User:Zeracles
G'day there. I hang around here and on the forums (PNF/SCDB and UQMF) chatting about Star Control, its community and occasionally doing stuff for the projects that good folks have started around the place. Star Control II is one of the first games I ever played, and if you're a Star Control fan too, I hope to see you around. Although I haven't done much work here for a while, I'm interested in helping to make things better and clarifying what can be improved in the main body of articles on this wiki.
In real life I have an interest in astrophysics and some experience (in order of decreasing competence) with matlab/octave, python and C. Although I'm not much of a gamer, I also like Doom, StarCraft and cricket. I can be reached via my talk page, or by PM on one of the forums. Cheers!
Current Projects
History of the Star Control Fan Universe
Some speak of the internet as a collective intelligence, with its denizens as the neurons, etc. And every intelligence needs a memory. Of course the threads are still in the forum archives, but left like that, it isn't very well organised, and is effectively forgotten because it's not easy to find stuff. While some of what happens on the forums is mostly there for currency, some of it is worth remembering, and I think it would be good to make those threads easily accessible to any who may find them useful. It's a big job and I'm really just getting started. If you have some input I'm happy to hear it.
Miscellany for Dragon's SC1 Remake
This is some procedurally generated art, and starmaps I worked on for Dragon's SC1 remake. Death 999 contributed part of the link-generating algorithm that I have demonstrated and implemented in both matlab/octave and C.
Project 6014
Like many others, I'm doing a little on this sequel mod for UQM. I'm working on concept, dialogue and whatever else time permits for a species new to 6014's plot. This project has unfortunately descended into mediocrity and infighting.
Projects On Ice
I don't really have a lot of time for Star Controlling, which stops me from doing stuff and it sucks. I don't have time for these projects right now.
Planet Landing Risk-Reward Formula
PsiPhi first mentioned this idea in 2005 (not that I was around, or even knew the ultronomicon existed at the time), and in october 2007 got us working on it here. This is an excellent idea, but as he said back then, it's ambitious. We (PsiPhi, Fyzixfighter, Valaggar and yours truly) have been discussing it since, and many interesting and challenging issues have come up. This is one of those problems which I think gets more interesting the harder it gets. From my perspective it's great that some of the things I've learned in research are finding a use in Star Control.
Planet Landing Risk-Reward Formula Discussion
Balancing the Prices of UQM's Ships
This was initiated by Valaggar. Valaggar's implementation is clever, though he acknowledges the input of Elvish Pillager. See here.