Recently I discovered that a couple thousands years BC, Africa was green. Instead of the Sahara there was a huge savannah and the lake of Chad was orders of magnitude larger. I discovered this because I disliked how in EU4 around half of Africa can not be traversed in any way, with most of this area being the Sahara desert.
However, when I found out just how livable Africa used to be, I wanted to make a more grand mod than just adding the wastelands as usable provinces. I wanted to make a mod that would take place in the range between 7000 BC up until 1900 AD, because after 1900 there are aircraft and EU4 can not simulate them.
Thus, I needed to mod the map. It turns out that modding the map requires changing lots of different layers. There are 4 files for the actual looks, one for map textures(which affect gameplay), 1 for how the land is split into provinces, 1 for which lands are water or not and how high mountains are, etc.
The most problematic of those all are the 4 for actual looks, because I'm not very good at drawing on a computer. At that point I gave up.
But yesterday I figured "I may have this weakness, but that doesn't mean I should just accept it."
So what I did was that I opened one of the maps up in gimp and copied the most used colors with color select. Then I tried adding an island next to France and called it Xeaune, which is essentially like Xon, but written like in French. Everything is longer in French.
As I tried the results in the game I noticed no major problems. I had used the wrong map texture, but that was easy to fix. Just a few days before I had given up on the idea of modding the map, but at this point I decided I should make an entirely new one. Modding the existing map on the same quality level is still out of reach for me, but in order to learn I just have to practice. Thus, now I want to make a new map with entirely new geography, cultures and balance. One thing that I'm sure of is that I want to add more islands than in the real world. Sea powers like England were actually quite weak historically. The only reason they were so powerful is that trade practically had to be done by sea. If only ground transport wasn't so thoroughly bad, sea powers would have been much weaker.
However, even in EU4 sea powers are in fact weak if they don't colonize. In order to make England actually able to fight on the mainland I needed to make a lot of changes. Some of those were for fixing silly imbalances in the base game, but some are also just overpowered. For instance, I made it so that if your sea power is higher than someone else's, you can easily declare war. This is a major imbalance and the only reason it doesn't break the game is that those who get the most use out of it are simply weak anyway.
But yeah, I'm going to make an entire new world. Maybe.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
Emotional Epiphany
Yesterday I had an emotional epiphany of sorts. I was reading a book called "Flow - the psychology of optimal experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Essentially it talks about how fun works on a psychological level. The core idea of the book is a concept called Flow, which is a state of mind where you are engaged in what you do, exactly according to your ability.
When he talked about what people find happiness in he also mentioned getting a calypso. At this point I got a strong image of diving around a laguna in a warm climate. I closed the book and focused on this idea to better understand it.
When I did so I remembered that I had actually liked those things - tropical water life and deep-sea diving. Although I had never encountered either of them firsthand they were nonetheless fascinating for me a couple years ago. It's amazing how much I've forgot.
It happened between 6th and 7th grade. By the time I joined 7th I realized that I've lost a lot of my memories. I quickly understood that the memories are still there, I just can't access them because the way I think has changed. Over time I reclaimed some memories, but most are still gone.
Later on I've thought about this further and know what was special about those memories that I lost and why I was able to reclaim some. The way my mind changed was that I lost most of my ability to remember emotions. I feel normal, but when I try to think about how I felt at a specific time I just can't. Then again, this doesn't stop me from reminding myself how I looked at things. The logical, episodic part is still there. This is why I was able to regain some memories - I had mentally described my feelings at some points in life and thus I was able to access those descriptions.
The change itself was something I didn't feel happen. It was probably a result of domestic violence and the ensuing depression that I didn't notice until years later.
Since I didn't feel it happen, I also didn't realize for a while that anything was wrong. How could I?
It took me years to finally get it that the depth of my emotion is also lower. I don't find joy in most of the things I used to find it in.
I used to make plasticine figures and draw spaceships. Of course I can still do those things. I can even do them much better than I used to despite the lack of practice that I had for years. However, they no longer have as much relation to my inner fantasy as they used to. They no longer give me motivation to keep doing stuff. Yet, I see their flaws more clearly. I can attempt to draw something and then give up because the techniques I know are not good enough. When I was little I simply didn't care about those things. I was unable to see most flaws in what I made and as such, I was happy with it. They were only pieces to support my inner narrative, not art on their own. Is it a problem that a chess piece doesn't look like an actual soldier? Not really. Do anime characters look photo-realistic? No.
Those things don't need to be exactly right, because what matters is not their execution, but the idea. The same applied to my creations in the past, but since I've lost sight of the narrative I've started to focus more on the external part that doesn't truly matter. It's surely easier to present, but that doesn't motivate me.
My standards for myself have risen, but in effect it only ruins the fun instead of making me work harder.
When I thought about diving I saw again for a short time my inner narrative. I saw meaning. It made me wonder what the hell I had been doing all this time. Why I hadn't done anything about this interest of mine if it can give me so much pleasure just by accidentally thinking about it. As a result, I have felt good today.
Thinking about the details of how to achieve this dream has kept me busy and I love to work on this. Of course it's only a matter of time until I relapse into numbness, but while this emotion lasts I want to treasure it.
Looking back at what I wrote today I can see that I'm talking about something emotional. This is unusual for me, as I am usually stuck in thinking with purely logic. The numbness makes me so.
This has objectively great relevance to me, because it shows that what L had given me is something I can also produce myself. The way she motivated me and made me more emotional is not only an aspect of her, but also of me. Knowing this is reassuring, as it proves that my happiness is not about what happens outside, but how I handle it inside.
When he talked about what people find happiness in he also mentioned getting a calypso. At this point I got a strong image of diving around a laguna in a warm climate. I closed the book and focused on this idea to better understand it.
When I did so I remembered that I had actually liked those things - tropical water life and deep-sea diving. Although I had never encountered either of them firsthand they were nonetheless fascinating for me a couple years ago. It's amazing how much I've forgot.
It happened between 6th and 7th grade. By the time I joined 7th I realized that I've lost a lot of my memories. I quickly understood that the memories are still there, I just can't access them because the way I think has changed. Over time I reclaimed some memories, but most are still gone.
Later on I've thought about this further and know what was special about those memories that I lost and why I was able to reclaim some. The way my mind changed was that I lost most of my ability to remember emotions. I feel normal, but when I try to think about how I felt at a specific time I just can't. Then again, this doesn't stop me from reminding myself how I looked at things. The logical, episodic part is still there. This is why I was able to regain some memories - I had mentally described my feelings at some points in life and thus I was able to access those descriptions.
The change itself was something I didn't feel happen. It was probably a result of domestic violence and the ensuing depression that I didn't notice until years later.
Since I didn't feel it happen, I also didn't realize for a while that anything was wrong. How could I?
It took me years to finally get it that the depth of my emotion is also lower. I don't find joy in most of the things I used to find it in.
I used to make plasticine figures and draw spaceships. Of course I can still do those things. I can even do them much better than I used to despite the lack of practice that I had for years. However, they no longer have as much relation to my inner fantasy as they used to. They no longer give me motivation to keep doing stuff. Yet, I see their flaws more clearly. I can attempt to draw something and then give up because the techniques I know are not good enough. When I was little I simply didn't care about those things. I was unable to see most flaws in what I made and as such, I was happy with it. They were only pieces to support my inner narrative, not art on their own. Is it a problem that a chess piece doesn't look like an actual soldier? Not really. Do anime characters look photo-realistic? No.
Those things don't need to be exactly right, because what matters is not their execution, but the idea. The same applied to my creations in the past, but since I've lost sight of the narrative I've started to focus more on the external part that doesn't truly matter. It's surely easier to present, but that doesn't motivate me.
My standards for myself have risen, but in effect it only ruins the fun instead of making me work harder.
When I thought about diving I saw again for a short time my inner narrative. I saw meaning. It made me wonder what the hell I had been doing all this time. Why I hadn't done anything about this interest of mine if it can give me so much pleasure just by accidentally thinking about it. As a result, I have felt good today.
Thinking about the details of how to achieve this dream has kept me busy and I love to work on this. Of course it's only a matter of time until I relapse into numbness, but while this emotion lasts I want to treasure it.
Looking back at what I wrote today I can see that I'm talking about something emotional. This is unusual for me, as I am usually stuck in thinking with purely logic. The numbness makes me so.
This has objectively great relevance to me, because it shows that what L had given me is something I can also produce myself. The way she motivated me and made me more emotional is not only an aspect of her, but also of me. Knowing this is reassuring, as it proves that my happiness is not about what happens outside, but how I handle it inside.
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