nuke – Cubilone's Dimension

eyes-wide-shut

It all began when They realised Their time together meant less and less. They loved eachother, that much was obvious. But was it enough? Could it be that their passion was in danger? “I love you” was so easy to say, so truthful, it meant so much but implied so little. Even when they bridged Their physical distance and met again, armed with what They thought were new experiences that would bring balance to everything, it made matters worse; nothing had changed. They could not let Their relationship rot away due to routine and perfectly fulfilled expectations… Something had to be done to stir things up a bit. And when, after they separated, each headed to their own little island She told him of how She had already taken the step. She had mentioned it while They were Together, but He had not managed to feel it into His skin at the time. But then She told him of the step that had left everything behind and at the same time preluded infinity. From now on They were truly free to do as They wished with anyone, as long as They kept Their own relationship intact. And this is how It started.

tt0049406_largecover2

Before learning of Her step he had observed and contemplated, but the new developments had made the plan clear in His head and had blown confidence, power and decisiveness into Him. Decisiveness to execute the plan and get the girl, despite all odds. He thought that if he went according to his honest wishes, everything would go according to this plan. And thus He set it into action and He did carry it out flawlessly. Or at least everything pointed towards that at first. Little did He or anyone know that The Killing would be the result of this grand scheme… And he was happy and satisfied in His success, just as He would love the thrill of rushing down a speeding river right before the waterfall.

clockwork-orange

Even before all of this had even begun to form, He had promised to visit Her in Her new life. And so He did. Together They practiced ultra-romance, bringing a supposedly known type of human interaction to unknown extremes. Many thought of what They did Together as sick, inhuman, not the result of pure love but a twisted, self-conscious kind of thing. But how can an act of pure feeling survive in a society where the sick, inhuman and twisted acts are frowned upon unless done underground? Under “special occasion”? When anybody indulges in these acts out in the open, it is natural for them to become a target, a scapegoat… This ultra-romance was not, consequently, a stable situation. Warnings had been given by the rest of society about how it would ultimately bring Them down. Twice They survived almost-fatal internal strife, which in turn brought Their peak of ultra-romance. He, in the end, would end up getting caught in the devastating whirlpool of social reconciliation, easily influenced as He is. Now everybody else was to teach Him a lesson and teach it to Him for good.

DrStrangelove4

It is always the unpredictable factor that takes anything stable to brutal instability. Just as it takes only the push of a single button for two huge nuclear arsenals to destroy the world. His new-found love interest did not enjoy this ultra-romance bullshit, nor did she like the fact that she was part of a grander scheme or a plot, even when she was cherished through it. “I’m never going to get used to it! I don’t want to hear a single thing about Her!” With a single move of breaking ties and flipping the finger, she would set up the scene for the End War to take place. He would not let go, He did not want to let go; it could not be that His plan had gone so awfully wrong, His ultra-romance been this misguided and worse still, misguiding. It could not be that society had been right… but right about what? He could not make it out. He decided to end it with a bang, to take the chance, to go all out for what He desired. Just like taking a chance with a nuclear war… like saying: “Is MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) really the only possible outcome”? Could it be possible that He might win something by making the move? Surely, it’d be true that he would not have faltered, he would not have cowered in fear when the time to take the risk did come. He took the seemingly brave step. He took the plunge riding His proud atom bomb all the way to hell. The result?

We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,
But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

What did He expect? To win a nuclear war just because He struck first? He lost everything, He won nothing. Everything lay in ruins, nuclear fallout everywhere. The idea of the goal, of Vicktory, so forcefully spitting in His face, and His image of Her just as destroyed in His eyes as His own in Hers. He had ridden the bomb, taking the chance and risking the world… And He was shot down in a million mushroom clouds. The idiocy of such a war, the whimsical, spontaneous decision to consciously destroy everything that matters… Yet…

Can it be true that He won nothing?

2001_space_odyssey_fg2b

To create is to destroy. But what you create is, thankfully, not dependent on what you destroy… Sometimes, radical changes have to be made for something new, productive, better to emerge. This fact is what all revolutions are based on. The initial result might have been devastating, heart-breaking… but, as it goes:

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I’ve been pretending I’m OK, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.”

Source (note: He played this monologue last week for the uni Theatre Group).

He has seen the possibilities of the blank canvas.This canvas is not white though. It is a radioactive shade of gray. It’s still blank, however. Blank and ready to draw on. His memories of the time when the world was beautiful, the things that really count, are all intact. He can recreate it, if He wishes. He can make it even better now, the experience having made Him richer. He can make a whole different kind of world. It all depends on Him now. What woeful glee!

What are the chances of a post-apocalyptic world reaching a transgressive state of being?
They can’t be too slim.

http://www2.aegean.gr/kinimatografiki/?p=3

Originally posted as a Destructoid.com cblog.

Wouldn’t you like just sitting back and enjoying the night sky in a game, knowing that what you see is a perfect represenation of the actual night sky? It is true, a pretty night sky captures the eye (as most WoW players can testify) and there is no prettier sky than the only one we earthlings have had the chance to see, give or take a few planets, moons and nebulae.

Today I was having a conversation with two friends of mine (Mario and Housemaster, if you’re reading you know that unlike the guys from d-toid!), one of them also a user of Destructoid. The kick-off for the conversation and the inspiration for this blog post was me complaining that Fallout 3 had a completely messed up night sky. I recalled my first experience with this upon exiting the elementary school close to the beginning of the game. The stars were all tiny grey dots of the same brightness. No constellations of course, nothing. It didn’t even have any significantly brighter stars that could form any shapes. Of course, that’s totally different than anything anyone can see if they look up at night in the real world. To top it off, at some point I had a look at the moon. Its position in the sky was totally wrong compared to its phase, a relationship which can normally be defined with two basic rules: A new moon is close to the sun so it sets a bit after the sun and rises a bit after the sun as well and the full moon rises when the sun sets and sets when the sun rises anew. This was completey screwed up as far as I observed in Fallout 3. As if that wasn’t enough, upon closer inspection the starry sky did not move at all. Instead, the moon was moving against the backdrop of a frozen sky, setting south-east. That is wrong in so many levels I cannot begin to describe. Surely the nukes didn’t stop the earth from rotating? Even if they did, there’s still night and day!

My friends told me that I had not grasped the feeling of the game, that I was looking at the sky when the game was NOT about looking at the sky (which in turn means that anything not directly related to the main focus of the game is perfectly OK to be made with minimal attention paid to it but whatever) and that since Fallout 3 takes place in an imaginary, alternative universe, the creators do not have to realistically depict the sky as it is today in the real world. But… Even though Washington D.C. features in the game complete with existing roads (correct me if I’m wrong) isn’t it safe to assume that the sky is the same as it was hundreds of years ago in-game? We’re not talking about a completely different universe, say Oblivion’s or WoW’s universe, but one pretty close to our own experience and one that derives from it and uses it to make said universe hit us harder emotionally, make us feel that we’re actually on Earth as it would be centuries after a nuclear war. Is creative freedom this powerful when talking about the imaginary based on reality? Why be realistic when it comes to sun movement but not care about the movement of the moon or the sky in general? Would a sun rising at 6PM be OK because it’s Bethesda making a game about something NOT real? At the end of the day, “who cares?” or “Hang on, I’ll call the care police”. That’s what my friends were saying and no doubt many of you.

Truth is I can see where they’re coming from. In this day and age observation of the sky is trivial at best. Erroneous night skies make their apperance everywhere from movies to novels to games… People don’t know better so they don’t really care (developers in turn don’t care either).The sky we see today is fundamentally the same sky people of ancient times wondered at and worshiped and the same sky Copernicus observed and realised that the earth rotates around the sun and it’s not the other way around. Till the 20th century, the sky was an excellent guidepost, the stars always pointing towards the right direction. Even the first foundations of time-keeping were based on the movements of the sky and moon (let alone the sun) and when during the night certain constellations appear. See Orion rise right after sunset and it’s winter alright, follow the direction of Polaris, the current pole star and you’ll be visiting the polar bears. And so forth. Today of course these observations aren’t at all useful for everyday life so the sky remains up there enchanting everyone with its beauty but giving little useful incentive for further exploration of tis workings and secrets.

I won’t lie, less than 2 years ago I was one of many, thinking that the night sky is pretty but difficult to get to know. The movements of the planets, the moon, why the sun rises and sets when it does and what the equinoxes mean eluded me. At least, though, I knew from a very early age that the earth rotates around itself anti-clockwise and that this is what actually makes the starry sky move, as well as the sun and moon, from east to west. And finding out how the rest of this stuff works wasn’t that hard at all. Since then I have been able to spot mistakes almost everywhere.

The final question is: Does it all matter? If both people making the game and playing the game can’t tell the difference, does it matter? I’ll compare the whole thing with having a game take place during a specific time period, say the Middle Ages in England. The game is superb in every way but the buildings aren’t correct or something else isn’t right, say the language spoken or a piece of armour. Few people will notice, but those which are fascinated by history and historical accuracy will promptly spot the mistake and instantly lose a bit of interest/immersion for the game. Maybe it’s not a great analogy because portraying an accurate sky is much easier than certifying the historical accuracy of a certain piece of armour and historical accuracy is much more important sometimes than having a correct decorative backdrop for a game’s universe. Because it is true. In the end, it’s all decoration with few gameplay implications, just like the building or the armour. But can we really justify these “astro-errors that were willingly introduced and indicate a profound lack of attention to easily checkable detail” (sic), using only the argument that nobody cares enough? Well, I care! And I’m certain that especially Fallout 3 must have attracted quite a number of people that will have spotted the same thing. Not to say that other games sport a richer nightly display; I’ve yet to encounter a game that has it right (with the exception of Wii’s Weather Channel — no, it’s not a game, I know).

Even if we break this down to pure aesthetics, which one of these would you prefer?

This:

Or this:

Creating a perfect recreation of the sky isn’t all that hard. It may be harder than creating a dark background with lighter dots and leaving it at that but I believe the coding required for the former would be easy. The skies would be realistic, pretty and keep all the astronomy buffs like me quiet and agreeable.

Tag: nuke

November

Astronomy in games: does a realistic sky make a difference?