by looking at this fact
> to hell for some games you needed even your brain!
"a simcity for every child" along with "a laptop for every child" makes a lot sense

screenshots?
how far i am?

mostly it looks still like pioneer, it is pioneer it's only named "Phoenix" from now on
(for several reasons it's a phoenix resurrected from the ashes and i always liked "phoenix" the shoot 'em up)

but if you like i can post some new shots for those who are new and have no idea what gernötli is doing and how he is related to pioneer
for the latter ask pinback or geraldine

in advance if you feel the models look very basic, yes they do and this is bound to the Lua Models Resource which had ben removed from pioneer a couple of years ago.
but to me no pioneer without the LMR it's one of the main differences for me to other space sims and there are many.

scriping models has limitations, mostly by the length of the script, in a CAD to build a model and use up easy a 10'000 vertices (vectors) for a few shapes.
in a script you have to define these vectors first by typing them in the script and 10'000 i never used, but therefore countless polygons.
with a software it's easy to create shapes and you can perform a lot of "magic", for the LMR you have to invent the "magic" first.
with a software it's easy to animate a object (while exporting the animation is still a problem, and bound to the chosen model system).
in a script no such "matrix animations" which results follow a given translate/rotation matrix are possible,
you have to "dream" the animation first ad then find the right way to make it possible, but there are limitations,
one is that you can't correct data, a moder CAD will do this for you and it's easy to setup a rigged outlayer or a conrod
while like i stated it's not as easy to export such properly, helpers like constraints won't be present in the exported mesh, thus you need a "clever" export script,
clever means simple, one which exactly writes the matrix as you see it in the CAD, nothing more and nothing less.
internally CAD's don't work with a matrix it's pretty much the same as i script, translate and rotate, only that a CAD will ahve the possibility to
make joints by clamping on a certain vertice or calculates correctional data on the fly for things like a conrod.
this i can't with a script on the fly or not.

the used collada (if that is still used for pioneer) model system is very similar to a script, at least for the animations and that's the reason why you can't have a conrod in collada
because you can't export it how you builded it to collada and the result is unpredictable.
collada is ment i repest myself i know, for web presentations and not to create models for a game, point
collada animations can always be reolved, means if you get a collada model you can load it to the CAD and everything appears like it should the animation is the same as it was
for the original model with exception of constrains and correctional data
collada supports only one animation channel, well that's fine for a presentation, but for a game?
we have dirctx meshes
it's old yes, but these guys thought of the future and it's made especially for games and nothing else
you can animate as much as you like in a x mesh, it's not lmited to one channel even if most game engines use only one channel
it's not limited to simple translate and rotational stuff, they are matrix animations and if one likes it or not they have advantages
x meshes can even reproduce skinned animations it was "promised" but then...
they chose collada which can't perform any of this
the only lack of a dx mesh is it can't be resolved
if you load it to a CAD the animation is rubbish and the parts are depending on how they was centered centered to their origin which is often 0,0,0
thats'the weak point of dx meshes they aren't exchangeable
collada is exchangeable but limited the same as a scripted model, even more because in a script i decide how many animation channels i need for a specific model.
you can se this easy if you examne a collada, it's build up like a script and the animations are translate from vector to vector or rotate so and so radiants in so and so time.
but i can't deform a mesh (which i can in a script) and i can't influence this simple animation channel even if i know where i had to put the correctional data,
in a script this is only bound to the limits of my imagination.

for collada you have to know almost as much about geometry as for a script, for dx meshs you won't have to know this.
e.g. that a conrod will only work if at least two shankels of the triangle which it forms have the same length.
like it would work mechanically, in reality for i.e. a steam powered locomotive you cant "shrink" the conrod or correct the wheels position,
if the conrod is designed wrong either the conrod or the wheel will break (i suspect the conrod or "pleuel" like we say in german).

it's a small difference...
a small difference?
well a landing gear moving in a rotational movement out of it's recess looks stupid, what drives this? usually pistons what means a conrod.
i a CAD it's rather easy to let the conrod follow the rotational movement thus it looks like the conrod would drive the wheel or rig even if it's for the model vice versa.
the rig or the wheel slippes the conrod after itself and the conrod had to be clamped to a given position.
a small difference with a quite big effect.
if i can't have conrods i can't animate such, not even close to it and this is the limitation which frustrates me most avout collada
(apart from "signal lost" eh it's a active format and really not ment for games, but therefore the Mac displays the model in the thumbnail (or signal lost if it fails to open it)
and you can use collada in a PDF or a HTML and that's what it's ment for, to present mainly architecture or technical parts in the web or in a pdf.
and yes exactly for the technical parts the "true animation" is needed you know this part you see will work in reality as it works in collada, because collada works like real mechanics)
but for a game if i can't script the model then at least i like to have all i can do in my CAD and not beeing limted to true mechanics, apart from the fact that the CAD will calculate
correctional data on the fly and unnoticed by you, thus you won't know if it works finally in collada as you ment it.

that was a quite long reasoning, but well for those who wonder what this means and why i started "Sputnik"
and why the models i will post here look very basic.

nothing really nothing fits as well as a random generated name 😉

lookathat (which is even randomly the name the name of the single outdoor planet in recent achernar )
though
looakthat! (and a name used in a old sci-fi story for a huge mountain, lookathat)

LOOKATHAT!
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first the funny name i didn't do anything els as to buy one ship, no change of registration or hack
"FRESH SAUCER"
well a fresh saucer that's what it is ven if it isn't a saucer but by the means of flying saucer it is one, more or less
a fresh saucer.

but do you notice what i really like to show?
>! it's the different lighting of the scenery, we have here a blue giant and a dwarf star, usually in pioneer everything under a dwarf star or a red sun is glowing red,
>! i even wondered why everything is so flat and you couldn't see the terrain.
>! i always disliked it, it's not natural and shading needs more refining of course.
>! i simply snooped in the respective script and "siehe da" (lookathat!) "add star color to objects emmissive color" comment "a bit odd"
>! if it's odd why using it? i changed it to the right thing "add star color to objects diffuse color" and "lookathat" probelem solved no more glowing red planets
>! no more structure of the terrain isn't to see, proper shading for buildings and planet.no more "i feel the scattered light is to strong".
>! directive light and the feel of shade where no lighting should be is proper.

intentionally i liked to start with this shot, but after i noticed the unique name of the above ship i had to post it first
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as one can se it's still labelled "Pioneer", like i said i only liked to see if the remnants a scrambled will still work.

it's evening on "lookathat", but i guess one can see the proper shading nonetheless (because the terrain isn't glowing)
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a very typical Ladybug, this is how we started out
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anyones got a idea what "False Devastation" means?
i really love my "legal names" you never now what will be the result and mostly it produces a smile.
"falsche verwüstung" interesting, a wrong devastation...
besides there woud be a lot of devastations false and proper ones good and bad light and heavy dark and bright or well even a fresh devastation
because of this it rarely fails.

besides for this release not a single "solid" mesh is allowed
everything is based on scripts and if anyone likes to contribute to "Phoenix" he will have to mess with the LMR.
of course still this would be possible since it's alpha32 it supports all formats we used "pure" scripted models, models using wavefront obj and put together with the script
or collada or dx meshes latter are badly supported by pioneer even if it would be the right format for a game like pioneer.

the decicion was collada and i will never understand this - not in a hundred years.
but if one likes to transport rocks in a ferrari or tries to challange a ferrari with a pickup then it's the right format.

it's imho the same as you would try hard as you can to display a dx mesh in a HTML script.
it's the wrong format for the job.
a construction worker as a surgeon is pretty the same.

i tryas hard as i can to make the model scripting easier with countless helper functions,
to rotate a gear in easy way with rotation helpers, the "gear_rot" will rotate a model by parameters for you
to call finished landing gear sub-models, all of the recent ships use them
to help you with setting up materials from a materials table, because mostly you will use the same settings
to make the scripting of vectors easier with "mirror x" and "halfways v1, v2" (interpolate vectors, while one could use "vlerp" and a fixed percentage)
with a simple translation helper which translates the model by parameters for you.
with a text autoscale function to scale text to a given space, thus no matter if the station is named "la seur du Dan Ham" or twice as long it will fit to the space.
with finished engine glow materials and ready to use nozzles for the ships.
with station animation helpers to ease the animation of stations
and
and
and there is planned a lot more

also a wide range of ready to use sub-models
the landing gear as i told already, four different ones, one simple front "single wheeled" one rear "quadruple wheeled", one to place under a wing "airplane like",
one simple piston which rakes out of the ship.
my old position lights with a enhancement, they flash now like on a airplane
a pilot (my old scripted one it has to be made new, it uses up to much tris)
two robots or droids to place in stations or whatever one decides to do with them
everything you remember from the past

the landing gear sub-model is something which maks it really a lot easier
and such is what i imagine as a sort of consruction kit, ready to use parts.
it won't look as good as if you create special ones relation of size and texture is given
both i can make somewhat more flexible but it costs ease. then it's a function and you will have to set the parameters for texture and scale.x
scale.x is enough if you can scale x you can fit the model to any dimension together wth the global scale, without to loose functionality of the conrod
or to create accidentially oval wheels.

it's planned and i had to remove the start of the change because of the screenshots i posted

it's besides a good example how the kit will work, ready to use parts which can be scaled and textured different by choice
even texture coordinates i could automate
it' simple a texture has always the size X1 Y1 (or U1 V1, if you like), thus to proper scale a texture to a shape of i.e. 2m x 4m
you simply have to divide 1 with either 2 or 4 and the result s the scale for the texture.
to move the texture to the right place similar can be made it's all just geometry and mathematics.

a example how this work is to find in my "outdoorstations" script, because if i didn't use a textured .obj
i have to set different texture coordinates for the landing pad creation function, this i had to automate and it works well.
that is mainly for my "cheated" floodlight, it's a glowmap which looks like the floodlights would light up the landing pad.
besides glowmaps are a good helper for such tricks, i used once the "local lighting" function for the cockpit lighting
but it's far better and the result is almost the same if i use a glowmap, better even because i can exactly decide how it should look like,
what will be lit up and what is in the shade.

![]( "")

"just geometry and mathematics" if my old teacher would hear this i guess he gets a heart attack, he knew that i'm not bad in it
but i didn't believed him.
and now gernötli is using geometry his most hatet subject in school nearly daily.

but well i also thought "if there comes a time i need this i still can learn it"

"Für Fragen und Vorschläge bitte diesen Briefkasten benutzen"

Hi Gernot,

What is the shading change you made for planets?
I want to make sure that we're not doing something strange in Pioneer too.

in words
"i simply snooped in the respective script and "add star color to objects emmissive color" comment "a bit odd"
i changed it to "add star color to objects diffuse color".
the result is hat the terrain isn't glowing anymore exept for the lava shading which is declared seperately
i can't tell if that is still present in the recent build(s), since i recenty can't run anything above alpha31

the change is in geosphere_terrain.frag

``#else // NUM_LIGHTS > 0 -- unlit rendering - stars
//emission is used to boost colour of stars, which is a bit odd Q:if it's odd why not use material.diffuse?
gl_FragColor = material.diffuse + vertexColor; //instead of diffuse, emission was used
``#endif

matter of choice maybe?
but i felt always the since some release that the terrain and surface objects lost depth and i guess it was this change

it results in a quite good directve light from ore then one lightsource but keeps the things in shade which should stay in shade
the only thing is still feel the whole scenery is to dark, probably (but not only, the glowing has no effect on the ships) because of this change
but i certainly will find the powerswitch.

some oldies

![]( "")

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in pioneer ships don't land on antigrav pads, since this won't happen ever.

of course enyone can see it's a XF MKI
but nut much would had to made this ship is still present in many variations in my archive,
the adding of the landing gear was quite some work or turned out to be.

the next i had to clutter together i found the script and made a new texture new for it
![]( "")
this will be what you have to mess with in phoenix, i shitty Lander with which you first have to make some very boring and not very profitable
interplanetary cargo runs.
the capacity is quite good and you can carry at least 5 passengers but it has no a hyerdrive or any sort of weapons or defense
it's what i feel a "interplaneary shuttle" is ment for
and if you have no autopilot at start then it's sometimes quite tricky to succeed in a rather simple mission
the specs are low and due to that you need a lot of time and fuel*

following is a brutality
![]( "")
it's a waste of polygons in the scripted variation, but i had to revive this combination of three Landers, for some reason it has the docking nozzles.

even this one i could save
![]( "")
i still have it as a SGM model but it neded quite some luck to find the script, the texture i took from the SGM model.

while i made "Sputnik" i evaluated a own simple method to unify the ship specs

`--THRUST CALCULATOR
thrust = function(grav,tara)
return math.floor(grav * 9806.65 * tara)
end`

this is in front ("00_thrust_calc.lua") of a ll shipspecs and makes it formost easier to know in advance hoe many G's it will be
due to that you reach always beautiful round values.

what" Tara" means i don't have to explain and grav is the desired acceleration in G for a empty ship.
as tara i sum the hulmass and the weich of a ladden fuel tank, that's fair, one could also take the naked ship or the ladden weight
it will result in a different grade of let's say speed (acceleration, but of course it speeds up the game also).
to take the ladden weight is not to recommend because the ships will be very unrealistic when empty
to take only the hull mass will result in a very lame ship when you like to go to the lowest acceptable limit, even when the fuel mass is ony a tenth of the hull mass.
thus i decided to add the fuel tank mass to what is "Tara".
in front of each ship spec i declare also the final scale i used for this ship
the bounding radius multiplied with the scale
and call the above function with my desired values
and that shit works well
you just enter your G's and exactly this will be shown in the games ship roster
the radius i use as factor for the angular thrust, that's maybe not accurate but it works out well

`local scale = 1.2
local radius = 18*scale
--tara = hull_mass + fuel_tank_mass
local tara = 30
local main = thrust(10,tara)
local reverse = thrust(10,tara) --not needed for this ship but to show it
local lateral = thrust(5,tara)

define_ship {
name='Lander',
model='lander',
forward_thrust = main,
reverse_thrust = reverse,
up_thrust = reverse, -- usually lateral
down_thrust = reverse, -- dito
left_thrust = lateral,
right_thrust = lateral,
angular_thrust = lateral*radius,`

whatever system you decide if you keep it in your game it will result in a balanced and easy to control ship setup
since this ship is that weak it's allowed for it to use the same values as for main/reverse thrust for to lift.

nachtrag:

this oldtimer i just had to grab out of a old mod
![]( "")

it was just a bit a puzzle to find out which texture tiles belong to which shape, because i try to take as much as possible from a repository
instead to have for eachship many different, recently it depends on the state of the remnants if i have a combined texture i use this even if it's abit hard
with scripted projections to find the right section, but i have some experience and it could also be planned.
but if i have the right texture tiles ready i won't change that it saves me a lot of work.

Thanks Gernot I'll take a look at the code and see if it makes a difference on ours 🙂

Ok I checked, that change shouldn't produce any difference when there's a star, but it will when there isn't a star.
Basically that comment means that its the end of the section that deals with lighting "#else NUM_LIGHTS > 0" so that code isn't used on planets with a star.

*phew* glad that's the case!
I think it made some sense for the rendering to boost emmisive rather than diffuse because otherwise on star-less planets you'd be able to see the planet clearly, but with emissive it just makes it glow a little bit as though it's lit by (distant) starlight only.

Anyway, good luck with the Pheonix project 🙂

thanks

your'e right, i couldn't see any difference - i could swear... but who knows maybe it was gettin' a little late...or early in the morning.
and if i woud have looked right at the script i should have noticed that.

Hi Gernot! I'm thrilled that you're working on this again.
I just watched Menace from Outer Space. It's not half bad. Well it is actually half bad, which means it's also half good. The special effects were fairly good for television in 1954. I thought that the Orbit Jet spaceship might give you some inspiration.
Damn!
I just tried to upload some screenshots from my hard drive like we used to do and found out I can't anymore. I'll upload them to my Dropbox and post them later.

yes a lot has changed, it's a quite more basic system as before.

therefore to post YT clips it has get easier you have now only to paste the link YT outputs when you press "share".

however, your link pointed to this page

can a dropbox link be used to display a picture?
i just ask bacause i can't use links from my cloud to present a picture, i have to use a link from photobucket or similar
AND
because i'm bored by the adverts in photobucket it starts to annoy me, i accept thet the free access is payed by
advertisers but the popups are a very agressive way and i feel you don't reach your goal with this
because am i interested in someones service or product if he annoys me?
but perhaps they have enough subscribers and just like to get rid of the ballast.

instead to ask such stupid questions, let's try it


ha, it works
but you have to display the graphic in dropbox rightclick on it and select "copy graphics adress", this link will work
if you just select the shortened link dropbox offers you it won't work to display the graphic outside of dropbox.

i hope this is no abuse

because i found i new place where i can stuff my screenshots and whatever without annoying adverts, that's great!

It's later. That TV movie was cobbled together from several episodes of the "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" series. The Orbit Jet is a tail-sitter. You've made those before. It has no retros as far as I could tell. I can't figure out how to show the pictures, but here's some links.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j18lrx3m72rj0sa
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nt29tuec02fmaht
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6k0l7b5zr9exkd4
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnocubx0d3pz4zr
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nczuhqhr3so7u6y
That dark area that looks like a cockpit window is not. The ship has a viewscreen. In this last pic they've landed and are using the viewscreen to spy on some villainy.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/poiphf86nkthfe2

> ha, it works
> but you have to display the graphic in dropbox rightclick on it and select "copy graphics adress", this link will work
> if you just select the shortened link dropbox offers you it won't work to display the graphic outside of dropbox.
>i hope this is no abuse

i was a few minutes to late



certainly i like the tailsitters and yes it would suit a project like phoenix to go retro in design
but i guess to make them really functional the source had to be changed, in principles i guess it's just to define if it's a tailsitter to change the forward axis from Z to Y (or the up axis vice versa) for the camera and the flight system.

i would really appreciate that, it would be a cool option to the modern ships and requires a lot of experience to maneuver such a vessel even still when "up is up".

certainly i can revive the "atomic 1" or try to build a ship like you showed, but unless such a change either the orientation is wrong and a autopilot won't work (which isn't so bad) plus that you get confused by forward and up
or the ship will be no tailsitter and is oriented horizontally.

i would like a range of tailsitters 🙂
for such it would be worth to redesign the whole game and throw out all what is "modern" only retro design but not only in appearance even though in handling.

sort a 30's to 50's retro design, i can imagine this also well for the architecture, which is another point to work on the source
i have no idea how far pioneer is with such, however you know it's a "must" to separate between hostile and outdoor worlds
for the architecture and the stations, that's also why i used for sputnik mostly existing old because this has to be made before i start to build any more buildings and types like we had i miss even since long, the cities are to less orderly and if you enable i.e. something exclusive like a church you get 50 churches in return. and still i have the idea ready to build a city from city tiles
similar like in old FE2/FFE, it would for outdoor worlds result in better cities, while for hostile worlds and moons a scattered appearance fits well if the buildings won't be common unsealed outdoor architecture. here and there something which rakes out of the terrain is reasonable for a city on a moon the most will be under the surface. it is usually not funny when it's night on a hostile world (it's damned dark then) and at daytime you need really beefy welding goggles.

the paragon is there, it's called Frontier and simple or not it solves this problem well (hostile / outdoor architecture).

a space battle with tailsitters and no reverse thrust and very low lateral thrust, i wonder how such a jousting will work out.
certainly not like in the movies
it will be extremly difficult to hit at all i guess, but it will be the same for the opponent, point on the enemy and fire
both can't move much just like two overarmed horses and their knights.
and don't forget to dodge out
else you end as space debris

Abuse? Not at all! Thanks for the lesson. 😀 How's this for an alien building? It's from the same movie.

Marcel
these viewscreens from the past was magical devices, you could watch on them every scene, every place, from every desired angle and all this without to use something like a drone.
and it presented always the important things to watch at the right time.
just like ming who watches every desired angle of his worlds to control his people, when you look at a control room just for something common like a city tunnel, you realise soon that it's impossible for a human to watch all simultaneous. and that's just a single object not 100 or just one world to control.

looks like i have to watch the movie hm? i have enough time why not.
because i don't know which alien building, yes but you know the lmr don't expect to much.

but right yesterday i "dreamed" of architecture, it moves me since a while also for FFED3D, i should do more for it in the next time also to learn from it in detail how the cities are constructed.

of course i know "how", but not what could be i.e. a useful tagging to group buildings.

of course FFE and FE2 had a advantage due to far less powerful machines and of shading was not to think of, thus the terrain is like we had in a unshaded pioneer and you won't notice if a building (set) doesn't stands on the ground if you don't rough land close to it.
the physical terrain and the displayed aren't the same exactly and a city is leveled by the station if one side is underground and the other 50m above doesn't matters.

we can't have such in on a shaded terrain and buildings or building tiles have to be levelled to the terrain
or and i feel it's the only real option, the terrain must be flattened to create a acceptable outdoor worlds city
for hostile worlds i see this different, they even don't need such tiles because you won't have parks or landmarks except a
"gee that's a ugly antenna".
it start's already to get to a problem for FFED3D because the terrain is shaded and you see the differences unlike in the original.
i can live with this for FFED3D because these are the conditions for this game, i can't and neither i would change them.

i realy thought already to do the vice versa for FFED3D and instead to work with the city tiles to remove them, just to see how that will look, the arrangement of the buildings will be the same, just there won't be no streets or such, but neither it will be that obvious that they probably stand 50m above the surface. also the different shading is a problem, the tiles are flat but the terrain is not and even when i remove the specularity from them they will be shaded different as the surrounding terrain. streets i could use from the tiles, while on the other hand sometimes they don't fit to the buildings and some buildings might stand in the middle of the road.
the tiles are designed intelligent this i have to say and however you rotate them or arrange them they always fit near to seamless to each other. of course neither that's a big thing in principles you just have to determine first where the connecting

but yes, "alien building" sounds good.
what i see for phoenix are rather simple buildings, made of primitives and basta, things like the domes on hostile worlds in FE2,
a couple of them and a couple of antennas plus a entry to a underground starport will look most reasonable.
if that starport could be build instead to use a single design is to think about.

because if you would build it systematical it could range from a single landing pad/hangar to a large station, "city" in the way a city is build won't exist, it would be like a web of buildings.

and instead to use the seed to scatter the buildings over the landscape it would make far more sense to use it to construct such a station which will look different on near to each hostile world, conditions have to be respected, temparature is not the only thing to respect, and i know it would be possible, also to tell which range of atmosphere is acceptable for a outdoor world not to have outdoor cities in a argon atmosphere, hardly i can imagine to walk around there without a pressure suit and my needed oxygen.
not everything must be respected it's acceptable i.e. if this outdoorworld has a gravity of 5G or more and a respective high airpressure even if that neither would be a condition to live in or even if that is a vulcanic world as long as there is some oxygene. halfways reasonable would be already a great thing.

instead to scatter it randomly to struct it respecting the conditions we know we will find by the meaning of same numbers draw always the same number.

though from my ward a couple of cylinders can look more "alien" as what i can imagine in my wildest dreams.

"alien" depends anyway on what sort of alien you expect and we haven't real alien races in pioneer, it's to think about hidden artefacts this i think could be a great anker to build missions around.

what could we expect? some rejected the idea at all and decided to leave it up to the imagination of the rerader / viewer.
will they look like a trees stump with a dish helmet like head and rather fragile limbs which stick out of the stump by need?
or will it be a reptile?
i guess both will have their very specific architecture and we can only speculate what is pleasing for a reptile not to talk about living stubs.

the last novel from heinlein i've read featured "living stubs" as creatures from mars.
it's i guess i told it already, a different sci-fi, no space battles and such, but i guess the story would work fine for these days.
because it's about a actor and you won't like his personality, he stinks he thinks he's the best and just not enough honored for his outraking talent. he completely dislikes aliens, he has no real reason for this but he hates them, he thinks they smell ugly and have no manners (it might remind us of something). due to circumstances he "falls into the hands" of a couple of space pilots, traders, people whichs daily work is to make a little profit with interplanetary cargo runs. their interest is to have good contacts to whatever race, they don't mind about race as long as they can make a little profit. they formed a political movement even though true space pilots hate politics, but things in their world have changed and ppl look suspective at alien races. our protagonist is exactly such a common human which hates aliens but he didn't even know why.
how the story goes on and i alrerady suspected it, he had to pick a very special role and play the double for the leader of this movement, he disliked the job (the actor) but also he is a man of truth and deal is deal, i have to make it. he ends up in space where didn't liked to end up, he visited mars and the imperator (which is a human and complete different as one expects). he had to play the role of his life and mind washed (he had to learn in hypnose every detail of his role) or not he starts to think different about what is alien.

in the beginning i thought it's a bit a lame story, but when i closed the book, i had to say brillant way to transport the message.
you first dislike the protagonist
then you start to understand his point of view, you accept that he's a opportunist and that he has his reasons for this to be.
then he has to change his point of view because he learned it is wrong.
and that one as soon as he feels he is responsible for his friends because he made for the first time real friends will start to think different. people who really respected him not only applauded and threw a few dollars in his hat, who would give their life to protect him because they need his special talent to reach their goal.

he disliked it completely that a software has selected him and a second one, the fact that it was a stupid machine and the fact that this machine was that presumptuous to select even a second one who should be as good as him.
neither he felt that this will be a role to play, "i'm no lookalike, that's a idiots job".
but, who knows this machine seems to be very clever 😉 because exactly the fact that he has a challenger or just the idea that there could be one as good as him has moved him finally to make the contract with the space pilots, and of course the need of bread.
obvious that this challanger never existed and was a just a catalyst which was used by the the clever space pilot.
when in space he even realised this and he wasn't pleased to be fooled that easy, by a space pilot (you have to see them as something common humans don't like and don't respect much, the typical rough space pilot we know from old sci-fi, doesn't talks much, acts first asks later etc. one would say uneducated or at least uncultivated, but cultivated enough to respect the different races like his own)
"shit, now i'm in space, i dind't wanted to be here, never, but i have to make the best out of the situation".

it points a light on what is culture and how to treat different races and this i like much, i like how this message is transported by the way of a protagonist who's character you dislike, instead to take one you will like from the beginning on.
you learn to review your point of view while he learns to review his.

there is more which amused or amazed me,
it's for me the oldest novel in which something like a light sabre is used.
easy possible that it had been "invented" before, but it's a novel from the 40's i guess and this makes it quite early for this weapon.
also and obviously it's less a weapon as it is a piece of evidence for honorabilty, that someone who carries such a weapon isn't a common beeing. it's a, how else, alien invention by the marsians the ugly smelling stubs in this story.
i think it's worth to look at the society heinlein draws for them and the reason behind.
we learned they are stubs and that's what they are, a sort of plants. they have no sex to reprodeuce themself like our nature works.
their nature only reproduces through subsidiary i guess is the right term. the "families" as far as this is the right term are better described as breeds, they are all of the same "blood", genes in other words, due to the fact that they are subsidiaries. it's queationable if such would work, a evolution without splitting and mutation, but we let this aside it's about society not about evolution. this special nature needs a special culture that such breeds can live together without to have continous racial wars. in the story this was the case for the marsians for many centuries and they found a probate way to manage this and this is by a very stiff codex. everything must be done after this codex only this grants them peace. now we come to this culture and we start to trade with them and have our very own culture which is based on individualism - which is extremely different to their which is to them approved by centuries (interesting parallels no?).

and of course you find as less alien friendly marsians as you find alien friendly humans.
nonetheless the imagined leader of these space farers has this honor to wear such a weapon because due to his steady effort in understanding between the cultures which a true marsian who knows why the codex is so stiff must honor.
this "redneck" managed it to get "brother" of a honorable marsian ... tribe, brotherhood one must say it's never one, one is many of them.
and due to circumstances this "redneck" squeezed out the brain of one of the subsidiaries of exactly his "brother breed".
and still he knows that they will be friends, how can this be?
they might have the same genes, they are not just "the same blood", subsidiaries, nonetheless each subsidiary has his own personality has lived his own live and must not think and feel the same as another subsidiary.
and that's the thought of the protagonist and the thought of the reader,
"what greatness it needs to leave aside that he is me and was murdered by a human, but i can see that it was needed and that my subsidiary had the wrong goals".
that this subsidiary not only injured a ancient codex, that this codex is to respect even for alien lifeforms and is to weight higher as the life of my own subsidiary (me).

we have a different codex and it includes individualism or to tell it right individualism we believe is the key to a society in peace if "...we give us following constitution".

and this "constitution" is to weight higher as my own life (and it stands in no relation to a value of gold or gems) and it values for all "thinking beings", if that sounds pathetic of me or not.

now (caugh), that's why i think the story fits so well to 2017.

however you like to write the story a true space farer knows how to decide or for what he has to fight.
and yes certainly he likes to make profit that's his job, but not every price he must be willing to pay for this.
and what i even liked in relation to 2017, these space traders hate trading laws, it's not to their profit. it hinders trading if this and that law hinders me in trading a good, and it's not because this good would be illegal, because someone takes profit out of the situation that it is ballasted with high import taxes. if that is good for a society is questionable.

"That was a real horrotrip Flash"
"Mungo is only fantasy Dale, but what happens on Earth is reality"

"architecture"
another sort of architecture i changed for phoenix and i guess it's a good change, i have only one "handwritten" system in the game, sol, the rest is generated, sometimes "forced generated" if i like to force to have a inhabited system but never scripted.
"i would like if every system would be procedural generated, but you have the possibility to script one"
well i like it even generated.
the 100 and one factions i left but i reduced them to tiny kingdoms of 1 to a handful of systems, equal to the systems you find in frontier which are treatened special, communistic, dictatorships, plutocratic, all this sort of societies is limited to these generated factions with a high chance for illegal goods of all sorts even textiles 😉 "it's forbidden in our kingdom to wear any clothes", due to that some rich idiot will pay a high price to wear socks in his cellar. therefore you won't find these political systems in any of the established factions, i guess already this changes a lot for a future gameplay. recently a political faction hasn't a homogene appearance means recently in such a tiny faction even if all systems are plutocratic the list of illigal goods varies and i think it shouldn't or not that much, it's a dictatorship of whatever sort and certainly the laws will be the same in such a small faction.
there is no if and when in a dictatorship neither a eventually.
also i recognized that i changed back then the default system or independent faction, it has no homeworld usually, but due to that you find independent systems through the whole galaxy, that's far to much. the whole galaxy inhabitet by humans in 1000 years?
never! you can define "sol" even as homeworld for the independant, which would be a fact, pioneer is inhabited by humans and they come all from earth. recently pioneer "don't likes that" and toggles in the systemmap between federation and independant but it stays a federated system. but i guess such is to fix, it's far better if the default faction has a limit besides from that it is more reasonable. and i'm sure it can be done in a better way as to give this faction a homeworld resp. the same as for the federation.
strangewisely, no obviously if you give the independant another system as sol as homeworld they will suppress the federation and all other because of their high grow rate which is reasonable resp. needed for this faction.
but if it's the same system the default stays in background and doesn't competes with the other factions.
default is in the recent case only independant and disorder as political system, therefore disorder is limited to independant systems.
to me that is very reasonable, all other systems which belong to a faction of any sort will have a order, the order of the faction they belong to. exclusions are ok, but exclusions are exclusions and not the usus and still can be scripted resp. invoked.

I'm running Firefox with uBlock and NoScript so I don't see the ads on Dropbox. Maybe I'm cheating them, but it improves the experience. I called that building "alien" because it was built by the people of Fornax, an inhabited moon of Jupiter that's full of ~~Dilithium~~ crystals. They look just like us, but they might be blue or green. It's hard to tell in B/W. It's as silly as it sounds but not quite as silly as Flash Gordon.