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Author Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!)  (Read 16180174 times)

Gunner-Chan

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71940 on: February 19, 2012, 01:45:11 am »

So some stuff got me angry today. And then...


Suddenly Saints Row III tank rampage. Set to classical music.

Now I feel better. Now if only someone would convert the oblivion lop-ear elf race to skyrim so I can stop derping around in morroblivion... (Hint hint)
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MaximumZero

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71941 on: February 19, 2012, 02:17:34 am »

Welp, if I can remember how to code anything at all, I should have the computer-crippling solution to my problems with dice probabilities soon. If not, and I probably can't, I'll weep for being unable to write a gorramn dice roller, but hey, optimism.
...why not just use dice? :P

Also, I bought a microphone, and I'm seriously thinking about necroing the evil laugh thread.
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Holy crap, why did I not start watching One Punch Man earlier? This is the best thing.
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Solifuge

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71942 on: February 19, 2012, 02:23:48 am »

You know, Tolkien wasn't the only one to use elves. There are other places you could draw inspiration from...

That's a great little article for people who are into world-building. I always find myself expanding on the usual "fantasy race" lineup when putting together a setting for some game or other... next time I find myself creating a fantasy setting, I think I'll start with the planet, and delve into some other world mythology to create some new faces to populate it with. Off the top of my head, it's pretty tough to do without resorting to anthropomorphic animals or fairy-tale critters though.

Got back from MegaCon. It was okay. Getting out, however, was hell. Numerous other big events were going on  (basketball game, as well as a few other events) were happening in the same general area.

-snip-

Yeah, I've gotten burned out after 3 straight days of Con before (the "Sleeping on the floor in various people's hotel rooms" bit probably didn't help), but it was still a good time. I'm glad you decided to go, and that you enjoyed it!
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Max White

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71943 on: February 19, 2012, 03:17:41 am »

Well I don't think you need to go and make an all new race, but you should at least justify why things are the way they are, instead of just assuming that elves are elves because they are. For example, if I were to write a quick and scrappy back story for the elven race...


There was a time when gods would command legions of followers into battle, and of these the god of humans rapidly grew his forces into an unstoppable fist. The human race grew to power, and became a dominate force, but few were pleased with these arrangements. In the shadows, a sinister lord of demons plotted the destruction of the human god, and his army of colossal oni would lay waste to the human cities.
Battles rages throughout the realms that bask in the light, but over time the demon king was pushed back into his eternal darkness, and so he sat, and skulked, and watched the humans from afar, filled with a envious rage, and as he watched, he came to understand why the humans were able to defeat his minions.
Every day, the humans would ready themselves for battles that may never come. They would spar against each other, and fire arrows at scare crows. They would read over vast books on war tactics, and tone themselves by playing sports. They were more than they were made to be, because every day they fought, so that when war would come, it was a day like any other to them.
The demon king looked at his own forced, that were little more than large animals. They were given all the subsistence they needed, and slept for thousands of years at a time. They were lazy and weak, and would never stand against the human forces. They needed to taste blood, were they to ever demand it.
And so the demon king took the elemental forces of his realm, and from them he crafted a sacrifice to his own follows, a new race that resembled the humans in figure and stature. He filled them with zeal and determination, the gifts he had neglected to give his demons.
He then gathered this new race that he called 'Elves' and appeared before his sleeping demons. With a great voice to shouted, and they awoke to his voice.
"You are all lazy, ungrateful beasts!", he proclaimed, "You could not even beat such puny animals! You are all worthless to me, and I have a new chosen race now, crafted in the image of those that destroyed you!"
The demons rose with anger, and envy. Their master was their own, and their pride would not allow them to share his vision. They attacked the elves, just as the demon king had planned. There was no battle, just a blood, as the mighty demon forces tore apart the infant race. They were no warriors, and not ready to stand against such an army. Those that could retreated back, hoping to survive the fury.
The king of demons watched as his pets tore apart their new toy, then slowly, one by one, returned to their slumber. This angered him, that his attempts had been useless. His forces were no better ready for battle than they were before. While the human forces he sought to over come were warriors armed with sharp steel, his elves were little more than weary vagabonds. He would need to give them a chance to grow, and become strong, before they were to serve their use.
So he made a gambit, one that would either destroy the last of his elves, or allow them to meet their potential. He opened a rift to the realms that bask in light, where the humans and others were waiting for them, and he hoped that they would survive the righteousness of the human race.
There, the humans looked upon the first elves not as enemies, but as brothers. They were similar in form and figure, and shared a common hate of demons. They were welcomed as  guests in these worlds, and were allowed to build their camps, to become towns, to become cities. This pleased the dark god of demons, that his eternal slaves would be safe within the house of his enemy. He once again appeared to them, and they listened to him speak with open ears.
"Your homeland is held by vile savages!" he told them, "Would you disgrace yourselves and me by allowing this? If you will still honour me, then you will pay tribute to me! Every night that the moon is taken by my touch, and dares not shed it's silver over the landscape, I will open a rift to your true home, and you will march through the wastelands to my home and temple, and there you will pray!"
And so it was that every new moon, elves warriors entered the realm of shadows, and marched through the waste towards the great temple, but they were always challenged by the demons, who now dare not sleep, lest their god choose these infants over them. And the demon kind sat, and he watched as the elves grew to become a might race, wishing to serve him, and as they grew stronger so did his chosen race, the demons he had crafted before time, and he smiled.



See, elven mythology without all the cliché.

Kadzar

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71944 on: February 19, 2012, 03:19:21 am »

You know, Tolkien wasn't the only one to use elves. There are other places you could draw inspiration from...

That's a great little article for people who are into world-building. I always find myself expanding on the usual "fantasy race" lineup when putting together a setting for some game or other... next time I find myself creating a fantasy setting, I think I'll start with the planet, and delve into some other world mythology to create some new faces to populate it with. Off the top of my head, it's pretty tough to do without resorting to anthropomorphic animals or fairy-tale critters though.
One thing I do, or, at least, I did a lot when I was younger, was I would just draw a vaguely humanoid-looking shape for aliens and fantasy races. The basic idea is to just draw without having any idea in your mind what you want it to look like, and not trying to steer it in any particular direction. I think. I'm kind of out of practice with the whole unbridled creativity thing.
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Bauglir

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71945 on: February 19, 2012, 03:27:41 am »

Welp, if I can remember how to code anything at all, I should have the computer-crippling solution to my problems with dice probabilities soon. If not, and I probably can't, I'll weep for being unable to write a gorramn dice roller, but hey, optimism.
...why not just use dice? :P
Because I need to run 5 metric fucktons of trials to determine the probability of a given result (or higher) for a given number of dice with a given number of faces, keeping only a given number of the highest rolls. I've yet to find a tool that does this (except for one online thing that breaks before it gets to a high enough number of dice for my purposes), and since there's no known formula for calculating this if previous conversations were any indication, brute force is my only choice. Empiricism suggests that 1,000,000 trials per option is sufficient, and like hell am I doing that by hand. This is for system development, not playing, which is a whole other beast.

In related news, it goddamn works! YESSSSSSSSSSSS. I just had to sort out a few bugs first (actually, I did it entirely correctly the first time, except for putting the necessary +1 in the random number generator in the wrong place, and my attempts to correct the results before I realized that introduced more bugs that it took me a while to figure out). Time to bring my computer to its metaphorical knees.

Also no, I don't know anything about lists. Because I've forgotten. I had to look up how to print things to the console, that's how much I've forgotten. >___________________> I sure do suck at this, but at least I still succeeded.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Max White

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71946 on: February 19, 2012, 03:30:09 am »

I list is like an array, but you can use it to store any number of items, not just a pre-set amount.

Bauglir

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71947 on: February 19, 2012, 03:36:24 am »

... Holy jegus. That'd probably be a lot more efficient in terms of computing power, wouldn't it? If I actually cripple my computer before I get enough results to be useful, I'll look into it.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Max White

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71948 on: February 19, 2012, 03:40:01 am »

Heck no.
If you know how many elements you are going to need before you need them, an array is like a bajillion times more efficient.

What the fuck are we doing here in the happy thread? Go to the programming thrread and think about what you have done.

Solifuge

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71949 on: February 19, 2012, 06:11:22 am »

You know, Tolkien wasn't the only one to use elves. There are other places you could draw inspiration from...
Well I don't think you need to go and make an all new race, but you should at least justify why things are the way they are, instead of just assuming that elves are elves because they are. For example, if I were to write a quick and scrappy back story for the elven race...

I like that concept, MW. Still, that article hit a notion that bothers me about Fantasy as a genre*, which even that idea doesn't escape. I understand that all creativity, without exception, is based on something that already exists; "Elves are like people, but different because _____", "Dragons are like giant lizards, but _____", etc. If it wasn't, it would be completely unrelatable to readers... it's tied into the way our brains work, and the schemas and symbols with which we understand the world. Still, it's gotten to the point that there are conventions you have to follow; if you don't, you will probably be seen as "playing against type" for effect, and may even risk upsetting your readers. In a nutshell, that's what bugs me.

----------
* Hell, the notion that "Fantasy" has even become a genre... a sort of formula with expected variables like evil overlords who control/employ beasts and monsters, supernatural forces like magicians and interventionist gods/demons, a cast of "Standard" fantasy races like Elves/Dwarves/Goblins/Trolls/etc. really bugs me.

** That's right, Eragon is Tolkein fanfic. So is World of Warcraft, the Shannara series, Record of Lodoss War, and every Forgotten Realms novel ever.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2012, 06:38:56 am by Solifuge »
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Max White

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71950 on: February 19, 2012, 06:31:15 am »

So what you are saying is that if we don't start with a reference point, we can not comprehend what we are dealing with, and what is left and strange and disturbing..?
So basically you can channel Lovecraft?

Solifuge

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71951 on: February 19, 2012, 06:35:48 am »

That was precisely my point, or my name isn't Solifuge.
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RedKing

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71952 on: February 19, 2012, 06:51:19 am »

In my conworld, what passes for elves (I at least give them a different name, though it's pretty transparent window-dressing) were initially a plains-dwelling tribal people who after a time were forced out by ethnic cleansing by the humans living there. The only place left for them to go was a large taiga forest. Most of them died. Those that survived learned how to live in the cold and the woods, and have a VERY big grudge.

But yeah, the classic fantasy genre on the whole is pretty hidebound in its conventions. Which is not to say that there aren't other subgenres within fantasy that are quite vibrant. I'm more and more preferring the notion of "speculative fiction" as a larger genre encompassing fantasy, sci-fi, horror, alternative history, etc. Especially as writers increasingly blur the lines between those subgenres.
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Max White

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Re: [>゜))))彡] [>゜))))彡]The fish has been doubled! (Happy Thread)
« Reply #71953 on: February 19, 2012, 07:01:23 am »

I think one of the things I dislike most in fantasy is imposing black and white morality, and even massive stereotypes on entire races.
Goblins, orks and drow? Evil.
Dwarves, humans and elves? Good!
It is just a lazy short cut for instant characters. You don't need to give your dwarf any character depth, because he, like all dwarves, is a cheerful drunk who serves a lawful good god and likes battle axes. That is just every dwarf ever, so why bother doing any more?
Admittedly in my elves example I am sort of guilty for doing this for the demons, but I picture them as angry wild animals, like large hairless bears with two sets of front legs and long antlers. I think it is acceptable to stereotype dumb animals. But the elves themselves are a little more of a blank slate, starting with their morality. Fuck taking their position into account, it would be hard to define them as good or evil to start with.
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