choas
-
This post did not contain any content.
No problem, just mention it in the requirements - early on. Not when everything is built to work this one specific way.
-
Or there's fish and we are one, or there's fish but hagfish, dogfish and lungfish are something else.
I guess we could return to medieval and say it's based on shape not taxonomy, too, so whales would be fish.
It's why taxonomy uses latin for this... the definition of english words are based on common usage which isn't going to line up to any kind of scientific categorization. English is always changing and scientific categorization is also always changing when there's more empirical data. These changes are independent of each other so it was wisely decided long ago to not even try to make english words consistent with scientific taxonomy.
So in common usage, yeah it's based around the general shape but it isn't a whale (big mammal) a dolphin (a relatively smaller mammal). A shark might be called a fish but more likely someone will just call it a shark instead of just using just "fish". This is fine for communication among laypeople, if marine biologists are having a conversation about those same animals, they break out the latin and there's no confusion.
Also my understanding is that in medieval times, the word whale actually refereed to a specific species of whale... what we know call the Right Whale, which is nearly extinct. So a word for a species became a word for a group of species and then it was awkward how to refer to that original species. What kind of whale is that? "It's a whale whale... you know the original whale... the proper whale... the right whale." There's actually a paragraph in Moby Dick about this.
English is weird and changes in weird ways. Just use latin if you want to be scientifically precise.
-
I actually do, yes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of hours played and I made it down there and back out exactly once.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Lol, I still died half way up my one orb run, so you're further than me. I save scummed right before Zot:5 and did get it on my second try, but that doesn't count.
It was a gnoll abyssal knight IIRC. What about you?
-
It's why taxonomy uses latin for this... the definition of english words are based on common usage which isn't going to line up to any kind of scientific categorization. English is always changing and scientific categorization is also always changing when there's more empirical data. These changes are independent of each other so it was wisely decided long ago to not even try to make english words consistent with scientific taxonomy.
So in common usage, yeah it's based around the general shape but it isn't a whale (big mammal) a dolphin (a relatively smaller mammal). A shark might be called a fish but more likely someone will just call it a shark instead of just using just "fish". This is fine for communication among laypeople, if marine biologists are having a conversation about those same animals, they break out the latin and there's no confusion.
Also my understanding is that in medieval times, the word whale actually refereed to a specific species of whale... what we know call the Right Whale, which is nearly extinct. So a word for a species became a word for a group of species and then it was awkward how to refer to that original species. What kind of whale is that? "It's a whale whale... you know the original whale... the proper whale... the right whale." There's actually a paragraph in Moby Dick about this.
English is weird and changes in weird ways. Just use latin if you want to be scientifically precise.
I mean, some of the taxanomic divisions do have common names as well - jawed fish and ray-finned fish might come up in that conversation. And don't forget some of the formal names and roots are Greek as well.
What kind of whale is that? āItās a whale whaleā¦ you know the original whaleā¦ the proper whaleā¦ the right whale.ā Thereās actually a paragraph in Moby Dick about this.
Was that the weird chapter that was just a biology lesson, but was also completely wrong?
-
A browser based Doom or Quake engine world sim to run around playing with others sounds like such an awesome concept. I'd love that!! And in the 90"s no less. That would've been crazy impressive.
Microsoft and MMOs, man. I remember they were gonna make a really neat online fantasy one for the Xbox and canned it, too.
That's such a wild story. Thanks for sharing that with us! I wish they wouldn't have cold shouldered you like that...
Here's how I was imagining that went down the whole time I was reading it lmao. Just for you.
Wow, nobody's ever put me in a cartoon before. I'm honored!
It does kind of fit the situation lol.
-
Lol, I still died half way up my one orb run, so you're further than me. I save scummed right before Zot:5 and did get it on my second try, but that doesn't count.
It was a gnoll abyssal knight IIRC. What about you?
According to the screenshot I took, it was a gargoyle berserker with an axe. I had some ridiculous luck with armor drops, so basically every resistance was either maxxed or close to it. I only really got into trouble down in Zot:5...
And hmm, I should do more with Lugonu. I never really have a reason to pick him, but that means I also don't experiment with him, so I won't really learn what reasons there are to pick the guy...
-
I mean, some of the taxanomic divisions do have common names as well - jawed fish and ray-finned fish might come up in that conversation. And don't forget some of the formal names and roots are Greek as well.
What kind of whale is that? āItās a whale whaleā¦ you know the original whaleā¦ the proper whaleā¦ the right whale.ā Thereās actually a paragraph in Moby Dick about this.
Was that the weird chapter that was just a biology lesson, but was also completely wrong?
I mean, some of the taxanomic divisions do have common names as well - jawed fish and ray-finned fish
Searching for "jawed fish" takes me here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnathostomata
But that's jawed vertebrates. So I'm not sure which taxonomic group you're referring to when you're saying "jawed fish". The wiki page indicates salamaders are in the Gnathostomata group. Are salamanders considered to be jawed fish?
I think this just goes to further prove that using english words for taxonomy just causes a lot of confusion. My search results for "jawed fish" also returns a lot of results from national park sites and yeah, that kind of terminology for a national park conversing with a layperson is fine. Close enough for a layperson, but for a biologist they probably should use Gnathostomata when that's what they're talking about.
Was that the weird chapter that was just a biology lesson, but was also completely wrong?
Probably, but it's been awhile since I read it. But it would be insane to read Moby Dick expecting it to be a good biology text book. You have to read it as people's understanding of biology and terminology in the past, which is why I referenced it in the context of the evolution of linguistics about ocean animals.
-
I mean, some of the taxanomic divisions do have common names as well - jawed fish and ray-finned fish
Searching for "jawed fish" takes me here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnathostomata
But that's jawed vertebrates. So I'm not sure which taxonomic group you're referring to when you're saying "jawed fish". The wiki page indicates salamaders are in the Gnathostomata group. Are salamanders considered to be jawed fish?
I think this just goes to further prove that using english words for taxonomy just causes a lot of confusion. My search results for "jawed fish" also returns a lot of results from national park sites and yeah, that kind of terminology for a national park conversing with a layperson is fine. Close enough for a layperson, but for a biologist they probably should use Gnathostomata when that's what they're talking about.
Was that the weird chapter that was just a biology lesson, but was also completely wrong?
Probably, but it's been awhile since I read it. But it would be insane to read Moby Dick expecting it to be a good biology text book. You have to read it as people's understanding of biology and terminology in the past, which is why I referenced it in the context of the evolution of linguistics about ocean animals.
Sorry, "jawed fish" is used a lot in when talking about the epochs where tetrapods hadn't evolved yet - growing the first jaws was a pretty big landmark. That's my bad. Ray-finned is pretty clear, though, and doesn't include anything I can think of that's unexpected.
Close enough for a layperson, but for a biologist they probably should use Gnathostomata when thatās what theyāre talking about.
They absolutely do use casual terms as well as the technical names when talking to each other - I've been a fly on that wall. They tend not to get confused about their own subject. However, when they have to get into more specifics than "that's a squat lobster" yeah, they have to go back to the jargon.
-
I wouldn't mind seeing that! After V-Worlds was declared "completed" MSR tried to find a product group to fold it into, but nobody wanted to own it. I don't remember if XBox existed then, but the code just sat there for a few years, then I heard they opensourced it. When my kids were playing ToonTown I found a bug that let you slide behind the background and move around, like you could see that a clerk behind a counter was just a legless floating torso. The method of getting there seemed to be exactly like a V-Worlds bug, so I wondered if Disney might have been using the code. But it could have just been a common graphics bug, I dunno.
I remember finding another bug while creating a demo with a snaky sea creature swimming around. To animate a multi-segmented object you had to animate each segment separately. After the animation ran for a minute or two, enough unrelated interrupts would happen in the computer that would throw the body parts out of sync, making body parts either merge into each other or move apart, and the whole thing would look like crap. Same thing if you had somebody ride in a car or on a train - the car and character were animated separately and you'd end up with the character floating along behind the car.
I asked the dev about making the animation itself an abstract object whose position would be moved around, and attaching in-world objects to it, with position offsets. Each animation step would be computed just once instead of for each body part (or for the person and the car), and all the parts would be rendered with offsets from that one position, guaranteeing them to stay in sync visually. He said yeah that's a good idea, but we're not working on that code anymore. Oh well.
Another bug involved moving from room to room. The engine only loaded graphics for the current room, so when you went through a doorway it would load the new room and dump the previous one, causing a very unnatural visual delay that looked like a glitch in the matrix. The way we coped with this was by putting an entire world in a single room, so all the world's graphics were loaded all at once. But this not only limited the world size, it meant we had to create our own version of the room system in script. To keep track of where players and objects were, we put invisible barriers in doorways and used event handlers when things passed through them. Then we used this to enforce which players could talk to each other or hear sounds made in a given "room".
I suggested loading a cluster of rooms at once - the current one and those that were one connection away. Then when an avatar passed into a doorway the new room's graphics would already be there, no glitch, and the graphics for nearby rooms could be loaded and unloaded in the background. Again, nice idea but we're done working on that code. Sigh. I really wish I had joined that project about 6 months sooner. Not like I'm a genius or anything but these seemed like really fundamental things that should have been addressed up front.
Okay, rant over. I haven't thought about this stuff in quite a while - I'm kind of amazed so many details are still in my head. I must have agonized over it a lot at the time lol.
Hey if itās still out there as open source could finally fix those bugs lol!
But yeah seems interesting especially if it had a second life once it was opened sourced. It kinda boggles my mind how much companies are willing to scrap things after putting so much work into it, but I guess thatās the whole sunk cost thing but still.
Plenty of nostalgia for toon town so if it was used could broaden audience of video def.
Thanks for your ārantā was interesting seeing some of the same problems that pop up for me in my current game dev (how to handle when to load certain things).
-
According to the screenshot I took, it was a gargoyle berserker with an axe. I had some ridiculous luck with armor drops, so basically every resistance was either maxxed or close to it. I only really got into trouble down in Zot:5...
And hmm, I should do more with Lugonu. I never really have a reason to pick him, but that means I also don't experiment with him, so I won't really learn what reasons there are to pick the guy...
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Lugonu actually started as a goddess, before being turned into a genderless abomination. I think I've seen the devs use it/it's pronouns.
Yup. The panic buttons are nice, the easier rune is nice, and back when there was Ak there was a cheap blink+blink other ability. That character used a distortion-branded demon whip to great effect as well, IIRC. Happy playing!
