Official "Discuss the latest page" thread

[coldfire142]

yea whisper in action...hmmm... I agree I've seen plenty of creepy holograms in horror movies. For example- Resident Evil love the movie

[neutral stalker]

uhhh, i dont know about the whole "no shields" thing, i mean, that sort of thing is bound to show up at one point. the classic "oh look, we cant shoot through their shields...now what?"

my personal theory on practical shielding involves the application of an electromagnetic field, projected from a craft, creating a "bubble" if you will, of energy that could in theory be used for either the dispersal of incoming fire, deflection, refraction, etc. for cloaking your ship-the energy shell refracts light around the craft. no light hitting an object, no seeing. of course the pilot and crew would be blind because no light would reach their eyes...and i mean none. aside from interior lighting. they just cant see anything beyond the shield... the last application involves field theory, which states that by setting up specific vibrations within an object, the object can be shifted into alternate dimensions (riftspace, subspace, whatever you wnt to call it.)

the one thing that i avoid when writing sci fi is the use of teleporters or tractor beams...instead i use harpoons and cables.
also retro-rockets/engines make all manuevering easier, as spaceships dont have to bank in order to turn. you just whip around pulling enough G's to blast your lungs out through your back.
anyways, thats all

[Lokekar Kra]

The one problem would be they could just throw things not affected by the electromagnetic field at the ship, poor ship. Also the field would be detectable (great now you can just set the missile that can easily go through the field to just home in on the origin of the field, poor ship) and I would hope that interstellar ships would not relay upon visual range and sighting to find an enemy ('Uh sir" I think that star just moved","Course it did dummy, we are moving!"), as pointed out elsewhere modern fighters engage targets long before the pilots even see the speck on the horizon that is the target.

Too much reality kills the fantasy part, just the right amount makes things fun :)

[neutral stalker]

yeah, of course, the electromagnetic field (as i mentioned before) creates an oscillation in other dimensions. if you set the configuration as something solid, the shield acts quite literally as an invisible wall, being invisible in this dimension but being composed of solid matter from another. this works much in the same way as star trek's famous warp engines- they cause space in front of the craft to become spread out, and space behind the craft to wrinkle and bubble, thus propelling the craft.
as for the cloaking device, i see your point. lets say your ship's radar has a range of 10 kilometers or so.(no idea whats realistic here, must do more research) the next step is determining whether or not your ordnance has the fuel capacity to reach your target, although sophisicated missiles may provide for an initial detachment burst, and enough to get them flying. inertia does the rest, and i guess the rocket would be able to conserve fuel for maneuvering (or something)

energy weapons are another story, laser or xaser (concentrated x-ray) weapons have a limitless range, while things like flak cannons are set for specific distances and locations.

thus the challenge in using laser weapons is being accurate enough to hit something (small or big) at range.

i know im probably detailing this to death, but its the kind of stuff i do for fun. i write sci-fi in my spare time.
you can expect to see some comic related goodness within.....whenever i feel like it. lazy.

[Tachyon]

It's a common enough throw-away gag among my friends, but Whisper does have this knack for taking things to the next level.

It's Daniel's comment that really makes this one. ^.^

[Dhraakellian]

I suppose this goes at least partway towards explaining the presence of the hologram.

Oh, hello
Let's see...
yep, the only seats still available are that-a-way
tee-hee
buh-bye!

[neutral stalker]

...........creepy but surprisingly accurate.

<insert antagonistic contradictory statement here> you know, for kicks

[SciFiGuy]

Okay, they are the 'actors' - pretty cool.

I have an idea to get more time, David.
Go to an eight-day week!
We can call it AugDay (named after the 8th month of the calendar) and you can sleep in til 11 or 12n, eat "brunch", then crank out a new CD!

re: Your Decision - whatever you have to do I'm sure we'll understand.

[skythorn]

so ... HOW did the ship countdown get changed?

What is the fate of the buffer

How will we get our fix and stay happy.

I have a thought

Release one panel per week rather than one comic per week, that way you can get your studies under control and not completely snafu the comic for your real life ...

[altasilvapuer]

I think with David's style, that would be very strange, personally. Right now his comics flow extremely well from panel to panel, and I worry that breaking them up too much will negate that.

Skythorn might be on to something here, though. Some form of smaller installments might help, but it would take some figuring out to see what meshes with your style.

Personally, I wouldn't be adverse to having to go a couple weeks without, while you concentrate on your studies. You say that whatever you do, we likely won't like, but that's rather to be expected. I don't mean that in a negative way - rather, your life outside Crimson Dark should naturally come before our desire to read it. My personal advice is to complete only so much of the comic at a time as will help you retain the most sanity, until things quiet down and you return to your preferred schedules.

Just trust your instincts. You've proven to us quite well in the past that you have a resourcefulness to always find the solution that is best for you without abandoning us to the wind. And even if you do have to temporarily abandon us to the wind, we will understand - desperate times call for desperate measures, no?

-asp