simple machines forum

Formerly: What is the nature of irreality?

UPDATE: I recommend starting with Reply/post #6. It is the final word on this topic.

This is something I actually think about an awful lot considering the relative obscurity of the subject.

I constantly find myself thinking about fantasy in literary terms. Is good and evil really the ultimate dichotomy? What about reality vs. irreality? That seems far heavier and potent to me. And more interesting.

More and more this distinction seems to be the ultimate obsession of mankind. You think nowadays sure, the educated lot of us seem to gravitate towards a lifestyle that is split between these modes of being. Sometimes reality almost seems to be purely in the service of irreality. We live thousands of lives via artistic media, and we get actual life where we mostly keep ourselves alive, the more astute of our kind allocate a good portion of our free time expanding the frontiers that we have to thank for the relative safety of our day to day existence. The safety to enjoy all forms of irreality.

But that is a modern perspective. What about in ancient times. What about religions, superstitions, folklore, theatre, literature? It seems like irreality has always been with us. Even more so perhaps the further back that you go. At least that is until the recent advent of interactive video game virtual realities.

I think about Seath and Guyra in King's Field (forget about Dark Souls for a second) what is the relationship there? It seems to me like Guyra is reality, and Seath is irreality. It seems to me like the Moonlight sword is irreality and the Dark Slayer is reality. Seath is a deception, and Seath is nature, Seath is loved, Seath is adored. Guyra is Seath's opposite. Guyra is the ugly truth no one wants to acknowledge. Guyra is not a beautiful deception. Guyra is unnatural. Guyra is physical, the stuff of light and shadow, scientific. Guyra is despised, Guyra is hated. Like I say I think in literary terms.

What is moonlight? It's a kind of false light. It's a reflection. And what does it mean to slay darkness? It means to let the light in, to see things more clearly.

These are powerful metaphors anyway. And to my mind it's really great to think of Sword of Moonlight as a tool of irreality. I think you can if nothing else have a lot of fun with games where the swords are creators of worlds and exist like a weird hologram in the worlds they create... perhaps instruments of undoing. Not unlike Stormbringer in Michael Moorcock's many interwoven tales.

Moorcocks fiction intersects with the modern day world, or at least a fictional version of it. There's no reason the Moonlight Sword can't do the same. In fact there is ample evidence that the Moonlight is based on Stormbringer. You can easily hypothesize that the Moonlight sword is Stormbringer only by another name (as is so often the case) and if you really want to have fun, you can go as far as to declare Sword of Moonlight itself to be a facet of Stormbringer in the flesh in the here and now

Which brings about the question. Another name that has been attributed to Stormbringer is a familiar one to us in the west. We know it better than Osama Binladen. It's a name with a literary cachet. You guessed it, none other than old Satan himself

Did I just say Sword of Moonlight is satanic? Yeah I did, but not knee-jerk satanic. Satanic in a far richer literary tradition. Now hear me out. Satan is a concept we just can't let go to waste.... there's a lot of value there. And fundamentalist religious people won't be around forever.

So the back story for Seath and Guyra goes. I've read this on very authoritative looking Japanese websites anyway. I can't exactly quote the games themselves yet. A god, Valad I think, could be wrong, thought that the elves and dwarves had gotten lazy, and mankind was at endless war among themselves. Valad I think is an earth god, one of a trio, who was left to do everything, because the sea and sky gods got bored went to sleep or something. Valad decides the best thing to do is to split himself up into two dragons, Seath and Guyra. I like to think that Valad is something like Abraxas... Wikipedia says:

"The Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung wrote a short Gnostic treatise in 1916 called The Seven Sermons to the Dead, which called Abraxas a God higher than the Christian God and Devil, that combines all opposites into one Being."

Usually Abraxas has two serpents instead of legs. You can think of each serpent as being our friends Seath and Guyra. And so the back story goes Seath is designed to be a figure of worship, and Guyra is designed to be a figure of hatred. Through the synthesis of the two mankind would reunite as Valad saw in his wisdom that nothing brings men together better than worship and hatred.

Speaking of Jung. I also think a Jungian approach to games would work really well for SOM. I call it extreme first person. And I like to think of the worlds of King's Field really being virtual reality worlds that are a cross between Total Recall (PKD) and Jungian like psychotherapy... which apparently equals something like The Wizard of Oz. IOW: what if the NPCs in the game looked like your friends and family? It's like the screen where you get to name your party characters taken to the Nth power! And what are ancient myths, why do we still remember them, why because they are all psycho (-logical) dramas that's why! If you want to make a good story you have to structure it around psychological phenomenon that is personal. But that is another thread.

Again, why satanic?? Well like I said, I am firmly of the conclusion that good/evil is not it. In fact good/evil might even not be something that can even be teased apart. What I think is the ticket though is reality vs. irreality, and there is no good guy or bad guy there, it's relative, just like the taijitu structure of King's Field 2. And one reality can be another man's irreality. It's turtles all the way down in other words...

The word Satan is Hebrew if I am not mistaken. It means something like "the other team" so to speak. Or the opposition. If you have two competing realities they are each other's Satans so to speak. But we recognize that video games are not reality. That's pretty obvious to sort out from our perspective. Sword of Moonlight is a tool used to make virtual worlds. And a tool to destroy those worlds; from inside the game that is; think about it. You can even compare the Moonlight sword to Shiva at this point... the creator and destroyer of worlds

Now I want to quickly unify SOM and Megaten (another personal obsession of mine) real quick. The thing about gods and demigods, deities and devils in general. Their names are always simple things. They don't have proper names, and they don't have alien names, no they are named after their very nature. It's like Earthsea, the thing is its name, and can't be otherwise...

Christians have been conflating two of their favorite devils for a long time. They've almost succeeded in making Lucifer and Satan synonymous. But from a literary standpoint these are different figures for the most part. Lucifer-cum-Satan is a fairly contemporary invention. Now I have no clue the basis for these two in Christianity. I am not a religious person though I have my private fantasies that are not entirely divorced from traditions here on Earth. I tend to prefer religion that is good for the arts. I'm into anything with a Hell too, because I'm kind of keen on justice, and I like to think that any half decent god(s) would see the utility of a hell

The word Lucifer is Latin (Rome) and it just means light. Period. In the west we usually think of light as being the stuff of the good guys. Only christians would think to denounce light. Of course they've worked out that somehow a demigod can be transmuted, perverted, by their god, but what is the literary value in that?? We already have a Satan don't we? Yes we do. Maybe its just uncomfortable to have other godlike figures taking up space in the pantheon.

In fact christians never really liked the idea of angels or devils in the first place. It was a concession to a very popular religion of antiquity that now goes by the name of Zoroastrianism. It was dualist. It has two supreme deities at odds with one another. Not unlike Seath and Guyra and loads of other popular fiction. Wikipedia/Zoraster says:

 The religion states that active participation in life through good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will, and Zoroastrianism rejects all forms of monasticism. Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail over the evil Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, at which point the universe will undergo a cosmic renovation and time will end. In the final renovation, all of creation—even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to "darkness"—will be reunited in Ahura Mazda, returning to life in the undead form. At the end of time, a savior-figure (a Saoshyant) will bring about a final renovation of the world (frasho.kereti), in which the dead will be revived.

Sound familiar? Of course christians would not accept Ahura Mazda as their mono-god. So to placate the Zorastrians we get two angels instead. One of light and one of dark, and you can guess which is Lucifer, and which is Satan. In fact angels are pre-Abrahamic religions. You guessed it, they are Zorastrian inventions. They are like the many gods of Hinduism, splinters of two root deities in this case. I'm not positive but I think most modern Hindus assume a single root deity.

EDITED: For the record, I am pretty sure that there are still adherents of Zoroastrianism around, and they probably do take it seriously. Wikipedia says they number in the tens of thousands.

Of course we all agree that once upon a time Lucifer was #1 angel in heaven, but that he had a falling out with the god. First of all angels don't have free will. They are like programs. Whether people do or not is beside the point. So this falling out could've been expected. And it is pretty easy to see why. If Lucifier is the embodiment of sugar spice and everything nice, then he's going to find fault in a god of all things sooner or later. Because a god of all things can't be 100% just all of the time. Sooner or later you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. So Lucifer ends up in hell as the story goes. Not put there, he chooses to make his home in hell. From hell Lucifer gets to be the executioner of enlightened justice that he always imagined himself to be. And that gives Lucifer a bad image. Does that remind you of anyone? *cough* *Guyra*

And what about god then? That statue of a maiden in KF2? Do many of god's followers ever start to look like satanists? Worshiping a maiden that turns out to be a serpent wearing a dress??? Many traditions believe nature itself is a deception. Gnostics, Buddhists. Statistically speaking they are probably right on the money. We live in a strange reality that by all rights should probably not exist. Did two Escher like realities simultaneously erect one another? And if so what the hell was the firmament for that process?? If you can't meditate long enough on that to cut your fellow man some slack then maybe that is the definition of evil that we are looking for...

Anyway, I bet this has been a long post. And I bet you are wondering what the hell conjured this up out of me. It's actually this...


For a long time people have been thinking. Video games are becoming more than just games. We need a new word to describe this nascent phenomenon that will soon begin consuming all of the arts and if we are not careful, reality as we know it.

I've always thought we should just ditch the goggles concept of 90s "virtual reality" and call it all VR. Because that's what it is. Even Tetris is a reality, goggles or no goggles, or piped directly into your brainpan. Its a reality. But it occurred to me this afternoon that we have a better word, if only for its brevity, in "irreality"...

And an abbreviation does not a word make. So I vote, as the art of video games matures, and as we begin to see all forms of storytelling media being developed with the same tools used to develop video games, because make no bones about it, it will just be a thousand times more economical to do so, and there will be a thousands times more people who will therefore be able to afford to do so...

We slowly begin to refer to this stuff as "irreality". The word itself is already strictly limited to the subject of fantasy, fantasy fiction almost exclusively. So there is no ambiguity in terms of terms like hallucination or surreality to be had


The End (of this post; please discuss)


PS: Why are movies etc. not irreality? Well they are. But they are not interactive. I think something has to be interactive and intuitive to strictly qualify as a(n) (ir)reality.

Aren't video games games? For the most part yes. But a game usually has a win condition. And its not appropriate to describe something as fine art and a game in the same breath. We are not at fine art yet, but we do have open ended games with no obvious win condition... and there is certainly no shortage of players who would seem to want their favorite games to go on forever and ever.

Can something be commercial and fine art at the same time? No not really, but in essence certainly yes. This website is squarely a non-commercial enterprise. So non-commercial games are not that hard to imagine. Free software itself is about as immaterial as things get.

Are "fine artists" allowed to take their audience into consideration?

The demo can be twitchy with Sony's controllers...

There will be a proper fix in the SomEx.dll update that will be online in a few days, but the following changes can help make the sticks more linear (less sensitive at the extremes) which will make it less likely to twitch.

[Detail]
escape_analog_gaits = .2 .25 .3 .4 .55 .75 .95
The twitching actually happens when the controller sits on a boundary between the gaits causing the gait to change back and forth (probably more because the controller's sensors are noisy than your hands being twitchy.

We've had a bit of a ice storm here that set in on Christmas night starting with rain and turning into about 7 to 12 inches of snow. I enjoy this time of the year out on the ranch... for these kinds of natural challenges. For a little time each year you get to participate in almost a sport, man vs. nature, that people in the city with urban utilities can only liken to shoveling their driveway. Wood stove and horses tend to sap these days away, but this year, with the usual late December TV lull Dark Souls has also been sapping away my days...

I miss the KF and ST days, but Abyss was pretty weak, as was IV, so I don't know if From' would be able to crank out an honorable addition to these series if it wanted to... and that may well be why it hasn't tried. The DS series adds something different. It feels like a Shadow Tower MMORPG to me, but also like it would be better if it was a more character driven game comparable to the Castlevania series. Demons' feels like Portrait of Ruin with its centralized organization, and Dark feels like SOTN only with a bunch of secret passages connecting bits of the castle at every turn. Personally I would have preferred each zone to just have more organic exits into adjoining areas. And there is what seems like enough content in Dark that it could easily have been spread out into 3 games (2 expansions) if From' would go back to releasing games on a yearly schedule.

That said my main problem with DS is its fatally flawed control scheme. In my mind the series can only be a shadow of itself until it scraps the controls and does something completely different. It bills itself as a hardcore game, but it's controls manage to be even worse than those of ICO, which would be a perfect 10 if not for its controls bringing it down to a high 6. DS has no substance, which is probably good if From wants to spin out as many of these games as it possibly can muster. A game without substance must have tight controls, so DS is something like a 5 out of 10, could be an 8 if it had functional controls. It loses points for me personally in being so shallow while simultaneously more complicated than anything I can possibly imagine, and way more complicated (and obtuse) than any game has a right to be.


The controls have so many problems. In the places were Dark contributes new features to the controls, they are all features with huge potential blowback. Eg. the combos don't always seem to work... and when they don't, instead of leap attacking you do a strong attack, which of course doesn't have the necessary range, leaving yourself completely exposed. There is probably 10 gaping issues such as this, and 10 more more subtle issues with the dysfunctional control scheme. So I won't get into it. Bottom line there has to be a B scheme for players who desire a modicum of precision. Nothing kills immersion like making an ass of yourself and having to berate the game just to blow off the steam telling you to put it down and never pick it up again. Bottom line, if Armored Core had a control scheme like this it would be ridiculed. You can't take a control scheme like this seriously.



I'd like to just post a little bit about where I would like to see SOM go in terms of game play with respect to equipment. All based on my observations WRT the DS games. Some of the late PS2 Armored Core games had a system I really enjoyed, it involves the parts being destroyed. This would be equivalent to a piece of your armor breaking in Shadow Tower. Only its not slow whittling... its more immediate. You were hit in that spot, and your equipment is going to sustain significant damage. If it takes a few more like that that piece of your armor will be completely ineffectual...

That's how I would like to see part breaking work in SOM. That's how armor works in the real world. And I realize emulating the real world is not often, or even necessarily usually, the right thing to do in game worlds. But I think in this case it would be far more interesting. What if weapons had 2 stats? One for breaking, and one for dullness. So your weapon gets dull of course... you sharpen it, but it also breaks. And say if its at 50% then the next swing has a 50% chance of the weapon breaking in two! I think that would present way more interesting scenarios too. Add an element of chance...

Likewise if you don't wear a helmet... your head should not be protected by the armor stat of your boots. If you are hit in the head, well lights out. You'll find that this approach radically simplifies things in the defense dept. No longer do you have to factor every piece of equipment into your game's balance.

If your helmet is at 50% then there is a 50% chance that the next hit will go through it. Higher for pierce, lower for smash of course. Then you're mortally wounded unless you have something up your sleeve.

Finally rolling is retarded. It's not worth wasting buttons on, and being invincible while rolling is just cheese. But likewise you can't be expected to control everything when it comes to evasive maneuvers. My thinking is why shouldn't that be something the game does automatically? If you are not wearing a helmet, then the game should automatically have the player flinch when anything is coming towards their head in plain sight. You simply can't put everything into a controller, and I don't see any indication that we won't be playing games without controllers anytime soon. And I don't think anyone would seriously want to play a game in any other way anyway (short of telekinesis)

Likewise jumping. Sometimes a game might not do what you want it to do, but it should try not to do something that is stupid without any reason. For instance in Dark Souls there is a bonfire in the garden hidden behind a wall that is itself on a ledge. I quit using this bonfire because 50% of the time I'd fall off the ledge just trying to walk around the wall. No player would do that on purpose. Is it suggesting that the bonfire is actually a trap? I don't get it. It just seems like bad design to me.

Games should incorporate a kind of AI to make sure the player cannot do nonsensical things. Consider every action instead to be a gesture, or communication to the game, to indicate what the player would like to do, and ultimately let the game make the best decision.


EDITED: I played an MMORPG once upon a time called Megaten (Megami Tensei) IMAGINE, because I felt like if I am going to be serious about a career in games, I have to seriously play an MMORPG at least once. Anyway when you repaired a piece of equipment in that game, there was always a chance of diminishing returns. The better and more expensive the repair NPC at their craft the less the likelihood of the item loosing some durability permanently. I would like to see that in From's games. I don't think a durability system even adds anything at all to games if there is not diminishing returns, and immediate consequences that do not just come from forgetting to keep your stuff in repair. You may as well just play an accounting simulator at that point.

Here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=628.0) is the announcement thread at www.swordofmoonlight.com

It includes a link to this (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/holy/Rath%20Crags.htm) page where I recommend you look for the demo. The top post has a link directly to the .zip file, also hosted here, but I can't vouch for how long it will be before that link goes dead.

I recommend editing the following code into the [Adjust] section of the Rathmor Ex.ini file:

[Adjust]
pc_walk_speed_multiplier = 0.5
pc_dash_speed_multiplier = 0.7

;edited: for difference in dash
fov_frustum_multiplier = 1.35

This will make the PC walk at the speed of a man. It may seem like a slow pace to you, but it takes time to walk several meters. Go outside and try it

Anyway the adjustment is mainly to make the walking locomotion provided by Ex (do_sway) appear more natural. Once trying that out you might want to undo the changes or adjust things as you like. The motion itself can also be adjusted but that is beyond the scope of this post.


Now I don't exactly expect anyone to do so. But if you are a responsible and good and decent human being, you will help us gather some numbers about whether or not two particular menus work for you. SOM has only one single remaining game ending bug that can make the Take X item? and the in-game Save Game (event triggered; such as when examining a save point) menus unnavigable...

Ex does some magic to make this work for most users (computer setup wise) but unlike possibly every other fix, this one is only a bandaid. It also has the negative side effect (when necessary) of making these menus clunkier than others. Unfortunately I've had at least one report of the fix having no effect upon the menus. I can't exactly understand how that is possible, but it seems to be the case.

Regardless this is definitely a bug that needs to be fixed. But it's a rather intractable bug with no obvious fix. I'm confident that a definitive fix will arrive eventually but in the meantime it would be good to know just how many people are affected by this, and potentially helpful to see if they share anything in common.


You can comment on this blog without registering with website. Please comment to say you tried the demo, and tell us if you were able to pickup items and use the save-point, which looks like a giant skull (it's pretty hard to miss)


PS: If you are experiencing this bug and are resolved to finish the demo. For some reason clicking on another window makes the menus just work the next time you press a button. We love From Software as much as anyone here, but SOM is a monument to buggery. Make no bones about it

EDITED: I noticed that all of the (presumably) free software library licenses are printed in the back of the game manual. It's shocking just how much of commercial software nowadays is built on the back of free open-source software libraries. You get the impression that probably sooner than later commercial games will be built entirely out of free software.

Let's face it, there are a lot of really really ugly smileys out there on the internet. But I am a big fan of smileys. The trick is just finding the ones that get their message across while being pleasing to look at.

Ever since I've been administrating websites I've kept my eye out for well done smileys. You could even say that I am a bit of a collector of smileys. Anyway I found my first new smiley for a long time just now

I just nick the things wherever I find them devil may care. And I just thought it would be a good idea to ask everyone that ever comes to make a home here to join in the great smiley hunt with me/us here


Credit where credit is due. I inherited the bulk of these smileys from websites I've either inherited or had been forced to take over (for lack of any other takers) over the years. I won't go into gory detail. That's just a nod to anyone who knows what I am talking about.


But brass tax if you look at the smileys available in the post form here its pretty obvious the kind of smileys that are welcome here...

A) The circumference of the round head if there is one needs to be about the size of an average line of text, which incidentally is the same size as all of the other smileys here. They can vary by only about a pixel. If the smiley is not head based it can have a bit more lee way.


B) The background needs to be transparent. There are a number of not featured smileys that are not transparent. These need some work. If you post a smiley here please doctor the background to be transparent first if it isn't already and you know what you are doing.

C) Generally it's best if the lines are clean. I prefer personally the hard black outline and solid colour smileys, but as long as the head size is appropriate for embedding in average height text its hard to make a smiley too ugly.

D) Smileys expressing derogatory and intolerant positions toward others are not welcome here and should not exist in the world. You know these when you see them. Likewise for violent and unjust smileys ... bottom line ugly smileys are not welcome whether they are ugly on the outside or inside

E) That said there is a grey area that is perfectly acceptable. Like we have an angry smiley in case you want to rant at corporations or some other faceless evil out there in the world. And you are welcome to be cheeky as long as keep everything impersonal, or at least passive aggressive


All smileys will be available on demand in the form of a .zip file. Allow time for processing


PS: Be sure to not miss the additional smileys in the popup window on the post form. Just click the [more] button below the featured smileys

I saw this (attached) for the first time today

I hope the organ theme wasn't butchered too