Lace
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  • So, I'm sorta thinking Rhasz might be too big a project for us at the moment, since the only games I've ever <em class='bbc'>actually</em> finished fall spectacularly short of the magnitude of this one, and (unless you've been holding out on me) the same is true of you.
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    Make another game of smaller scope methinks.
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    Let's do something kinda retro-ish, so that we can get away with quasi-minimalist graphics/audio, which (in addition to just being cool) would be much easier to implement so we can focus more on game mechanics.
    Lace
    Lace
    Platformer, top down view, or neither? (like tetris or something)
    Unfortunately, I have not made progress on nailing down details of a magic system. In lieu of that, however, I've started trying to work out some of the kinks in implementing a mouse gesture based mechanic.
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    The rule is just if the angle is smaller than a certain threshold. I don't actually know exactly what that threshold is, because I didn't code it in terms of angle, I coded it in terms of the 2nd derivative of position. If the magnitude of the difference between two consecutive displacements exceeds 70% of the magnitude of the displacements (which is fixed at 25 pixels, so no matter how fast or slow you move your mouse, it always plots points 25 pixels apart), then there is a corner there.

    <a href='http://pastebin.com/kkvciXCh' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>http://pastebin.com/kkvciXCh</a>

    There's the source, if you wanna try messing around with the displace and tolerance variables (currently set to 25 and .7, respectively).

    As to your second point, I think we'll worry about that once we decide which gestures, if any, will need to be detectable.
    Lace
    Lace
    SO I fixed my numbers thingy. Exciting, yes, but it's O(n^4) or something. Yaaay. <a href='http://pastebin.com/381kJxZS' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>Here</a> are the first 100 numbers. Not sure if an ingame culture should use this (or a modified version thereof), but I thought it was neat.
    Lace
    Lace
    Also I kinda want to talk about the character of Morgan (Georgia) if you ever return to irc existence.
    I still think <s>Religious Business on Mars</s> Secrets of Shabrotl is the best title.
    Right, so I was allegedly going to resume Arctic Winds analysis. Will do so tomorrow.
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    Currently, our previous discussion is on the next page of my profile, and covers the starting wind sounds and the first three actual notes. Those three notes help to establish C# as the tonic. The next set of notes in the flute (G#, B, C#, G#, D#, B) are an expansion on the first set, but, instead of landing on the tonic pitch of C#, it remains unresolved, landing on B. Also notice that the three new notes (G#, D#, B) form a minor triad built on the dominant pitch (the 2nd most important pitch after the tonic, the 5th note in the scale, G# in this case). Recall that dominant chords tend to want to resolve to the tonic. If I had wanted to create even more unresolved tension, I would have used a B# rather than a B. The note a half step below the tonic has a strong tendency to want to move to the tonic, since it's so close but not quite there. I chose not to do this because this part of the piece is still quite floaty/ethereal, and I didn't want to create too much tension yet.

    Alright, yeah, I was gonna go further, but laziness. So that I know how to progress in the analysis, are there any particular aspects of the piece that you're more interested in than others (i.e. melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre)?
    Oh right that was the other thing. Is it actually possible to not-get the treasure? Or does that flag just mean "hasn't got it yet"?
    DoubleThink
    DoubleThink
    Also a teleport sound plays whenever I enter or load in Perseverance, what is this sorcery?
    DoubleThink
    DoubleThink
    And Sue's sprite is still a mess
    Lace
    Lace
    1) Haven't got it yet 2) yeah we have no idea how that happened. I think it has to do with misery? 3) still? it was never a mess before D:
    I have to say, American Sign language seems like a pretty interesting means of communication
    <p class='citation'>Quote</p><div class="blockquote"><div class='quote'>Hm. Well I guess the uncertainty principle does mean that determinism is a stupid POV, but does it imply that we're free agents?</div></div>No, but it does at least mean that one can reasonably believe in both free will and physics without contradicting onesself.
    Lace
    Lace
    which is a relief, certainly!
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    In searching for the source of the HP/litalch/ringstructure stuffs, I came across this and felt a need to clarify that, after reading part of the lesswrong sequence on quantum mechanics, it has been brought to my attention that the uncertainty principle itself is not actually non-deterministic, but is merely a consequence of the schrodinger equation (namely that the wavefunction wrt momentum is the fourier transform of that wrt position) which deterministically propagates the wavefunction through time (although that also may turn out to be false, because physics may turn out to be "timeless" though I'm not even really sure what that means) HOWEVER free will still isn't totally impossible because it's unclear how/why we perceive/experience some possible realities and not others (maybe we "choose" them?) but the fact that we do experience some realities and not others is a separate fact from the uncertainty prinicple.

    If none of that made sense, read the lesswrong sequence - Eliezer explains it much more eloquently than I do.
    Awright, so, as I understand it, the basic psychological alchemal process according to Carl Jung is as follows:
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    phase 1 (black) - the individual gradually becomes aware of certain impurities/imperfections within themself.

    phase 2 (white) - the individual cleanses themself of aforementioned impurities, but, in doing so, also diminishes their individuality/character, so they become sort of a generic good person.

    phase 3 (red) - the individual regains their individuality without sacrificing their goodness/purity, thus reaching their full potential.


    <a href='http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-09-034-f' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>This article</a> gives a much more in-depth explanation of how alchemy appears in Harry Potter than the one on mugglenet (though its explanation of alchemy as a whole is rather vague). It seems to have been written before the last 2 books were published.

    <a href='http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/guest-post-the-connection-of-ring-composition-and-literary-alchemy-in-the-layout-of-the-seven-book-harry-potter-series/' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>This</a>, in addition, seems to try to explain how the alchemal aspect of the series relates to its ring structure.


    The explanation of the possible connection to Sonata-Allegro form will come in a day or two.
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    So yeah, 5 days TOTALLY counts as "a day or two", since I didn't put any units on the number 2. The unit was definitely 2.5 days.

    Sonata-Allegro form was extremely prevalent in the classical era (which, as a reminder, was from approximately 1725-1800), so much so that almost every piece composed in the style of that era has at least one movement in this form. One of my music history profs had a very interesting theory about its purpose and why composers used it so much. His theory sort of seems to me like an incomplete magnum opus (missing the final "red" phase). The form is also sort of a small ring cycle.

    On a very loosely related note, <a href='http://xkcd.com/819/' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>this</a> has always bugged me - The Magic Flute was written by Mozart, not Bach. I guess we can forgive him since he had only 5 minutes to write it (Randall that is, not Mozart, though if anyone could write an opera in 5 minutes, it would be Mozart).

    ANYWAY...

    S-A form consists of 3 sections: the Exposition, the Development, and the Recapitulation. The first and last of these are almost identical (hence ring cycle), except that the Exposition changes to another key in the middle, while the Recapitulation starts in the same key as the Exposition, and stays in that key until the end. The key that the Exposition changes is typically either the dominant (V) if the starting key is major, or the relative major (III) if the starting key is minor. So, for example, if the starting key were D major, the new key would be A major, or, if the starting key were G minor, the new key would be B-flat major. The Development is sort of a free-for-all mashup of everything that was introduced in the Exposition, in a multitude of different rapidly changing keys.

    Aaaaand, I have to go to class now, so I won't be able to fully 'splain until later <img src='http://www.cavestory.org/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/frown2.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':(' />
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    Well, anyway, my prof said that S-A form is representative of the mentality of the time period (the so called "age of reason/enlightenment") in that it represents the intellectual resolution of some conflict/disagreement. The Exposition states the conflict by having it's two subsections in contrasting keys. This would correspond to the black phase. In the Development, the conflict becomes more heated, which would be a transition from black to white (the tumult of this section comes both as a result of the increased impurity at the end of the black phase, and the first attempts to resolve the conflict at the beginning of the white phase). In the Recapitulation, the conflict is resolved, like in the white phase.

    Another tidbit about the resolution of conflict in the Recapitulation, which isn't directly related to alchemy, but is nonetheless interesting, is that, in the early classical era (i.e. Mozart, Haydn), composers would often make sort of a game of trying to make the smallest possible change between expos/recap so that the former changes key and the latter doesn't.
    So due to a combination of laziness and being busy trying unsuccessfully to decipher the ogg file format, I haven't given much thought to the lit alch thing. So here's a loosely related riddle for now:
    Lace
    Lace
    Also they all still live.
    Lace
    Lace
    They also all are homo sapiens sapiens, are capable of forming abstract thoughts, are mythological figures around which various sects of people center themselves, are male, "died" tragically to save the world from voldemort (nicolas flamel lives!), have magical powers, and are extremely sexy.

    So quite a lot, really.
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    Basically the 2nd one was what I was thinking - except I was thinking more along the lines of "Evidence suggests they died long ago, but there are still those who insist they didn't".
    I've been sent on a mighty quest by my own slight boredom to discover the name of that one game with the little dude that I played at your house. It was notbad.jpg but I didn't get very far :c
    Lace
    Lace
    ALBERO
    <a href='http://www.mediafire.com/?2xgtg9plal19kta' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'><a href="http://www.mediafire...2xgtg9plal19kta" rel='nofollow external' class="su_links">http://www.mediafire...2xgtg9plal19kta</a></a>
    Wedge of Cheese
    Wedge of Cheese
    So, I'm still pretty intrigued with the whole "literary alchemy" thing, though my searches on the subject have been quite a bit less fruitful than those on ring composition. What I have found is that Carl Jung used the alchemal "magnum opus" process of black to white to red as a metaphor for the psychological development of an individual, and that some authors (like JKR apparently) use a similar process for developing their stories/characters. I'm trying to piece together the fragments of information I've found into something meaningful and then see if you agree with my analysis and/or have anything to add. I also think I might see a link between the alchemal process and Sonata-Allegro form, which is one of the most important (if not THE most important) musical form in the history of Western music. So we might take a bit of a detour from analyzing Arctic Winds to look at that form.
    Lace
    Lace
    It seems that a lot of musical forms could be modified for use as a narrative form.
    I wonder if there's any fruit in that line of thought.
    Lace
    Lace
    Also I am excited for your analysis
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