BBC documentary about life on earth if there was no humans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XDbcMND7fY&feature=share&list=PL8115CA6F1D3A4807
Monday, 17 March 2014
The Last of Us - Level and puzzle design
Ive begun to research some games that are considered to have good level design.
The Last of Us documentary 'Grounded: The making of The Last of Us', feature some good interviews which discuses how the developers design there puzzles and levels
http://youtu.be/R0l7LzC_h8I?t=1h13m46s
Main features from The Last of US level design:
The Last of Us documentary 'Grounded: The making of The Last of Us', feature some good interviews which discuses how the developers design there puzzles and levels
http://youtu.be/R0l7LzC_h8I?t=1h13m46s
Main features from The Last of US level design:
Iain Banks - The Culture Series Research & Ideas
I read overviews of the authors and some of the themes explored in there books, I was most drawn to Iain Banks, Culture series. The main themes throughout his books are about events surrounding The Culture. The Culture is a Sci-Fi, Utopian society where hundreds of species live and share knowledge together.
Worlds research
Living space
Much of the Culture's population lives
on orbitals, vast artificial worlds that can
accommodate billions of people. Others travel the galaxy in huge space ships
such as General Systems Vehicles (GSVs) that can accommodate hundreds of
millions of people. Almost no Culture citizens are described as living on
planets, except when visiting other civilizations. The reason for this is
partly because the Culture believes in containing its own expansion to
self-constructed habitats, instead of colonising or conquering new planets.
With the resources of the universe allowing permanent expansion (at least assuming
non-exponential growth), this frees them from having to compete for living
space.
The Culture, and other civilizations in
Banks' universe, are described as living in these various, often constructed
habitats:
Airspheres
These are vast, brown dwarf-sized bubbles
of atmosphere enclosed by force fields, and (presumably) set up by an ancient
advanced race at least one and a half billion years ago. There is only minimal
gravity within an airsphere. They are illuminated by moon-sized orbiting
planetoids that emit enormous light beams.
Citizens of the Culture live there only
very occasionally as guests, usually to study the complex ecosystem of the
airspheres and the dominant life-forms: the "dirigible behemothaurs"
and "gigalithine lenticular entities", which may be described as
inscrutable, ancient intelligences looking similar to a cross between gigantic
blimps and whales. The airspheres slowly migrate around the galaxy, taking
anywhere from 50 to 100 million years to complete one circuit. In the novels no
one knows who created the airspheres or why, but it is presumed that whoever
did has long since sublimed but may maintain some obscure link with the
behemothaurs and lenticular entities. Guests in the airspheres are not allowed
to use any force-field technology, though no reason has been offered for this
prohibition.
The airspheres resemble in some respects
the orbit-sized ring of breathable atmosphere created by Larry Niven in The Integral Trees, but spherical not
toroidal, require a force field to retain their integrity, and arose by
artificial rather than natural processes.
Orbitals
One of the main types of habitats of the
Culture, an orbital is a ring structure orbiting a star as would a planet.
Unlike a Ringworld or a Dyson Sphere,
an orbital does not enclose the star (being much too small). Like a ringworld,
the orbital rotates to provide an analog of gravity on the inner surface. A
Culture orbital rotates about once every 24 hours and has gravity-like effect
about the same as the gravity of Earth, making the diameter of the ring about
3,000,000 km, and ensuring that the inhabitants experience night and day.
Orbitals feature prominently in many Culture stories.
Rings
Ringworld-like
megastructures exist in the Culture universe but are referred to simply as
"Rings" with a capital R.
These habitats are not described in detail but one is recorded as having been
destroyed (along with 3 Spheres) in the Idiran-Culture war. In Matter, the Morthanveld people possesses
ringworldlike structures made of innumerable various-sized tubes. Those
structures encircle a star just like Niven's Ringworld and are about the same
size.
Shellworlds
Shellworlds are introduced in Matter, and consist of multilayered
levels of concentric spheres in four dimensions held up by innumerable titanic
interior towers. Their extra dimensional characteristics render some products
of Culture technology too dangerous to use and yet others ineffective, notably
access to hyperspace. They were built millions of years ago as vast machines
intended to cast a forcefield around the whole of the galaxy for unknown
purposes. The species that developed this technology are now lost, and many of
the remaining shellworlds have become inhabited, often by many different
species throughout their varying levels. Many still hold deadly secret defence
mechanisms, often leading to great danger for their new inhabitants, giving
them one of their other nicknames: Slaughter Worlds.
Ships
Ships in the Culture are intelligent
individuals, often of very large size, controlled by one or more Minds. The
ship is considered the Mind's body. Some ships (e.g., GSVs) are tens or even
hundreds of kilometers in length and may have millions or even billions of
residents who live on them full-time, and together with Orbitals represent the
main form of habitat for the Culture. Such large ships may temporarily contain
smaller ships with their own populations, and/or manufacture such ships
themselves.
In Use
of Weapons, the protagonist Zakalwe is allowed to acclimatise himself to
the Culture by wandering for days through the habitable levels of a ship (the
GSV Size Isn't Everything, which
is described as over 80 kilometers long), eating and sleeping at the many
locations which provide food and accommodation throughout the structure and
enjoying the various forms of contact possible with the friendly and
accommodating inhabitants.
Spheres
Dyson spheres also
exist in the Culture universe but are only mentioned in passing and are simply
called "Spheres". Three spheres are recorded as having been destroyed
in the Idiran-Culture war.
In Matter,
the Morthanveld Nestworld of Syaung-un is a "Sphere World" consisting
of a complex, recursive arrangement of transparent tubes
within tubes within tubes, all revolving around a small central star. The
Nestworld is alleged to contain forty trillion Morthanveld, more intelligent
beings than on all the Culture and associated worlds put together. There are
also noted to be other Nestworlds, but none as big as Syaung-un.[11]
reference:
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