Tag Archives: questions

Drendast, Part 2: The Unknown

Posted on by
Reply

Image

What Earthporn ain’t good for, I’ll never know. Thanks to redditor Snahans for sharing this image here.

I can imagine a lot of similarities between Earth and Drendast. Forests, deserts, mountains, oceans, islands, and various other non-polar terrains. But when it comes to imagining (to say nothing of describing) what sets Drendast apart from Earth, I come up with as many misses as I do hits.

As mentioned in Drendast, Part 1: The Big Picture, Drendast is a mega planet, nearly 100 times the diameter of the sun. It is so massive that it has three (3) suns orbiting around it, not the other way around. Prior to the fall of one of those suns, called Tropreus, into the planet, there was perpetual daylight. Life evolved in a manner which capitalized on that bountiful, endless supply of energy, easily able to meet all basic needs in peace. This meant no predation, no struggle to survive. Life was a free gift.

Additionally, the surface of the planet is more than 90% ocean, save for what looks like 12 little islands spread out evenly around its surface. Those islands, called Subworlds, are actually massive, Pangaea-sized super continents, connected to one another via a naturally occurring intra-planetary network of Conduits.

I could go on about other known features about Drendast, similar or different from what we might expect to find on Earth, but the point of this entry is to emphasize the fact that there’s still tonnes of details which are unknown or not clearly understood about the planetary super system. For example:

How is it that the gravity isn’t too crushing for complexity and, eventually, self-replicating proto-life forms to emerge? Does the presence of ether mitigate some of gravity’s more intense effects at that magnitude?

How are days marked with three suns in the sky, if at all?

Wouldn’t there be solar tides? How would they effect the planet’s surface?

In what ways is the climate on Drendast unlike that found on Earth?

Does Drendast have a determinable spin/rotation?

Does the Drendain stellar system orbit around anything else out in deeper space? Like how our solar system orbits around the super massive black hole in our galaxy’s center?

Are there other, more distant stars and celestial bodies? If so, are Drendains aware of this fact prior to the fall of Tropreus, given that it should be impossible to see stars in the night sky if there’s never any night?

Is there tectonic activity on Drendast prior to the Fall? If so, how does it manifest itself? Would it at least partly be caused by the orbits of the suns?

What is the present day role of the formative primordial ether at the planet and suns’ cores, if any? I mean, right now, it’s the ambiguous, cosmic, vaguely-spiritual, ultra caveat any sci-fi writer might like to have on hand to magically conjure up an otherwise impossible explanation for how and why things are the way they are, and I’m happy to use it to explain the cosmic origins of Drendast, but beyond that..?

If Drendast has no spin of it’s own, does it have a magnetic field? If so, how? Is it anything at all like that found on Earth? If not, again, how so? — I’m thinking the suns each contribute equally to what might be described as a dynamic, ‘Triune’ (or ‘three-in-one’) magnetic field around and resonating with Drendast.

Are there monsters on Drendast, despite ideal evolutionary conditions?

Drendast and the three suns may be deified by the Drendain peoples, but will they actually play a role as personified entities throughout the course of Drendain history, literally and directly intervening here and there, or no?

These and many more questions plague me somewhat, leaving what might otherwise be a fully immersive setting bereft with holes. Sure, there is supposed to be a given amount of perpetual uncertainty in the world of Drendast owing to the fact that it’s just so bloody huge that no amount of exploratory effort could ever observe everything there is to see under the suns even after thousands of lifetimes, but there are other mysteries, such as the ones listed above, which are only mysteries because I, as a writer, come up short for answers which I feel I rightfully should understand better.

So, I might as well just put it out there for any interested thinkers and dreamers to muse over. If you can imagine a sensible enough sounding state of things on Drendast which sufficiently answers one or more of these questions for me, and I go as far as to officially adopt it as cannon for what is known and true of Drendast, I will be more than glad to credit it back to you!

Any takers?

Levels of Separation

Posted on by
Reply

Under the right state of mind, or way of looking and thinking about things, sometimes I find it difficult to enjoy certain games. A number of diverting past-times are particularly well designed, capable of creating an immersive experience that, even if just for a brief moment, leave the one experiencing them unable to differentiate between their obvious fictional basis and their potential real world basis.

Case in point (and this is going back a little while now), but when Halo 4 was first released, I did a marathon run through. It took me awhile ’cause I like deliberating, taking my time, checking over everything, and basically just wasting time. No big deal, usually, except that this was one of the first video game titles that I played from beginning to end while high.

For the record, I enjoy a little weed from time to time. Mind you, I’m a ridiculously easy bake, and I can easily make $10 worth last me an entire month. I know tonnes of people who can’t even make that much last them half a day. So.

I don’t need much, and since I use so little, I develop almost no tolerance over time whatsoever. This helps keep it affordable. Usually, when I’m out, I’m out and it’s no big deal. Life goes on. I manage. However, I enjoy having some on hand for specific uses. I find that it really does help lubricate the cognitive machinery, and allows me to think of things with greater depth, or from unusual angles, or whatever. I’m not really sure what exactly it does do, but the TL;DR version is that it really helps me out in the creativity department.

We’ve all heard that before one time or another.

As much as I know from first hand experience the truth of that, there are instances of pot use which have other, unintended effects, such as while gaming. It helps me achieve a heightened degree of focus. Textures seem more vivid. Progression seems slower, allowing me time to take more details in as I go along. Events that happen in game seem more believable. Encounters with enemies seem much less like targets presenting themselves on a screen (to which I respond by pushing buttons in order to dispatch) and more like legitimate contact with some sort of supposedly hostile alien life form.

And of course they’re hostile! Don’t you seeing them firing at you? A voice of reason in my head might insist, if there were voices in my head. Testing that hypothesis is silly. I’ve played countless FPS titles before, not the least of which were prior titles in the same bloody Halo series. I know when the game is presenting me enemies and when it is presenting me with friendlies (or, more rarely neutrals).

As a gamer, my instincts are automatic. There is absolutely no moral imperative to question what it is that I do in the name of fun. If ever I found myself in doubt, all I would have to do is fail to return fire in response to being fired upon. The character that I play, the iconic Master Chief, drops in defeat. Dead. I restart from a previous check point, losing progress made.

Sounds awful! How dare those moving polygonal meshes execute scripts which generate coded beams of colour which just so happen to inconvenience my ability to get from various, vaguely similar A-to-B points in a rapid fashion! THEY MUST ALL BE DESTROYED!!!

And, because I’m just a gamer playing a completely fictional character in a completely fictional, computer-generated universe, pitted again completely non-sentient, computer-controlled AI, why on Earth shouldn’t I just enjoy the strongly implied acts of violence I’m evidently encouraged to carry out?

You see how describing it with alternative language sheds a different light on what a gaming experience can sometimes feel like? At almost no time do I ever question my actions playing First Person Shooters while not baked (I’d say ‘sober’, but it seems that alcohol only emphasizes the ‘okay-ness’ of simulated violence, so…). However, while baked, I find myself questioning everything.

The fact of the matter is that I have almost no understanding of what I’m really doing. I believe there are companies which hire artists (something I want to be!), programmers, designers, creative directors, and tonnes and tonnes more besides who spend ridiculous hours and funding to put a game together for the eventual enjoyment of gamers.

I don’t write code. I wouldn’t be able to interpret a block of C++ to save my life. And with the rate that technology is advancing (careening steadily closer and closer to Turing-approved AI), how do I know that I’m not actually playing a role in the deliberate destruction of a variety of under-credited artificial life forms, hmm? It wouldn’t be a stretch to attribute the tag ‘alien’ to such life forms, would it?

That’ll be a blog for another day.

For now, the point is to provide a basic commentary on what makes a game a game. If a game turned out to be a real and truly violent activity on some poorly-understood (likely informational) level, then I, among countless other well meaning gamers, would be guilty of cold-coded murder on multiple counts. If, however, a game is just a game, well then… Have fun! As for me, the lesson I think I’ve learned is to really limit how often I play games baked in order to still be able to enjoy them as they were intended to be. Otherwise, the layers of separation feel like they become stripped away, the experience becomes uncomfortably raw, and the immersion at times feels all too real.