#0038: Demonstration of chess game data featured in Cowboy Bebop anime

2023-04-162023-04-16 Otto

#0038: Demonstration of chess game data featured in Cowboy Bebop anime

Preamble

I have been playing a fair bit of chess recently. I even went so far as to buy and start reading books on the subject. (gasp I know, first “buy”, then “read”. Must be one of those mundane everyday miracles I keep hearing about.) Anyway, as I did: it reminded me of a particular episode of an anime that I absolutely loved watching as a teen. Namely: Cowboy bebop.

Created by a Japanese company called Sunrise Inc. Cowboy Bebop is an anime that is generally highly regarded on the internet to this day (2023). Even though it originally aired in Japan in 1998. 25 years ago. Part of the reason for this in my opinion: is the sheer attention to detail, and artistic care of craft displayed within each episode. Something I will hopefully demonstrate here.

As a show: Cowboy Bebop has primarily an episodic structure. Where each individual episode features a self contained story with a start, middle, and end. That then contiguously fits into a larger narrative that runs across the season. With few exceptions such as the odd multi-episode narrative, or recap episode. The focus of this article is episode 14: Bohemian Rhapsody. A chess themed episode where I found the move-set for a full game of chess.

I wish to display that game here for your viewing pleasure. Please note however that I am no chess expert (as I am barely competent), so I will not comment on the game itself. I just want to feature it here because I think it’s really cool; that an anime would have such attention to detail as to feature things such as a complete game of chess. One that briefly scrolls across the screen for less than a handful of seconds no less. [See video extract below.]

Tools

Since this is not a tutorial piece I will be brief here. I just wish to outline the tools used to make the chess game demonstration GIF image and video extracts below for those interested.

XBoard – to play the game move-set out on, in a Linux based OS
Native Screenshot application of Linux Mint Cinnamon – to take screenshots of XBoard
GIMP – to edit images for the GIF animation
imagemagick – to convert a series of PNG files into a single animated GIF file
VLC – to play videos
Flowblade – to edit and export videos in MP4 format

Episode narrative background

Please note: this is primarily from memory, so I may have some of the details askew.

The cartoon villain of the week featured in this episode is a character by the name of “Chess Master Hex”. A child chess prodigy who whilst working for a large corporation as a researcher helped develop the first hyperspace gates. Gates which allowed space ships to move between planets in our solar system significantly faster and safer than previously available. They quickly became ubiquitous due to the savings on time and general logistics.

Now here’s the wrinkle: there is an unspecified fatal flaw in the gates’ system. One that never got addressed due to corporate interests burying it for the sake of profits. Hex who wanted the project paused until research into the flaw and it’s resultant fix was developed – was removed from the project for protesting it’s rushed go ahead. And then fired. (And likely made to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. You know how it is.) Because of this he then spun a decades long plan of vengeance on the corporation that wronged him.

Now fast forward to the present. Our cast of cowboys (space bounty hunters) are tasked with catching him. This is due to the corporation placing a large bounty on the entity that is coordinating a series of cyber-attacks against their hypergates. Cyber-attacks that involved the use of custom hardware that utilises an (until now) unknown latent vulnerability within the gates’ systems: in order to completely drain the bank accounts of any customer who uses a hyperspace gate’s pay point.

In the process of chasing up on the bounty, our cast manage to independently capture several of the low-level criminals that have been physically installing these systems into the hyperspace gates themselves. The odd thing is that all these people had nothing in common; except for the fact that they all had in their possession a digital chess piece. A King piece, that allowed the holder to play an online game of chess with a player who turned out to be Chess Master Hex himself.

The chess game

During the story a digital chess piece is scanned. It’s data is displayed on the scanner’s VDU. The contents of which are two different chess games’ moves-sets. Games played between a player named “Deep Blue” and Hex himself. The actual name “Deep Blue” is a reference to a real world notable chess super computer. That is contemporary to the anime’s time (1998). Note: I assume above that the first game was also played by Deep Blue. However, unfortunately half of the first game’s move-set (and metadata) was cut-off. So really only one and a half games’ data is revealed to us. With only the latter game’s data being revealed in it’s entirety on screen.

Now, being the curious cat that I am: I decided to actually play out the second game. The one I could see the complete move-set for. See below. The interesting thing learned here is that they are in fact real chess moves. Not just some random gobbledygook, as I feared it might be. All the moves depicted a valid game of chess, with none of the pieces making any illegal moves.

Well … There is one exception however. On White turn 18, a Rook makes an illegal move from it’s starting position of f1 to e7. (“Rfe7”.) I made the logical inference that it was merely a typo, since it was the only illegal move in the entire move-set up to this point. And since the numbers 1 and 7 typographically look alike: I substituted the legal move of “Rfe1” for it. This amended move resulted in the rest of game, including follow-up moves for that same rook piece being valid. Bravo.

One last little tidbit on this game: when it mentioned Deep Blue I was curious as to whether or not the game featured in the anime itself was famous. I.e. did they copy verbatim one of Deep blue’s games. (ctrl-c ctrl-v style.) And upon a cursory (Wikipedia) search it does not seem to be the case. I compared it to the games that made Deep Blue famous. The notable games where it had won against Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and it didn’t match any of the six games that they had together in 1996, as well as the six rematch games of 1997. I compared all the games with a 1-0 result as is here. First the one’s where Kasparov wins 1-0, assuming him to be a substitute for Hex. Then I chose to include the one’s were Deep Blue wins 1-0 just for the sake completeness. To no avail.

Wikipedia summary of games between Deep Blue and Kasparov

Chess data-set compiled screenshots

Original compiled screenshot

Error corrected compiled screenshot

Screenshots of first camera shots of scanner displaying chess data

Video extract of scanner displaying chess data

Chess game demonstration

Chess game demonstration stills

Chess game demonstration animation

Radical Edward and Chess Master Hex playing chess using electronic chessboards

What’s the point of this section? I just think that this is cool is all. It illustrates the use of a holographic electronic chess board with public network access. I also love the aesthetics of retro-futuristic tech in general, as well as scrap-tech; and this touches on both. Now look at the screenshot of Edward (possibly?) holding in the ratty network plug into the electronic chessboard’s socket with her foot. It’s surprisingly relatable. (Or maybe I am just projecting.)

I initially wanted to plot the move-set for this game out as well, and do another animation for it too. Since the pieces look to be in consistent positions between shots. (Operative word: “look”.) However I found the process to be too much work for the payoff. The various dynamic camera shots of the chess boards (“boards” plural!) depicting the moves of their respective pieces quickly became disorientating.

My chronically sleep depraved brain soon threw it’s metaphysical hands up in frustrated surrender. Stuff it! The straw that broke the camel’s back as it were, is the shot (@ 00:49) of Hex placing a white queen, despite playing black! I just wasn’t willing to error correct, in addition to wrestling a coherent game out of those hectic camera shots. Still… I may comeback to it one day, if I fancy the challenge. Unlikely.

Moving on. Now look at the startup animation for Edward’s electronic chessboard. Did you notice the spelling error? Nice little bit of ‘Engurish’ there. It made me smile anyway. I mean the 90’s were a golden age for top-shelf Engurish in general. And thankfully Cowboy Bebop is no exception. Unfortunately the English dub is of such high quality that I have had no need to watch the Japanese original audio version, so I have likely missed out on some peak spoken Engurish as a consequence. What a genuine shame.

Aggregated screenshots of chess game

Video compilation of chess game

Sorry about the audio syncing issues in this vid. All settings are good, yet Flowblade (repeatedly) renders the video with de-synced audio. I am not sure why. :/ I am not going to chase it up right now because it isn’t really important. (And not worth the delay.) The visuals are what I am primarily demoing here.

Closing thoughts

The funny thing is that I don’t even really watch much anime anymore. However like I said earlier: I have had my interest sparked in playing chess as of late. I’ve been playing it at work using smartphone apps (like lichess.org or chess.com) as well as using a physical set against my work colleges. And while I was playing I was suddenly reminded of Cowboy Bebop’s chess episode. Specifically the scene with the junky scanner displaying the chess data lopsided on a monochrome green CRT monitor. And the idea suddenly occurred to me: “I wonder what that game actually looks like”. And that’s how this write-up came to be. I hope it has entertained you if nothing else.

Thank you for reading.

Acronyms used

CRT – Cathode Ray Tube
GIF – Graphics Interchange File
GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program
GNU – GNU’s Not Unix! (recursive acronym)
PNG – Portable Network Graphic
VDU – Visual Display Unit

Links, references, and further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cowboy_Bebop_episodes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engrish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_operating_system
https://imagemagick.org/Usage/
https://www.gimp.org/
https://linuxmint.com/
https://jliljebl.github.io/flowblade/
https://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
https://www.lichess.org
https://www.chess.com
https://www.rd.com/article/what-does-gif-stand-for/

#0037: Tip for securing a cabled USB type-A plug and socket together

2023-02-26 Otto

#0037: Tip for securing a cabled USB type-A plug and socket together

Preamble

This is a quick budget tip for securing a cabled USB type-A male and female plug and socket together. This technique could probably be extrapolated for use with other plug types. However I have yet to do so.

Tip for securing a USB type-A male and female plug and socket together

Now onto the tip. Simply put, I use an elastic band to hook the two plugs together. That’s it. Done. Thank you for reading…

Still here? Okay, now onto the part where we explore in excessive detail such a simple concept. One so simple you probably have immediately intuited the basic theory of operation. If not then here it is. Basically, the elastic band applies a pulling pressure that keeps the plug and socket engaged. This is especially useful when you have an otherwise loose connection, typically caused by issues such as weak retention springs within the female socket. Something that seems common to USB extension cables in my opinion. At least the ones I have encountered.

Method of application

I like to start by using a basic cow hitch to lasso one of the plugs. This is done by folding the band into a loop and simply inserting a plug into this loop. Then tightening it around the plug’s plastic shoulders. That’s a basic cow hitch.

Now, with the other side of the elastic band wind it around the plastic shoulders of the second plug a couple of times until the elastic is reasonably taught. Then insert the male into the female plug. And done. The band should now exert force that will keep pulling them together.

Elastic band application demonstration video

Best practices

For best results, I recommend using a reasonably strong elastic band. I also recommend only wrapping it around the plug’s plastic enclosure itself, and not involving their respective cables. This is so that no force is applied to the cables themselves. Force which may aid in the development of faults such as repetitive flex damage, or a kink in the cable. Additionally when the band is secured on the plug body it focuses and directionalises the force in a way that better pulls the cable ends together.

An attentive reader may notice that in one of my example images, the one with the beige elastic. The upper band loop is a little bit too high up, and sits on the plastic wire strain relief itself, rather than the plastic plug body. What can I say? Do as I say, not as I do. 😉 Its really not a huge deal either way. Securing the loop on the plug body is just what I consider best practice.

Why not use adhesive tape instead?

Alternatively to using elastic bands, you may think: why not use tape to adhere the two ends together? Briefly put, tape is messy – it leaves glue residue when removed, it’s too permanent or hard to remove, and probably most importantly: it doesn’t put pressure on the plugs to keep them together. So as time passes the plug could slowly but steadily slip out of it’s respective socket. Due to things like vibration, gravity, or general handling.

Closing thoughts and my use-case summary

In my particular use-case, I use elastic bands like these to keep the USB extension cables attached to my 4 Watt USB lights and their switches. The weak retention springs within the female USB sockets on the extension cables allow any plugs inserted into them to eventually slip out.

I used to use electrical tape to manage this but, as time went on the tape lost it’s adherence. Yet left a mess of melted glue residue. After this I switched to using duct tape, but it was too strong, and too difficult to easily remove when I wanted to. Hence the bands. Third time the charm it seems.

So far, just common garden variety elastic bands seem to work best for me in this application. Whatever you can find is fine. Funny thing is, I didn’t even buy them. I just collected the ones that my mail man keeps dropping around my door.

All in all. This is an example of a zero budget application of junk that has gained value via use. At least I found it to be so. Anyway, I hope this article is of use to you. At the very least I hope I can raise a little awareness of the genuine potential uses of random household miscellanea. And that it may assist you in exploring alternative DIY solutions to purchasing one’s way out of any given problem. I know I have been guilty of that.

Thank you for reading.

#0036: Introduction of a website changelog

2022-03-31 Otto

#0036: Introduction of a website changelog

Preamble

I initially launched this website in 2020-02, with nothing but the default wordpress “coming soon” page to show for itself. Then after some months (2020-06) I finally managed to get round to actually publishing content onto it. And ever since then, I have been in a continual (albeit sporadic and intermittent) process of revision and iterative improvement.

So after about a year and a half of having this website online and functioning as intended: I now see the potential need for a master changelog here. A public facing log that will record all notable changes made to the website.

Utility of a public facing website changelog

Although this changelog will record all noteworthy changes made to the website as a whole. I specifically see the utility of this website changelog, with regards to noting changes made to the content of this blog’s articles themselves; rather than the website at large.

What I mean by this, is that it is more important to note post publication changes made to the content of articles. Than it is noting change in the wider website as a whole. This is because most changes made to the wider website outside of the articles hosted here will likely be concerned with aesthetics. Such as an addition/subtraction of a decorative graphic.

Simply put: they are less substantially important changes in terms of affecting the value proposition of the website itself. Although I do intend to note these types of things as well. At least for the most part. Although very minor website changes of this kind are unlikely to be noted.

That being said: I should restate the main function of this changelog. It is to note changes made to article content. This is because this blog’s articles (or blog posts) is where it’s primary (or most substantive) value is as a website. I.e. the primary reason a person may visit this site is to read the articles. This logging will allow readers to avoid confusion when/if they visit an article that they have already read, only to find that the content has to some degree changed within the interim.

My M.O. regarding editing published articles

Once an article has completed the development process and is finally published, I tend to have a habit of coming back to tweak and change things after the fact. This tends to happen some time time after the article is published when I have had sufficient time to rest and cool off on the topic. At this point I am usually more fresh minded, and hence I am more apt to find better methods to get my point across, as well as to spot any residual errors previously missed.

I am of the mind that I should also chronicle these changes as I make them. This is in order to avoid a sense of revisionist history. One caused by the absolute erasure of any mistakes such as: erroneous calculations, half-witted conclusions, or simple misinformation. I admit I am prone to getting it wrong a lot of the time. Especially when it comes to speculations made with limited observations, or ones unfortunately coloured with personal biases.

With that in mind, I should take a moment to state clearly the nature of this website in order to eliminate any misunderstandings or confusion as to the nature of this publication. As the name should suggest; this website is literally “a tinkerer’s blog”. The articles held therein are presented not as an authoritative source of information, but rather my (and only my) best understanding of any particular subject at the time. Complete with grammatical mistakes, spelling arrows, personal experience, and biases; as well as good ol’fashioned human ignorance and incompetence.

Although I (think I) do my due diligence in researching for articles; as well as re-reading my work several times over before publishing. This is in order to (give myself the opportunity to) catch any and all errors that I can. Unfortunately, often at that time: my mind can become exhausted with the subject matter, and would rather move onto to something else. Anything else! (Maybe even a refreshing punch to the testicles.) Add to that time pressures such as work and scheduled commitments. Well. They all add up; pushing me to hit the publish button perhaps earlier than I otherwise should.

Hence in an article’s final proofreading and finishing edits stage – I tend to find myself skimming sentences; or simply unconsciously mentally correcting the text grammatically and/or semantically. I.e. I knew what I meant by what I wrote, although I left the text in a state where it’s messaging is either ambiguous, nonsensical, and/or open to multiple unintended interpretations. Often I miss mistakes because of this and only really find them after I had some time to ‘cool off’ on the subject, as it were.

So that’s what normally happens with any given article. Post publish edits and refinements seem like a standard protocol for me. I even have a small to-do list regarding edits I need to make to past articles.

For example: my review of the video game “Princess Remedy: In a world of hurt”, has no critic of the game’s soundtrack. I somehow just completely forgot to mention it at all. I just blotted the concept of it out of my mind at the time of writing. So at this point: I intend to go back and insert this into it at a later date.

The thing is: I don’t like the idea of this additional content to suddenly one day appear within that article apropos of nothing, and masquerade like it has always been there from the beginning. I’ll leave that revisionist M.O. to the articles on political/activists news websites.

Hence, I need some way to communicate across to the audience that it is an add-on edit. In the past I solely used what I call an “update tag”. I’d insert a set of square brackets featuring the date before the add-on segment. Basically this: “[UPDATE: 2022-0X-XX] The music is …”. In the future I think I will use either the changelog alone to note smaller changes, and both the changelog as well as an in-article update tag for larger updates. Such as an entire additional segment to an article.

RSS

Just as an aside: if for whatever reason you want the raw undoctored initial publications. Free of my post publish meddling that is. Then please subscribe to my RSS feed. As it sends you the articles as they are published, and doesn’t update the content after that initial data transfer.

To do this, copy the below link into your RSS aggregator of choice:
https://www.tinkerersblog.net/rss

Closing thoughts

Although as stated the main reason for a changelog is for logging post publication article edits, it will also be good for keeping track of more general activity around the website. Things such as when new manual scans are added, or which pages have been recently edited. It’ll give the readership insight into where my attention regarding the website has been recently. Allowing them a sense of the frequency and general trajectory of my activities here. Which would be useful / hold value to anyone interested. (If there really is anyone interested … that is.)

I think it’ll add real utilitarian value to the website. But we’ll see exactly how much once it is actually implemented, and had some time to operate. Theoretically there is no reason as to why a website shouldn’t have a changelog. I mean it is a software product with ongoing development just like any other. However, I do wonder why so few other websites actually do have a public facing changelog.

It could be something as simple as a public changelog not truly being a necessity. Or it could be the fact that it would bring a level of perhaps unwanted transparency to their website. I mean it’s hard to simply vanish things, if you have a policy of documenting changes. I guess you could just not document the vanishing of the undesirable content, but still document the more mundane changes made. Although that does undermine the utility of the tool.

If I were pushed to give an answer: I’d say that most people just don’t want the work of it. For example: with for-profit websites tending to streamline their overheads (i.e. cut costs wherever they can), coupled with the continual communication and co-ordination between multiple levels of staff required for implementing and routinely updating a changelog: they most likely wouldn’t want to bother with one. Especially since there is little in the way of returns in terms of profit for the work necessary.

Even single owner general hobbyist websites probably wouldn’t bother with one either. As the single operator likely focuses their efforts on documenting their actual hobby activities. Rather than developing the website itself. I’d imagine that this is especially true in cases where the subject of their hobby or activity is unrelated to technology.

So unlike with this website, there’d be no on-topic value to discussing website development as a subject. Such as a website documenting: a homestead, hobby farm, painting miniatures, religious education, or bodybuilding to name a few. Basically any website where discussing the website itself is unrelated to the core subjects of the website… Website.

That’s all really. Changelog incoming. (Actually its already here, this article is a month late. :D)
Thank you for reading.

Term Glossary

RSS – Really Simple Syndication
M.O. – Modus Operandi (mode of operation)

Links, references, and further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changelog

Personal Blog: Entry 2021-12-31

2021-12-312022-01-01 Otto

Personal Blog: Entry 2021-12-31

Introduction

Good grief. Its already the end of the year. The last day in fact.
Since this is the last couple of hours given to me of this year 2021, I figured that I might as well put something out. Something to inform you as to what I have been up to, and what you can expect from me in the future. Hopefully my more personal ramblings will still provide some entertainment value if nothing else. Obviously I will limit the subjects to those relevant to this website’s remit.

Time limitations and prioritisation

Ok. Where to begin. Well, it has been sometime since I last released an article. Nearly two months in fact. And what’s more, the last article I released wasn’t even all that interesting if I am honest. It just involved repairing a knife for a friend, and a rather shallow inspection of it’s mechanism.

So what have I been doing in the meantime, eh? Well it’s multifaceted. I have been doing a lot of things. Mostly working a new job and collecting money – so that I can hopefully have enough to move on to the next chapter of my life within 2022. (I will talk more about that at a later date.) Add to that all of life’s other important obligations. The kind that tire a person out. Mentally and physically.

That being said: I still made some time for tinkering with crap and writing about it. Unfortunately none of my various completed drafts have passed my personal threshold of quality *pause for laughter* in time to meet the self-imposed obligation of publishing at least one good article a month.

Projects currently worked on:

Device repairs and analysises

I have been working on several things including: a repair and device analysis article on an incandescent handheld torch, as well as a device analysis on an old nightlight and bicycle lights. Add to that an update on the tap cartridge article – where I replace the old cartridge as the temporary repair discussed in the first article has now since failed, and I don’t feel like redoing it again to buy a little more time. Within this article, I go through the process of measuring a cartridge using a caliper and noting all the most relevant dimensions for identifying and then purchasing the correct model replacement part.

Moving on, I also have some product reviews in the works; as well as various other repairs, refurbishments, and modifications. And since arguably the best times to shop for a good bargain is in November / early December: I have been purchasing a lot of tools and equipment in “spares and repairs” conditions. Ones’ whose repairs I have been / will continue to document.

I find myself now sitting on a veritable dragon’s hoard of broken electronic crap. Including everything from power-tools such as angle grinders and cordless drills, to useful devices such as uninterruptible power supplies, projectors, radios of several different stripes, as well as a sewing machine and a typewriter. All at rock bottom prices. And providing that I can repair them economically, all of these items will become a major boon once fixed: as they will assist me in future endeavours.

Theoretical subjects

Add to that the fact that I have several different drafts of a more philosophical nature or that deal with a theoretical subject in the works. Articles for example that discuss the economical aspects to repair and why it is difficult to maintain a profitable business repairing consumer electronics. As well as article that discuss subjects such as: methodical troubleshooting, true/perceived obsolescence, the nature of consumerism, and the dis/advantages of multi-tools such as smartphones.

Funny thing. Initially I started writing the more philosophical articles as a way to either whine about something that irks me, or as a way to create what I perceived as easy content. All I have to do is make a coffee and sit down and write. Right? Well no, this is because as I started writing on any subject of this nature – where ideas are explored: I become acutely aware of the gaps in my knowledge base. However often with no easy or sign-posted path to fill those gaps. Just an uneasy feeling of helplessness as one grasps at nothing in the darkness.

This is why these article are the ones least likely to get published. As I don’t want to advertise my ignorance, and doing some of these subjects justice requires writing a formal essay. With structured research and citations. And once you reach that point, it is no longer easy content now is it. Easier to just fish a used smart-dildo out of the dumpster, wash the shit off, then crack it open and throw a schematic up on here. I could probably complete that project within a single productive afternoon. And be less likely to embarrass myself in the process.

Project updates: Remote PI

I also have not forgotten the fact that I want to get back into making video games. Its just that operating as a solo developer is a heavy burden. It really is. And adding it to everything thing else that is going on – well I just haven’t had the time to put work into it as I should.

However, having said that. I am still chipping away at it. Right now I am playing around with creating pixel art. This skill will be relevant to the game. You might have spotted some of my work on this site. The Warhammer 40k Ork on the main page, or the Pokemon Magnemite on the “post index” page.

I even have heaps more that are unpublished. Including a bunch of pixel art icons and sprites that I intend to use in the role-playing tabletop game Shadowrun. I will use them to make decking (i.e. hacking) more compelling and attractive. By using the pixel art icons as visual indicators of networks, devices, as well as virtual entities such as AI sprites, ICs, and other deckers. Basically to add a visual flair to the game and give it some flavour.

So, even if I am not directly working on the game by creating assets for it. I am still developing a skillset relevant and conducive to the production of Remote PI. Its the main reason why I am creating pixel art. These other products are a side effect of that.

Software projects

I have several other software based projects that are currently ongoing, other than Remote PI. These include, creating a HTML wrapper, or converting my old Flash games so that they can be played here online. Alternatively, I may just make them downloadable. Either by bundling a portable Flash player with the .SWF files or by finding their original project files and recompiling them into an executable binary using the Adobe Air library.

I am also working on smaller HTML programs that I want to incorporate into this website itself. Such as an analogue clock widget, like the one in the Windows Vista sidebar; or a quote of the day program. Fun little things that add flavour to site like mine – albeit mostly by cluttering it up.

Closing statements

Broadly speaking, I think that I have achieve my stated goal with this first post. You now know what I have been up to this last month or so, and what I will be generally posting in the future. Although I haven’t mentioned every little thing, I think I got the big ones out of the way.

Having said that, going forward I will need to create a better daily routine for myself. One where I can have both the time and mental energy to work on these project more. As they are important to me, believe it or not.

This website enables me to look back on my work and experience it again. It enables me to put something useful and good into the world that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Even if I am the only one who reads this. Documenting things here is at least therapeutic. And I think that I will continue to do so.

If I did new years resolutions – which I don’t because they are for weak people, as they are usually used to give these people an excuse to procrastinate important life changes by delaying them until an arbitrary time period. At which point they half-heartedly promise themselves the opportunity to change, only to inevitably fail and resume their previous life habits. But don’t worry dear reader, there’s always next new year. Imma rite?

Anyway what was I saying before I started preaching like a clergyman? Oh yeah. New year’s rez.

Find a good daily/weekly routine that enables me to have the time (and mental energy) to work more on my projects. This includes cutting out bad time, where I am tired and instead of sleeping. I veg out in front of the computer. That’s probably one of the most cut and dry changes I can make to improve my productivity, as sleep restores brain plasticity.

Anyway. Thank you for reading, and happy new year.

#0035: repair and analysis of a talon style folding lock knife

2021-11-03 Otto

#0035: repair and analysis of a talon style folding lock knife

Preamble

I was recently given this folding lock knife to fix for someone. The internal mechanisms of which I found mildly interesting, so I figured it would be worth the time to document it. It may also prove useful for future reference incase I come across something similar.

Initial observations

The first thing that I noticed whilst examining this unit is the unusual blade shape. This is a talon type blade. It is a single edged, crescent shaped blade that curves forwards and terminates in a single point. It’s crescent shape, coupled with the blade edge being on the inner concave curve: give it both a visual as well as function resemblance to the talons of birds of prey. The blade is designed to roughly function in the same way: to pierce and then to hook. This shape of blade can easily convert slashing motions into pierces, due to the blade tip being the leading contact point.

The blade description above may lead you to think that the pictured example knife is a deadly weapon. And that would be the case, at least if not for my second immediate observation. Which is that this knife is a mass produced (I assume) chinese special tacticool toy knife.

It is rather cheaply made, and only really aesthetically resembles the weapon that it is aping. This pictured knife is just a box cutter. That is also it’s literal function currently. Its what the knife’s owner, who is a warehouse operative uses it for. It is also the only thing that it can be used for in my opinion.

Faults

The main thing that was wrong with this unit is that it was not maintained properly. The owner did not tighten the various torx screws on this thing as they worked themselves loose. This led to various joints and mechanisms developing too much play in them. This then resulted in the blade being seated at a crooked angle. Which in turn allowed the blade tip to scratch the handle as it was retracted into it.

Additionally due to the owner’s negligence: some of the various screws that loosened over time, fell out entirely and were consequently lost. This is rather unfortunate, because these fittings consisted of a paired torx screw and socket nut; that where sized to fit flush into the recesses of the handle plates. The socket nut especially is rather annoying to replace. Requiring a specific purchase as it is rather uncommon, and wouldn’t likely be present in any of my bins of miscellaneous salvaged hardware.

The blade itself also has an issue. The main one being that it is made from a miscellaneous soft junk metal; and the second one is that it was currently dull. So it required a basic sharpening, in order to make this knife operable. At least for the relatively short time period that the blade’s soft metal can maintain a serviceable edge.

Parts list

A complete version of this locking knife consists of several discrete components:

1 x camouflage painted outer metal knife handle plate (left)
1 x camouflage painted outer metal knife handle plate (right)
1 x black painted metal inner frame with spring compartment insert gap
1 x black painted metal inner frame with blade locking wedge
1 x black painted metal finger guard with box cutter point
1 x grey painted talon style blade
1 x metal spring
1 x metal spring compartment
2 x plastic washers
4 x smaller black painted metal hex screw and blind nut set
1 x larger black painted metal hex screw and blind nut set
1 x black painted metal trouser clip
3 x black painted hex screws for the trouser clip

Tools and materials

Tools:

Round edge metal file
Knife sharpener rod
Torx screwdrivers (T7, T9)
Tweezers

Materials:

plumber’s grease (or equivalent)

Repair

There really isn’t much to say on the repair itself, as its pretty straight forward. I disassembled then reassembled the knife; fixing everything dodgy about it as I went.

Actions:

Completed knife disassembly.
Bent the blade locking wedge on the inner frame so that it stops the blade from folding closed more reliably.
Greased the blade’s damaged plastic washers to help prevent future wear.
Bent the blade spring’s hook into a right angle in order to get a better hold on the blade.
Re-greased the blade spring within the spring compartment due to presence of dry grease here.
Re-tightened all the screws and socket nuts that keep the housing together.
Added a stand-in replacement for a missing screw and socket nut pair that consists of two screws and a salvaged threaded brass insert nut.
Added a plastic screw and nut to help hold frame. I chose plastic so that I could cut down the screw and round off the nut easily so that it doesn’t snag the user’s hand.
Performed a basic sharpening on the blade using a metal file, then honed the edge using a knife sharpening rod.

The actual repair itself is hardly anything to be proud of. It wasn’t a hard repair and didn’t even take long. However this knife has been saved from going into the rubbish bin, for at least another couple of months, and that should be the main take home. This thing is ready for work again; and should stay that way for quite a while.

Before and After video demo

Before

After

Recommended modifications

1) Grinding the blade edge and sharpening.

The knife blade could use a proper grinding and sharpening: if it to be used for anything more involved than opening boxes. I recommend grinding the blade down so that the angle of the blade edge slopes smoothly up to the mid-ridge. That way the blade can have more acutely angled edge.

This will consequently make the blade sharper than it currently is. A smaller angle will also remain sharper for longer whilst in use, due to the relative thinness of the new blade edge. Even as it dulls. Although the blade will also likely become more brittle and likely to snap as a consequence of the severe loss of material this newly angled edge will require.

2) Installing a blade backstop.

A blade backstop will stop the blade from over-rotating when it is extended. It will also prevent the blade from wobbling when extended by sandwiching it between the backstop and the blade locking wedge.

This knife likely already had a blade backstop of sorts, as it already has the screw holes where on could be mounted. However it was probably lost during use. As it is the blade overextends backwards when it comes in contact with any material that resists it.

3) Thread locker on the screws.

Thread locker such as “Locktite 243” when applied to screws prevents them from slowly working themselves loose during operation, due to factors such as vibration. This will extend the lifespan of this knife when applied to the screws that hold the frames together, as it will mean that they will (largely) no longer need to be checked and re-tightened at intervals.

And since we have already established that this knife’s owner is averse to maintaining his equipment: the lower the level of maintenance this knife needs, will be proportional to the extension of it’s operational lifespan. I.e. it will last as long as it lasts, if the thread locker can keep it together for longer, than it will last a little longer as a consequence.

4) Installation of additional retaining bolts.

I think that installing a few additional bolts and nuts to keep the frame together would greatly increase the overall structural strength of this folding knife. As it would share the strain of keeping the unit together amongst more points. This would allow this knife to be used in applications that require more force.

Although one has to be careful not to drill and install any bolts within the blades seating area within the knife handle housing, or within it’s pathway. Common sense right?

Post mod roles

As it is this knife tool is weak and too dull for any real work beyond cutting the tape off of cardboard boxes. however I theorise that if the above mods are made, then one would end up with a stronger, sharper, and more stable tool.

This would then allow the tool to used in a broader array of applications. For example light wood working, or bush craft applications. A talon style blade is good in both of those applications. The sharp hooked point is good for carving detail into wood. The concave blade is good for gripping and working with rounded objects like natural woods (sticks and branches). For example: for sharpening sticks, or for feathering wood to create tinder. It is also good for harvesting (in this case smaller) plants; as the concave blade helps bundle the stems together when cutting. Like a miniature sickle.

I could go on but I hope you get the point. The issue here is not with the knife’s design, it is with it’s flawed construction. If that could be remedied (or at least alleviated), then this knife could actually become a useful tool. It just requires work to get there.

Closing thoughts

Honestly, I actually rather dislike these types of low-cost low-quality mass produced items. This knife for example: it’s low-cost promotes replacement rather than repair: as it can very quickly make many repairs in it’s owner’s eye deemed as uneconomical. And that is assuming that the owner has a mend-and-make-do mentality to begin with. Most contemporary consumers do not. They have a use and replace mentality.

The main reason why a person may want to repair these things in my mind: is either philosophical (i.e. environmental conscientiousness, fiscal responsibility, anti-consumerist sentiments, etcetera); emotional sentimentality (e.g. hand-me-down from a relative); or if they are in severe financial strife and literally can’t afford to replace a £3.99 work knife.

Now look at it’s cheap build and materials. This factor exacerbates the issue above. Chiefly because it lowers the tools operational lifespan. This is the time it is in use, before it somehow breaks on it’s owner. Hence sooner putting them in a position to make the call on whether or not to either repair or replace the tool.

I do consider a knife like this to have been built with planned obsolescence in mind. Even though the term is hardly used for mechanical hand tools like knives; as it is usually reserved for electronic or computer products.

However, consider this: if the user does no maintenance on this knife. Then there are only so many operational hours that it is capable of before completely falling apart, or at the very least becoming inoperable. It’s shoddy build quality purposefully limits this simple hand tools lifespan. And when it is over, the user is expected to then purchase another one. That is a form of planned obsolescence.

I hate preaching, but please consider not buying this kind of shite. There are better alternatives available. Such as buying second hand quality tools. I always advise that people do the requisite research first. Then spend what they can afford in order to get the best value tools that they can, for their specific use case.

I said “Best value”, not most expensive. A chrome-vanadium spanner is a chrome-vanadium spanner at any price. Just because a person pays more for a brand name, doesn’t necessarily mean that their chrome-vanadium spanner is better than the off brand one.

Nowadays, it’s rather likely that they were both made in the same factory from the same material stock. An idea that would be laughable, if it wasn’t also true. Many brands on the market don’t manufacture anything. They purchase orders from the same OEMs then label the products as their own.

*proceeds to mount high horse.

If you absolutely have to purchase at the bottom of the market because you absolutely have no more money to spend. Then spend time instead. Time upgrading, fortifying, and maintaining your tool. This is so that it can last as long as you need it to. Or at the very least extend the time intervals between new purchases.

That being said, it is an unfortunate reality that most people who do mindlessly purchase bottom of the market products like this knife: are either unable; or more commonly, unwilling to invest time in their tools. They are in many cases content to use the shoddy tool in the short time until it breaks. Then purchase another bottom of the market shoddy tool to replace it with. Repeating this loop of short-sighted wasteful false-economy ad infinitum.

*proceeds to dismount high horse.

I feel that I should somewhat qualify my rather negative sentiments against these types of bottom market products. In the past I have worked within a small recycling facility, one that primarily serviced my local community on behalf of the local council, as well as the surrounding areas. (The point is that we weren’t shipping it’s garbage in.) I worked there as a materials sorter.

It gave me a certain perspective on the sheer volume of material wastage people engaged in. For a supposedly poor community, the amount of waste of useful materials was astounding. Every night I came across hundreds (not hyperbole) of very useable tools of all kinds. Everything from: screwdrivers, knives, drill bits, and spanners, to pots, pans, skillets, as well as whole bicycles some nights. All of that thrown away for recycling.

Many of these things were in decent conditions. Conditions that required either basic maintenance such as: sharpening, some hammering, replacing a handle, or realigning, or even a simple old fashioned cleaning. Gasp! Working there made me dislike a lot of these products; as when I now see them new: I think of where they’ll likely end up in less than a years time … In the fucking trash.

I just don’t like companies purposefully making tools/products that have such a short lifespan designed into them. I doubly don’t like it when these same products are purchased, used, and then wastefully discarded, by people whom I have heard a thousand times: claim poverty. But that’s another rant entirely.

Thank you for listening. It really helps.

Term glossary

OEM – Original Equipment Manufacturer

#0034: Repair and analysis of a tap cartridge

2021-10-312021-11-01 Otto

#0034: Repair and analysis of a tap cartridge

Preamble

I recently had to repair a constantly dripping kitchen faucet, and thought that I may as well document it. Especially since I found the construction of the cartridges within the tap to be rather interesting. Although I must say that the title does make me feel a bit silly.

Tools and Materials used

Tools:

crescent wrench / 17mm wrench
nylon spudger / pry tool
phillips screwdriver
soft bristle toothbrush
plastic container
pipette
teaspoon

Materials:

petroleum jelly / plumber’s grease
vinegar
water

Tap cartridge inspection

I’d like to start by examining the water faucet’s cartridges themselves, as this information will be relevant later during the repair. The two pictured cartridges were taken from a quarter turn kitchen tap. This is a tap that only requires the handle to be turned 90 degrees around it’s axis, in order for it to go from a fully shut to a fully open state, and vice versa.

This type of cartridge is designed so that water flows into it from the central hole at it’s bottom inlet. This water then flows up inside it’s shaft, and through the two holes within the first ceramic disc. It is then diverted out through the two radial holes on it’s side via the second ceramic disc. At which point the water has a direct route to the faucet head.

This particular type of cartridge has two ceramic/plastic discs within it, that in conjunction with each other operate as a single water control valve. They do this by establishing a water tight seal between them; a press fit seal that is created by the two discs merely pressing against each other in a way that eliminates any gaps between them.

This seal is demonstrated within the video below, where you can see a suction effect take place between the two discs. This suction helps the two discs adhere to each other when wet. This is only possible due to the absolutely smooth surface of the first disc, coupled with the hollow cups present on the second disc’s contacting surface.

These two ceramic valve discs are both keyed to fit into their brass metal shaft in one particular orientation. This orientation has the bottom disc operate as a fixed or stationary valve. Whose job it is to split the ingressing water into two separate streams. It does this via the two distinct triangular quarter-circle holes within it. This lower disc is keyed to fit into the inner wall of the cartridge’s cylindrical housing in a way that makes it immovable.

Whereas the top disc is keyed into the rotating tap handle cylinder attachment. This allows the tap handle to control the rotation of the upper disc. This upper disc is cut in a way that either blocks the two water channels provided by the bottom disc when closed; or when open: diverts water from the holes of the bottom disc outwards to the radial holes in the cartridge housing. This water is then further diverted up and out of the tap for use.

The reason why it only takes a quarter turn to fully open the water channels of this type of cartridge: is due to the placement of holes and channels within these ceramic discs. The first (bottom) disc has two oppositely placed holes within it. Each taking up approximately a quarter section of the circular valve.

This quartering is then reflected within the top ceramic disc. Which consists of two opposing cupped flat plates, and two opposing angled wedges: which veer off to the radial holes within the brass cartridge housing. And since these channels take up opposing quarters of their discs – it only takes a quarter turn to either align both holes of the bottom plate with the upper disc’s water outlet ramps, which then allows water to pass; or with the flat plates, which then blocks the water at both holes.

Cartridge operation demo video

Valve operation demo video

Suction effect demo video

Dripping fault Analysis

Dripping fault cause theory

The fault that causes a dripping tap can be due to a number of different factors. Probably the most straight forward scenario includes water simply making it’s way around the rubber o-rings and/or water gasket. This could happen if the rubbers have gotten old or heat damaged, and started contracting or cracking as a result. Alternatively, they could’ve been disturbed or are otherwise not seated correctly in order to form an effective water barrier.

This means that whatever water does manage to get around these seals can then bypass the cartridge altogether and shortcut it’s way to the faucet head. The severity of the leak in this case would be directly proportionate to the ineffectiveness of the rubbers to seal out water.

Another issue could be within the cartridge itself. With water entering the cartridge and then passing through the cartridge valve by squeezing between the two ceramic disc plates due to an imperfect seal. This pressure fit seal between the two disc plates could be undermined by a number of different factors.

The most likely of which are a build up of limescale on the the ceramic discs themselves. Limescale is a broad term to encompass residual build up of the carbonates present in drinking water; such as calcium and magnesium carbonate. Water rich in minerals like this is often referred to as “hard water”.

Limescale build up on the contact surfaces between the ceramic discs, can cause them to then become uneven as the limescale adheres to them. Specifically the drip issue is caused because the valleys in this now uneven surface provide the water a small pathway across the pressure seal’s threshold when it is closed.

Another issue that could cause the valve to no longer function effectively is scoring of the inter-disc surface. Essentially scratches that then allow some water to pass through their valleys when the valve is closed. A likely cause of this could be something as basic as wear and tear. The two discs grinding each other down over an extended period period of time due to standard use. This happening with just the minor friction created from repeated opening and closing over time, eventually compromising the watertight seal as disc surface material is lost.

Before moving on, I should mention that this section is largely speculation. Basically educated guesses based on my observations during the disassembly. That being said these theories above are the one’s that I went into this repair with.

Dripping fault effect

A continuous drip may initially seem like a minor fault, because it is. However, this fault incurs a waste of resources. A slow but continuous one, that is hard to easily assess. Simply put it wastes water, and probably more than you might expect as well. Just because it only wastes a drop at a time, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t wasting a lot cumulatively. It just makes it difficult to easily see the totality of wastage.

Sampling methodology

Let’s try to get a rough idea of how much water is lost due to this fault. Note that this is not going to be very scientific. It is just a test to get a rough idea of water wastage. With that in mind, there are two discrete pieces of information that are required: 1) is the average water droplet volume; and 2) the number of water drips within a set period of time. In this case the sample time will be 1 minute.

I captured a single drop using a teaspoon. Then sampled it using a random plastic pipette that I had on hand. I repeated this a few times and found the droplets to be rather consistent in volume. Unfortunately, due to the pipette’s lack of precision, I was forced to visually estimate this volume between it’s labelled increments.

Collected observations

This leaky tap consistently provided around 13 drips within any one minute period.
With each drop having a volume of approximately 0.3 ml each.

Water drip rate and predictive volume lost

1 minute: 13 drips @ 3.9 ml
1 hour: 780 drips @ 234 ml
1 day: 18720 drips @ 5616 ml (~5.6 litres)
1 week: 131040 drips @ 39312 ml (~39 litres)
1 month: 524160 drips @ 157248 ml (~157 litres)

Leaking faucet demo videos

Droplet sampling demo video

Leak conclusion

Interesting result. If a household either has a limited water supply (e.g. off-grid), or is on a metered supply where they pay for water by volume; then 157 litres lost in wastage in a single month by a single tap is not insignificant.

I hope this has illustrated how important it is to fix even minor faults such as this as soon as possible. 157 litres of water used could very well cost a metered household more money on the fault’s first month on the household’s monthly water consumption bill, than a complete cartridge replacement for that tap otherwise would have.

Repair process

Getting at the parts

First thing first. Common sense. I switched off the water by closing the main water valve for the house. This was located under the kitchen sink for me. This is an essential step in the same way as one would switch off the electricity before working on an electrical outlet, one needs to turn off the water before working on a water outlet. You’d think that was common sense right? But I have seen too many plumber fail videos online that say otherwise.

After giving the kitchen faucet a once over, and looking online I decided that the tap cartridges are the most likely suspects for the drip, so I set upon getting at them. Since I have never taken a kitchen sink tap apart before, I engaged in what I call an exploratory disassembly. Prodding and poking the device looking for hidden clips and screws.

To cut to the point: I used a nylon spudger to pry open the (metal coloured) plastic screw cover on each tap. I recommend using a plastic pry tool to avoid scratching the finish off of any part of the tap. Next. I unscrewed the phillips metal screws which attached each tap handle to the rotatable cartridge cylinder section below them. After setting aside the tap handles, I then removed the full cartridge assembly from the faucet housing using a wrench. As for disassembling the cartridges themselves, they come apart toolessly in-hand. That’s it. Easy.

Inspection

Like every repair, this one begun with a thorough inspection. A basic visual inspection did not reveal anything obviously wrong with either cartridge to my eyes. However once I disassembled both hot and cold units, I noticed that the internal plastic disc valves on the cold water side felt rough to the touch. Likely indicating a build up of limescale. Most notably this was even apparent on the surfaces between the two valves. And since these two surfaces come together to form the press fit seal that controls water flow: I concluded that this was likely the specific cause to this particular leak.

Limescale build up is nothing unusual for my particular location, as I do live in a heavy water area. However the odd part was that all the limescale build up was on the cold water side cartridge of our kitchen tap. With little to none on the hot water cartridge. This is really unusual in my opinion because I believe that higher temperatures should exacerbate limescale build up. The average water kettle should be a testament to this theory. However in this case the limescale build up was only sufficiently present on the cold water side.

A working theory I have concerns the on demand water heater which directly supplies this tap – a boiler which my household recently (1.5 years) had professionally installed. I believe that it has some-kind of water filter (or softener, or descaler…) that has been fitted to minimize limescale build up within the unit as it heats water. This means that the hot water provided by it to the tap would have less mineral contaminants (i.e. be softer) than the cold side. I would verify this, but it is not a pressing issue and not worth digging the unit out at this moment to confirm.

Cleaning the cartridge

Once I decided that it was limescale that was undermining the valves press-fit seal, I decided to take the already disassembled cartridges and submerged them into a vinegar solution. The idea is that the mild acid of vinegar will react with the alkaline limescale and dissolve it into the liquid solution.

After about an hour, I removed the parts and brushed them all down with a basic toothbrush in order to remove any loosened remaining debris. I did however take care not to scratch or score the plastic valves as any scoring would also undermine their ability to form a watertight seal; as this would allow water would pass through the miniscule divots that would be present on the seal’s contacting surfaces.

With regards to this method, I should note that I made exceptions for the rubber parts of the cartridges. The blue o-rings and red/blue rubber gasket. I just did not feel comfortable submerging them in an acidic solution for extended periods. I feared that it may affect the chemistry of the rubber material and ‘dry’ it out. Thus causing it to crack or split; and consequently be no longer effective as a waterproof seal. (FYI the pictures below are lying.)

Testing

After a quick rinse in tap water I decided to reassemble the cartridges and put them back into service for extended testing. Although the leaking was significantly reduced as it didn’t drip continuously as before: it still dripped regularly. This was tested by leaving an empty cup under the tap head overnight. I’d regularly find the typical coffee cup I used at least half-full come morning.

This lead me to surmise a number of scenarios:

1) That the water was making it in between the the plastic valve seals. Likely due to surface scoring caused by either my cleaning/brushing of the valve discs; or the limescale itself being ground into the discs as they operated over the years.

2) Water is making it’s way around the gaskets and o-rings, in addition to bypassing the valves. And that I have only remedied/alleviated one issue.

Greasing the cartridge components

With these conclusions I decided to then purchase some plumber’s grease. Thinking that it would be perfect for the application of assisting the plastic disc valves and rubber gaskets to form water tight seals. The Ebay listing for it explicitly stated just that.

However once the product arrived, I decided that I wouldn’t be testing it’s efficacy as I decided that it was not fit for use. The reason why: was that the little tin came with a whole host of warnings on it’s label. Warnings typically associated with poisonous chemical products.

Particularly the “Do not eat, drink, or smoke …” around this product warning gave me pause. Especially when coupled with the fact that the very vapours from this thing were an irritant. It emitted a vapour that was a mild irritant to the eyes and nose, smelling almost minty like the ointment “tiger balm”.

So despite the labelling assuring me that it is indeed appropriate for use within water faucets, I decided that this was not something that I wanted coming in contact with my drinking water – and ultimately ending up inside me. Maybe I am just paranoid. Maybe not.

Either way if an irritant chemical has warnings not to ingest it, and by using it for it’s intended purpose you are essentially guaranteeing ingestion. Maybe don’t use that chemical. Ultimately, it all just comes down to personal choice, and how much you trust anonymous Ebay sellers over your own intuition.

Personally I just found a substitute: Petroleum Jelly. A non irritant, non toxic chemical that routinely comes in contact with human skin and lips. So chances are good that it won’t do any harm if you accidentally ingest some with your drinking water.

Additionally unlike the plumber’s grease, the jelly can be used with rubbers like the o-rings and gaskets. I used to use some back in school within the science lab. A small amount was applied to the mouth of a bunsen burner’s rubber gas hose in order to help form a gas-tight seal between it and it’s brass attachment. I remember it even hydrating the dry red rubber of those hoses. Although I am pretty sure that petroleum jelly is also flammable so I’m not sure if that was a particularly safe application for it. :/

However within this application: my only concern with petroleum jelly is it’s longevity in the system, and heat resistance. However those are considerably less concerning than putting poison in a drinking tap. So after greasing everything up: the o-rings, the rubber gasket, and the plastic valve discs, then tighten everything down properly – I did note further improvement. Now the faucet barely leaks at all. Barely being the keyword here.

Jobs a gudd’un mate.

Post repair review

I left some time after the repair for observation before writing this review and it seems the leak is slowly returning after a month. A month of constant use keep in mind. I am still chalking it up as a success because this repair really only needed some basic tools and materials. The only consumables used are just household sundries like vinegar and pure petroleum jelly. So it can be done for next to nothing.

There are even more things I could do short of purchasing replacement cartridges, and that would be to use an additional o-ring under the main water ingress rubber gasket. This will put more pressure on the plastic disc valves. Squashing them together to form an even tighter pressure fit seal between them.

Although there are likely drawbacks to this, including and not limited to: firstly, a stiffer tap – the more downward pressure on the cartridge mechanism, the harder it would be to rotate it; and secondly, the higher pressure on the discs themselves would cause them to grind against each other more, and likely shorten their lifespan by promoting scraping of their contact surfaces.

Although if you are repairing it in the first place, chances are that they are already well towards their end-of-life, in which case this fix will extend it couple of months before they likely fail into a unrepairable state. At which point replacing the ceramic discs will be needed. Just my guess.

Closing thoughts

Not much to say here really, I surmised my thoughts on the repair itself within the Post repair review above. So I’ll go with a more personal note here.

I actually enjoyed looking at this tap cartridge more than I thought I would. It really is amazing what people are capable of creating through iterative design and mass production. It reminds me of the gaming concept of min-maxing: of getting the most out of the lest.

I mean look at the simple design and construction of this cartridge. It uses two plastic/ceramic discs to create a watertight seal by just pressing against each other. Undoubtedly the results of iterative cost cutting to the point of being adequate or acceptable, and little more.

I know that when I usually talk about cost cutting, especially when discussing mass produced goods: its usually in a negative light. That’s because the stimuli or catalyst for those tangential rants tends to be a product that is sub par, and in my opinion not fit for purpose. Products that I refer to as “factory fresh e-waste”.

However that is not the case here, these cartridges are fit for purpose. But they are also (in my humble opinion) built down to a price point. One that makes economical sense. Look at the bill of materials here for example: a brass housing and insert, a retaining clip for the insert, a metal washer, two o-rings, a water gasket, a metal screw, two plastic/ceramic discs, and maybe one or two additional miniscule hidden parts that I missed. That is a list that has been reduced to the absolute necessities and little more, but nothing less either. I admire the philosophy honestly.

Anyway, enough gushing about the tap. Since I repaired it: it’ll do that itself in a year or two ;). Upon looking up the Ebay prices for replacements, I noticed that they are very cheap. (At least the generic versions.) The average price for a set of two is £10; and if you wanted to repair your own two cartridges with a kit of replacement o-rings, gaskets, and ceramic discs, then that’ll set you back around £2.50. Very doable.

As a final note, if you found yourself confused as to why I kept referring to the cartridge discs as both made out of plastic and ceramic. Well, this is because the unit I was working on (pictured) felt like plastic to me. A hard somewhat brittle plastic.

However upon looking them up online, apparently they are all ceramic. I also wrote the repair section during the repair process prior to this; and I decided to leave it as plastic because that’s what I felt that material was while I was handling it. Although I am by no means an expert on such things, if the internet says that it’s ceramic then I guess it likely is.

Thank you for reading.

Links, references, and further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water

#0033: Repair and modification of a Stylophone

2021-10-242023-03-19 Otto

#0033: Repair and modification of a Stylophone

Preamble

As a bid to get myself into creating music – or at the very least something music adjacent: I decided to purchase a Stylophone. A simple and cheap electronic synthesiser. Something budget friendly and fun looking with which to test out the waters.

What is a Stylophone and how does it function?

If you are unfamiliar with what a Stylophone is, I will briefly explain. A Stylophone is a handheld electronic musical instrument. A synthesiser that creates audible waveforms from electricity.

The most notable feature of this instrument is it’s set of oversized PCB (Printed Circuit Board) pads, which operate as musical keys. These keys are accompanied by an electrically wired stylus, which functions as their activator. To play a note, one just has to touch the stylus to a keypad. This then closes an electrical circuit within the device, in essence mimicking a keyboard (button) press.

Broadly speaking, component-wise: at the heart of a typical Stylophone lies a voltage controlled oscillator. This component creates a waveform when fed a DC voltage. This waveform is then fed to the speaker to create an audible tone. Since this is a voltage controlled oscillator, it means that it’s output waveform is dependant on the input voltage supplied. Thus voltage is used to control the specific sounds produced.

To control the oscillator input voltage, each musical note key on a Stylophone has it’s own circuit with it’s own unique resistor values that are different from all the other note keys. These resistors are used with the intention of stepping down the 9 volts input into whatever each note-key’s desired oscillator supply voltage is.

Although there is undoubtedly more to discuss on Stylophones; such as how the pitch change, or vibrato functions operate: they are largely out-of-scope for this simple introduction. Although I will go into further detail if/when I do a full device analysis on this Stylophone. (Link below when/if that article is written.) However in general Stylophones like this one are really not too complicated devices.

Tools and equipment

Tools:

soldering iron
hot glue gun
toothbrush
tweezers
desoldering pump

Consumables:

hot glue
isopropyl alcohol
desoldering braid
(leaded) solder
solder flux

Components:

red 5mm⌀ through-hole LED
ethernet wire (multi-strand copper wire)
10kΩ potentiometer
toggle switch

Device Repair

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately for this article) the device needed very little fixing. It’s main faults were either cosmetic in nature or trivial to fix; and since the Stylophone was basically fully functional, other than the dirt and grime that had gotten into it over the years: there’ll consequently be little to say about it in this regard.

I will say that the sound it produced was a bit choppy (intermittent), probably due to dirty contacts on the keypad. This issue of dirty contacts applied to the two built in slide switches as well, as they where notably unresponsive. Flicking them produced unreliable results.

More specifically: flicking the power switch on didn’t always cause the device to power on. I had to toggle it a couple of times for it to operate as expected. Additionally I couldn’t even tell at the time that the “Vibrato” button wasn’t functioning. It was only until after it was cleaned and started working, that I realised what it actually did. It makes the sound of the notes “wobble”.

Since these slide switches were built into the PCB itself, rather than a discrete component than can be easily removed: I decided that the best course of action was to simply inject some isopropyl alcohol into them. Then work the switches on and off until they self cleaned. The combination of the alcohol breaking down the embedded grime chemically, and the friction from mechanical manipulation cleaned the electrical contacts.

Moving on. I cleaned the PCB keypad in a similar way. Dousing it in alcohol and scrubbing it with a toothbrush to remove any loosened debris. This simple cleaning fixed both the intermittent connection issues of the switches and keypad.

Another small but annoying issue I encountered was with the stylus’s wired cord. It was damaged. The cord had a deep nick on the inner side of a loop that it had to fold in on, in order for the stylus to fit into it’s receptacle. Because of the location of this damage, it meant that I couldn’t simply just put a layer of heat-shrink tubing over it and call it a day, as it would limit the cord’s flexibility. Which in turn would make it no longer able to fold up and fit into place.

Instead I decided to just replace the entire wire. This lead to the next issue. The stylus’s original wire is somewhat unique. It’s inner structure consists of loose bundles of stranded metal conductors (presumably aluminium) interlaced with plastic (nylon?) fibres. This made it significantly more flexible than any of my wire stock. This flexibility allowed the wire to fold in tight under the stylus when placed into it’s receptacle.

Since I didn’t have an appropriate substitute wire, I decide to just use the best that I had on hand. This consisted of a single line of pure copper multi-stranded wire that was salvaged from an ethernet cable. Since this wire was considerably less flexible than the original, it meant that I could not use the original cable hole to enter the stylophone, if I also wanted to use the stylus receptacle as well. This is because the new cable could not fold into the same tight space under the stylus the old one did. Prioritising the stylus’s use of it’s holder, I decided to just drill another hole for the wire towards the back of the stylophone’s plastic housing.

Now, with regards to the more cosmetic elements of this repair: firstly, I removed and straighten the bent metal grill top plate. I then scraped it and the plastic housing clean of all that yellow hard glue using a scalpel. Ultimately I replaced all the old yellow glue with hot glue after I cut up the grill to fit my additions.

Although as a whole, probably the most noticeable thing about this Stylophone: was the prominent yellowing of the plastic housing. This yellowing is caused by ultraviolet (UV) radiation in sun light. The more sunlight a plastic enclosure like this gets in it’s lifetime, the more yellowed (or even brown) it becomes. Ironically to restore these plastics to their original colouring, one has to use a UV light in conjunction with hydrogen peroxide.

I briefly considered whether or not I wanted to restore the plastics to their original white. And if this was a full restoration project I would have done just that. However this wasn’t the point of this project, since at the end of the day: I was planning to add some crappy home-brew mods to it.

Additionally, I actually rather like the yellowing of older machines. Computers especially. I find it nostalgic. It reminds me of a simpler time: of a young boy listening to the hum of a beige box as it powered on, and the clicking and chittering of the various drives as they promised quality escapism. Insert Sierra logo tune here.

Device Modifications

First things first: for anyone who might raise an eyebrow at my choice of components below, I wish you to know that I basically decided to modify this Stylophone with whatever junk I happen to have on hand at the time. I was unwilling (and somewhat unable) to purchase or salvage more appropriate components for the task.

Not a single part that I put into this machine works as well as they could if I did take the time to source (or install) things properly. However I think that for this particular use-case, such perfectionism is unnecessary. It was just a fun and experimental hack together; and ultimately a learning experience.

With that in mind, I made three simple mods. These were made with the aim to better facilitate my particular use case of this instrument. Something I will explain as I go on.

These mods are:

a power indicator
an internal speaker cut-off switch
and a volume dial for the internal speaker

1) Power indicator

The necessity of an indicator was made apparent to me: when I first picked up the Stylophone to find that I had left it on between sessions, and that the battery was now flat. Now that isn’t to say that the Stylophone definitively uses power when on but not actually playing. I’d need to test whether or not that is the case to say for sure. Either way really, a power status indicator is needed on this device to remind me to turn it off when putting it away. Simple as that.

To install a power indicator, I just used a basic 5mm⌀ red through-hole LED paired with a 330 ohm resistor. I tapped into the 9 volt positive side just after the power switch, and the negative side to the common device ground.

Unfortunately, this resulted in the LED being far too bright for my liking; with a light output that is more applicable for illumination, than as a device power status indicator. I really should have ran some basic ohm’s law calculations on this. Instead I simply used the same resistor value that I was accustomed to pairing with these types of LEDs on the 5 volt circuits that I am used to. Even then, they were rather bright. Now they are even brighter. I should have used a resistor with a much higher value. 1kΩ would likely do for a status indicator on a 9v circuit.

RED 5mm⌀ LED amperage and brightness comparisons

maximum continuous amperage: 30mA
recommended continuous amperage: 20mA
setup I am used to: 5v/330Ω=0.015A (or 15mA) –> reasonably bright
current setup: 9v/330Ω=0.027A (or 27mA) –> too bright
future amendment: 9v/1000Ω=0.009 (or 9mA) –> perfect for a status indicator

I should state that in my experience using ohm’s law like this is a good guide for component choice. However components are all variable. The vast majority of components all operate within certain tolerances of their stated values. Additionally they can also behave differently once within a circuit.

For example I tested a red LED with a 330Ω (actual value 329Ω) resistor in series on a breadboard and provided it with 9 volts. It’s current draw was 22mA. I don’t really know why. It should still be 27mA. I’m guessing that I am likely not adjusting for something, such as the inline resistance of the breadboard and it’s contacts. Either way, these simple calculations still allow a technician to set their general expectations with regards to component behaviour.

2) Internal speaker cut-off switch

In addition to the internal speaker the Stylophone also comes with an amplifier output socket (3.5mm audio jack socket). I intend to use this socket to sample the audio. Either directly, or via an intermediary signal amplifier of some sorts. This is an alternative to recording using a microphone as you would with an acoustic instrument for example. I think direct sampling like this would produce a cleaner signal, and ultimately better audio.

I added the speaker cut-off switch because I didn’t want the Stylophone itself emitting sound while I was sampling it using a computer. Additionally, since I am likely to be plugged in to PC audio using headphones during the process: the Stylophone playing to the room is unnecessary in this scenario. Hence it might as well be silenced in order to minimised noise pollution and/or disturbance to others.

To make this happen, I just added a switch to the line between the main PCB and the speaker. I decided to use a toggle switch because they are cool. Very simple stuff. That being said, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with a speaker cut off switch if I though of installing the volume dial first. This is because it effectively performs the same function. By lowering the speaker volume to virtually nothing, it does the same job of silencing the speaker.

This was however the first thing that I installed into the device, and I have to confess it was predominantly because I thought that toggle switches were rather neat. I like the tactile feedback of flicking a switch like this, and because of that, I then went looking for a reason to install it into something. I actually almost used two switches like this to replace the two built in slide switches; but decided against it when I saw how they where integrated into the actual PCB itself. Too much work for too little return.

As it is I did notice something interesting about this toggle switch. When flicked off, the signal outputted to the 3.5mm audio jack socket lowers in volume. I think this might have something to do with the cut-off switch taking the internal speaker out of the loop. Perhaps the lower impedance of the speaker coil draws a higher amperage. Which would provide a stronger signal which then would have access to the audio out socket: since it has been place in circuit parallel with the internal speaker.

It’s just a guess, I honestly don’t know why removing the internal speaker from the circuit would result in the signal volume on the audio output lowering. I’ll look into it further when it comes time for a full device overview of this Stylophone. Just for clarity, I should also mention that this does not happen when the internal speaker’s volume dial is set to lower the volume to zero. With it’s potentiometer adding ~10kΩ in series with the speaker in the process. It only happens when the switch cuts the speaker out of circuit entirely. Hmm. :/

pins bent to fit space

3) Volume dial

This is probably the only add-on of mine that is actually an absolute necessity in my opinion. Simply put: the Stylophone’s default volume is too loud. It’s tinny high pitched notes can easily come across as obnoxious and irritating at it’s default volume. Especially, when the player is using it to learn by playing the same little tune again and again, and fucking it up half the time.

To install a volume dial, I placed a potentiometer in series with the speaker. That’s it. In this case I used a 10kΩ pot as that’s what I had to hand. Once it came to testing however: it became apparent that I was using less than a quarter turn to effectively move the volume from 100% to 5% volume. With the other approximate two quarters moving the volume from 5% to 1%. Interestingly, the volume never does go down to zero. Even with the full 10kΩ of inline resistance: I can still hear the notes coming out of the speaker faintly. (For context: this pot only rotates to approximately 225 degrees; i.e. to a little under three quarter turns.)

I think this may be the reason why older devices’ volume dials ended with switches. For example with mono-sound CRT televisions: they’d work the volume level with a potentiometer, and then once the volume was below a certain threshold the dial switch would click on to either mute the volume entirely, or switch the device off all together. With that in mind, it makes the unnecessary speaker cut off switch sound almost useful. Eh?

If I were to redo this add-on: I would probably replace the potentiometer, with one with a smaller resistance value range. Maybe a pot that caps at 2500Ω. This is because only the first quarter of the current 10kΩ pot is in effective use, as it represents the most dramatic change in resultant volume.

The main reason why I may want to use a smaller value potentiometer is because it will increase the amount of incremental control the user has over the volume. This increase in precision is caused by adding a larger number of degrees that the dial needs to be rotated in order to increment the volume. Ideally this will result in a full turn of the pot corresponding to the volume scaling accordingly (100% to 5%). As opposed to the current setup of 0 to 90° rotation representing a 100% to 5% volume level, with the other 160° of rotation essentially going to waste.

Another way I could possibly achieve this is by using the same 10kΩ potentiometer and pairing it with a fixed value resistor in parallel in order to bring it’s effective max resistance value down to around the 2.5kΩ I desire. I am honestly not sure how that would work out, as I am only thinking of this while writing. I will experiment with putting resistors in parallel with the potentiometer when it comes time to revise this device.

only 1 side of the pot is used

Before & After

Before

After

Video Demonstrations

Mod demo #1

Mod demo v1:

internal speaker output
vibrato function
speaker cut-off switch demo
volume dial demo

Mod demo #2

Mod demo v2:

power LED
internal speaker output
vibrato function
volume dial
speaker cut-off switch

Sound output demo

Sound output demo:

external output plugin
external & internal speaker dual output
internal speaker output
internal speaker cut-off switch w/ external output demo
internal speaker volume dial w/ external output
volume dial unable to mute completely
volume differences on external output w/ using speaker cut-off switch

Music demo (internal speaker)

Music demo (external speaker)

Closing thoughts

Ya’know reading back on this: it really is funny how much I could say about so little. At the end of the day all I did was purchase an old Stylophone, clean it up, and then stick a bunch of bullshit in it.

Now, some people may be mad that I did this to such an old device. I noticed that it was made in the 1970’s; and honestly it’s age did give me pause. However I paid very little for this Stylophone, and bought it for the express purpose to tinker with. Additionally, it was literally the cheapest one I could find. Spares and repair condition, economy delivery, no returns accepted. You know the drill.

Also let’s be honest here: not everything old is an antique (e.g. your mum ;)). A mass produced low price point item like this Stylophone is not going to be worth much any time soon. However my innate preservationist did have to hold his breath while I butchered this wee lad. I’ll say that much.

I will be revisiting it, mostly to repair my repairs. To lower the power LED’s brightness, to decrease the volume potentiometer value, and to look into the utility of the speaker cut-off switch. I did have a few other mods in mind as well for it. Such as a 9 volt DC barrel jack socket and power source switch. That way I can run it off a wall charger in addition to battery.

That’s right you heard me. If I am going to butcher a beloved piece of British history, I am going to go all out.

Thank you for reading.

Term glossary

CRT – Cathode Ray Tube
DC – Direct Current
LED – Light Emitting Diode
PCB – Printed Circuit Board
UV – Ultra Violet

Links, reference, further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylophone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage-controlled_oscillator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU7vXMezW_I

[wikipedia]_MIDI_2021-08-31 Download

[wikipedia]_Stylophone_2021-08-24 Download

[wikipedia]_Synthesizer_2021-08-31 Download

[wikipedia]_Voltage-controlled_oscillator_2021-09-17 Download

#0032: Instructions on digitising physical documents

2021-10-012021-10-02 Otto

#0032: Instructions on digitising physical documents

Preamble

This will be a quick guide to anyone who may be interested in creating their own digital archives of physical documents. Although there are undoubtedly any number of different ways to achieve this task: I only intend to show you one method. The method that I specifically use (at the time of writing) in order to create, label, modify, and archive document files. Files such as the ones hosted on this website’s “Device Document Scans” page.

Hyperlink: https://www.tinkerersblog.net/device-document-scans

Tools and equipment

Hardware:

flatbed scanner
personal computer

Software:

Linux Mint (operating system)
Bash terminal (TUI program for accessing other TUI programs)
simple-scan (GUI scanning program)
GIMP (GUI WYSIWYG image manipulation program)
ImageMagick convert (TUI image manipulation program)
img2pdf (TUI file format conversion program)
xviewer (GUI image displayer program)
xreader (GUI PDF displayer program)

Process overview

1) Scanning the physical document.
2) Initial edit, and virtual file export of scanned images.
3) Edit of image dimensions and watermark application.
4) Creation of alpha-less versions of the edited images.
5) Compilation of all alpha-less images into a single PDF file.
6) Test, organisation, and archiving of files.

Process explained

1) Scanning the physical document.

I use the flat bed scanner on a Pantum M6607NW laser printer scanner combo, in conjunction with a standard GUI GNU/Linux program called simple-scan. One by one I scan all the document’s pages using a 300 DPI (Dots Per Inch) image fidelity setting.

2) Initial edit, and virtual file export of scanned images.

I use simple-scan to export all the raw scanned images in a lossless PNG image file format.

Although simple-scan has some basic image editing functionality, such as image rotation and cropping; I tend to shy away from cropping images here due to the lack of precision available with the tool. However a rough crop to minimize image file size can be useful at this stage. Especially when scanning documents with a smaller page size (e.g. A5); which would otherwise have a lot of needless (memory consuming) white-space in each image.

Additionally, I find that rotating whole images at this stage using simple-scan to be a better experience than rotating them later using GIMP (or even xviewer). This is because, anecdotally: it seems to use less system resources for some reason. It’s just a smoother experience.

As for the outputted files themselves: I like suffixing metadata information onto the file name. In this case “_300DPI_scan”. This is to help identify specific files when they all get archived together.

It also adds a certain element of future-proofing because I may want to create higher or lower DPI versions of the same documents for specific purposes in the future; without it causing a naming conflict, and upsetting my global naming scheme.

Output:

generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG
generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan.PNG
generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan.PNG …

3) Edit of image dimensions and watermark application.

I use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to crop each page image with pixel perfect uniformity (i.e to the same image dimensions). Then I apply my watermark to each page and then export them as PNG images again. I mark the exported PNG files with the ‘WM_’ prefix to differentiate them from the original PNG images, which would otherwise have the same file name.

For the sake of clarity I should state that I keep all the original files (raw scan images) just incase I need to work with them again, and for some reason I do not wish to use the edited versions. It’s good practice to always keep and archive the original unadulterated images for instances like these.

Input:

generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG
generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan.PNG
generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan.PNG …

Output:

generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG
generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan.PNG
generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan.PNG …

WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan.PNG …

4) Creation of alpha-less versions of the edited images.

I use the terminal “convert” program to remove the alpha layers of every PNG image. This is because “img2pdf” can not compile PNG images into a PDF that contains alpha layers. (I.e. clear sections/layers within an image). If you try to, img2pdf will return an error message that contains additional instructions. Unfortunately it will still also output a 0 byte PDF file which you will have to delete.

Error message:

WARNING:root:Image contains transparency which cannot be retained in PDF.
WARNING:root:img2pdf will not perform a lossy operation.
WARNING:root:You can remove the alpha channel using imagemagick:
WARNING:root: $ convert input.png -background white -alpha remove -alpha off output.png
ERROR:root:error: Refusing to work on images with alpha channel

The “convert” command options assigns the background colour to the image as white. This is the colour that replaces any clear (or alpha) sections of the image. Next the alpha sections of the image are removed, then all alpha functionality of the PNG file is switched off.

Please note the exact order that the command options are passed to the program is not important, I only state this order for human understandability. Additionally the “convert” program does not actually convert the original files inputted into it, it instead outputs a modified copy. It will however overwrite the original file if you give the output file an identical name.

I suffix the “_no_alpha” label onto the the outputted files to differentiate them from their predecessors. Although as you can see the file names are getting long and unwieldy, especially if the manual itself already has a long name. However the various prefixes and suffixes all serve a purpose and are necessary for file version distinction.

Command:

convert WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG -background white -alpha remove -alpha off WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG

Input:

WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan.PNG …

Output:

WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan.PNG …

WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG …

5) Compilation of all alpha-less images into a single PDF file.

I compile all the watermarked no alpha layer versions of the image files into a single PDF file using “img2pdf” via the terminal.

Command:

img2pdf WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG WM_generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG … -o generic_manual_300DPI_scan.PDF

Input:

WM_generic_manual_p1_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p2_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG
WM_generic_manual_p3_300DPI_scan_no_alpha.PNG …

Output:

generic_manual_300DPI_scan.PDF

6) Test, organisation, and archiving of files.

This stage firstly involves testing if the PDF actually works as expected. Whether or not it is functional and whether or not all the pages contained therein are in the correct order. As well as rendering and scaling correctly. To do this I just try to open the file using Mint’s default PDF viewer program (namely xreader), and skim through the document’s pages.

This stage also involves putting each different collection of images from the various stages of this process into their own labelled ZIP format archive file. Then placing all these files into another container ZIP alongside the ultimate resultant PDF.

It is then placed into the local “device_document_scans” folder. Which is then copied over to the backups. Finally, I also upload the PDF by itself onto this website.

Output:

generic_manual_300DPI_scan.ZIP

Containing:

generic_manual_300DPI_scan.PDF
imageset_no_alpha.ZIP
imageset_raw.ZIP
imageset_watermarked.ZIP

Thoughts on tools and equipment

Hardware

As far as hardware requirements go, its just the bare essentials really: a decent scanner and computer. Neither devices need to be anything special, just fit for purpose.

Computer

As for computers, whatever computer you are currently using is likely to be just fine. The main thing that may become an issue is probably system RAM size; and even then only when scanning large (600+ DPI) multi-page documents at the same time.

This is because the scanning program will have to hold all these rather large images uncompressed within the RAM as you scan through the document. RAM may also become an issue when using image manipulation software like GIMP. If it is too low it may limit how many images you may work on concurrently. At the very lest it may limit your ability to do other things on the machine as you process these images. For example running a RAM greedy application such as a modern internet browser (e.g. Firefox or Google Chrome).

Another thing that may be a limiting factor with computers is CPU processing power. When converting file formats or compiling a series of images into a portable document file: your system may freeze or become unresponsive. Especially if the programs used/running aren’t optimised to be multithreaded. Resulting in the instruction sets all getting queued on the same CPU core and thread. This in turn causes the unresponsiveness as user input is queued behind these instruction sets.

To sum it up, any computer with more than 2-4 gigabytes of RAM and an early generation Intel i3 processor will likely suffice. However there are too many variables that may affect whether or not these system requirements are adequate; such as the desired scan image size, resource use of the operating system, scanning program, as well as background processes.

Scanner

Now onto the scanner. Most if not all modern flat bed scanners should be adequate. Chances are if they connect to your computer via USB 2.0 protocol or better than they are new enough to provide the 300 DPI (dots per inch) image quality that I use for digitising my manuals. If you are scanning photographs you may require a higher DPI rate such as 600 DPI to maximize image detail retention.

However since the value of my manuals is rather utilitarian in nature, 300 DPI is a fine image quality for my use case. By ‘utilitarian’ I mean that the information printed onto the manuals is what I am primary preserving, and not each page’s visual aesthetic. Because of this I just need them to be legible without necessarily preserving every minute page detail.

Heck, an argument could even be made to go down to a 75 DPI scan setting: as it’s perfectly useable whilst also minimizing all file sizes; including all intermediary portable network graphic images, as well the final portable document file.

However I find that working with 300 DPI images (which translate to a maximum of 2550*3507 pixels for an uncropped full scan) are a good compromise between image detail and workability/use-ability.

Example of 1200 DPI scanned image unable to be displayed with xviewer

Scan DPI example files

example_0075DPI_scan Download

example_0150DPI_scan Download

example_0300DPI_scan Download

example_0600DPI_scan Download

example_1200DPI_scan Download

example_2400DPI_scan Download

(Feel free to download and test these files on your own system.)

Scan image metadata translations

(Translations based on a scan of the full scanner bed of a PANTUM M6607NW)

Key: scan quality (Dots Per Inch) / image dimensions (pixels) / file size (bytes)

75 DPI / 637*876 p / 870.9 kB (lossless PNG)
150 DPI / 1275*1753 p / 4.2 MB (lossless PNG)
300 DPI / 2550*3507 p / 17.5 MB (lossless PNG)
600 DPI / 5100*7014 p / 62.8 MB (lossless PNG)
1200 DPI / 10200*14028 p / 211.9 MB (lossless PNG)

Software

Since my operating system of choice is Linux Mint running the Cinnamon desktop environment, I just use the programs that are either available with the initial install package as standard; or downloaded from the standard Ubuntu repository if necessary.

Simple-scan comes preinstalled with Linux Mint. It is the default scanning utility program. There are more robust alternatives such as ‘xsane’; however my philosophy with regards to tools like this is that one only upgrades tools or seeks alternative tools when the default tools are found to be wanting. I.e. when there’s a particular functionality or quality that the current toolset doesn’t provide; and since the default simple-scan program provides adequate functionality, I don’t need to seek alternatives just for the sake of it.

Moving on. Both GIMP, Image Magick and ‘img2pdf’ are available within the standard Ubuntu software repository. So both can be downloaded using the ‘sudo apt-get install’ commands. However it is recommended that you first use “apt-cache search [program]” command to ascertain whether or not they are available within whatever repository that you are using, if you are using another Linux distro to Linux Mint.

sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
sudo apt-get install img2pdf

To sum up GIMP. If you are coming from Windows, you may be used to other image manipulator programs like ‘paint.net’ or ‘Adobe Photoshop’, if not GIMP itself since it is a multiplatform program and available on Windows. Anyway if you have used any modern full-suite WYSIWYG image manipulation program, then GIMP will be an easy enough program to jump on to.

Finally Image Magick. This is a software toolkit that you access via the Bash terminal. Many people, including myself prefer TUI based programs like this due to their ease of use, user interface uniformity, and functional robustness.

I often write scripts including commands that utilise programs that can be accessed via Bash. The programs provided by Image Magick are no different. Once a person gets used to using them, it becomes a natural progression to create scripts which then automate the process.

This would be useful for situations such as batch conversion of multiple files: as scripting allows the user to go AFK or do something else, rather than babysit the process. Scripting and chaining commands like this is probably the greatest strength of CLI/TUI programs over GUI programs.

Closing thoughts

If you aren’t already accustomed to using any Linux based distro, then one thing I recommend keeping in mind is hardware compatibility. It is probably this platforms biggest weakness.

This is specifically because most companies build their products to target the Windows platform. Often facilitating device functionality by using proprietary drivers, and oft times even programs: such as with proprietary controller programs for LED keyboards. These drivers are sometimes absent in Linux. However in most cases there are open-source alternatives.

In the past this used to be a bigger issue. Thankfully the list of supported peripheral devices has gotten much better as of late. As it is at the time of writing, and according to my personal experience as well as as some online reading: most devices work flawlessly plug-and-play; however, some devices work for the most part but are missing some advanced functionality, and some devices don’t work at all.

Unfortunately the best way to tell whether or not your device will work, is by simply plugging it in and fiddling with settings and open source drivers; until it either eventually works, or you give up. Whichever comes first.

As an example: I had quite a few issues with my system not recognising my Pantum M6607NW printer-scanner combo properly, despite official Linux drivers being available on the standard repository, and via the companies website. Even now, after resolving that problem and getting the thing working, I am still having some minor issues with the device.

For example if you paid attention to the images above, you may have noticed that Simple-scan allows for a 2400 DPI scan in conjunction with the Pantum M6607NW. Unfortunately this setting doesn’t work as expected. It does scan the document, and it does it noticeably slower than on the 1200 DPI setting. Which is as expected, due to scan heads collecting more detail from each page segment. However the resultant image has the same pixel dimensions as a 1200 DPI scan. So if there is a higher detail density, it isn’t reflected in a larger image dimension – as is the case with all other DPI settings.

Although xviewer failed to open images of this size, the Firefox browser did not; and upon visual inspection and detail comparison between the 1200 and the 2400 DPI scans: I have concluded that they are identical. See for your self, the files are listed in this article. Knowing this, it is likely that simple-scan is providing an option that the scanner can not support. Although the Pantum’s slower read speed on the 2400 setting has me doubting this conclusion. Since it seems to exhibit a programmed hardware response to this setting.

I could likely find the solution eventually by combing through the official generic M6600 series online manual for my machine, then hunt down more specific documentation … although it is frankly not a priority at this point. As I am not planning on using a 2400 DPI scan setting anytime soon. I only highlight this specific issue to make you aware of the kind of troubleshooting fun to expect on this platform.

So if you are moving to a Linux based platform for productivity purposes, well you can’t say that you haven’t been warned. Having said that, don’t let that stop you from using this platform for this purpose. When it works it works fantastically, and when it doesn’t there is always something that you can do yourself to make it work. You have to get used to being your own tech support.

Best of luck archiving your documents, and as always:
Thank you for reading.

Glossary of terms

AFK: Away From Keyboard
Bash: Bourne Again SHell
CLI: Command Line Interface
DPI: Dots Per Inch
GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program
GUI: Graphics User Interface
PDF: Portable Document File
PNG: Portable Network Graphic
PnP: Plug and Play
TUI: Text User Interface
WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get

Links, references, and further reading

man_bash Download

man_convert Download

man_gimp Download

man_imagemagick Download

man_img2pdf Download

man_simple-scan Download

man_xreader Download

man_xviewer Download

#0031: Creating a TF2 themed RimWorld scenario mod

2021-09-282021-09-30 Otto

#0031: Creating a TF2 themed RimWorld scenario mod

Preamble

I recently decided that I’d like to try dipping my toes into creating mods for RimWorld. Incase you are unfamiliar with the game: RimWorld is a base builder; where the core objective is to try to create a functioning base or colony.

Building and maintaining this colony is achieved by issuing orders to various pawns. Examples of orders include: building the structures you designed, hunting animals, farming crops, fixing broken items, creating tradable goods, and cooking food to name a few. Additionally, it also includes arming up and engaging in combat.

RimWorld is a game that is in a similar vein to the venerable classic that is Dwarf Fortress. And like DF, once you have built a base that is halfway decent, you can then move on to secondary objectives such as: exploring the world, or actively trading and warring with other factions.

I decided to start modding RimWorld with something very small. Something that could be done in one or two sittings and with minimal research and planning. That way the mod doesn’t risk spiralling out of it’s initial small scope. Which can likely result in an eventual state of demotivation and ultimately project abandonment. Which is primarily caused by ongoing feature creep due to poor project management (scope discipline).

With that in mind: I decided on a simple custom scenario, coupled with a preset roster of pawns. For nostalgia’s sake: I decided to give this scenario a Team Fortress 2 theme. As a rule of thumb (and for obvious motivational purposes) I only really create things that I myself would like to play with. And to me at least: the idea of playing with the TF2 roster within the RimWorld settings sounds pretty fun. I hope you agree.

Creating a custom scenario

Scenario creator tool

Straight off the bat I should mention that the built-in scenario creator tool does not facilitate editing the individual starting pawns itself, just the world conditions and the equipment that they start with. In other words it does not allow for the modification of each individual pawn’s variables such as traits and skills. To specify pawn variables, one has to use an additional mod called “EdB Prepare Carefully”. Which I will discuss in more detail later.

With that said, let’s begin. Creating a custom scenario is a rather straight forward affair. All you need to do is navigate the menus within the RimWorld game, and follow their very simple instructions.

There are several game options available from the scenario editor. However for the most part editing a game scenario consists of choosing how many pawns the player is able to choose from, and then start with. Then choosing their starting load-out of equipment and resources: weapons, tools, food, animals, building materials, etcetera.

Additionally one could also add various world conditions such as periodic events (e.g. meteorite crash), permanent weather conditions (e.g. toxic fallout), a game time limit, as well as more wacky things such as every world pawn exploding upon death.

It seems like a rather fun thing to play with, however I only required an equipment list that vaguely resembled something that the real TF2 cast might have. I tried to give each pawn similar weapons and tools to the characters that I modelled them after. However, the group got little else in terms of general equipment and technology, outside a handful of exceptions for narrative reasons. Namely the ground scanner and a drill; since they are technically (narratively speaking) on this rim world in order to survey it for Australium.

I should also mention that I designed this equipment list with the mod “Simple Sidearms” in mind. In other worlds each character pawn was designed with the intention that they have the ability to carry more than one weapon. For example the Sniper was given either a sniper rifle or recurve bow to equip as a primary weapon, with the gladius (a functional surrogate for his kukri or bush knife) to be used as a secondary weapon (sidearm). Although the mod itself isn’t strictly necessary. If you choose not to use it, you’ll just be saddled with an abundance of surplus weaponry sitting in your stockpiles. That’s all.

Pawn equipment list

Sniper:

[x1] sniper rifle
[x1] recurve bow
[x1] plasteel gladius

Pyro:

[x1] incendiary launcher
[x1] molotov cocktail
[x9] incendiary shells

Scout:

[x1] shotgun
[x1] wooden Club

Soldier:

[x1] shotgun
[x1] plasteel breach axe
[x3] triple-shot rocket launcher

Engineer:

[x1] shotgun
[x1] autocannon turret
[x1] plasteel mini-turret

Medic:

[x1] revive serum
[x18] medicine (x18)
[x1] vitals monitor

Heavy:

[x1] minigun

Demoman:

[x1] frag grenade
[x1] plasteel longsword
[x60] beer (x60)

Spy:

[x1] revolver
[x1] knife

Miscellaneous:

[x1] ground penetrating scanner
[x1] deep drill
[x18] packaged survival meal

Alongside the equipment list, I also wrote some flavour text for the scenario. However, as far as what I wanted to achieve with this mod, this is as far as the scenario editor went. The next thing I needed to do was edit the nine random pawns the scenario provided into the TF2 mercenaries using the Prepare Carefully mod.

Creating custom pawns

In order to create my custom pawns I needed the mod “EdB Prepare carefully”. This mod allows the player to edit their pawns to a far deeper level than the standard RimWorld tool does. Which only really allows rolling a completely new character with randomised stats. Before this mod, I remember having to keep clicking the randomise button repeatedly until I eventually got something halfway decent. A process that honestly gets old rather quickly.

Using this mod I created a custom nine pawn preset. With each pawn having their own unique appearance, backstory, traits, health conditions, and skills. Once finished I saved this configuration locally, in a file named “TF2_crew.pcp”. It saved as a custom XML file that was suffixed with “.pcp”, which I assume stands for “Prepare Carefully Preset”.

And that’s it. That is all that there is to the process. Easily really. Although I must say that: it actually took me several hours to get all nine pawns’ various stats just so. This is because I can be a rather pedantic perfectionist when it comes to the little (read: insignificant) details. Things like which eye is the Demoman missing (left), and whether I should give him a peg (left) leg or not.

That’s not even to mention assigning each pawn’s skills, since they absolutely have to be (in my mind) representative of the character. This was then exacerbated by the fact that I also tried (and mostly failed) to balance the pawns in terms of usefulness and general colony value. That is, as well as retaining each character’s unique flavour; like Pyro’s oddness, or Demoman’s alcoholism. Needless to say it took some time to settle on such things.

This balance of priorities, often working against each other ended with a reasonable compromise in the final version. At least I think so. Still, I learned that Engineer and Medic are by far the most useful pawns in application, and that if you allow the other pawns to drink Demoman’s beer, causing you to completely run out by day four … well let’s just say that I nearly put a bullet in him myself, after his third low mood tantrum due to the alcohol withdrawal debuff coupled with his natural pessimism.

Scenario narrative and expected gameplay

Explaining the narrative premise

Yes, there is indeed a story here. There is reason for these guys to be on an extraterrestrial planet 3000 years in the future. The story is rather simple. 3000ish years ago, after exhausting the Earth’s supply of Australium: TF Industries decided to look for it on other planets.

So they built a fleet of Mann Co. brand low cost space rockets. A thousand of them. Each rocket containing 9 cryogenic life support pods designed to keep it’s occupant in a state of suspended animation. The occupants naturally being clones of the mercenaries. Cheap, useful, and expendable. These clones were then shot into space with the mission to survey any planets that they land on for Australium.

That is if they actually make it to one. And after three thousand years of drifting in space, and against all odds: one rocket managed to actually make it to a habitable planet. It also somehow manages to deposit it’s cargo of crypto-sick mercenaries and their gear; just in time to avoid catching them in the fires of it violently exploding in the planets atmosphere.

Now these mercenaries find themselves on a hostile planet with minimal supplies other than guns. And with no direction other than a 3000 year old order to survey the planet for a rare resource.

Just for the sake of clarity, I should mention that the resource Australium is not implemented within this mod. It is purely a narrative plot device. Funnily enough, implementing an extra resource like this is exactly the type of feature creep I mentioned earlier that end up killing my projects. Its a rabbit-hole that I don’t want to go down, nor need to go down as I simply want to bang out a small mod that consists of a custom scenario and character roster. That’s it.

In-game scenario text

in-game_story Download

Incentivising gameplay

I designed this setup for a combat heavy game. Since the player only starts with 18 meals (enough to feed a team of nine for about a day), no money for trade, no animals, and only a little medicine – it incentivises more aggressive actions in order to survive the early game. Especially at higher difficulties and challenging world conditions. Keyword: “incentivise”, not force.

The players are encouraged to strip the map of resources early. Steel, components, herbal medicine, berries, as well as deconstructing buildings for their materials, and attacking the ancient danger room much earlier than usual. This is because they don’t have the time to build up resources normally; by for example farming and stone cutting blocks. The nine pawns will just eat too much in the mean time.

Additionally the fact that every pawn also has the “psychopath” trait means that many of the drawbacks to bloody play-styles are removed. Such as emotional debuffs due to executing prisoners, butchering humans, or harvesting organs.

All of the above factors leaving early bloody aggression as a very viable and deeply incentivised play-style. Basically, I designed the TF mercenaries to play like the TF mercenaries. In other words: a hostile invasive violent paramilitary force, and not an agrarian farming community. Thank you very much.

Having said all of this good stuff, I should also parenthesis it with this final sentiment. Don’t feel like you have to to play these characters out in the way that I designed them. Feel absolutely free to tinker with them however which way you wish. Is Demoman’s alcoholism annoying you? Remove it. Don’t like how slow Heavy is? remove the Slowpoke trait from him. Pyro burning down your cornfield in the middle of the night for no reason? You get the message. Although I designed things in a way I personally find compelling; it’s your game at the end of the day. Play it your way™

Technical issues explained

RimWorld UI and editing XML files directly

Although creating a scenario using the in-game menus is simple enough, the cumbersome basic user interface for this can get rather frustrating rather quickly; because of this I quickly made an initial save of the scenario with all the basic fields and variables populated. This is in order for the RimWorld binary to create an XML file for the scenario. A file that I then chose to edit directly with a text editor.

I find that editing XML files in this way with a text editor to be a preferential experience, to fiddling with the game’s user interface. For example if I wanted to reorder a list of items, by taking the bottom item to the top of the list or vice versa: using a text editor it is as simple as cutting and pasting the textual data set into it’s desired place.

Whereas doing this within the game requires one to to click on either the up or down arrow button in order to make the list item move a singular place; by swapping positions with it’s respective neighbour. I should also mention that when the item swaps position with it’s neighbour, the list item itself moves on-screen and not the list items around it. This means that you can’t just keep smashing the arrow button to skip several places quickly; because the button moves from under your mouse once clicked. Imagine wanting to order a list alphabetically and then having to do something like that for every item on a 30 item list. Tedious. You’ll have to essentially manually bubble sort the entire list.

Using a text editor to bypass this went fine for the most part. I was able to reorder the populated list of equipment easily enough, as well as change item quantity and material (when applicable). I did however reach a sticking point here. After several edits I found that the RimWorld binary no longer recognised the scenario file. Something within the file was breaking the program’s ability to read data from it.

Naturally I thought that it was a syntax error. Maybe I forgot a character of syntactic punctuation somewhere, or forgot to enclose an XML data set properly with their data syntax. No. After much double checking for errors; followed by more back and forth: changing one thing at a time within the file, then rebooting the RimWorld game to test if it now recognises it. Well after that process, it turned out that adding comments to the data set broke the RimWorld binary’s ability to read the file. Just for clarity when I say comments I mean fully syntactically correct XML comments.

Example:

 <!-- this is my comment -->

I can only conclude that the XML interpreter within the RimWorld binary for whatever reason does not have the functionality to understand comments and skip them. At least when specifically talking about reading data from either files that it originally generated or from scenario files in general (.RSC file format).

After a little additional testing: apparently I may put comments in and have it still load but only if it is not within the <parts>…</parts> section and in between list items <li>data</li>. In other words as long as the comments aren’t in the only useful place to have them, in order to meaningfully separate a run on list of items into recognisable categories.

I’m guessing that the RimWorld interpreter probably has a very rigidly structured read protocol; and why shouldn’t it, since it is only expecting to read files it itself created. Please note that I am not an expert on XML nor the interpreter RimWorld is using, I just can’t help speculating when I observe such behaviours.

Honestly it much doesn’t matter anyway, I only mention my experience here in the case that you choose to add comments to your code base, and then it suddenly stops working despite having no syntax errors. I hope to save you some time needlessly troubleshooting and head scratching.

Text-field character limits

The RimWorld Scenario editor has an upper limit to the number of characters each text-field box can contain. (As of version 1.3.3117). I first realised this when my initial draft of the scenario description did not fit into the intended text-field box when pasted into RimWorld. What followed was a tedious process of trimming my sentences (narrative) until it finally fit.

To save you having to do the same, I decided to get the character limits of each text box. The process that I used was by inputting the character ‘0’ into each text field until full. Then CTRL+A, CTRL+C, and CTRL+V into an empty text file. I then used Xed text editor’s built-in tool that counts words and characters to get these results.

Text-field character counts:

Title: 55
Summary: 300
Description: 1,000
Game start dialogue: 20,000+*

*doesn’t seem to have a fixed upper limit (possible dynamic text-field)

Character count files:

scenario_textfield_boxes_char_count Download

Equipment parity issues

I spent quite a bit of time going back and forth between the scenario editor and the equipment section of the Prepare Carefully mod; as I wanted to make uniform both lists. Even though technically only the Prepare Carefully equipment list actually matters from a gameplay perspective since that is the one that overrules the scenario’s list and actually makes it’s way to the game. I still wanted both lists to be the same since the scenario list is the first one the player sees, and consequently informs them of what to expect.

I should mention that the reason why the two lists of equipment weren’t always identical is because as I edited the pawns, and looked through the (quite frankly better) Prepare mod’s equipment chooser: I got motivated to give and take equipment. For example I added the Auto-cannon to the list rather late, as only once seeing it’s graphic in the mod’s loadout section: did I get inspired to use it as a surrogate for the Engineer’s big turret.

In order to avoid this tedious back and forth editing, I would recommend that you plan ahead and write down the complete equipment list before initially creating a custom scenario. Alternatively, don’t worry about the scenario editors equipment list at all while making the custom pawn presets. Instead circle back to it at the end and essentially paste in the equipment list from Prepare Carefully.

Instructions for running this scenario (GNU Linux)

1) firstly make sure you have the mod “EdB Prepare Carefully” installed
2) download the file archive here: “rimworld_tf2_scenario.ZIP”
3) unzip the file archive
4) move/copy the file “TF Industries Australium survey force.rsc” to “~/.config/unity3d/Ludeon Studios/RimWorld by Ludeon Studios/Scenarios”
5) move/copy the file “TF2_crew.pcp” to “~/.config/unity3d/Ludeon Studios/RimWorld by Ludeon Studios/PrepareCarefully”
6) boot the game, it should show up as a custom scenario
7) choose it, then click on the “prepare carefully” menu button
8) click the “Load Preset” button and choose “TF2_crew”
9) edit the pawns to taste
10) start game

Note: Windows and Mac instructions are basically the same but with some variation around the location of the RimWorld data directory.

Closing thoughts

Simple one this time round. Like I said I wanted to complete something small in a timely manner, just to dip my toe into the waters of modding RimWorld. I hope you enjoy playing with this mod as much as I did. Hmm, is this thing even technically a mod? Does it matter? I guess not.

Funny. It actually took me longer to do this write up, then it did to create the actual thing that it is about. I guess that’s not that odd, considering the fact that explaining things properly can take it’s time. Especially with my signature caveats and addendums … and waffling.

I hope this article motivates you to at least try out getting into modding games, if you aren’t doing it already. Never be afraid to start something new. But start small. Start with something that can be completed within a timely fashion and with your current skillset. Then iteratively add complexity with each later thing that you complete.

I know this is rich coming from me, but remember that “perfect is the enemy of done”; and that there’s nothing more motivational than finishing something that you set out to do. It’s better to complete 100% of something small, than 66.6% of something big. One can be released out there for people to enjoy, whilst the latter is rotting in your “ongoing_projects” folder. Or maybe that’s just me.

Thanks for reading.

Mod Files

rimworld_tf2_scenario_files_2021-09-28 Download

(Please check the downloads page for the most up to date version, incase I forget to update the link here.)

Term Glossary

UI – User Interface
XML – eXtensible Markup Language

Links, references, and further reading

https://rimworldgame.com/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=735106432
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927155256
https://rimworldbase.com/prepare-carefully-mod/
https://rimworldbase.com/simple-sidearms-mod/

#0030: Game review: Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt

2021-07-192021-07-21 Otto

#0030: Game review: Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt

Preamble

I wanted to feature this game here as I think it is rather interesting, and I have a few comments I’d like to make about it. The game is called “Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt”. It is a bullet hell game created for the PC platform. However interestingly, it was made with the design limitations of a game targeted for the Nintendo Game Boy Color portable games console; as least it appears that way superficially. This article will feature a review and discussion of the game as well as a play-through or two to demonstrate the gameplay, visuals, sounds, and general game mechanics on offer.

Screenshots

Pixel art samples

Sprite size: 16×16 pixels
Grid cell size: 16×16 pixels
Grid size: 10×8 cells
Status bar size: 160×12 pixels

Game Review

Before I begin it is important to get a bit of context on the circumstances of this game’s creation. According to the read-me file that I found within the Steam version of this game’s directory (‘remedy.txt’): ‘Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt’ was originally created in 2014 during a livestreamed four day charity game jam by a group of four people. This initial completion constituted their version 1.0.

Although this version lacked certain additional features present in the latest 1.5 version that I have played. Features such as: gamepad support, options menu, multiple difficulties, and additional endings. The version 1.0: although undoubtedly rough – established a set scope of gameplay mechanics, narrative, and player experience; that was then subsequently refined and improved upon.

With the exception of the ‘Jealous Chest’ mechanic and extra endings: the additional refinements were mostly quality of life features, and in my opinion do not necessarily constitute raw additional game content. Like a new area, or new enemies would for example. As such the final version still feels like a game that could arguably be created within a short amount of time.

I only mention the game’s humble origins because it is apparent by the restricted scope of mechanics present, story, and short playtime: that not much in terms of resources actually went into the game’s creation. By resources I mean time taken to either plan a deeper narrative, create additional gameplay mechanics, or create more materials (i.e. media like image sprites and sound effects). Add to that the necessary programming time taken to implement and test every additional element.

Although it may come across as a criticism, I do not mean it as such. Rather it is by virtue of it’s spartan nature that I am attracted to this game to begin with. I wish to emulate it in my own way, and create a similar title as a practice game for a larger project I have in mind. Also I rather like the minimalist approach to game design presented here, a design that discards all but the essential components needed for a viable gameplay loop. As a hobbyist game designer who has discarded games mid-development due to feature creep (and the frustration that it incurs): I actually admire an approach that respects the limitations of available resources and deadlines, and operates with a more prosaic ‘get it done’ attitude as a consequence of that.

Now onto the game itself. The core gameplay experience consists of walking around and exploring a classic 2D RPG world like the one of ‘Final Fantasy I’ (FFI). Here you find people to talk to, to then enter a battle instance with. This battle instance consists of a unique bullet hell mini-game; as every NPC has their own custom setup of enemies and terrain layout to contend with. Winning these battles provides rewards that come in the form of a stat boost called ‘Hearts’. Hearts are the most important stat booster in the game. This is because in addition to marginally boosting the characters health (or hit) points, a set number of them are also needed to open the specific gates that lead to other map areas, and thus progress the game.

The game has a simple and concise gameplay loop. It may superficially look like a classic RPG title such as FFI, however all the extraneous RPG mechanics from a game like FFI are not present here. There are no items (beyond gate-keys), status effects, nor any character abilities, or levelling. There is however a basic system of stat progression that involves collecting stat tokens.

The full list of stat tokens include: the aforementioned ‘Hearts’ which marginally improve HP, ‘Power’ which increases shot damage, ‘Multi’ which increases the number of shots fired at a time, ‘Regen’ which increases the HP regeneration rate, and finally ‘Flasks’, which increases the number of uses of the special attack action during combat. In addition to Hearts, all of the other stat boosts are exclusively found in chests dotted around the various towns and caves.

The actual game world itself consists of a simple world map, which links together a series of higher fidelity maps. These higher fidelity maps primarily come in two forms: towns and caves, but also includes a few castles, a pond, and several other unique areas. The world map only contains heart-gates and key-gates. It is the higher fidelity maps that contain all other interact-able objects. These come in two formats: NPCs and chests. Each NPC only offers a quick dialogue on interaction. This dialogue either contains game hints, or instigates that specific NPC’s bullet hell mini-game. Whereas the chests contain either stat upgrades, or keys for opening shortcuts.

I should mention that the higher fidelity maps also contain a puzzle element. Some chests are set up in a way to resemble secrets from other visually similar RPG games. Specifically, in order to get to them they require the player to walk off of the displayed tile area, by passing through normally impassible terrain tiles (like walls): into the black space in and around the map that traditionally denote impassable terrain. Links to secret paths like this are marked by a slight imperfection on the terrain tile that connects to them. Thus marking it as passible terrain.

That’s it. That’s the game. Talk to people, then win the bullet hell battles they offer to get hearts; find chests, get stats, and more hearts; then open the heart-gate to get to the next area. Rinse and repeat until you get to the final boss. Where you play an extended bullet hell battle. Done.

The only real deviation from this formula that this game offers is via the ‘Jealous chest’ mechanic. Within an advanced area of the game – one that is gated by three separate heart-gates, and hidden within the town map there: exists the Jealous chest. This is a special chest that will give the player a shot power boost, but only if the player has not opened any other chests before it. Meaning that in order to acquire that shot boost, the player will have to win (nearly) every battle up to that point in the game without any of the stat boosts that the other chests offer.

This challenge adds significant difficulty to game and I personally found it rather engaging. However there is a down side to this. The problem comes in when you actually get the Jealous chest. Shortly after opening the chest and getting the extra power boost contained within, the player gets the contents of all the normal chests in previous areas, even the ones hidden by secret passageways that may otherwise be missed.

This gives the player a very sudden and dramatic power boost. Which on one hand feels great, due to the fact that up until this point the player has been surviving the battles with mere base stats. ‘Surviving’ being the operative word here for the experience. Then all of a sudden you gain all the stat boosters from three zones, giving you the power to nuke previously troublesome enemies like the Ghosts.

The problem with this sudden dramatic power gain is that it causes an inversely dramatic drop off in game difficulty. Even though technically the enemies fought in the later game after this point are stronger than the previous enemies, the same level of planning and skill required to survive up to this point and win battles is no longer necessary due to the raw power output the player now has.

This phenomenon causes the player to experience a significant spike in difficulty in the mid game levels just before acquiring the Jealous chest. Which is then not surpassed by any of the other following levels, including the final boss fight. This is due to the smaller disparity of power between the enemies and the player. In other words once you get the Jealous chest, you can essentially coast the rest of the game, even though you’ll technically be fighting stronger enemies. It will not feel like it.

Luckily the Jealous chest is an add-on mechanic, and is only really necessary if you wish to get the full 101% completion rate. If you don’t care about that, then you’ll likely experience a far more gradual and balanced difficulty curve as you progress through the game the normal way: haphazardly collecting (and missing) chests as you go.

Moving on. As for the bullet hell battles themselves, they are also very simple. They consist of manoeuvring an auto-firing character around, and occasionally using the catch-all action button to throw a flask; which functions as a grenade: doing AOE damage across a three-by-three (nine square) grid. The standard shots fire automatically from the character as is standard fare in bullet hell games.

What isn’t standard is the fact that the character can change which direction she is facing; meaning that in Princess Remedy you can fire in all four directions. This is due to this game taking place in a sandboxed square area. Unlike more traditional arcade shooter bullet-hell games, which tend to play out within either a vertical or horizontal scrolling stage. In which the player character’s firing direction is fixed to face in the direction that the stage scrolls into frame from. As that’s where the enemies are coming from. The most typical example of this, is that of a spaceship themed vertical arcade-style scroller like ‘Ikaruga’.

Ikaruga Steam trailer

The enemies in this game are rather varied. There is a mixed bag of enemies with differing movement patterns, health points, and who emit different shot types, in different numbers and frequencies from each other. There are enemies such as the Spike-ball which just moves towards the player when within it’s line-of-sight, as well as the Ghost which follows the player whilst also intermittently disappearing and shooting a terrain piercing shot toward the player. There are a handful of iterative enemies like this Ghost, i.e. harder versions of previous enemies. They utilize the behaviour patterns of the previous lower tier enemy, but then with a little extra mechanic added on.

I should also note that enemy behaviour actually changes across the difficulty levels. To me it is always a pleasant surprise when the actual enemy AI is tweaked to be more difficult on harder levels. In my experience playing video-games in general: it is far more common to see developers simply tweak stats like shot damage and hit points, then call it a day. All whilst maintaining the exact same enemy patterns of behaviour. This game probably does buff the stats of enemies in the harder modes, although I haven’t played enough to verify enough to the point that I could confidently state so here. Its not important either way. What is important is the fact that the enemy AI is tweaked and geared for the difficulty.

An example of this would be with Bat enemies. Bats are enemies that move in a random direction at a set time interval. They damage the player by colliding with it. In normal mode when a Bat dies, it simply dies. In hard mode, Bats shoot out three regular bullets in the direction of the player upon death, and in master mode the Bats move considerably faster whist also doing everything from the lower difficulties.

Moving on, now let’s discuss the more technical specifications of this title. This game was made using the Game Maker engine and targeted the PC platform. However more interestingly the game was visually designed to imitate a Game Boy Color game. It has the same resolution as GBC games (160×140 pixels), as well as similar colour pallets, and sprite types (8-bit era 16×16 pixel sprites).

It also uses a severely limited range of player inputs for interacting with the game. Although it maps multiple buttons/keys to each input type. For example the ‘action’ input is mapped to multiple keys including Enter and Spacebar. This is where my first real criticism of the game comes in. The ‘action’ key, the in-game results of pressing this key are highly contextual.

If pressed next to an NPC, it will engage them in dialogue; if pressed whilst moving, the player character will start running in the same direction; and if pressed whilst stationary and not facing an adjacent NPC, it’ll pop up the menu screen. Needless to say it has caused me to misclick a couple of times. Mostly by throwing up a menu when I intended to run. But that could just as easily be an issue with me and my keyboard. Although I found this catch-all action key to be a rather clunky method of input, it is ultimately a relatively trivial matter.

The main thing that I have encountered within this game that is actually worthy of criticism is it’s pixel scaling methods. At higher resolutions than the base times one (‘x1’) or 160×140 pixel screen size, it looks absolutely awful. The sharp clean pixels at the base size get blurry even at the times two (320×280) screen size.

Honestly, I am not sure about the technology being used here to resize the window and rescale the display assets within it. If I were to guess, I’d say that it is the functionality of one of Game Makers image manipulation libraries. Judging from what I can observe: I assume the image is actually being scaled using a form of on-the-fly interpolation. Such as linear or cubic interpolation.

Essentially algorithms (used within this application that are) designed to guess at what colour the pixels should be within the newly created empty regions, between the separated pixels of an upscaled image. Unfortunately, they do not have the context that they are dealing with a pixel art that requires clean lines, and consequently blurs edges in a bid to establish some kind of smooth colour gradient. At least that’s my guess as to what is going on here.

I think the window and asset scaling in this game was something of an after-thought honestly. Especially since the ‘options’ menu containing it was introduced to the game in it’s 1.1 patch. After the conclusion of the game jam. Meaning that the 1.0 game jam version was only made with the fixed Game Boy Color screen size in mind, and with all assets specifically scaled for it.

Only afterwards did the programmer who is maintaining the game decide to add additional resolutions. Unfortunately they did not recreate the art assets to be more scalable. For example by using large images designed for a modern full-screen display (e.g. 1920×1080) then scaling them down.

Although this has it’s own issues such as image artifacts being created by aggressively compressing image dimensions. However in my opinion, a little artifacting is considerably more palatable then the horrendous blurring incurred by the current solution of upscaling tiny images to large resolutions. This is most comically apparent when in full-screen mode. Imagine what happens when you upscale (essentially stretch) a screen with a height of 140 pixels to 1080 pixels. Needless to say it is virtually unplayable.

Now upon hearing this, you may think to yourself: why don’t they do that? I mean it won’t take long to use an image manipulation software (like GIMP) to upscale each image asset by raw pixel doubling; and without introducing blurring via interpolation techniques. Well, another reason why the current maintainer of this may not want to use upscaled images may include the related image code itself.

Considering that this game was initially made in a span of four days for a competition, then things like proper planning and future proofing of code goes out the window. It it very likely that this game has been hardcoded with strong references to the current image dimensions throughout the codebase. If so it will also explain this slapdash box-ticking approach to getting higher resolutions, as it likely avoids having to deal with the technical debt incurred by hard coding the image dimensions into the game logic in this manner.

What do I mean by this? Let me illustrate the problem here: imagine if you had a line of code that moved the Bat enemy for example. This enemy moves every other time tick in a random direction the full length of it’s size (16 pixels). Assuming that the code for this is hardcoded (i.e. code containing asset dimensions, or verbose inflexible instruction sets). Then the code for moving the Bat across the vertical axis may look something like: ‘moveBatY(){bat.posY+=16; updateSpritePos();}’.

Now, let’s say you want this game to also work at a times two scale (or at 320×280) resolution. This instruction set will have to be modified to allow the bat to move it’s full length. Which is now 32 pixels and not 16. If the code is left as is, then the Bat will no longer function as intended/expected. This is a form of technical debt, i.e. creating your codebase in way that will require reformatting/rewriting before significant additions can be made to the feature set; by in this case adding additional game resolutions. And considering the volume of image interactions going on in this game, likely having to reformat the entire codebase will not be a trivial matter. After a basic cost-benefit analysis, the programmer here probably deemed it not worth pursing at the time. Instead opting for the sub-optimal (yet viable) solution that is currently implemented.

Resolution scaling screenshots

Manually scaled examples

X1 (game)
X2 (game)
X2 (GIMP)
X4 (game)
X4 (GIMP)

I’d like to leave this review on a positive note. As I was doing a final check after writing this review I found out that the main developer, namely Remar has very recently updated this game. The latest version at the time of writing is 1.6; however this version (at lest currently) is only available on Remar’s personal website. The update included a few things: most notably a dedicated run button. Which addressed some of my criticisms I had made prior. So discount those if you play version 1.6.

The real cool thing about this situation is that you have a developer here who decides to update a now 6-7 year old game; that they made available to the public for free. That’s a developer that cares about their craft, and cares about their legacy. At least I’d like to think so, I mean they sure as shit aren’t making any money off of it. And as a guy who is currently trying to port his old garbage flash games to HTML5 – love for the craft and posterity is the only real reason I can see for a person to go out of their way and tweak/improve something like this.

If you want to play ‘Princess Remedy In a World of hurt’ it is available on the Steam PC platform and also on the Developer’s personal website with no Steam DRM. Download link: ‘https://remar.se/daniel/remedy.php’. It is a free game so give it try. If you really like it you may even want to purchase it’s paid sequel: ‘Princess Remedy In a Heap of trouble’.

Video Play-throughs

Difficulty: NORMAL
Completion: 101% (jealous chest run)
Time: 42 minutes 5 seconds
Game version: 1.5 (Steam)

Difficulty: HARD
Completion: 101% (jealous chest run)
Time: 52 minutes 41 seconds
game version: 1.5 (Steam)

Game credits

Game copyright Remar Games and Ludosity 2014
Design, script, code, SFX edit: Daniel Remar
Design, graphics: Anton Nilsson
Music, SFX: Mattias Hakulinen
Final boss songs: Stefan Hurtig

Nintendo Game Boy Color reference images

Closing thoughts

This is the first actual game review that I have done on this site. I hope that it proved to be insightful and useful to you. Whether you wish to simply play the game (and you really should as its free on Steam), or whether you are simply interested in a hearing about a game’s systems and the interplay of mechanics within it. I hope that I at least entertained you if nothing else.

The main reason why I covered this particular game is because I intend to create a clone of this title. I like the very limited nature of it, and genuinely think that I could make a copy in order to sharpen my skill-set. I needed a small but genuine gaming project to try out my tools, and to practice my pixel art and music creation. So look out for that game when it is out. I’ll pop a link here for it when available.

It’s sort of funny when when certain coincidences happen, and one gets that feeling of living in a small world. The name ‘Ludosity’ came up a couple off times while I was reading up on this game. I just thought ‘huh, that rings a bell’ and moved on. Its only once the review was almost finished and I decided to actually visit the website links within the readme files, did I find out who it was. They were the people that made ‘Card City Nights’, a game that I really enjoyed years ago. I even 100% the game, blue Steam ribbon in all. I remember it was also a game of limited scope, being just a series of card battles attached to something almost akin to a visual novel, with a simple collectable card game or deck builder core. It also had a simple but very compelling gameplay loop, and lovely art…

On that final nostalgic note, I’d like to say:

Thanks for reading.

Glossary of terms

2D – 2 Dimensional
AI – Artificial Intelligence. Although in this context it doesn’t refer to real AI, but rather patterns of situational behaviour that non-player controlled entities engage in or act out.

AOE – Area of Effect.
NPC – Non Playable Character
RPG – Role Playing Game
Sprite – Simple low resolution image of an entity. E.g. NPC.

Links, references, further reading

https://store.steampowered.com/app/407900/Princess_Remedy_in_a_World_of_Hurt/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=716757641
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Corporate/Nintendo-History/Game-Boy-Color/Game-Boy-Color-627137.html
https://remar.se/daniel/misc/themegaupdate.txt
https://www.remar.se/daniel
https://www.ludosity.com

Game text files:

manual Download

remedy Download