Saturday, February 24th, 2018 —> +2˚C / +35˚F with less than an inch of new snow on the ground, and the vehicles … @ 8:13 am A couple hours North of the Bay of Fundy —

– First the Good News? – This is me in Aerendel –

— Yup We had a Catastrophic “oops” – One click wiped out like ten days of work.

— Working inside a 3D Compute Game – World Building – has it’s ups and downs. Now the bad news? —> While trying to resize an ‘asset’ ( big old rock ) the pyramid moved, I clicked and we lost – jeeze – I don’t know – The bottom 4th of one area —? Ten days’ work messed up in half a split second?

— But – Before I admitted anything I tried to undo that click, nope  – didn’t work, so I started fixing the area the hard way – & three hours later I had the perimeter back where we started – But we had some intense landscape that was missing – including the connections with other areas – We’d spent hours fussing with ‘water’ to fake a waterfall – and tip up one ‘oceanic’ bit of water – at a weird gravity defying angle – and messing with orientation adjustment tools to try to match up the edges of three bits of water, two parts of a river and the waterfall – so it didn’t look as horrible as we feared it might. And we were proud of that. But that ‘One-Click’ disaster had buried all that hard work beneath a now suddenly flat featureless landscape. — Luckily – the water, the rocks we used to cover the seem at the top of the waterfall – all that stuff was still there, hiding.

– The “Ocean Inlet” Above ( We weren’t entirely sure whether it was going to be and ocean or a big lake /inland sea – ) – Was actually beyond the limits of the area it was connected to – And it was slowing us down –

— The above was just before the disaster – We deleted two cosmetic additions to one major area because they were really slowing us down, making it frustrating to try to navigate around – No matter how pretty or aesthetically satisfying they looked, they had to go.

– Jim’s Builder character – Checking out the ‘altered’ blue fog –

— “Before”? – Please notice how flat the land is to ‘TaleRocker’s right –

– In the process of driving ourselves nuts to fix the landscape – Jim went off and checked out an old area that never lost the stars, came back and tried something –

— Now look – Pulling down the ‘Landscape’ again – left us with a dilemma – and the opportunity to make some changes that might be more visually interesting – We’re not finished with that ugly weird hill on the other side of the river, but the river itself looks better than it did ( Um – in my opinion anyway – )

— & Another unexpected bonus to working our tails off in marathon sessions – I got up exhausted and headed for the kitchen to get myself some ‘nourishment’ and everything I looked looked absolutely amazing – Suddenly everything around me was vibrant with colours I probably saw, but didn’t  pay much attention to – paint on the walls – even the sand on the dog’s stairway in and out from the elements – even the sand in the driveway – Everything was beautiful – I remember a Yogi giving me advice way back in my misspent youth – He said that anything artistic we do helps us in our quest for spiritual ‘enlightenment’. Like the quote from “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones” – “Before enlightenment – chopping wood and carrying water — After enlightenment – Chopping Wood! and Carrying Water!”

— Did I tell you that when Jim came back from North Shamrock Island he went in and deleted our ‘Skybox’ and bingo – the stars came out – They’re not all that visible in the screenshot above, but they’re there –

– “Ellyn the half-elf” –

— “Ellyn” ) I don’t know how well putting her to the left of this text will work, but there she is, cropped – with the exposure adjusted so she actually shows up in this ‘photo’ –

– I think this is Ellyn posing in a full width screenshot that had to be adjusted for size to keep it under 2 MB so this blog will accept it here.

— This was Ellyn before we messed up the landscape behind her.

– Fidaria – The female cat person. –

— Fidaria. Jim met a young woman of ‘Yugoslavian’ pedigree whose name was Fidaria. He thought that name was both beautiful and exotic. So when one of us wanted a Female cat Person as her main builder Character – Before she knew I had a cat person avatar for me here –  And she wondered what to name her – Jim went down the alphabet and got as far as ‘F’ and or friend lit up – “Yeah – that’s a whole lot better than “Kitty” –

– “Me” in the dark at Sundown – just before the stars came out and dazzled us all –

— I should probably end this here – I was the last one standing a couple hours ago and things got slowed down to an agonizing scrawl as the loads of landscaping changes we made were stacking up in a buffer somewhere – And I’m pretty sure I can safely log out and re-enter and run around to see how the changes we made look in the ‘daylight’ here 🙂

— Hasta luego –

—– Xyrean ( the bloodshot and starry eyed ) –