Christ...

You know sometimes I forget that most anime isn't targeted towards kids...or that it's usually at an emotionally gut wrenching level beyond American filming. I started watching Full Metal Alchemist, thinking it was going to be a pretty light hearted show all around...yeah...it's not, it's really, really, *REALLY* the fuck not.

The worst part so far was one of the semi-main characters who turns out to be a complete fucking psychopath who winds up transmuting his own five year old daughter and the family dog into a "talking chimera"...yeah, it pretty much goes downhill from there.

The whole series seems pretty centered on the whole "dealing with death" theme, that and the horrifying results of war and racism. If you showed this series to any solider on his way to go and fight in a war somewhere, well, I highly doubt he'd be able to go through with it afterwards.

This series is right up there with Chrno Crusade on the level of pure emotional mind fucks. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised though, I mean this shit is coming from the one country that had nuclear fucking bombs dropped the hell on it...guess that's well enough to fuck the "human spirit" of the populous pretty good, even over the long term.

Mapish Consorts

This is a partial thread repost from one of the Webbie boards I'm posting about my game on. I figured I would repost it here so that other people can read it as well.


Thanks for the update!

What you have is very good, I hope it will be as fun to play as it is to read about. However what you seem to have is more of a 3D cube than a 4D hypercube.

A 4D hypercube has 8 cubical sides (or hyperfaces). Each cube is connected to 6 other cubes through its 6 sides (or hyperedges).

This is much like how there are 6 faces on a regular 3D cube, and each each face is adjacent to 4 others, all the other faces except the one on the opposite side.

Although it doesn't matter to me how many dimensional realities you wish to have, I think your present explanation would be more consistant with a 4D hypercube if there were 8 total. If the space folded continuousely as in the animation, each reality would only connect to the adjacent 6, however passing through the middle or 'interstice' as you call it would allow you to connect to all 8, altho the space folding transformation would not be as continuous.

Actually, that gives me an idea. What if the interstice was one of the hyperfaces, and each reality is a hyperface adjacent to the interstice? Then with the 6 realities, the interstice, and the hyperface oposite the interstice (some kind of anti-interstice?) you would have the 8 hyperfaces your hypercube needs.



Thanks for the info, I'll see about incorporating your ideas into it. The "science" of the story definitely needs some ironing out. I'm not trying to make it extremely exacting, but I would at least like it to be semi-plausible and at the very least believable by the average player. It's the old "Hollywood Illusion" as it were. Convincing the audience that sheer bullshit is actually plausible, potential reality.

*Mipsus goes off to eject the warp core and realign the pattern buffers for the transporter*

^__^



Yeah, I know it doesn't have to be scientificly perfect. Sorry, I just had to post that because my math sense was tingling.

*athomson quantum teliports instantly to the other side of the universe by hitching a ride on a stream of entangled electrons* :-)



Nah, yer post was good, it gave me some good ideas. Critiques, suggestions, maps, character forms, story lines, art work and ideas are always welcome. If there's something you want to see in the game just tell me and I'll see about incorporating it. The game's going to be big enough to include plenty of ideas, so there's tons of room for expansion.

I just finished up making one of the basic maps:
4th Space Map 1

Each pixel represent a 32x32 tile. Dark green represents forest, light green is grass, tan is dirt/sand, dark brown is lower mountainous areas, dark gray is high, rocky mountainous areas, white is snow, faded green is snowy forests, light gray is snowy mountains, the blue is water obviously and the light bluish outlines are shorelines or shallow waters.

I think how I'm going to make this work is that the worlds are going to come in sets, so each world will have a kind of "mirror world", that'll be somewhat the same, but slightly different. Like in this one, the alternate world is going to have a complete land mass on the bottom right there and it's going to be explained that the reason it's mostly gone in this world is because of some nth level, cataclysmic destruction.

The original universe is going to be a mirror of our own, but basically a few thousand years older with some various small changes in events, land mass, etc. Along with highly advanced technology since they'll be a few thousand years ahead. It's going to be that the 4th Space, the alternate realities, were basically created accidentally in an experiment gone awry. The original experiment was to try and travel through time, but instead it fucked everything up and cubed the universe into various, fragmented, folded dimensional realities.

In some respects it'll be similar to the episode of Farscape when the ship tried to travel at warp and then everything went wrong and it got split into four realities with holes between the four in various locations. Only on a universal scale. That's basically where I got the idea from. That and the episode of Voyager, "Shattered", as well as the "mirror universe" in Star Trek were also inspirations.

The over world maps are going to work a little different from traditional RPGs. As they're suppose to represent an entire planet you're not going to be able to just wander around on foot, which is kind of ridiculous. So in each world, to travel around you *HAVE* to find various means of transportation. Each world will have different forms of transportation, some more advanced than others. Also, as you're traveling around, in some worlds you'll encounter random enemies of various sorts and in others not, depending on the circumstances of that particular world.

One of the things you'll be able to do as you're traveling is to stop on the map screen and "get out" of your transportation. Which in most cases will lead you to a random, generic map that matches the terrain you stopped on. Most will have nothing there, maybe some common items, maybe some monsters. There will be a few spots though in which there will be really good/hidden items, quest items, people to talk to, houses, "Easter eggs", various puzzle related factors, etc, etc. You'll be able to find these hot spots via researching, sleuthing, talking to people, etc, etc.

In some respects it'll be similar to Zelda, "The Ocarina Of Time", where if you have a rumble pack you can find hidden chambers that can be bombed open. That's what the idea is based upon. Basically the whole game is sort of like a massive conglomerate of all the best ideas and my most favorite ideas that I've seen in other video games, anime, cartoons, movies, etc. Along with my own original story. Although even my story is going to be based somewhat on mainstream tropes that I'm fond of, in anime, as well as video games, TV shows and movies. They'll then be refined, expanded upon, broken apart and combined in various ways and developed more indepthly (so as to avoid obvious cliches).

The Interstice

Whew, been awhile since I've done any updates. Been kinda busy. But anyway, today I threw together the Fourth Space "Interstice", which is basically a kind of space between spaces that acts as a conduit between the Fourth Space dimensions. When you start off, only two spacial dimensions are open for travel, the one to earth and another to one of the four Forth Space dimensions, like nyah:
Starting Interstice

The Fourth Space can be described as a kind of hypercube, it contains four separate outer face dimensions and then a top and bottom dimension, our home dimension being on the bottom. Like so:



How you're able to transport between dimension is visualized here, which shows the workings of a hypercube:



The inner box represents the current dimension you're in, in relation to yourself, so to travel to another dimension you're basically being spatially folded into the destination dimension. Said dimension then becomes the center cube. Everyone, no matter what dimension they're in, has their current dimension as the center cube, in relation to themselves, with the other dimensions existing in folded space, which is why you can't see them even though they're all basically in the exact same place and time.

One of the story arcs will revolve around the destabilization of the dimensional hypercube, which means the various realities will start to overlap and merge with one another and extreme chaos will then ensue. ^__^

Here's what the Interstice looks like when you have all the key crystals:

Complete Interstice

The key crystals are found in the various dimensions, so when you find one it'll open up the way to another dimension and then in that dimension you'll find the next key crystal, and so on.

There is one master dimension to the other five, and represents the original dimension. Due to some yet to be explained circumstances that original dimension was basically spatially cubed forming the other dimensions. As it is a hypercube, there is the possibility that the separate dimensions could lose cohesion which would cause each of them to be cubed, and then those cubes each being cubed themselves, exponentially creating an infinite number of folded universes all existing on the same relative plane. So needless to say, preventing the dimensions from losing cohesion will be an important factor in the story line.

In addition to the key crystals opening up the various dimensions, within each dimension there are transportation crystals and blocks, which can be used to warp from one location to another location within the same dimension. Here's what they look like:



These crystals can be used any number of times and you can put them in and take them out of the transport blocks as you like. You will have a limited number of them, with dozens of transport blocks within each dimension, which will be used to create various puzzles throughout the game. Some of the transport crystals will already be in place, some with only one end in place, and others that you'll simply find by themselves or obtain through some means.

The transport blocks are bidirectional, so one block will always lead to another block and that block will in turn lead back to the previous. In the cases where you have a transport block set that's missing both transport crystals and you only have one left on you, you can put that crystal into one of the transport blocks, but if you try transporting you'll basically wind up trapped on the destination end with no way back unless you can find another transport crystal to complete the connection.

In addition to the generic transport crystals there will be specially colored, unique transport crystals, which can be used to alter the regular pathways of the transport blocks. So if you put a red transport crystal in one block and then put another red transport crystal into another, not normally linked block, those two blocks will then form a temporary connection to each other so long as the colored transport crystals remain in place. This will of course add to the puzzle factor and there will be various circumstances where you'll really need to "think outside of the box" (pun intended) in order to progress through the game.

There will be a number of side quests that won't be directly relevant to the main story arc, these side quests will be *MUCH* harder than the regular game progression, but they could pay off in being able to obtain various rare items which can help you move through the main story arc more quickly, others will simply add more story and interest in the characters, with no super rare items obtained.

Unlike most all RPGs, this one will be very unique in that the bosses and mini-bosses will act differently and use different strategies depending on the items and weapons you're carrying as well as your character stats. So if you level up to a massive degree and are basically God like in strength, the bosses are going to be able to tell how strong you are and they'll alter their tactics accordingly. So sheer strength and level building won't really help you much in most situations, instead you'll have to actually think, find information about the bosses, their techniques and such, and then you'll need to come up with counter tactics in order to defeat them.

It'll be sort of like in the Mega Man series, where each boss is particularly weak against another obtained weapon, although this will take it to a more in depth level, although not so completely complicated and confusing that it's just frustrating and annoying (Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories comes directly to mind in that particular fault). You'll also gain techniques, weapons, and various items when you defeat bosses and mini-bosses, so the game won't be completely linear, you'll be able to choose how you want to progress through the game, being able to choose between various quests at various stages in the game.

You have to complete all the primary quests, but you can pick and choose which ones you want to go through first and you'll even be able to back track, such as going halfway through one quest, picking up some items/weapons/techniques/etc and then being able to go back and start through a different quest within that particular story arc. Again, this will add more strategy and puzzle scenarios, in that you'll find certain things in one quest which will aid you in another, so you'll have to do some back tracking, look for clues, figure out puzzles, etc, kind of making the game sort of like a Sherlock Holmes mystery of sorts at various stages. Like puzzles within larger puzzles, basically. But again, it won't be so completely impossible and confusing that you'll just get frustrated and want to quit out of boredom and annoyance.