One of them worships Osod Tombsphantom, a dwarven god of death. That god is from The Anvil of Carnality’s gods list, so that’s good, but he is also (according to the archives) pretty popular among necromancers, that figures. I don’t think the worship of that god should be encouraged in Zealpainted.
Another migrant is a thirteen year old “ardent worshipper of Dasël (one the gods of our nation)”, he is so ardent he is actually “unfocused after being unable to pray to Dasël”! He also has “a meager ability with social relationships, very bad analytical abilities and very little patience”. There’s more…“He has little time for forgiveness and will generally seek retribution”. I think Zealpainted got its first zealot! Too bad he’s not worshipping The Barricaded, but I’ll take it. I’ll make this kid a judge someday or something, he’s perfect.
Running from the chaos of The Crest of Praising, our dwarves set out to make home in the mountains of The Horn of Man (map).
I want this fortress to have the theme of “a bunch of puritan settlers leaving behind the decadence of their old home”. This new settlement shold be big on going back to the roots and all that. So, I let the game generate random names for the group and for the fort they will build and I stopped at the names that fit the theme. The group is “The Armors of Esteem”, and the fort will be “Zealpainted”. For the symbol of the play, I chose it to be this:
On the main continent of The Universe of Souls, there lies a lake so huge it’s called “The Teal Ocean”. Magnificent and unchanging, it lies in contrast to its surroundings like an island of peace in the midst of a raging sea of chaos.
From the early decades of recorded history, the civilizations surrounding The Teal Ocean were embroiled in an endless struggle against each other. The vast steppe to the east has been populated with numerous sites of those civilizations over the past 550 years. Those centuries have very complicated histories of wars, raids, governments, and groups of outcasts large enough to challenge civilizations. Many sites have lost their original identity, and many have been abandoned to ruin.
I made a relatively acceptable sound of the rhythm guitars in Guitarix before, but I wanted to keep all the work inside of the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). The DAW is where the recording and mixing is going to happen, so I wanted the guitar effects to be there as well. I’m glad that all the Guitarix effects are also available as plugins for DAWs. The one I’m using/trying to learn is Ardour.
I started working on the sound of the rhythm guitars in Wherever I May Roam using Guitarix (a free and open-source virtual amplifier). Here’s what I got for now (put on some headphones and watch out for the volume)
Recording and processing music on a computer in real time require some preparation. This is a Linux specific post, I haven’t done this on Windows.
Probably the easiest way is to just install a Linux distribution that is prepared for audio production, like KXStudio, AV Linux, Ubuntu Studio or others. I have only tried Ubuntu Studio. That said, any Linux distribution can be set up for audio production, I installed Manjaro (Linux distro) on my old(er) potato and will use it for the music things. These are the resources I more or less followed:
I wanna recreate the song Wherever I May Roam by Metallica at home from scratch. Well, maybe not from scratch, I do have a few things:
Guitar
I have a used Epiphone SG G-400 that I got for a good price. The previous owner put a Seymour Duncan bridge pickup, so that’s good. The bad is that some strings make a choked buzz kinda sound on some frets. I suspect that the truss rod needs some adjustment. I have no experience with that whatsoever and I don’t feel like paying to get it fixed right now, so I’ll use it as it is and blame the crappy solos I play on those frets.
I recently acquired an audio interface so I can connect my guitar to the computer in a decent way. I also have a MIDI controller which I bought a while back but haven’t really used much. Finally, I can unleash my music on the world.
Or I can procrastinate. The secret to guiltless procrastination is to do it in the name of preparing. For example, if you wanna learn something, don’t actually learn it you silly person. Instead, learn about learning it. Watch YouTube videos about the gear you need, or read useless articles about the top 5 best resources to learn from. I’ve been doing this for quite a while.
I finished rereading Scott McCloud’s great book Understanding Comics recently. Like a good conversation with an intelligent friend, it keeps giving even after it’s over. It got me thinking about a few things. One such thoughts was about prehistoric cave art.
In chapter 2, the book argues (comics style) that simplified or iconic pictorial representations of things are more relatable, more accepting of us projecting ourselves onto them. We make a face out of a circle with two dots and a line inside of it, then let our imagination fill in the blanks. Since iconic representations are abstract, they are universal. This simple cup can stand in for the one on your desk, that rectangle can be your computer monitor and the stick figure is you, at least for a moment. The reason this is possible, according to the book, is that we do not see ourselves. My face is a mask that is visible to others, but not to me, so my mental image of my own face is very abstract. Now imagine if you are presented with a photo-realistic picture of someone, it would be much harder to identify with that picture. We might not see our own face much, but we see everyone else’s. A realistic picture is specific, not universal, and it makes you aware of its specificity just like you are aware of the details in the appearances of others. We “mask” ourselves in iconic images, and perceive otherness in realistic ones.
Alright, let’s try this again. Had a busy couple of months and it took the wind out of my sails. As simple as this website was planned to be, it should be simpler. Maybe more sections will be added over time when there is actual content for them, and maybe better Home and About pages.
In real life, we walk around. We bump into each other, we bump into footballs and we bump into light posts then fall and bump into the ground under the force of gravity. Typical human experience. We like to relive this experience in video games.
The physics of these situations are then described by two things:
Physical contact (collisions),
Action at a distance (forces, spooky or otherwise).
Collisions happen when objects come into contact. Forces act on objects depending on their position, regardless of proximity. We also encounter ghosts, these are objects that we cannot collide with, we usually pass through great-grand-auntie with no detectable effect, and they do not obey the force laws of the world.
A few days ago, I came across this article by the director of the IAS, Robbert Dijkgraaf, in which he argues that fundamental physics is not only alive and well, but that it’s prospering. Throughout the article, I couldn’t help but feel that he made the case for exactly the opposite.
Exaggerated or not, one hears the reports of late 19th century physicists declaring the completion of the fundamental laws of physics and that all that is left is to refine measurements to more decimal places (check this discussion on Stack Exchange). This is often used as a cautionary tale against any claim that physics is over, after all, the 20th century started with two great revolutions of fundamental physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The moral of the tale is to never think that we have discovered all the laws because, over a century ago, people thought the same and they were wrong. But isn’t the ultimate goal of theoretical physics to find the final laws at some point? Did we catch ’em all? I certainly hope not, otherwise this website will be pointless.
Just like the pyramid builders, I am leaving a legacy for the world. Primarily, a documentation of my attempts to learn physics, music, and game development, I have already mastered advanced web design. Most likely I will not resist the urge to ramble on indefinitely about other subjects, this space will double as a blog of sorts.
I have some knowledge of physics, but not nearly enough. Additionally, I want to collect this knowledge into a coherent set of principles. I like semi-axiomatic/foundational approaches to subjects that are traditionally presented as matter-of-fact. An example of that is Landau’s “derivation” of the classical mechanics Lagrangian, I will definitely write a post about that sometime. And since this is theoretical physics, I will ramble on about philosophy as well.
