November 2000
- 25 -
Leaving home yet again
Well, today is the last day that
I'll have access to my web server, at least until sometime after December
20. I'll be sure to have Fossil Canyon available then, and maybe
a few more levels. Maybe I'll even do something for Unreal Tournament
- first I'd have to learn the intricacies of the Unreal engine - and I
know UT is kind of showing its age by now, but there will be future versions
of the Unreal engines and most likely a new game with an editor.
I hope the terrain feature of the new Unreal turns out well, because it
would be cool to make outdoor areas that are as detailed as the ones in
Drakan.
I've been thinking more about
rational ways to come up with solutions, and my explanation yesterday didn't
go into much detail, so I'll elaborate on it. There only seem to
be real problems with compromises when it's an either/or situation, or
when the validity of one or more arguments is in question. For example,
if some people believed 1 + 1 is 2, and others believed it's 3, then the
best solution would not be to just compromise and say it's 2.5. This
is because one of the arguments has been proven to be true, and the other
is definitely false, by definition. Now, there are instances where
the validity of both arguments cannot be established. For
example, religious people cannot prove the existence of a supernatural
being, and atheists cannot prove the absence of one. This leads to
big discussions that go nowhere, if everyone tries to come up with a rational
explanation.
But with all this, the issue
that seems to create the most strife and polarization, at least in the
United States, is the issue of abortion. There are just so many factors
and so many things to consider that it is very hard to take them all into
account. I know I shouldn't really have an opinion on abortion, and
I don't really - but I do think that if there were fewer unwanted pregnancies,
the abortion issue would not be so polarizing. But there is not much
I personally should do to try to stop this, because if I did I would be
butting into other people's lives and it would be very annoying.
All I can do is, perhaps, promote lifestyles that have an extremely low
risk of unwanted pregnancy.
The environment is also a hot
topic, but it at least has basis in science and fact rather than faith
or opinion. Unfortunately, much of the evidence on both sides is
based on predictions of the future, many of which are global effects.
Global warming and ozone depletion are the most hotly debated topics in
environmental science right now, because they are on such a large scale
and new evidence is being found all the time for the true causes and effects
behind these problems. We know there are ozone holes, because they
have been proven to exist over Antarctica and part of South America.
We know the earth is warming up, because there has been a reported rise
in global temperature by a few degrees in the past century. But people
just can't seem to agree on the severity of these problems, or even whether
they are caused by human activity. Many believe global warming is
caused by an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, while many others believe
that we are emerging from an ice age and that the rise in CO2 is caused
by the rising temperature affecting the earth's processes and putting more
CO2 into the air. The best solution I can see for issues like these
is to gather all the evidence, preferable done by people who do not have
a vested interest in the matter and have not prematurely decided on a conclusion,
and examine it carefully to give the best prediction of what will happen
in the future.
I have to write all this text
in a separate file because Netscape Composer lags big time on this old
computer when I try to use it. It's a good thing I saved this text
file because when I was trying to scroll up in Composer just a minute ago,
it froze up my entire computer and I had to reboot. Now I'm starting
to see why some people don't like Netscape. Oh well, at least Netscape
seems to work all right most of the time on my newer computer at college.
But, if anyone can tell me how to get Internet Explorer to stop lagging
the mouse wheel, and how to get links that are opened in a new window to
open in a maximized window, then I might consider switching over.
Well, this is my last entry on
here that you'll see for a while... I will keep trying to find that new
focus for my page. Maybe it will be another computer game to make
tons of levels for, maybe it will be an environmental advocacy page, maybe
it will be something that will try to reduce unwanted pregnancy or stop
hunger or end bigotry... or some other worthy cause. Perhaps it can
be a combination of a lot of different things. On the other hand,
maybe I shouldn't try to do all that because I don't have the experience,
so my ideas are just wishes and dreams. Oh well... I suppose the
best thing to do now would be to keep this site going the way it's going
now and see what it becomes in the future.
Tomorrow's entry will be my last
one for a while, because my Thanksgiving break will be over soon and I
will return to my computer, my Drakan server, and my e-mail. I haven't
been checking it now because the way I have it set up, the messages aren't
deleted from the server after being downloaded.. This is because
I'm always afraid that there will be a crash somewhere and a message will
be lost forever. Call me paranoid, but sometimes I get messages about
things that are very important, like my registration information.
There really does seem to be
more of a partisan split in America lately, especially in the wake of the
current election confusion. Bush supporters and Gore supporters alike
are accusing their opponents of foul play, and it seems like rational thought
is being lost in the process. It's just like the arguments between
the pro-choice and pro-life people. I mean, I think both sides on
that issue will agree that an abortion is, in itself, not a good thing,
and that a better issue to worry about is how to reduce the number of unwanted
pregnancies in the first place. Likewise, in arguments about environmental
issues, it should not be so much a battle between ecology and the economy
as it should be an effort to find a balance between the two. In cases
like these, there are a lot of people who are rational and can see the
bigger picture, and try to believe in what's best for everyone, but others
just stick to their side's opinions no matter what and make efforts to
demonize their opponents. I have been guilty of this occasionally,
I admit, but I usually come around and try to find a common ground.
I have shut down my Drakan server
for Thanksgiving break, and I detached my computer at college from the
network. This is for security reasons, and because the people there
might think it's wasted bandwidth. There are plenty of other Drakan
servers, so it won't be too much of a loss... except that there are few
other servers that play air levels. There's a duel being proposed
on the Surreal forums, but unfortunately they're not going to play on Sky
Island. I designed that level just like all the other popular duels
so people would play it. Maybe some people haven't played it yet.
I sure can't tell who's playing what just by looking at the servers now,
because Drakan isn't installed on this computer.
Lately I've been reading a few
message boards. One of the first political discussion forums I stumbled
across was part of the the Ars TechnicaOpen
Forum called the Soap
Box. There are a lot of arguments in there, especially between
liberals and conservatives and between religious and non-religious people.
Some topics really go on for a long time when there's a lot of evidence
on both sides, or when the evidence doesn't seem concrete to someone.
One topic from about a month ago started out as a discussion of Christian
symbols, then it was about what everyone was doing for Halloween, and then
it got hijacked and turned into an argument about evolution and the origin
of atoms. Later, I saw a link on the Soap Box to another site, called
The
Straight Dope, which is dedicated to fighting ignorance by finding
facts about all sorts of topics. They have a message
board too, and its discussions are kind of like the ones on the Soap
Box but a little more rational. I've also been reading the ActionXtreme
Drakan forum and also the ones
on Surreal-News, and it was from the ActionXtreme board that I learned
about the K-Files discussion forums. The posters are mostly Australian,
and the forum used to be based on Tomb Raider but later expanded to other
topics. They had to move their site, and now it's called the Pretend
K-Files. Lately there's been a bit of strife going on, and some
of them have started posting on another forum called the Dark
Café instead. Message boards like this are so addictive
because they are constantly being updated and sometimes you just want to
see what's new on them. It almost makes me want to start up a message
board for The Sine Wave, but I still don't think the server has permissions
for CGI scripts besides the personal hit counter. There's yet another
reason to get my own server.
The Sine Wave is here once again,
and is being typed from my home in Minnesota where I have returned for
Thanksgiving. It's really great to see my family again. Our
little Chihuahua dogs were really excited to see me for a while, especially
Tippy. Tillie wasn't so excited because it was the same time that
she was really afraid of having to go outside, because it's so cold.
She is the smaller of the two dogs, and gets cold very easily, so she always
hides when she thinks my parents are going to take her and Tippy outside.
It's back to my old computer,
a Pentium 133 with a Voodoo 1-based card, until Sunday. I uninstalled
most of the newer games on here because they didn't run very well, but
that's not important because I have some console games that I haven't played
yet, and I want to at least try them out. Most of them are classics-based
Playstation games, like Frogger and the Pac-Man 20-year update, that my
brother got for Christmas and his birthday. I also still have to
finish Final Fantasy VIII, but that would probably take up more time than
it's worth. I don't know about those console games anymore - I loved
them, especially ones like Metal Gear Solid and Zelda: Ocarina of Time,
but now I think I'm more into PC games, or at least just a few games I
can stick with and be interested in for a long time. Also, console
games can't really be added on to, but many PC games have had their life
spans lengthened by support for editing and multiplayer. Just imagine
how quickly Quake would have been forgotten if you could not make mods
for it or even play online.
I have neglected my page for
over a month now, and I'm sorry for that. It's just that I've been
working on a lot of school projects and Drakan levels lately. Yes,
the siren song of the editor just draws me in whenever I think of a new
idea. This time I wanted to create a duel level with a very high
frame rate and few bugs, plus a healing system that is effective and lag-free,
so I made Sky
Island. The only bug is that you can move the camera through
the floor and sometimes even put the camera outside the level, causing
a shadow and sky effect. Then, after being beaten by better players
in air combat in the original multiplayer air levels, I decided to make
an air arena with only one weapon and no items anywhere on the level.
Then, I decided to make a normal air level, another one with lots of items
and even a new weapon, and five more single-weapon arenas, all using the
same landscape. This level set is called Fortress.
After that, I thought it was time for me to make another ground level because
a lot of people like to play those, so I combined the weapons from Cliffs
(plus some new ones) with a "ring of destruction" spawner in the middle
like in Hill of Fire, then built up layers and textured it in an octagonal
symmetric design, and came up with Kaleido.
I also have a Master of the Dragon level called Fossil Canyon that's being
tested by some people now.
About Drakan: Across the Meridian...
well, I've decided not to call it that anymore because the 2-worlds teleportation
rift (called the Meridian) is not really a part of the main story, just
one place in the game. Also, some people have gotten the name of
the levels mixed up with Meridian 59, a multiplayer role-playing game from
a few years ago. I haven't decided a new title yet, but it will be
something having to do with the main plot of the level series.
I visit and read a lot of message
boards, reading discussions about religious and political topics, and seeing
how people feel and what motivates them to do what they do. Mostly
I'm a lurker, because sometimes I just feel shy and just want to read and
not have my opinions analyzed, but I've learned a few things about different
viewpoints and such. I'll have more information about this tomorrow,
because now, I really need some sleep. Yes, it's back to the old
"I need sleep" proclamations too on this page... but someday I hope to
be able to focus this page on something I really care about a lot, and
which helps more people than a simple Drakan-focused page. The game,
and the others I talk about, have been all right, but it just feels like
there's something missing from this page.