World creation with existing items

Now...  going back to the worlds in my head.  Thinking roughly about them, there are ways to create those worlds.  The only problem is that using each of those methods to create your world in someone else' equipment is that their equipment was purpose built for their task.  That doesn't quite work out for doing something you want to do.

For the rundown of options, you have...

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion:  The graphic engine for this is beautiful.  It's capable of creating huge, open worlds.  The game is beautiful, it's wonderfully old world, and the world of Oblivion looks like kind of like what I would imagine if I were to create a world.  The only real problem is that I hate the way they do speech.  I've dug into the complexities of creating a collection of unique characters that each have a different life and things to say.  But in Oblivion, doing that is something that's a complete and utter pain in the butt.

The 2nd big problem with Oblivion is the scaling difficulty.  By the end of the game, the enemies are just as strong as you are.  You've started out at one strength, and essentially stayed there the entire time.  You essentially have to break the game mechanics to see any real growth in your own power.  That strikes me as wrong.  What's the point of leveling up when everything levels up with you?  It's occasionally fun to go back to an area that was hard and whip the tar out of it.  But you can't do that in Oblivion.

And if I'm going to create a world, I'm going to want to play it.  That's the entire point, isn't it?

I haven't spent much time trying to get textures into Oblivion, but it seems like a pain.  Why do I want to create some place that looks like Tamriel that's not Tamriel.  Makes no sense. 

Fallout 3:  Has a great post-apocalyptic tile set, and inventory system, but the game was buggy as hell.  It frustrates me to no end to play a game I paid for with a computer system that is beyond the greatest specs and I have to play it at the lowest possible screen resolution because that's the only way the game is stable.  Screw that.

Seeing as how Fallout 3 is based off the Oblivion engine, it's probably got the same problems as the Oblivion engine and world creation set.  No need to beat that dead horse.

Unreal Development Kit:  Is the only remaining alternative.  But it suffers from wanting to create small, compact worlds.  If I want to create a world, I want to create a huge world.  I want something that is big, complex, and interactive. 

The UDK also has no built in inventory system or conversation system, so those have to be built.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great engine.  But the framework is not there for what I want to create. 

So there you have it...  The video game engines that I have don't provide what I want in a world building software.  Maybe there's something else out there, but I don't know what it is.  Someone out there in internet land knows.  But not me.

A Week

It's been a week.  Statement of fact.

Not sure where to go from there.  There is work to be done, and ideas pounding in my head.  Not sure where they want to go, but they are pounding away.  I think the creation desire is back again.  I'm not sure for how long, but it is back.  I think I've talked about it before, but then it was all about finding motivation.  Now, it's just an unresolved longing.  What can you do?  The mind races and screams to go and create and produce, and the body jumps from subject to subject, unfocused.  Finding focus is the hard part.  The want and need to create are difficult, but they are there.

You see, there are two worlds floating in my head.  One is old and dead... many thousands of years ago in comparison to the current state.  If I was to put a time frame on this world, it would be before the flood of Noah.  In this world, there are all sorts of magical creatures and beings.  Giants, ogres, unicorns...  tales of bad people doing bad things abound. 

The other place floating in my head is a few weeks after tomorrow.  It's just as vague and strange, and fanciful things roam the land.  Except this time, it's all technology.  The people are still the same and the horrors still exist... but now they are masked and hidden.  The thieves don't carry swords anymore.  They carry pistols and the kings' gold isn't gold anymore.  It's data.  It's a different and just as fanciful world...  But it's still the same. 

I know these worlds will eventually reach some sort of medium, be it book, comic, or video game.  I've already started on the first, but it doesn't go very far: just a forest with some snow.  Perhaps I should return to the forest and flesh out the world. 

The other thing I've been contemplating is this piece from Penny-Arcade.  One of my neighbors watches the Big Bang Theory.  I couldn't get into it, but I never understood why.  I guess the point is that Big Bang Theory was written by the jocks in high school about the nerds.  It's no fun being the punch line...  doesn't matter if you're 15 or 35. 

See, that's the real problem with nerds like me.  We want to drag the rest of the world into our technological wonder and it see it the way we do.  But they never will.  They will show up and "not be us" no matter how hard we try.  See, there's a fundamental fact: you can't control other people.  You can influence them.  You can educate them.  You can do your best to get them to see things your way.  But you can't control them.  And part of their nature is to do things differently than us. 

I occasionally have a side job as a DJ.  I generally handle the lighting portion for a buddy of mine.  He's got the musical knowledge and talent to hook kids and them dancing and enjoying life.  It's the kind of thing that makes for a good elementary/junior high dance.  We've done an adult dance, but those are generally separated by hours of platitudes and copious amounts of beer.  Even then, it's different. 

During those elementary school dances, I see posters advertising the school as being a "bully free zone".  And that's fucking hilarious.  I try to avoid using such language, but sometimes it's necessary.  See, kids aren't as smart or crafty as adults that pay attention.  They think they are getting away and being slick because it's dark and everyone is drowned out and not paying attention.  Too busy being lost in the moment.  But me...  I have a tendency to see a lot.  I'm not sure if others see these things or not.  I'm not going to act like a super hero with super powers.  It's just that you can see the thugs and bullies in a school setting easily if you know what to look for.  And they're everywhere.

So that's why the "bully free zone" idea is hilarious.  You can't control people.  Scumbags are going to be scumbags, no matter what sign you put up.  Call it a natural order, call it what you will.  It's just an observation.

Friday afternoon randomness

Been a bit, but I'd thought I'd write a Friday afternoon something or other.  It is Friday after all.

Apparently I become a colossal jerk when I work too much and don't get enough sleep.  As a compromise with my wife, I no longer wake up at 5:45 in the morning.  The studying time was awesome, but I was become a pretty worthless human being.  No point in being a worthless, humorless, human being.  So I quit that.

Tax time is here, but my tax return probably won't be much of anything.  You see, I've figured out pretty close to what I need to set my yearly deductions at so I get to spend my money now as opposed to next year.  See, why do I want to give a government that doesn't handle money well any more money than is absolutely necessary?  Would you give a drunk alcoholic a beer?  No.  Then why would you want to give a government more of your money than is necessary?  It is YOUR money after all.  And they don't even pay you back in interest.

I started testing using the Pearson IT Certification Practice Test for the CCENT yesterday.  There were around 50 questions, and at question 43 I decided to figure out how to use the notes feature.  Then I found out you couldn't copy/paste, so I accidentally closed the entire program.  Made me rather mad.  I won't be using the notes feature any more.

I don't pay near as much attention to politics as I used to no, or news for that matter.  I spent about 5 minutes looking at news.yahoo.com and www.theblaze.com and didn't see anything of interest.  Just lots of fluff and congratulatory pieces.  The kind of thing that distracts the attention like a shiny object but has no real substance.   So I didn't miss anything. 

Programming, day 1

After coming up with the idea of Driven, it's time to start writing the code.  Or is it?  I have an idea, but right now the idea has nothing solid.  Like most great ideas, it's just that: an idea.  I can't write much of a program based off some random idea.  What to do?  I guess it's time to start writing a design document. 

The purpose of a design document is pretty simple: write down what you want and describe how you want the program to work.  I'd love to just start throwing down code, but I'm not that good at Java and the idea behind this program is considerable more complex than anything I've done in a while.  Besides, everything else I've done has turned out to be a colossal kludged mess.  I'd much rather finish this project and it end up being everything I wanted. 

As for an IDE, I've chosen to use NetBeans for this project.  I've tried Eclipse before, and it seemed to work fairly well, but...  Yeah, there's always a but.  I don't like the way auto-complete works in Eclipse.  I find it hard to select the completion I want without using the mouse.  If I wanted to use a mouse, I would be hunting and pecking.  When I want to code, I want to code as quickly as possible.  

The second reason I'm not going to use Eclipse this time is Eclipse seems to have quit working on my computer.  I'm not sure why, but it doesn't.  Won't even open.  Maybe because I've quit updating Java and am going to sit and hold at Java 6 Update 18 because of work requirements.  That's probably it.

I'm not completely conversed in NetBeans, so I'm not terribly sure how to do everything in it.  Rather than have a separate document for the design doc, I used create a new file and simply made it a text file.  So now, attached to the project is a TXT document that will give me the opportunity to work on the documentation from within the project.  Is there a better way to do this?  Beats me.  But it works for me, so that's what I'll do.

The complexity of a design document can go in many different directions.  The document can be just a few lines long or hundreds of pages, describing every single thing about a project.  I'm not sure where this design document is going.  Right now, it's a matter of deciding and describing what needs to be there.  For a complex project, unless there is prior thought and intention, there is no telling how the project with end up.

So the idea is created, and the design document is started.  It will probably take a few weeks to get the design document far enough along to be of any use. 

Discipleship and Mentorship

After my last post, I began thinking about mentorship.  That's one part that I thought was generally missing from my life. 

Let's recap for a bit...  

Four Fishermen Called as Disciples

¹⁸ And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” ²⁰ They immediately left their nets and followed Him.
²¹ Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, ²² and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.

Jesus Heals a Great Multitude

²³ And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. ²⁴ Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. 

Now, what we've initially gathered from watching what Jesus teaches here is that we shouldn't take a lot of time learning every single bit of information before becoming active in a subject, or in any undertaking.

All you really need to do is come up with an idea, and start doing it.  Part of the action is "start now even if you don't have all the information".  The second part is mentorship.

Mentorship and discipleship are intrinsically tied together.  A disciple can be defined as "a person who is a pupil or an adherent fo the doctrines of another; follower."  And a mentor then, is the teacher.

Now, back to my main thought.  I've never really had a mentor.  Now I realize I've got several, and I picked them up when I wasn't even looking.  The first is the Bible.  It's probably the single greatest repository of truth there is.  It would be better if someone had come along and indexed everything, but the Bible is a document that speaks to each individual in different places and spaces.  No matter what I flip through, I find something that pertains to my life.  The only real question: am I tough enough to apply it?  Sound easy?

Proverbs 22:7

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

So... how easy is it to follow the Bible?  Not very easy.