The Factory Floor

a4android

05:31

@MonicaCellio I was initially puzzled, but after discussions with @Secespitus it was obvious, not completely but enough to make sense, that this was so. Thanks for confirming it.

Bellerophon

09:36

I wish I could animate. I've come up with a great idea for an animated silent film but I can't do animation. :(

Secespitus

11:40

A question about Meta Tags: should [discussion] and [feature-request] be used together as was done here? I always thought you should choose one of these standard tags for Meta questions, which in this case should probably be [discussion].

@Bellerophon Maybe if you post a "Teaser-script" here in chat you could find someone who could help you with that? (Certainly not me, as I have no idea about this stuff - just interested in what idea you came up with)

Bellerophon

@Secespitus Pretty sure it is meant to be one.

Bellerophon

11:56

It should definitely be discussion.

Worldbuilding Meta

12:50

0

Q: Do we need the [4chan] tag on Meta?

I want to discuss the usage of the 4chan tag on Meta, as I think it is unnecessary. While looking through our Meta tags I found the 4chan tag which belongs to this question: Is there any section of 4chan that is suitable for worldbuilding questions? The question itself looks like it would be ...

Secespitus

@WorldbuildingMeta Sometimes the chat bot is pretty fast. That weren't even 10 minutes. I remember seeing some questions pop up more than an hour after they were asked. How come the time can be so different?

Bellerophon

13:42

@Secespitus It scans the newest questions page and posts any that weren't their last time it scanned. So if you post 1 minute before it scans it posts instantly but if you post a straight after the scan it takes ages to post.

Secespitus

@Bellerophon That makes sense. Similar to the regular badge-scan. Thanks.

James

15:45

Why are people resurrecting our very misguided santa experiment from two years ago?

Secespitus

16:04

@James Apparently the ghost_in_the_code liked that post

AndyD273

@dot_Sp0T If there's no light then there's no light. It has to have something to see by, whether that's IR, radar, etc. There might not be enough ambient light at night, especially on a world with no moon (or small useless moons like Mars), for a robot to navigate without some artificial source, which would run the battery down faster.

So that was a very late reply...

So, I really hope that the photonic fence trials go well, I want a laser bug fence for the back yard. engadget.com/2017/06/26/…

dot_Sp0T

16:50

@AndyD273 there's other ways to see than light. You can e.g. use sonar

AndyD273

17:17

@dot_Sp0T Assuming there is enough air. And sonar will still take some small amount of power, both for emitting the sound pulse, and processing the echo return. Assuming you want something more than "there is nothing immediately in front of me" sonar might not be great, especially since it is a very processing intensive process.

The TOF values depend on the speed of sound, while digital signal processing techniques have proven to be a necessity for compensating the speed variations due to temperature or other atmospheric conditions.

Some physical phenomena pertaining to ultrasonic propagation have made the development and the use of sonar sensors for obstacle reconstruction more difficult, compared with laser or infrared sensors.

In particular, the impossibility of correctly detecting an obstacle presence, when the reflecting surface is not orthogonal to the direction of wave propagation, is an important deterrent for the use of this type of device in robotic applications. This is mainly due to the wide sound beam propagated, which is responsible for unexpected TOF values owing to several factors, such as specular reflections and scattering.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.5772/62098

So I guess the question is, is there a cheaper energy cost to process visible light, or lidar/radar, or sonar.

DaaaahWhoosh

18:41

protip: if you're having massive keyboard lag and you recently tried cleaning your Shift key, you probably enabled a setting that waits half a second before taking any keyboard input.

AndyD273

@DaaaahWhoosh Is that the cat input prevention feature?

DaaaahWhoosh

lol maybe, I think I killed it so much after finding it that I can't find it again, otherwise I'd read the explanation

James

19:55

Anyone know of mythology be it historical or fictional wherein the creation myth involves defeating or chaining the elements?

DaaaahWhoosh

there was that one time in the movie Hercules where the Titans seemed to be elemental

James

@DaaaahWhoosh That movie never happened.

DaaaahWhoosh

but I liked that movie...

James

@DaaaahWhoosh The whole ancient Greece meets NYC thing was super annoying.

DaaaahWhoosh

oh, I thought you'd be more angry at the ancient Greece meets ancient Rome

James

20:01

@DaaaahWhoosh Now you mention it...also annoying it.

DaaaahWhoosh

other than that though, I can't think of any creation myths that involve the elements where those elements aren't already in control of the gods

maybe it's something you should ask on Mythology

James

I have this idea to make it part of my world's origin story

DaaaahWhoosh

(@HDE226868 you should confirm my above statement)

@James it seems like a cool idea. I like in Paradise Lost how Chaos is just some dude who has his own kingdom, and was around before God even did anything

James

Basically the god/gods and perhaps some demi-gods or humans team up to take the traditional elements and lock them up basically...

DaaaahWhoosh

lock them up as in the traditional elements don't exist afterwards?

AndyD273

20:13

Sorta kinda like the world in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality universe. Basically you have Chaos, and God (mostly) took the Chaos and wove it into reality. Fate also spins Chaos into threads to measure peoples lives. The world is basically a big sorting engine to take the chaos and sort it good from bad, to determine what the ratio is.

James

@DaaaahWhoosh So think of the elements being free as constant natural disasters. Eruptions, Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Tornados, Lightning, Earthquakes etc etc.

Then chaining them allows life to flourish because things calm down.

but their power builds up and squeaks out of their prisons on occasions

AndyD273

Are the elements incarnations? or just raw forces? Or actual elements as we know them

James

leading to less common natural disasters

They would be personified

So maybe a spirit of fire named Ignis

So the Earth spirit would be like Gaia...

Geia?

Gea?

...however you spell it

DaaaahWhoosh

I want to make a joke here, but it might be offensive, and is definitely contrary to my current avatar

James

...yeah thats my bad, I inadvertently baited you on that one

DaaaahWhoosh

20:18

eh, it's fine, let me find a replacement

@James you're a natural disaster

3

James

I have to give you that one

DaaaahWhoosh

anyway, so the Earth imprisoned the elements and thus allowed peace. So, one might reason that by harming the Earth, you allow the elements some measure of freedom, which cause bad things to happen

James

@DaaaahWhoosh Ok...thats an additional twist I hadn't considered...so the earth elemental would be good and side with the gods

DaaaahWhoosh

oh, I completely misunderstood that

I forgot that Earth is also an element

James

Its a neat twist...and begs the question...why would the earth be good and the others bad...

AndyD273

20:24

@James They could even war with each other, to the point where Gaia is mostly on the side of order, since nature mostly needs order to thrive, but it's not a hard rule. Fire and Water might be enemies, but occasional allies.

DaaaahWhoosh

yeah, Earth seems like the only element in favor of order, everything else is chaotic

AndyD273

Also, being incarnations, they have personalities, so why does Fire just want to see the world burn?

Could Fire have a deeper motivation

James

My initial plan was that the elements would be sort of banished from reality.

Their "bodies" would later be used (shortsightedly) as a prison for evil gods and their minions who try to destroy the world.

DaaaahWhoosh

oh, so there's evil gods too?

James

Yeah...my deific family tree is almost as obnoxiously complicated as the greeks.

You have primals, an over god (ala forgotten realms), gods, demigods, demons and angels, avatars...its a mess

DaaaahWhoosh

20:30

so, in terms of deities, I'd say order vs chaos is my favorite binary. Mostly because it's a sort of corruption of good vs evil

it's much more fun to imagine God as the ultimate old man, and Satan as the ultimate moody teenager; it makes them both fundamentally flawed, and allows everyone to question which side is actually better

James

Avatar

An avatar (Sanskrit: अवतार, IAST: avatāra) is a concept in Hinduism and it means "descent", and refers to the appearance or incarnation of a deity on earth. The term also generally refers to "alight, to make one's appearance" and is sometimes used to refer to any revered guru or human being. The word avatar does not appear in the Vedic literature, but appears in verb forms in post-Vedic literature, and as a noun particularly in the Puranic literature after the 6th century CE. The Rigveda describes Indra as endowed with a mysterious power of assuming any form at will. The Bhagavad Gita expounds...

@DaaaahWhoosh Reminds me of Ra Vs That big ass snake...whats his name

AndyD273

speaking of moody teenagers...

Kylo Ren ASMR Interrogation / Personal Attention / Dark Side Tingles

►

James

Apophis

DaaaahWhoosh

it seems like in the past, chaos has been seen as a bad thing

but I don't know if that's as clear now as it once was. People these days prefer things like freedom and diversity

AndyD273

@DaaaahWhoosh I think Chaos out of control isn't great, but without it life stagnates

James

20:39

Yeah...but is that because those of us living not in a third world country are unaware what real chaos feels like?

DaaaahWhoosh

hopefully the answer is that everything is best in moderation.

James

The middle tends to be the correct choice in my experience.

DaaaahWhoosh

the excellence of man is to find an intermediate condition between excess and deficiency in all things, or something like that

AndyD273

A universe in Total Chaos is an inferno where nothing real can exist, while a universe in Total Order is a frozen, unchanging place where nothing can live.

James

@DaaaahWhoosh Pretty much yeah

DaaaahWhoosh

20:41

which I guess is part of the symbolism of this as Middle-Earth. We sit between two extremes, and perhaps are better for it

AndyD273

So it could be that certian gods want to move the world closer to chaos, and others want to move it closer to order, so they work to check each other to keep things from going to far one way or the other

James

@AndyD273 Actually in my mythos most of the gods wanted to destroy reality which through a series of events empowered early mortals to stop the gods...

DaaaahWhoosh

destroy reality? that's unreal!

James

basically for the gods to impact reality they have to become mortal and enter the physical realm...which leaves them mortal...though still super powerful.

DaaaahWhoosh

@James I've been struggling with how to balance combat between mortals and angels/demons, I might try to steal that idea

James

20:47

Go for it.

odds are I will never finish writing anything anyways

DaaaahWhoosh

yeah, me too. I'm going to need at least five full-length adventures before I try to tackle a sci-fi Christian apocalypse story

and then after that, I'll need some more filler before handling the galactic-admins-vs-angels-for-control-of-the-universe-after-God-leaves story

but I feel like if I ever get there, it's going to be awesome

I gotta say, though, worldbuilding is hard when you have to draw everything

if you're just writing it, all you have to do is not describe anything.

@James so, when your gods are mortal, and they die, do they completely die? Or do one of those Tolkien things where they just get a new body?

James

@DaaaahWhoosh They die...though I have considered an option where their spirit lingers mostly powerless and they can be restored by ill advised mortal cultists.

DaaaahWhoosh

21:16

that usually is the best option if you want sequels

Transcript for