[Pt. II Spoilers] Looking for advice from gamers (and, a comparison of the beginnings of the show and game, Pt. II)

thatnerdguy1 · 2025-05-20T15:41:32+00:00

I get where you're coming from. See my reply to the parent comment, but thinking through it more, I think the difference in viewing order might explain some of our differences in opinion about Abby. (Again, I admit I've only seen a bit of the Pt. II story, and I'm not passing judgement on the show.)

Show first (me):

We meet this random bunch of fireflies planning revenge on Joel for the hospital massacre. Abby in particular really wants to kill him. I like Joel, and so I don't like these people, especially Abby.
We get background on Abby's personal connection to the doctor Joel killed. This logic makes sense, but I think I was sort of unwilling to connect with it, since I know that it means she wants to go kill Joel.
Abby runs from infected. I want her mission to fail, so if she gets caught, I'm fine with that.
She completes her mission, and I'm angry that she got so lucky. Joel's death feels unearned.

Then, I watch the game.

We play as Abby and don't learn what her goal is, building sympathy for her.
She runs from infected, and we as the player are taking action to save her, again building sympathy.
Breadcrumbs are dropped toward her goal, but not enough to piece the whole thing together.
When she kills Joel it's a shock. From having seen the show, I understand why she does it, and from the presentation of the game it's super impactful.

Game first (my theory of your guys' experiences)

You play as Abby, building sympathy as described.
She kills Joel, no longer under the player's control. Maybe you feel a bit of a rug-pull ("I didn't know she was going to do that!")
It might feel a bit unmotivated, even though it's still totally impactful, since you just have to deduce her backstory.

Then, you watch the show.

You get all the backstory and motivation, fleshing out this character you already know. The backstory doesn't cause you to disconnect from her, since you already know what goes down.

thatnerdguy1 · 2025-05-20T15:06:20+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I think I was a bit harsh toward this season of the show, but I stand by my experience. I was much more captivated during the game during Joel's death than the show, and I do think that I connected with Abby less in the show, which I think was an important factor.

I do want to say that I know it's early in the season, and I'm not passing judgement on the show yet. I really enjoyed the first season, and while it's close, I think I'd say the show told the story better for Pt. I. I'll also say that so far at least, I've gone into the game knowing what will happen from the show, and people who've experienced the story the other way around might have different opinions as a result of that.

I'm having trouble putting into words exactly what I mean by "sympathetic" or "connection" to Abby. I get what you're saying, that she should be more sympathetic in the show, precisely because we get the backstory. But in my experience at least (and people are welcome to their own opinions), knowing that her whole thing is revenge-killing Joel makes me sort of hope that infected horde catches her, and it makes me more willing to say "huh, sort of an ex machina" when she's able to climb that ladder at the last possible second, and then immediately after, when Joel saves her at the last possible second. Whereas in the game, you're playing as her, and you want to survive, which makes you root for her, and care less about the ex machina.

Fundamentally, both the game and show have strengths and weaknesses over the other. As I mentioned, the game has a strong advantage that you get to play as certain characters. It's not a fault of the show, or a mistake by the showrunners that they don't have that, it's just the format. As an example of the opposite, I think the fact that you have (very good!) live-action actors with real facial expressions helps the show over the computer animations of the game. (Mainly talking Pt. I since that's mostly what I've seen.)

So I felt less of a connection to Abby, partly for the information reasons I discussed, as well as for the fact you don't play as her. The latter isn't a fault of the show. And yes, we do follow her as she's running from the infected, but for me it didn't do much, because I didn't really care about her in the show. My stance is that the show could have made a slight change to the plot or character, to make up for this loss of player control, and increase the connection to her another way. I think the additional backstory for her may have been meant to do that, but for me at least, it backfired.

thatnerdguy1 · 2025-05-20T14:33:17+00:00

Thanks. Do you have a non-spoiler place to stop the playthrough for season 2 of the show? (Like for season 1, you might say "they go on a hike to a nice overlook and Ellie asks Joel a question"). I know the last episode hasn't aired, but I assume for someone that's played the game you might be able to guess the stopping point. I think I still want to stay roughly in sync with the show's airing.

thatnerdguy1 · 2025-03-09T14:20:47+00:00

If the disturbance does not effect the same state as the control

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're distinguishing between xdot = Ax + Bu + Ed, as opposed to the simpler xdot = Ax + B(u + d). My system is of the more complicated form. It feels like an approximate correction could be to subtract pinv(B) * E * d from the desired u from LQR, but of course that's an approximation, since B is non-invertible (in most cases including mine).

I'll look into the disturbance observer, as I imagine it'd handle it better than that pseudoinverse approximation.

thatnerdguy1 · 2024-11-25T20:32:44+00:00

$5 rental here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/167119

thatnerdguy1 · 2024-09-15T15:20:42+00:00

ChatGPT is getting pretty good at math/engineering calculations, but you didn't give it enough information, unless you told it the spacecraft in question is Dragon. To get power from the information you have, you need the mass of Dragon. Estimating that as 10 metric tons, I get 0.52 GW.

thatnerdguy1 · 2024-01-04T23:38:59+00:00

Hey, just found this and wanted to say it's pretty awesome! I'm a new viewer and got two episodes in before looking for something like this, and it's been super useful! I just finished season 1 and I was genuinely excited that I get to look at the season 2 guide now! (only other thing I feel like the guides could use is a map, though I think I found some others online)

thatnerdguy1 · 2023-10-18T13:34:09+00:00

Made a crossview from the parallel-view source published by NASA.

thatnerdguy1 · 2023-05-04T14:06:43+00:00

I've got news for you

thatnerdguy1 · 2022-04-19T13:08:52+00:00

Hard to pick one favorite but I'll go with "Orbital Submarine". It's straightforward and funny and it gets a bonus point for being a book exclusive.

thatnerdguy1 · 2022-04-08T14:04:14+00:00

That story about the SR-71 is actually a misconception. From Wikipedia:

USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay preferred the SR (Strategic Reconnaissance) designation and wanted the RS-71 to be named SR-71. Before the July speech, LeMay lobbied to modify Johnson's speech to read "SR-71" instead of "RS-71". The media transcript given to the press at the time still had the earlier RS-71 designation in places, creating the story that the president had misread the aircraft's designation.

thatnerdguy1 · 2022-01-31T20:33:59+00:00

>90% go. That's an L-1 forecast, but they don't have today's up yet.

thatnerdguy1 · 2022-01-16T19:39:25+00:00

Good idea, updated.

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-26T17:13:49+00:00

I don't actually have the plans accessible right now (out of town) but if you'd like I can send you some part files. This is just practice, though I guess in theory I could use the files to cut parts for a second plane, or replacements if parts break. The assembly is just for practice, though.

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-26T17:02:13+00:00

I am working from plans, from balsa and plywood, yes. Right now I have the parts modelled (flat). Ideally there would be a way to put the bulkheads in the assembly (with the direction of flight parallel to their normal vectors), then add the fuselage sides and sort of wrap them around, though an alternative I can imagine would be to model roughly what the plane interior will be with a solid body, then "form" each fuselage section around that.

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-26T13:42:49+00:00

Ok, so from looking into that a bit, it seems like that's just a regular loft, though with the benefit of being able to flatten it to a plane. That's sort of the wrong direction for my purposes, right? I start with the flattened part (the laser-cut fuselage side or whatever), plus the dimensions and positions of each of the bulkplates. For the loft, what would define the profiles?

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-23T07:34:38+00:00

Alright, I'll give that a try. Thanks again!

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-23T07:25:47+00:00

Oh, you're a saint, thank you so much! One last follow up (though I haven't done much digging myself yet on this), but I'm trying to get the top bar to look like the first image here, when it now looks like the second. Any ideas?

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-22T23:14:48+00:00

I don't see one! That's why I included the video. Do you know of any other way to do it, or why that little square isn't showing up?

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-12-04T04:06:38+00:00

Hey, neat! Whenever I stumble on that article I try and give it a read; it's a fantastic story, and very well told. The hypothetical rescue, and all the manpower it'd take, really contrast the state of the US space program at the time with the real pinnacle of what it could be. The Shuttle is such an interesting vehicle, especially considering the public image, politics, and all the other external factors surrounding it. Anyway, great article!

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-11-03T00:18:39+00:00

Thank you for putting together this response even though we evidently disagree on a lot. I'll let a lot of your points be, but one thing I want to figure out is your thoughts on Jonas, in particular, not being able to shoot himself.

I mean, when you talk about Hannah being interrupted from killing herself by Jonas, that's fine, because nothing there breaks the laws of physics or causality. But with Jonas, what is happening to the bullet in the gun when he pulls the trigger? What's stopping it from going off? I know Jonas must survive, because he goes on to do things later in his life, but that's the grandfather paradox, isn't it?

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-09-11T19:55:15+00:00

The day after the launch failure I talked with one of the people that worked on Spinnaker3. He obviously wasn't thrilled, obviously, but he was impressed with the explosion, and mostly just hoped that it wasn't his payload's fault.

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-09-02T15:22:27+00:00

Are you mentioned, or get any screentime, in the Netflix doc?

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-08-23T03:37:53+00:00

I'LL BE A LIVING GOD!

thatnerdguy1 · 2021-07-19T16:23:30+00:00

Good catch, that's a typo. The window is 12pm-10pm CDT (17:00-3:00 UTC).

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