michaelc - Network

I dusted off my old Bible for Easter yesterday. Well, technically not *for* Easter, but *on* Easter. I've been dusting the home...

I dusted off my old Bible for Easter yesterday. Well, technically not *for* Easter, but *on* Easter. I've been dusting the home library and I happened to get to the shelves where I have books classified as "B: Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion" (because I use the Library of Congress classification system at home like the nerd I am...)

I also dusted off an English translation of the Qur'an, Gnostic gospels, Book of Mormon, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Dao De Jing, old psych textbooks, etc...

Just watched a human helping a young doggy friend learn that "want" and "do" don't necessarily need to be connected....

Just watched a human helping a young doggy friend learn that "want" and "do" don't necessarily need to be connected. In other words, patience training.

Anyone know what this reddish plant is? Growing well in highly wet peat/muck soil in an old foundation with no building any more. Seattle. ...

Anyone know what this reddish plant is? Growing well in highly wet peat/muck soil in an old foundation with no building any more. Seattle. Curious if it might be one of those that's useful for remediation of water and/or soil. Or, you know, a noxious weed.

Discarded brick for scale.

(I've looked at a bunch of plant identification places but most only show the flower, or need details about the flower for identification. In other words: useless to me at this point.)

I'm 14 pages into my Planetary User Manual where I'll record the specifics of any custom planet I make for an author or GMs/DMs,...

I'm 14 pages into my Planetary User Manual where I'll record the specifics of any custom planet I make for an author or GMs/DMs, etc., using the planet Antinous as my example. I haven't even gotten to the part where I describe how to look at the planet on a globe instead of a flat map.

Planets are complicated, and anyone who hires me to make a custom one for them will get quite a lot of detail. I just finished adding fire risk to several of the biome descriptions.

#worldbuilding #gamedev

As I write up my Planetary User Manual for the planet Antinous, I'm pulling examples of Earth-based places for different climates. ...

As I write up my Planetary User Manual for the planet Antinous, I'm pulling examples of Earth-based places for different climates. It's fascinating to see the diversity of *where* the same climate shows up.

For example, Koppen category Dsb ("Mediterranean-influenced Warm Summer Humid Continental") is found in both Flagstaff, Arizona and Skagway, Alaska.

Or that Dallas, TX, and Milan, Shanghai, and New York City are all in the same category (Cfa: Humid Subtropical)

A few weeks ago (or months? I don't know any more) there was some buzz going around a new typeface that was designed to be good...

A few weeks ago (or months? I don't know any more) there was some buzz going around a new typeface that was designed to be good for...something. Dyslexia? Readability? I don't remember.

Anyway, I thought I'd try it out because I heard people saying nice things about it but can't remember what it's called.

Can anyone help me out here?

A little Blender magic later (with some help from a tutorial and a planetary cloud node setup) and the planet Antinous can be seen from...

A little Blender magic later (with some help from a tutorial and a planetary cloud node setup) and the planet Antinous can be seen from space, too. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the one-pixel mismatch between my land and sea masks, so there's....er... a 10km deep beach around every landmass.

#worldbuilding #wip

The planet Antinous is complete except for a little cleanup and writing up some details for making it into a product I can post. In doing...

The planet Antinous is complete except for a little cleanup and writing up some details for making it into a product I can post.

In doing this, I've found a few additional places for greater efficiency in the future, but I think I have a pretty good process now.

This map detail shows areas with potential for bronze (brown), brass (orange), and small- and large-scale iron and steel production (pink and purple).

The planet is ready for someone to start telling the story of its people.

While the fictional planet of Antinous has quite a few places with the copper, tin, fuel and related resources necessary to launch the...

While the fictional planet of Antinous has quite a few places with the copper, tin, fuel and related resources necessary to launch the bronze age, I'm intrigued by the idea that a culture on a subtropical island chain could be where it begins. On earth, the first cultures to develop bronze pretty much dominated for a very long time.

I broke down and set up a separate color palette specifically for geological stuff. And I'm still working on the bronze age. I...

I broke down and set up a separate color palette specifically for geological stuff. And I'm still working on the bronze age. I haven't even started mapping deposits for iron, zinc, various gemstones, etc.

Looks like I've got more than 110 layers on my map, too. Am I going a little crazy? Maybe. But if anyone wants to hire me to make them a planet, they will know *everything* about that planet. "What do I find if I dig here?" "What's the weather like?"

#worldbuilding #workflows #wip

Making a planet is complicated. I'm not sure how @godpod does it. At first, it's like "I only need to know where the plate...

Making a planet is complicated. I'm not sure how @godpod does it.

At first, it's like "I only need to know where the plate boundaries are so I put the mountains in the right place" and pretty soon it's "Should there be a volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposit here, because this is an orogenic belt, but was that a *subduction* zone? And if so, should I broaden the copper rich regions to account for the fact that this had been in an ancient shallow sea?"

The only time it's reasonable and credible to say "no homo" is when you're talking about things from more than 3 million...

The only time it's reasonable and credible to say "no homo" is when you're talking about things from more than 3 million years ago.

uspol Abrego-GarciaFor USians looking to write their senator in support of Sen. Van Hollen's efforts to get Kilmar Abrego-Garcia...

uspol Abrego-Garcia

For USians looking to write their senator in support of Sen. Van Hollen's efforts to get Kilmar Abrego-Garcia lawfully returned to the United States, here's the link to the article at the US Holocaust Museum with the quote that's been going around:

"What distinguishes it from a prison (in the modern sense) is that incarceration in a concentration camp is independent of any judicial sentence or even indictment, and is not subject to judicial review."

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-camp-system-terminology

Not nearly as exciting to look at as previous steps, but locations for varying quality levels of placer deposits, gossans,...

Not nearly as exciting to look at as previous steps, but locations for varying quality levels of placer deposits, gossans, secondary-enriched VMS deposits, etc., are figured out. Now any sapient species on the practice planet Antinous who have reached the copper age can find copper, silver, and gold in specific and appropriate places.

Planets are complicated.

Anyway, hope to have the bronze age resources done tomorrow, but it's even more complicated, so we'll see.

#worldbuilding @WIP

Worked through some geology (rock types, sediment, etc.) and started in on resources. Using Madeline James' sensible idea of mapping by...

Worked through some geology (rock types, sediment, etc.) and started in on resources. Using Madeline James' sensible idea of mapping by Earth technology era. Also, her color palette.

Started w/stone age, mapping out flint & obsidian, most likely sources of fuel for cooking, pottery, and early metal experimentation.

Next up: surface or near-surface deposits of native copper, gold, silver, tin, and lead.

As a service, I'll have to have a survey for what the client wants vs. doesn't need.

All of my biomes are in place on my practice planet of Antinous. This little region has quite a lot of different stuff going on. I think I...

All of my biomes are in place on my practice planet of Antinous. This little region has quite a lot of different stuff going on.

I think I might write up the whole planet when I'm done and make it a digital download for a couple of bucks as an ultra-low-cost sample of what I could do for writers, GMs, or others who want a custom world.

#gamedev #worldbuilding #writing

Do I know anyone here who raises chickens in an urban backyard situation?

Do I know anyone here who raises chickens in an urban backyard situation?

And now the planet Antinous has everything divided down into the various Koppen climate classification categories. I've used the same...

And now the planet Antinous has everything divided down into the various Koppen climate classification categories. I've used the same color scheme as the map on Wikipedia if anyone cares that much.

There were a few categories that just didn't appear on this planet. Antinous has 20 climate zones; Earth has 31.

Of course, Antinous is a fictional planet that I've only worked on for a couple of days, while Earth is an actual planet that's a few billion years old.

#ScreenshotSaturday

Totally solved it. I removed strict latitudinal constraints on climate zones and everything that had been unassigned fell neatly into the...

Totally solved it. I removed strict latitudinal constraints on climate zones and everything that had been unassigned fell neatly into the existing categories.

- Pink = tropical
- Yellow = arid
- Green = temperate
- Brown = continental
- Grey = polar

Whew, I was worried my method was more deeply flawed. And it's a bit faster to do, which is nice.

Oh, and 'cause of the whole "gay continents" thing, this planet is officially named Antinous.

#worldbuilding #climate

My new workflow for planet creation ... needs tweaks.I assigned all the Tropical (pink), Arid (yellow), Temperate (green), Continental...

My new workflow for planet creation ... needs tweaks.

I assigned all the Tropical (pink), Arid (yellow), Temperate (green), Continental (brown), and Polar (grey) zones according to latitude, rainfall, and temperature information.

Anything in black is unassigned.

It's about non-overlapping requirements, I think. For example, the area at the top is the right latitude for tundra but isn't cold enough. The temp is right for arid or temperate but too far north.

New model might be in order.