Recreating the Carboniferous Swamp Forest

[Jennifer_P]

I have to say that's not exactly how I pictured a carboniferous swamp forest, but you're the specialist.
Seriously now, that's great. One step at a time.

Uh, would you believe I linked to the Cambrian by mistake...? Thaaaat's why there aren't any land plants yet. Yeah.

Boy - there's nothing like the feeling of linking into your own age for the first time. Anything seems possible after that.

I'll say! It felt great!

Think about it... suppose we find another planet with life on it. What stage will it be in? Maybe life has been existing on it for billions of years, maybe only for a thousand. Maybe we'll find an advanced society with advanced technical skills, maybe we'll find big cats and ferns. Without going back in time.
So you just found an Age that's still in the Carboniferous period. It is not Earth.

That is definitely a possible explanation for the resemblance this Age will bear to the Carboniferous period. The writer might have been trying to time travel, but that doesn't mean that they were successful in doing so, in spite of the resemblance. And just so you know, there were no big cats in the Carboniferous period. But there were amphibians over two meters long and dragonflies (Meganeura) with wingspans nearly a meter wide, and millipedes that could grow over eight feet long. Those were the good old days!

On a happy note, it turns out that my progress report really isn't due until today (Thursday) at midnight, giving me till later tonight to procrastinate. Yay!

[Jennifer_P]

Surely every Age should have a giant floating colossus in it!

--Learned about extrusion
--Learned about vertex selection
--Learned about transformations
--Learned about smoothing
--Learned about snapping
--Learned about exporting
--Studied the marine Carboniferous echinoderms crinoids and blastoids.
--Studied early Carboniferous ferns.
--Rationalized about possible copyright infringements.

[Chacal]

Could be worse... could be a giant floating monkey head.

[Jennifer_P]

The trees in the picture are rough (VERY rough) lepidodendrons. Note the bichotomous branching--that means that the trunk split into two branches (and two roots also, though you can't see it in this screenshot) and then each branch split into two branchlets, and each of the branchlets split--well, you get the picture. It looks kind of like Channelwood, huh? But back to schoolwork.

[bluewyvern]

I gotta say, that rough little model is a more evocative landscape than a lot of finished games I've played. I wouldn't mind exploring a whole game with a minimalist aesthetic like that.

Must be the mist that does it!

[Jennifer_P]

Yeah, I think the mist adds half of the scene's atmosphere. I just love plant Ages. Well, now to learn texturing and billboarding so that I can add grass-like leaves to the lepidodendrons and cover every square inch of the ground with ferns and Sphenophyllum. Happily, our class been given a few more days to work on our projects since everybody was at about 40-70% completion, so I'll have till Tuesday to finish up what I can. And I also did my presentation today. I thought maybe you'd like to know how it went, so here's a brief summary:
In short, it went great! Too bad I couldn't have played more Uru on the overhead projector--it was cool seeing it on the big screen like that. My teacher seemed interested in Uru, even though he only got to see Relto and my Age. He asked whether Uru was the player's name or what, and I replied that Uru was a word from some ancient civilization meaning "deep city," which was referring in this case to a large cavern under New Mexico where an ancient civilization once lived. He was also impressed by the avatar. As I was trying to show him how there was no collison on the brown swamp water plane, I stepped off into it and surprise! It was one of the areas without the lowered terrain collision mesh below it and my avatar went plummeting down into the white abyss below, waving its arms. The arm waving was what surprised and impressed him, but I was thinking to myself, "Well, you should see what they can do now." And when I mentioned that you could adjust the friction of the ground and slide around, he said, "So you could go skiing?" Wow, I would never have even thought of that until he said it! Someone should make a skiing Age. I think the class enjoyed the presentation because there was a lot to see; I gave them the complete tour of the Blender model, ULM, and the Age in Uru--thank goodness it was working! People laughed when I told them that I viewed the working system of Blender+ULM+Uru+PyPRP+Python stuff as a tall stack of wobbly plates ready to crash down at the slightest adjustment of one of the pieces; they also thought it was funny how the plug-in was hacked out of the game by the its developers. This is an audience of computer geeks, you see. So it went well, and now I just have to finish my Age by Tuesday midnight.

[Chacal]

If you do everything with the same dedication and competence, You won't have a problem finding a good job.

Actually, get a training in IT security and I will hire you.
If you don't mind moving to Canada and working mostly in French, that is.

[Jennifer_P]

Wow, who would have thought creating Ages would get me a job offer? Unfortunately computer science isn't my strong point, interesting as it is. The working in French part does sound like fun to me though...

[Chacal]

Actually information security mostly requires a good analytical mind, diplomacy, persistence and communication skills (maybe a dash of ruthlessness). Don't be fooled by Hollywood.

I notice you said nothing about living in Canada. See? That's diplomacy.

[Jennifer_P]

Heh, actually it's because I live in Alaska. I'm guessing that whatever people view as undesirable about living in Canada is only worse up here.