he never bothered to take revenge on the pirate who actually killed him before, i.e. Jack Sparrow. Jack in turn seems to be secretly in love with Penelope Cruz and vice versa, again due to a backstory where they were lovers. Showing a more human side of Jack by having him fall in love with someone new to him? Nah, too much work, let’s just assume these emotions exist already and don’t need any explanation. Fittingly, the movie always takes the longest possible time to show us a character’s actual face, trying to make us guess whether it is not Barbossa but actually, say, Worf from Star Trek who is about to enter the room. For the record, I’m not sure if that would have made a better movie, but at least it would have been new.

Captain Jack should, normally, be the heart and soul of the movie. Always a mystery but at the same time funny, and always with an agenda and a plan, he manages to surprise us at every turn. Well, except here. During the London part of the movie, we see some of his great escapes… as well as a detailed description of how he will do them beforehand, by showing all the important elements clearly on screen for a few seconds so that everybody gets it. Once the ships and hence the movies really start going, Jack becomes totally ineffectual. Usually always in command of his own destiny and hence the plot, he has now been shanghaied onto Blackbeard’s ship and remains under his control to the end. After a mutiny is cut short by Blackbeard arriving on the scene (because you know that a mutiny has officially lost once the captain has noticed it), he does not even attempt to escape anymore, and it becomes quite perplexing why he stays around. He does not want Blackbeard to live and he seems to like Penelope Cruz, and he wants some MacGuffin Blackbeard owns, but neither explains why he so readily complies with anything that happens to him.

Blackbeard, of course, is the real star of the movie. Oh, sure, the movie tries very hard to tell us that he is evil, but he never does anything particularly evil by pirate standards. Selfish, yes, but evil? His worst actions are killing a single of the mutineers, and even that not with at least a chance to save himself, and almost shooting his daughter to get Jack to do something, although he tries to not let her know that. None of that is nice, but both could have been as easily done by Barbossa or in fact Jack, and those are supposed to be the good guys here. Blackbeard is also quite successful, right until a scene at the end that was ripped off almost verbatim from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

What can be said against Blackbeard is that he carries the idiot ball quite a few times. No characters are safe from it, but Blackbeard really causes some head-scratching. He goes through extremely great trouble to capture a mermaid, one of the plot coupons needed later. But when she almost dies and then can’t walk on her own, he threatens to kill her, because apparently he forgot that she was a huge investment, and to show that he is evil again. The idiocy gets so much at points that Jack Sparrow has to point it out, and I don’t think Johnny Depp should be the voice of reason in a Pirates movie.

The other characters remain fairly minor. If you had watched the trailer, you’d have thought Penelope Cruz was supposed to a worthy opponent to Jack Sparrow. But with three male pirates already, obviously the woman can’t be important. She never takes charge in anything, but always listens to her father who makes all the important decisions. Meanwhile, in any direct confrontation between her and Jack Sparrow, Jack wins unless she has help from others. Feminists should be outraged; personally I think it’s offensively boring, and a great opportunity completely wasted. Barbossa, meanwhile, seems to be ready to retire to his villa in London just as soon as he got that problem of Blackbeard over with. With a new position in the british royal navy, and generally not much to do, he manages for the first time to see truly old, instead of just look old.

Finally, there is the love story, between a missionary (captured by Blackbeard) and a mermaid, and it is baffling how anyone ever thought this was good or appealing. Maybe it’s some secret test and this blog post proves that I didn’t get that this was all a parody of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. His character can be summed up as “is a priest”, “tries to be righteous”. I really think he never gets a name. He certainly does not have a backstory or in fact any reason we should care about him. Clergymen can be interesting characters, as anyone who saw Firefly or V knows, but this opportunity is completely wasted. Moral guidance to any of the characters? Improbable fighting skills against the abominations from hell? Personal conflict between his belief that everything is good and the reality of the pirates around him? Way too difficult, let’s just have him kiss a mermaid!

The mermaid, meanwhile, literally does not have a name until the priest gives her one (Syrena), because nothing says symmetrical relationship like one owing her individuality to the other. Her character is just as blank. The movie shows that mermaids are soulless and largely mindless killer creatures, and only tells us that she is different, without explaining how. As it is, she has three traits: She can show a bit of compassion; she is a damsel in distress; and finally, she looks good when wet and naked. I really, really have a hard time believing the missionary when he says that it is number one that attracted him to her.

Fun. Remember fun?

What is lacking from that list are comic relief characters. Not surprising, though, because most of the comedy is gone. Jack Sparrow still makes the occasional joke, but most of the other characters seem to think that their plot is serious and relevant, which it isn’t.

The verdict

Most of what was good about the old movies is gone. Nothing good new has been added. The movie does set up a sequel or two, but I’m not going to watch them. Mind you, it was not a bad experience, but I can’t recommend it either.

Der Bericht

Große Überraschungen enthält der Bericht auf seinen 25 Seiten nicht. Er beginnt damit, sehr detailliert zu erwähnen, dass die Uni sich selbst verpflichtet hat, solche Fälle zu untersuchen, schon lange bevor KT seinen Doktortitel erwarb. Vielleicht ist das nur normale Prozedur, aber wahrscheinlich ist den Autoren durchaus bewusst, dass Leute jetzt von einer Hetzjagd auf den arme, doch schon zurückgetretenen Karl-Theodor sprechen.

Dass plagiiert wurde bestreitet heute keiner mehr, und der Bericht sucht sich auch nur ein paar einzelne Beispiele heraus und verweist auf die allgemein bekannten Quellen (auch das Guttenplag-Wiki) für eine detaillierte Aufstellung.

Viel interessanter ist die Frage nach dem Vorsatz, den Guttenberg selbst ja immer noch bestreitet. Hier lässt die Kommission keinen Zweifel: Das kann nur Absicht gewesen sein. Guttenberg gibt ja durchaus Quellen an, nur verschleiert er, dass er diese Quellen teilweise komplett übernommen hat. Die von Guttenberg vorgebrachte Idee, dass er den Überblick verloren hat, überzeugt auch nicht - wer sich so viel mit fremden Texten beschäftigt sollte eher mehr über die Quellen wissen als weniger. Aber selbst wenn er den Überblick verloren haben sollte, meint die Kommission, dass hier eine vorsätzliche Täuschung vorliegen würde: Er hat grauenhaft mangelhaft gearbeitet (was er auch selbst zugibt) und dann hinterher trotzdem so getan, als wäre dies eine Arbeit, die nach wissenschaftlichen Standards erstellt sei, anstatt sie einfach nicht abzugeben und auf den Titel zu verzichten.

Zuletzt betrachtet wird natürlich auch die Frage, in wie fern die Uni und der Doktorvater schuld waren. Wenig überraschend erklärt der Bericht, dass den Doktorvater und den Zweitgutachter keine Schuld trifft. Man kann sich über diesen Punkt sicher gut streiten, aber selbst im schlimmsten Falle kann man beiden höchsten vorwerfen, nicht genau genug auf Guttenberg aufgepasst zu haben. Und besonders jemand, der Doktor sein will, sollte eigentlich zum selbstständigen Arbeiten, ohne ständige Kontrolle, in der Lage sein.

Die Bedeutung

Man kann Guttenberg immer noch gut finden. Tue ich persönlich nicht, aber ich will es niemand anderem nehmen; verglichen mit den Vorstrafenregistern mancher Hollywoodstars ist sein Fehlverhalten auf jeden Fall harmlos. Was ich aber nicht akzeptiere ist, wenn Leute behaupten, er habe gar nichts böses gemacht. Das ist schlicht und ergreifend Blödsinn. Er hat im großen Stil betrogen und belogen, um einen Doktortitel zu bekommen. Er hat vorsätzlich wissenschaftliche Standards und das Urheberrecht mit Füßen getreten, was unter Umständen auch noch strafrechtlich relevant werden kann. Und er streitet dies bis heute, trotz überwältigender Beweislast, ab. Unter diesen Umständen kann man zu Guttenberg einfach nicht als “ehrlich” bezeichnen, persönliche Meinung hin oder her. Der Komissionsbericht ist nun in so weit interessant, weil er noch mal schwarz auf weiß genau dies alles belegt: Guttenberg hat plagiiert, und das kann kein Versehen gewesen sein.

Ich hoffe ja, dass dies ein paar Leuten die Situation klar macht, aber ich habe nicht all zu große Erwartungen. Noch immer behaupten Leute, es seien Neider, die an allem Schuld waren, oder die Uni, die nicht genug aufgepasst hat. Wie Neider oder die Uni ursächlich dazu geführt haben, dass die Doktorarbeit ein Plagiat ist, wird aber wohl weiter ein Geheimnis bleiben.

The thesis is done now, of course, but I did some more work on the simulator. Here is a current screenshot:

The basic features haven’t changed much since the first blog post: The simulator executes Lego NXT Bytecode. This results in commands for a very, very simple physics layer, which moves the robot according to them and handles collision detection. It also calculates the values for the various sensors, and feeds those back to the bytecode emulator. At the upper end, there is a sound output and input (for the microphone sensor) layer, and of course a 3D interface, which is not the most graphically advanced, but does its job.

From a technological point of view, there is not a lot truly exciting in there, just a lot of writing code. The entire thing is written in C++, using OpenGL for graphics and OpenAL for sound. For interfacing to the operating system, it uses SDL. The arguably most interesting part is the network support: In this mode, a network layer sits between the emulator and the physics, and transmits all output commands (such as “turn on motor A”) to the server. This then moves the robots and sends the new positions and sensor values back to the clients. Again, not the most advanced implementation of its kind, but for LAN, it works well enough. Finally, there are convenience features, such as the ability to lift the robot, turn it and put it down elsewhere.

The actual thesis is mostly a technical documentation of the code. It turned out to be way too long, but nobody thought this was a problem. In the end, for every corner of the simulator, I can point out how this or that could have been done much better, much more detailed and so on. In the end, though, it is just a tool for school children, and it really does not need to be much more sophisticated. My advisors and the examiners were very pleased with the result, and gave me a grade of 1,0 (the best possible). I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel quite proud of that.

But there’s more

In fact, they liked it so much that they offered me a student job. So since some time, I’m working as programmer for the research group. My main task: Improve the simulator. Apart from some general improvements, there are two major projects.

The simple one is about developing new forms to control and program the real robot, e.g. from mobile phones and so on. Since the real robot hasn’t really gotten any cheaper, it would be great if the simulator could be used for those projects as well, so I altered it enough that it can be controlled remotely, instead of executing its own code. Most of the necessary work was already done, thanks to the network mode. The main changes were related to the UI. The projects using this haven’t integrated this yet, so all I can show right now is a small sample Java application to control the simulator.

It’s not pretty, but it’s really just an example, so it will have to do.

The other big project: The simulator has to work on tablets as well, and since the Computer-Supported Learning Research Group (where I work) is the more-or-less official Android institute, this meant porting the simulator to Android. This is still a work in progress, but the basics are all there. As you may know, I’m more familiar with iPhone myself, so it is an interesting experience for sure. I’ll write more about this later. What I can tell you is that this won’t be a glowing recommendation; the Native Development Kit, which you need to write C++ apps in the Java-centric Android world, is still rather raw.

In the interest of fairness, and mainly to test multitouch even without the hardware (the Android phone above belongs to the research group, not me), I also have a fully functional iPhone port. If you paid close attention, you may have noticed that neither the iPhone 3GS nor the HTC Desire are tablets, so to speak. Sadly, neither the research group’s Android tablets nor my own iPad 2 are here yet. The phones are quite suitable to test how well the program works on the particular operating system, though. Larger screens are not much of an issue after that.

Finally: Yes, there are plans to release the simulator to the public, as Open Source. When and how exactly is not yet fixed, but I’ll post here on this blog and on Twitter once it’s up and running.