Potato is yum

Potato is yum.

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  • Battlebit’s Gameplay

    So now that we know the devs aren’t dead or something I guess I could actually say what I think about the philosophy behind battlebit as a game. When the game initially released it was hailed as the “battlefield killer”. Well, that aged poorly didn’t it. Battlefield six was incredibly successful and I think the gameplay of battlebit and BF6 kind of align.

    The new updates to battlebit attempt to polish the sound and visual clarity of the game. This is something battlefield somehow does incredibly well with the little triangle marking enemies at times where they are obviously marked. BF6 somehow does an incredible job at this spotting and makes the game much easier for a casual to play. I’m used to big combined arms games like planetside and appreciated the ease of spotting in planetside. However, planetside is an old game with many other issues that make much of the good things it does irrelevant.

    The snappy gunplay in battlebit was something I really liked and was mildly disappointed to see it slowed down in the playtest. I felt like I had to track ahead of my opponents to get kills and it felt clunky and slow. Looking at the comments, this is likely a result of the server lag and memory leak but I hope the devs consider going back to the more fast paced formula that worked in the original release of the game.

    One of the other things I feel is missing is the existence of any amount of cohesive squadplay. I know that battlebit has roots in milsim gaming and I feel like a beacon system similar the planetside might help with improving the cohesivness of squads instead of everyone just balling up on a point and using squadmates as spawn points.

    Some of my favorite memories in planetside were made in a squad of twelve dudes inside of triple fighting off an entire platoon of 48. The benefits of skilled cohesive squadplay in planetside were well established but not necessary to have fun and for every hour of sweating in triple was an hour of turning my brain off and following the zerg. I’ve seen people hate on the milsim roots of battlebit but I kind of want to see a bit more of it. Maybe in one of the playtests. Who knows.

  • A Few Hundred Words Of A Guy Who Really Hates SFM

    At this point I’m going to have to make this a weekly thing because this software is actually making me so mad that I might end up writing a whole hate post every week just for source film maker. So basically I started doing my project yet again and as expected I get a memory crash and have to figure out a way to shorten the recorded segment which I end up managing to do. Once I record the shortened segment I go playback and realize a bunch of textures are missing. Well, alright.

    So, I exit the program and try to reload the save since that’s how I almost always fix the textures and then it memory crashes yet again for a second time. Whew okay this is still within acceptable levels of jank. It is SFM. I rerecord the segment I want and start to playback and for some reason one of the bones is frozen. The lighting is all doubled. The sounds are screwed up? Okay. That’s weird. So what did I do now. Well apparently I recorded using the wrong view model so the whole thing is just off.

    That one is on me I guess. Still though, mildly aggravating. I redo my recording for the 3rd time and finally it all appears to be great. Time to export movie. Aaaaaaaand after like three minutes my computer blue screens. What. Why? Ah, something something drivers poop. Ugh. Okay an hour later after figuring out whatever that mess was I somehow managed to get a third of the scene I had planned finished. But now I need to record the other two thirds because I chopped it up to fit within the memory limit.

    Ugh. Pain. Well, it’s not like any other software could do better. I guess you don’t need to make a good product if you just make the best product your consumers can access. I’m so screwed.

  • Webcomic Review Of “Heavenly Demon Wants to Be A Chef”

    So Qi scans is a relatively new site and is the result of a few prominent Chinese translation teams coming together to form one team. Some of the webcomics that they have put up are not formatted correctly and there are a bunch of minor issues with the site even after a few months from when the merger happened. Anyway, I assume not much will change so I’m going to start going through the list since it seems like Qi scans is here to stay.

    I’m not an avid fan of portal fantasy and am generally pretty neutral when it comes to OPMC and the likes. Like all my reviews I’ll put up a warning here for spoilers. You can skip to the next separator if you don’t want any spoilers but there isn’t really much that I’m spoiling so it should be pretty safe to read.

    The premise of the story is that some OP cultivator guy gets transmigrated into a portal fantasy and his only interest is his hobby of cooking horrible monstrosities. The story plays into one of the more typical methods of limiting an OP MC which is the trope where they want to avoid attention for some reason or another. In this webcomic, the reasons behind hiding a pretty well established and the threats are fairly understandable making me feel like the application of this trope is actually surprisingly well executed.

    One of the biggest differences between this story and other action related OPMC stories is that this webcomic has the focus on the cooking rather than the action. The cooking drives the story and the action is almost always an afterthought to what the cooking will be. The amount of information fed to the reader is also done in a manner that prevents becoming overwhelmed and sets a very nice pace for the story.

    While the art is not exactly unique, there is nothing inherently wrong with it and each panel feels like a great deal of care was put into it.

    Overall I’d give this webcomic an 7/10 with 7/10 art. The only issue being the extremely predictable and repetitive nature of the story.

  • Why Do I Like FPS Games?

    I was talking in a discord VC a few weeks ago with some fellow writers and got asked this exact question. And it made me think. “Why?” I mean… for the past like 10 or so years of my life I’ve been playing FPS games. What is it that makes me just want to keep playing them?

    After a little bit of thought I responded to the chat saying, “When I win in an FPS game I feel like I’m in some way superior to my opponent.” And that’s when I realized why I like gaming, why I like reading fantasy stories, why I love mythology, why I love almost all the media that I consume. It stirs up that feeling of being better than the enemy, better than the odds, better than the world.

    I think there is something that makes everyone like this feeling of superiority. This is especially apparent by the rise of OPMC and isekai. From this, I was able to pretty easily figure out why I link RTS games and why I play counterstrike so much. Both of these games give you the feeling that you are in control and the results of the game is because of your own ability meaning that winning against an opponent proves you are in some way superior to that opponent.

    The hilarious thing about this feeling of superiority is that much of the results of these video games I play are up to chance rather than actual ability. When me and another guy see each other in counterstrike it’s more of a 50% chance that me or the other guy wins. But the game is structured in such a way that my brain believes I am better if I win.

    I think it is possible to use this concept in writing but I’m probably not good enough to make a coherent post about it. Maybe I’ll figure it out at some point. If I do I’ll say something about it.

  • Warframe Update Opinions

    This is about the added gameplay not the story.

    Alright, so IDK what they were thinking when they made the new content take at least 4 hours to actually use and then multiple more hours to upgrade but this is kind of insane. Each mission takes around 15 minutes for 15 drops. This means you get about 1 drop per minute and you need to get 450 drops. They start by giving you half of the required drops so you only need to get 225 for your first strike.

    This means you spend at least 225 minutes getting your first strike which is almost 4 hours of grinding the same three missions. Like alright I get it, you can get around it by oh… buying the stuff with the common drops but it takes doing like 3 missions to get enough of the common drops so you may as well just grind it out with the 4 hours because you also need those common drops to build the new weapons for MR right? Oh yeah not to mention you also need to still get focus and crap to upgrade the strike weapons? And did I mention that you only get 1-2 of the new arcanes every run? And like 1-2 of the new mods every run?

    Whew, alright so I get why they made it harder to get the strikes after the first one but it seems like the grind is a little ridiculous. Anyway, I’m gonna grind out all five because I really got nothing better to do with my life. Ugh. Oh and madarai is the best. The bow slaps.

  • My Experience Commissioning My First Cover

    So yeah, you might have seen that I commissioned a cover for my book. I’ll outline the whole process here since I feel like this might be helpful for others who wish to take their first steps towards self publishing. I’ll start this by describing why you should self publish rather than go through a publisher when starting out as an author.

    1. You suck at writing. Chances are, no publisher will want the first book you write. Your best bet is to write a bunch of crap, find something that works, then find a publisher. From my discussions with other authors it seems easier to push crap with self publishing until a publisher comes to you.
    2. It’s not that hard to self publish a book. With websites like royal road it’s easier than ever with such a low barrier for entry there’s almost no loss with self publishing
    3. All the costs of self-publishing are mostly incurred by choice. You can do everything yourself if you can’t afford it. Spending money just means you save your time to work on the stuff that actually matters, the book.

    So my first step was to find a place to search for artists. My choice was vgen because it had a price range that I could afford ($100-500) and guaranteed I would get what I paid for as the site protects both me and the artist meaning I know I won’t get scammed.

    The first thing to note is that you must pay for commercial use which often doubles the cost of a commission easily bringing the minimum cost of a full character cover up to $200 at minimum. The person that drew my cover is on the lower end of the cost range and did some incredible work for the amount I was paying. The general rule of thumb is that you get what you pay for. If you go to higher end websites and pay $1000-$1500 for a cover you’re almost guaranteed to get a much better result than me. Anyway, the first thing to do is make a little reference sheet with the parts of the cover you want.

    The way I did it was using the program Krita and pasting in photos of stuff I hand drew or screen shoted from video games. You can probably tell by looking at my cover that the charge rifle from titanfall is there along with a bullpup rifle and a combat knife. All of these were pulled from screenshots of various game props and assets that I slapped onto an image.

    When trying to think of the armor I gave the artist quite a bit of room to come up with something because I didn’t really know what colors/shapes would look right and figured that an artist would know more about that than me. I feel like handing off control over that aspect really turned out for the better since they drew something I wouldn’t have ever thought of.

    The background is incredibly detailed and honestly blew me away and I basically only gave the 3D model of the Anvil Arrow from star citizen as the base inspiration for it along with the fact that the main character crashed the ship.

    At the end I didn’t share any of my story or anything with the artist because it was slightly difficult to communicate through english which might be the reason why the price was lower than other artists. However, they did an amazing job and we didn’t really need to use much english when diagrams and arrows conveyed my wishes well enough.

  • What Makes Games A Great Medium

    This year in The Game Awards had higher viewership than the super bowl. This is actually kind of crazy when you actually thinking about games as a medium. I find that there is a significant number of people that play games instead of reading.

    So what makes Gaming so good? Reading is a great medium because it allows someone to very easily show the motives of characters without having to use secondary devices such as framing and body language. Because of this, there are many kinds of stories such as schemes and such that simply work better in a book form.

    Movie and video is a great medium because it enables the creators to portray a lot of visual information very fast to the consumer which makes for great action scenes where the throughput of information is of highest importance.

    Podcasts and audiobooks are a great medium because they allow for a creator to entirely focus on one channel of information and often has all the benefits of reading along with additional advantages for sound effects.

    Gaming? It has the unique ability to put the consumer into the world. This is especially apparent in the design philosophy around halflife where something is always happening when you move forward in the game to give the player the feeling like the world is real. This shift in story telling is really interesting when you take the current market into consideration. From what I’ve been getting recommended, I’m seeing much more stories that are written in such a way that the reader can insert themselves into the main character or one of the characters. The reader self-insert has become an increasingly successful genre and this is especially apparent with the rise of gaming.

    The whole point of gaming is to make the player feel like they control a piece of the world because they literally do control a piece of the world. As such, it should be possible to imitate this through other mediums such as through movies and writing. This is actually somewhat done through foreshadowing where the author hints at something happening and the reader predicts how the world will unfold. I think some more evolution can be done to this but I can’t figure it out myself.

    Thanks for reading. I was a little short on time and didn’t hit on everything I wanted. Here’s my plan for next week though:

    • SFM Sucks
    • Media Review
    • Warframe Update Opinons
    • Battle Bit Opinions

  • 50 Words

    I have a lot of bad writing ideas. I’m currently writing this book yeah? But it’s not my first idea nor did I think of the whole world in one sitting. In fact, it’s probably a stitched together mess of five years of changing tons of stuff about it. The whole world is actually based off a D&D campaign I did a few years back mixed with some stuff I did on a minecraft server 7 years ago mixed with stuff from my favorite games and movies. So yeah, ideas. I get a lot of them. And guess what? Most of my ideas are garbage. So I figured out this pretty easy way to see if an idea is good or not.

    Fifty words to tell a story using the idea. Fifty words is pretty easy to throw together in about five minutes tops and can give a pretty decent idea on the value of an idea. If an idea looks good I’ll throw it into the mixing pot and if it looks bad it gets lost in my forgetful memory. If an idea takes more than fifty words to write up, it’s probably too big to fit into any of my current projects. If an idea can’t fill up fifty words it’s probably not interesting enough for me to actually care enough about it.

    Sometimes I run into a big idea that is just too big to pass up and this is when I use fifty words to try and narrow down the scope of the idea down to something that works. Slimming down really big ideas is extremely useful as it can turn something clumsy and difficult to use into something really interesting.

    Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend fifty words for everyone. That’s just the number I found works for me. It could be more or less for others. Likely it would take more words. I’ve heard numbers like 200 or 250 thrown around in some places. But for me, I stick with 50 because my time is just that limited.

  • My Review Of Crimson Reset

    So Asura recently added a new webcomic titled Crimson Reset to their collection. It’s pretty great for action. Let me break down why I see a good future for this. Warning for spoilers though the story is fairly predictable so I won’t be spoiling much.

    We need to start with the idea behind the story being incredibly cool. The story is pretty obviously an OPMC story. We start with the main character getting killed by some strong church thing. This scene establishes the “enemy” and the power of the enemy in a fairly quick manner giving the reader a very easy way to become invested in the story since there are many successful stories that are about some character trying to escape from a church. This makes the story relatively easy to predict but with a twist that the main character is some kind of special vampire since he had the ability to regress in time so obviously we’re not reading about a normal vampire.

    This gives two major interesting points that makes me interested in continuing to read the story which is to see how this vampire survives the world and who this vampire even is. From here, the story begins to show us how our MC will survive in the world through half lies and other mechanics that are introduced to the reader in a rather slick manner. The way the world is breadcrumbed to the reader ensures that there is no info dump but ensures the reader always feels they have an understanding of the motive behind each of the MC’s actions.

    By making the reader feel like they can predict and can understand the MC actions, the events that throw these predictions pull the reader in even more as these events aren’t outside what the reader believes is possible but is something the reader did not ever consider as a possibility. By continuing this, the reader is incentivized to keep reading to figure out what is going to happen.

    This kind of approach that slowly leads the reader on through the story feels like a great strategy for retaining readership and I’ll probably try to integrate some of this breadcrumbing into my story.

    The art is amazing and the translation is surprisingly good this time around. I’ll give it a 7/10. Cool idea, great execution, nothing that new. The story is mostly a mix of excellent aspects of successful stories and is worth checking out.

  • Sneak Peek At My First Chapter

    Chapter 1 – The Right Wavelength 

    Year 3001. Republic Ether Wave Testing Facility No. 3 

    I stood in the long line with all my other classmates. Today marked the first year of the Republic’s establishment and to commemorate this, all members of the Republic were given the opportunity to take a free ether wave test. This was an unprecedented event as the tests often required payment with the new Republic medallions. 

    With the creation of a new currency, it was extremely difficult for the common person to get their hands on any number of medallions. As such, most people couldn’t see their potential. Until now. 

    I have already taken a wavelength test in my house. Because my grandfather is a so-called war hero or whatever. Not that I’ve ever seen him do anything remotely war-like. I winced as light pierced my eyes through the huge open ceiling with pillars on the side that held up the massive pane of glass that covered the testing facility. Whoever designed this, they must’ve been a genius. Where were we again? Oh! 

    Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a familiar face.  As we passed each other in the winding queue I patted his shirt, “Hey David!” 

    “Oh! Kaiser! I didn’t expect to see you here.” 

    David ducked under the elastic band that was used to create barriers for the line. I looked up at David and asked, “How’d you get sunburned?” 

    “Oh. This? You know the drill. Was welding a new engine together and forgot the body protection.” 

    “Be careful my guy. Skin cancer is not fun.” 

    David laughed, “You know I can’t afford that kinda crap.” 

    I patted his back, “Don’t worry about it man. I got you if you need it.” 

    David chuckled, “Sure. The pad is always open to you.” 

    “When’s the next show?” 

    “Which one?” 

    “The regionals.” 

    “I think it’s in a month.” 

    I smirked, “You think we got this?” 

    “Hell yeah. I’ve just gotta figure out the hydrogen exhaust.” 

    “Hydrogen?” 

    “Why don’t we recycle in another burner?” 

    “The chassis can’t fit that in. It’s like stuffing too many spices in a soup.” 

    “I mean we could just squeeze it in as a retrograde thruster.” 

    David shot me a look, “Let me give you a different analogy. It’s like trying to juggle four different shaped objects at once.” 

    “Oh, the difficulty is the tuning?” 

    “Yeah.” 

    We could slap a computer on it and automate the nozzles and pressure valves. I knew David hated using an AI chip. Still, it was worth a try. 

    “David, why don’t we- “ 

    “No. And you know why I don’t use them.” 

    I nodded, “Yeah. Sorry.” 

    I had no idea why. But it was better to act like I knew. I guess I kinda killed the conversation. Whatever. Let’s ask something light. 

    “How’s the track doing?” 

    David exhaled, “Not so good these days. Ever since the accident people haven’t been coming.” 

    “Is it going to keep running?” 

    “The experts said it was a fluke.” 

    I nodded even though we both knew. It was not a fluke at all. It was expected. Not even the driver’s body could be recovered after that incident. I glanced at the rest of the line; we were nearing the front. 

    “So. Is the track going to be alright?” 

    “Obviously. It’s gotta be fine. My old man is pooling dough to buy it.” 

    “Are you sure?” 

    “If it gets taken, it’s all over. They plan to turn the track into an expansion of the city.” 

    “I can help with some of the costs.” 

    “Thanks man.” 

    I glanced at David, “How much?” 

    “What?” 

    “How much is needed to buy out the track?” 

    “Hey. Thanks for thinking about me.” 

    “Huh?” 

    “We haven’t fallen so low as to rip you off.” 

    “But I hav-”

    “See you later Kaiser. It’s my turn for the test.” 

    I watched as David walked off. There was literally no reason for him to be mad. It was just a little bit of pocket money. 

    “Hey David! Met at the pad Saturday!” 

    He spun around. While walking backwards, he yelled, “Yeah. Sure,” and spun back as he walked towards one of the desks. 

    I sighed and stood at the front of the line. That guy just never seemed to understand that I could help him out. 

    “Next!” 

    I looked at the lady speaking and stood there. 

    “Sir? You’re next.” 

    I looked behind me and realized I was at the front of the line. Damn. That’s embarrassing. I quickly apologized to the woman who was behind me and walked over to the counter. 

    “Sir, can you give me your ID?” 

    I shoved my hand into my pocket and felt around for a few seconds, “Uhh um, give me a second.” 

    Not that pocket. Where did I put my wallet? I know I remembered it. Right? I remember remembering it. Ah. I pulled it out of my left butt pocket. Well. That’s a new place for my wallet to be found in. Huh. 

    “May I see the ID?” 

    “Ah. Sorry.” 

    The lady at the counter handed me back my ID and pointed to a man in a bright orange shirt with the words “Staff” in large black letters and said, “Go ask that man over there where you should go. Here is your ticket for your stasis chamber.” 

    I glanced down at the small paper slip that I had been handed. Better not lose it. I slipped it into my wallet along with my ID. 

    The man led me to an elevator that we took up to the sixth floor which had multiple stasis chambers. Some of them were currently in use. 

    “Insert the slip here.” 

    I shoved my hand into my pocket. Wait. Where did I put it again? 

    The man chuckled, “You put it in your wallet. Now put it in here and lie down in the stasis chamber.” 

    After inserting the slip into the empty chamber, I asked the man, “So what will this tester feel like?” 

    “Ah, this is a new version that uses brain imaging and stimulation. It’s much better than older methods.” 

    “So, what will happen?” 

    “You’ll fall asleep for a little bit and then wake up when the test is over.” 

    I clicked a button on the side of the chamber after lying down, “Alright.” 

    And then I somehow passed out right as the door of the stasis chamber closed. 

    The district event was always a big event. Some of the best pilots in the state came from our district. It was always fun to watch new pilots race against the established ones. Sometimes, the new pilots would win. 

    This year, one of the more promising young pilots had come to the competition with a corvette that he had built on his own. A custom-made generator tuned to exactly match his preferences. 

    I was impressed. I’ve been working on a corvette with David for the past five years ever since my father returned from the frontline. Mother was still up there on the moon, but Dad told me to ask for any modules I would need. One of my favorite designs is called the Hornet-AR. A combat corvette that had been stripped of weapons and hollowed out for atmospheric racing components to be stuffed inside. 

    When the Hornet-AR arrived on the pad, David and I stared at the craft in awe. We ripped out all the internals to understand how the craft functioned. Through a bit of testing, David and I realized the importance of stability. While very few racers were concerned with stability because they replace almost every module after a race, there were orientations that could cause a module failure while in operation of just a few short seconds. 

    When a corvette rolled up on the inspection pad, I noticed three amplifiers in parallel. In parallel? That’s triple the amplitude. And worse, right after that, there were another three amplifiers in parallel. This couldn’t be right. Nine times the amplitude could rip the generator apart. I watched as more armor plates were removed from the corvette for the inspection and looked up at the specs. 

    Falcon-AR17 engine specs v

    20x Amplitude

    Shift pi/17 ms

    Vert boost +4 e/s

    My eyes widened. 20 times? That’s insane. If you twist the wrong way with the flaps, the whole craft could careen through the air. Surely, the inspector would say something about it. I looked down at the pad. 

    The inspector circled the craft one, two, three, four, five times. Nothing? The inspector looked up at the engineering box and raised his hand. Surely it’s a thumbs down. 

    His fingers curled into a fist as he twisted his wrist and stuck his thumb. Up. What? Wait. No. I glanced over at David and saw he was staring at me. He shook his head. Yup. David noticed it. 

    I quickly entered the organizer’s contact number. 

    Ring. 

    Ring. 

    “This is the director Haribert. What’s the matter Kaiser?” 

    “I just saw a corvette that looks too unstable.” 

    “Too unstable? Which one?” 

    I glanced at the board, “I don’t remember the racer’s ID. It’s the Falcon-AR17.” 

     The director fell silent for a few seconds, “That ship has been checked already.” 

    “Are you sure?” 

    “If that’s all, have a good day. beep” 

    I stared at David. That corvette was going to fly anyway. I brought up the imaging drones. The race was set to start in half an hour. 

    David went down to the pad to attempt to stop the corvette, but it was all for naught. Ten minutes later, I saw the craft roll up on runway three. The track was set through a mountain range that was formerly known as the Rocky Mountains. Participants in the race had to weave between the mountains to complete the track. The track was well known for the intensity of each turn making it especially dangerous. 

    I looked up at the screen as an announcer introduced the other racers, “Five minutes left.” 

    David slid next to me in a video room, “I couldn’t stop it.” 

    “Yeah.” 

    David sighed, “The guy is also using a chip to balance.” 

    “That’s risky.” 

    “For sure.” 

    I glanced over at David and saw a sad look in his eyes. 

    “You aight David?” 

    “It aight. I pity that guy.” 

    “Huh?” 

    “Whoever his engineer is will not get a job after this race.” 

    “Yeah?” 

    “He’s gonna wipe out.” 

    I looked at the crew tightening the armor plates and head shielding to the corvette. The falcon was a very good craft. Hopefully it is stable enough to make it through the race. 

    The corvettes lined up at the back of each runway, three on each runway. Long strips of lights divided the lanes. A loud siren sounded. 

    “Wave one taxi to runway.” 

    Each of the corvettes turned onto the runway and started deploying various thrusters and other gadgets. 

    “Is every pilot ready?” 

    A series of green lights lit up above each runway. 

    “Three. Two. One.” 

    Bang 

    Bright flames burst out the back of each corvette as the engines spun up. For a moment after the light changed to green and the cannon fired, everything seemed frozen in place. The sound of gears slipping past chains made loud audible clinking sounds. A moment later, the line seemed to disappear as the drive chains of the launch gear caught the motors. 

    David and I quickly found the satellite tracking the Falcon. 

    “How fast is he going?” 

    “I dunno. Looks to be about mach two?” 

    “We should hear th—” Boom “-ah.” 

     David tapped my shoulder, “You see the tuning on that thing?” 

    I glanced at the system distribution, “Yeah? What of it?” 

    “You see this?” 

    Two of the bars were slightly oscillating. 

    “It’s just a preprogrammed wave tune.” 

    David shook his head, “Look at this.” 

    He took out a seismograph like-device and let it print out a graph. The graph looked like a normal cosine curve. The other curve looked just like a negative cosine curve. They add up to a net zero. It shouldn’t be an issue. Probably preprogrammed. 

    “Yeah?” 

    David stared at me, “Buddy. It’s not preprogrammed. You see this fuzzy stuff?” 

    Suddenly, I realized. AI Chip. I glanced at the graph, “What’s the chip doing?” 

    “It’s balancing fuel and ignition chamber pressures.” 

    I looked at the fuzzy part of the graph, “With the amplitude, isn’t that really bad?” 

    David looked up, “It’s worse, remember the specs?” 

    “Yeah, pi over seventeen milliseconds with an amp of twenty.” 

    “Look at the phase.” 

    “It’s normal cosine.” 

    David nodded, “Yeah, two pi milliseconds.” 

    I thought for a second. It wasn’t that bad. I didn’t get it, “So?” 

    David’s eyes started darting left and right, “It’s pi over seventeen right?” 

    “Yeah?” 

    “So that’s thirty-four oscillations per millisecond with amp twenty.” 

    “And? It averages to 0.” 

    “Averages to 0 depending on where you start and end.” 

    “Still, it’s not extremely unstable.” 

    “However, thirty-four is an unusual waveform, so the standard one oscillation per millisecond does not break since the harmonic cannot create the pure tone.” 

    My eyes widened, “So you end up with a complex wave.” 

    “That’s outside what I know.” 

    I smiled, “Maybe we’ll learn that stuff in university.” 

    David smirked, “I hope. Anyway, this out of sync AI chip is slowly increasing the amplitude of its corrections.” 

    “Oh. Not that fast though.” 

    David grit his teeth and inhaled, “It’s not linear.” 

    “What?!” 

    “It’s exponential.” 

    That… was not a good thing to hear. I looked at the graph and noticed how the fuzzy peaks and dips seemed to still be controllable. 

    “How long?” 

    “Who knows. It’s an AI chip.” 

    I looked up at the video. He was already pre turning for the upcoming turn. 

    “What will happen when he burns?” 

    “You already know.” 

    Yeah. He’ll wipe out. Blow up into a ball of flames. David and I stared at the screen as the Falcon slowly pushed up to first place. Each lap would take around 10 minutes 

    We watched for the next thirty minutes on the edge of our seats as the Falcon zipped past us three times. I glanced at David, “How’s the oscillation?” 

    “No notable change.” 

    I breathed out a sigh of relief, “Whew, maybe we’ll be alright.” 

    David stared at me, “You know what exponential means right?” 

    “Yeah? It changes quickly?” 

    “Yeah, thirty-four times per millisecond.” 

    “Huh? Oh. Shit.” 

    David nodded, “Yeah, if the base is even one percent, that would be a disastrous approximate forty point two six percent increase.” 

    “Yeah?” 

    “Per millisecond.” 

    “What?” 

    “Yeah, that would get out of control pretty damn fast.” 

    “So, how’s the starting constant?” 

    “Yeah, no. We can’t figure anything like that out with our current equipment.” 

    I rubbed my eyes as I thought back to what the director told me, “Why’d they let them race?” 

    “It’d be a good story.” 

    “The guy dying?” 

    David frowned, “That’d be true. He’s a rookie, you know.” 

    “Ah. So they want to create a new racer for worlds?” 

    “That’s what I’d guess. I dunno.” 

    The Falcon was coming around for the final fourth lap. We heard the announcer yell in the stream, “Corvette Four, Corvette Five, and Corvette Eleven are neck to neck in the last four hundred kilometers of the race!” 

    We looked up to see two Hornet-ARs and a Falcon-AR quickly closing in on the last turn of the track. Suddenly, a blue flame leapt from the back of one of the Hornet-AR; it lurched forward with a burst of speed. 

    “Corvette four has pulled away from the first group with a small micro explosion! This pilot is truly capitalizing on the benefits of a military based racing frame.” 

    David smirked, “That guy messed it up.” 

    I noticed it too. I pointed to the Falcon which trailed behind the Hornet, “It’s free airflow into the engines.” 

    David frowned, “Wait, but altering the air flow…” 

    My eyes widened, “Oh… crap.” 

    The other hornet produced two blinding flashes of light as a pair of nuclear explosions were lit behind the craft, propelling it forward with excess gases. 

    “Corvette Five takes the lead with two well-timed nuclear charges. Corvette eleven seems to be funneling the air flow of Corvette four to build up an explosive finish.” 

    The fifth corvette was created around a kilometer of distance from the other two corvettes. Suddenly, the Falcon seemed to sway upward. 

    “It seems eleven is getting ready to break out.” 

    A bright flash lit up behind the Falcon as five flame trails half the length of the corvette flared up a bright blue. 

    “And eleven has engaged its final hydrogen burn and is quickly catching up to five. We’re only 100 kilometers from the finish line. Will eleven have enough hydrogen?” 

    I glanced over at David, “How is it looking?” 

    “Not good.” 

    “Will they make it?” 

    David tapped his finger on the arm of his chair and hesitated, “Probably.” 

    The Falcon blasted past the last Hornet and darted towards the finish line. Suddenly, a cylindrical piece of metal flew off the back of the corvette while one of the thrusters sputtered to a dead flame. 

    “It looks like one of eleven’s thrusters has melted down. Will his corvette be able to rebalance thrust?” 

    David cursed, “Shit. He’s fucked now.” 

    “What?” 

    David glared at me and said one thing, “AI.” 

    Ah. That’s why. 

    The remaining thruster on the side of the craft that had the failure suddenly flared bright as the craft attempted to overclock the thruster by running excess liquid oxygen into the chamber while adjusting the nozzle. 

    “It looks like eleven has rebalanced his thrust and is still at a higher velocity than the other two contestants! We are nearing thirty kilometers now. Only a matter of seconds away from the end of this race!” 

    A bright flash of light appeared in the thruster that had melted down. I turned to David, “How’s the oscillation?” 

    He glanced at the graph, “It’s in the negative twelfth degree of magnitude higher.” 

    I stared at him. Wait. But that would mean… 

    Boom

    We both watched in horror as the corvette disintegrated into a blast of liquid hydrogen, oxygen, and shredded pieces of incinerated metal traveling through the air at over two times the speed of sound. One second, a corvette was flying, the next a pile of debris was careening through the sky. 

    “No… That can’t be.” 

    David looked down at his paper, “We… We were right.” 

    My hands shook as both I and David stared at each other. We were right. Why? How? 

    I opened my mouth, but nothing seemed to come out. I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was just a theory. How could ether waves actually have an impact on stability? How could an AI chip fail this poorly? How could someone not configure their tuning properly? 

    David’s eyes shook, “It… It wasn’t just theory. It was REAL.” 

    I switched the stream off, “Yeah… Yeah. It was real.” 

    My eyes opened wide as I felt some kind of liquid coming into my nose. cough cough. 

    “What the fuck?” 

    In front of me was a man wearing an orange shirt with the word “Staff” written on it in big block letters. Suddenly, I remembered, “Ah.” 

    The man waved, “Good morning Kaiser. Let’s go see your test results.” 

    This is just a draft and an editing pass for commas and such is still necessary. Hopefully you enjoyed this first chapter and maybe check out the book when it is posted January 4th on Royal Road.