Working Through Catastrophic Deletions & Learning to Really Appreciate Colour

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 —

Xhyrean's new look -

– 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.

Ocean inlet about to be deleted.

– 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.

TaleRocker looking at thesky.

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

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

Have ou seen the stars tonight?

– 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 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’ –

Ellyn.

– 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

– 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” –

Xhyrean at sundown.

– “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 ) –

Snowy Day – My Turn to Wax Philosophical ?

Saturday, February 10th, 2018 — -2˚C / +28˚F & still snowing lightly out there in Atlantic Canada @ 5:28 pm — On Galdrian’s Birthday —

Nikki / Evelyn

– This is the screenshot that Jim used to represent ‘Evelyn’ the child spirit in his Latest NaNoWriMo Novel. –

— As I walked to my window to see if it was still snowing, or had it turned to rain, ‘ice pellets’, or freezing rain like they said it might, I remembered the opening line from one episode of the original series “Kung Fu” —

— “To learn all there is about the good in this world, one life time is not enough. To learn about all the evil that is in this world, one hour is too much.”  { That might be a word or two off, but that’s how I remember it.  }

— & I don’t have any cool photos of today’s storm to pop in here, I’ll just leave it with the cool screenshot from our game world – which is still in progress.

— “Boof!” —

 

“Canadian Still Life With Snow Flurries”

Tuesday, January 30th, 2018 —>  -10˚C / +13˚F with ‘light snow’ @ 9:30 am Atlantic Time in New Brunswick, Canada —> I think today is Mrs. Noreen Rooney’s birthday —> 🙂

Wood pile under tarp in drveway with very slight accumulation of snow flurries.

– “Canadian Still Life – With Flurries” (?) –

— When I was in Alaska at this time of year ( 1994 ) the stillness up there really was still. @ -40˚C / -40˚F it felt like even the air was frozen. Ravens and Moose were alive, Ravens complaining vociferously and Moose blundering around in a trance.  { You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Bull Moose, at least two tons of one, standing on his hind legs, reaching about ten feet up into a tree to eat twigs and dead leaves —> His hooves moving up and down with his effort – All this about two feet away from you with only a double glazed picture window between you and the Moose. If the darned thing lost his balance, he would have come crashing into my sister’s living room, probably panicked and could have run around in sheer panic, smashing things and maybe killing people, if he landed on top of me, I’d be history – But yeah, that was an experience – } {{ And I lived to tell about it, I think. Am I still alive? Is this the ‘here-after’? Jeeze, I hope not… }}

😉

~~~~~ Jim