I thought I made an entry yesterday, but apparently not.

Well, here I am today instead.

Uhh.

Don't really have much coherent to say though.

Today was largely, combined with yesterday, a "catchup day", for internet stuff.

I also decided to re-tackle the scenario idea of Across the Ages. The hardest part will indeed be making the map, but I feel like I may have developed a technique that'll make it easier. All in due time, though; right now, I'm mostly going through and cataloging in the editor the exact effects of buildings, units, and techs, with the details behind civs queued up on the list as well.

It's...rather time-consuming. It took me two, three hours (something in that range) for just the buildings and units of Mesopotamia. (Admittedly though, that's because there's a freakin' weird interface glitch; there are files that are messed up that shouldn't be messed up. As in, copying the original scenario that is in the game and I know for a fact works because I did a quick test of trying the original scenario out in the game, and pasting said scenario, produces some...rather annoying things.)

The hardest thing to do will be the map, sure, but it'll also be only the smallest of small amounts of the total work load.
Right now comes mostly the rather comprehensive documentation steps.
Once I have everything documented, I can then crossreference this with actual logs from the game, so I have a correlation between them. And add in the notepad files, and...

...Well, aside from the painstaking effort of the map building (and figuring out how to place civilization starting markers...and figuring out how to place pre-existing cities...and figuring out how to set said cities' culture values...and figuring out how to set said cities' starting improvements, which I all associate as being part of said map building), it's a lot of work, but all very much doable.

I just need to do it in moderation, slowly, over time.

​Because I am in fact exhausted.

At least, for the moment, long enough to blog.

We have--twice--thought we had it back.
Where it was on for fifteen minutes.
Only to lose it again.

But, cautiously optimistic.

So, yes, that would indeed be why I missed blogging yesterday; I had a darn good excuse. I had no pen, no paper, no light, to write on, so the closest to having a blog would be the series of messages I sent to my girlfriend on dwindling phone battery power, eating up a solid third of the data I've allotted for myself for the month in a single night.

I suppose I could technically, then, take some of those, and make an entry for yesterday, but that just doesn't sit as being right, for me.

Extenuating circumstances meant I couldn't blog in ANY way, whatsoever, yesterday, but I'll take the hit because it was something entirely out of my control.

Heck, it's a miracle I'm able to get this in and the more I type, the more I risk not being able to, since. Again.

It's back now​, but could go back down again at any moment.

Hoh boy is it stupid; I can't simply expand the size of an existing map. So I will in fact need to create the map for scrap.

Still not sure if it's faster to use the baseline from Rise of Rome or the baseline from the vanilla game; right now I'm trying the latter, but not that it matters that much since.

Well.

IT'S GONNA BE TOO MUCH WORK NO MATTER WHAT.

I have to build. A. Full. Map.

160 x 160.
Trying to manually recreate...lesse the math...25,600 tiles' worth of space, getting it as close as is possible to the Mediterranean maps already in existence, but with the necessary adjustments.
Also I need to teach myself how to create fixed starting locations and also...cities.
​And also, figure out what units to give, and...and...oh god this is gonna take me forever.

I think that the looming despair has made me go, "Yep. That's all the work I'm doing on this today."
In spite of me having done...pretty much nothing!

​Ah well.

...I want to actually make one of my original mod ideas for civ 3.
Specifically, "Across the Ages: Mediterranean", which would be modeled after the Mediterranean taking aspects of Mesopotamia, Rise of Rome, Fall of Rome, The Middle Ages, Age of Discovery, and even the Napoleonic Era...while expanding it to also include all the tech from the normal game through the modern age, so while we're at it throwing in the WWII scenario, too.

There are some obvious hurdles.
The first being, is it easier to start from scratch, or to start from the Rise of Rome scenario (since the seven player civs with the eighth being canon fodder Egypt are from said scenario, but for good reason) and basically nuke the hell out of many key aspects of it.

Like...literally every single tech, and redoing everything involving the techs...which means, everything. (Notably, this would not be replacing my existing scenario; this would be a project undertaken separate from it which would also take things in a different overall direction; things in my current scenario, while mostly kept in, wouldn't all be kept in.)

And if it's easier to start from the Rise of Rome scenario...if it's possible to change the map to the maximum possible size (I am fairly certain the map isn't maximum size in that scenario), keep the lack of edge-wrapping all scenarios feature, and then add in resources to the appropriate spots from the other scenarios, add in resources from the standard game in locations where I'm employing guesswork (unless I cheat and look at a "map of the world" scenario, I suppose, of which there are dozens preloaded), add cities in, and so on and so forth and whatnot.

My basic idea here is that the Celts both represent themselves, and also pieces of the Franks/French and English; the Goths represent themselves, descendants in the form of Ostrogoths and Visigoths, a little bit of the Franks/French and English (via the Anglo-Saxons), the Germans, the "Viking" civilizations (Sweden, Denmark, etc.), even Russia.
The Scythians would be renamed the Mongols, representing said civ plus the Scythians and Huns.
The Persians represent a sum of the Medeans, Babylonians, Sumerians (all into the Persian Empire), with aspects of the Sassanids, Abbasids, Turks, and Ottomans thrown in for good measure.
The Greeks represent...well, Greece throughout the ages, including them being at the forefront of the Byzantine empire, sharing the Roman's Byzantine midgame tech.
The Carthaginians are a combination of the Phoenicians and later on the Caliphate(s) inhabiting that territory. (I remember the name of the Abbasid Caliphate, but not the other two.)
And of course, Rome would be. Well. Rome, but also the Byzantines, yet also the Burgundians, and also, the Kingdom of Naples.

It is probably impossibly ambitious, and I will probably never make it.
But the idea is there, and I've been putting the work in for the last few days on steps I'd take to actually make it reality.
I feel like it could work, if I did it smart, wasn't lazy, and took things one small step at a time, rather than rushing and doing it all at once, messily.

Plus, working on the mod I have been has given me the first-hand experience necessary to avoid mistakes. (Well. I wouldn't call anything I did really a mistake; if I wanted to remove something from what I made, I'd just remove it--that I keep it in is evidence that, yes, I see some charm in the aspect...even if it is something when making a new mod, I make the active and deliberate decision to decidedly not repeat. So, in that sense, they are "corrected", so sure, fit what many would call as mistakes. I'd prefer the term 'quirk'.)

Well, avoid the ones I made, anyway.
There are plenty more I haven't made...yet!

Will I follow through, probably no. I'll work on it when I work on it; when I don't work on it, I don't work on it.
I could go a day without working on it. Or a week. Or a month. Or a year.
I could permanently abandon the idea, not because of any reason, but simply due to shifting my interests elsewhere.

So who knows.

But it's something I am actively thinking about.
​At least right now.

Too many thoughts, too scattered to focus on any one thing.
​So no real blog entry today, apologies.

I could formulate words, and did so, but I was basically, start to finish, in every aspect of my life, unable to really formulate thoughts. This morning at work, for instance, I thought I might actually have a day of being fully nonverbal. (That may sound ridiculous...but if you could have seen how I was, then you'd understand why I had that thought.) I did eventually talk to family, but mostly just automatic stuff.

Even in written words, I didn't think much. I mean, I did a little, and the further into the day it went (especially once I got to talk to my girlfriend), the better it was, but all said and done, altogether, today is a not-very-active-brain day. It's not that I've been vegging out.

I know the feeling of vegging out; if this were vegging out, I'd describe it as vegging out. It's just flat-out not being able to truly think on a deeper level, for far more than I should.

And it was in fact for Phyrra and Cyrus!
Not as much as I wanted, but a fair amount.
Did a fair amount for them today, too!

But I'm more in the mood to talk about a cute webcomic idea I had, a slice-of-life/gag-a-day comic called "Children of Misery and Death".

As you may be able to tell by this being a slice-of-life/gag-a-day hybrid, there is an obvious direction for this to be taken in. It works like so.

Death, in this case, is not an all-encompassing Death, covering all things which die. Death is, specifically, Death for humans, and only humans. Death does not cause people to die; everyone dies on their own. But Death acts as a guide for them, gently walking them through the process.

As a guide, Death is thus, patient, fairly amicable, empathetic, understanding, and generally a fairly chilled, laid-back guy. The way he works is that he can take a single, corporeal form as a real body, living the life of a human...but at any and every location a human is to die, he will have a copy of himself there, at the time of the death, so he can perform his duties.

So he isn't quite everywhere all the time.

But he is both in one singular location, and in countless endless locations, at the same time, in that one location is his "real" location, and the other locations where he is an incorporeal entity acting as a guide, he is more an entity, a being, that transcends mortality.

Another way of thinking about it is that you could say that his incorporeal selves existing in all places where death occurs for humans are his true self, and that they have some sort of separate, yet connected, grander conscience, and that conscience is capable of taking the form of an avatar that is fully able to interact with the human world...

...In one location.

With, of course, the caveat that said form is explicitly never performing the job. His human form is never reaping, even if his human form comes across someone about to die. (In that case, he will be there, and he'll see an incorporeal version of himself also there, with the incorporeal version being the one who does the reaping.) He doesn't know when anyone dies, until the moment before their death, because death isn't planned in advance; it just...happens, and he is there for humans when it does, always, as a friend to guide them through.

It then figures that he is not the only anthropomorphic representation of a facet of human life.

Misery is exactly the same, for people who are miserable. She does not cause them to be miserable. In fact, quite the opposite, her job--guiding them through their misery--is in a way, meant to serve as a way to get them out of that feeling. (Death similarly can sometimes encounter people who can die or live, and have them choose which, more or less, but she does this without them knowing.)

Free will is a thing, and like death, she doesn't know when people will start being miserable, when people will stop being miserable, or how they stop being miserable. (Though at the moment the misery starts, similar to Death, she learns what caused it.) She is thus, with everyone, everywhere, incorporeal, when they feel miserable. There can be dozens of her in the same location (and she sees all of herselves), and she can take a single corporeal form.

Misery is anything but a representation of the emotion, because as her job is to be a guide through misery, she doesn't exude further misery, and is the farthest thing from it. She is upbeat, incredibly full of energy and joy, she loves having a good time, is a party girl, likes company (so yes, literally, Misery loves company), generally is altogether someone who likes to talk, to drink, to celebrate, to just be happy in general about anything and everything, an eternal optimist.

Yet she is also incredibly gentle and calm. While she likes to be uproarious, she is always rational and reasonable. She does what she does for her own fun, because she likes it...but she also does it for the benefit of others, to see them smile. She likes to help them.

In her corporeal form, she can see her incorporeal selves, but lacks the full access to knowledge about everyone and everything. So she's partially, but not fully, empowered during those times. (Her incorporeal selves, meanwhile, retain full access to all information of her corporeal form, but aren't allowed to meddle beyond what her job entails. So her job life and personal life, while able to see one another, don't directly interact.)

She met Death on the job (in a moment of dark humor, naturally), as the miserable do die (neither particularly likes it, since if you're going to die, they both think it's better to die content), and eventually their corporeal forms started dating, and married, and have kids.

A possible alternative title for the comic, then, would be the thusly created: "The Reaper Family". With Grimm D. Reaper, "Missy" Reaper, and then numerous children, from adults to babies. (So at least 25 children.) Said kids can see their parents' incorporeal forms and are immortal (in the sense that they don't age; they can still die, albeit not something rather likely to happen to them), but otherwise are just normal humans; they don't inherit any power other than witnessing when someone is miserable or about to die. (The ability to see when someone is about to die is often a handy indicator of when danger which could kill them is present, too.)

That's about as far as I got with the idea, butyeah. The basic premise after introducing the parents and their personalities would be to follow the teenaged children, for the most part, occasionally featuring the younger ones and also on some rare occasions the adult ones.

I want to create.
Except.
My mind is racing.
All it is saying is.
I want to create I want to create I want to create I want to create IwanttocreateIwanttocreateIwanttocreate

And so on and so forth. On repeat. I know what I want to create. I have a very, very strong passion for Phyrra and Cyrus right now. I've thrown around ideas for other things, but they were thrown out because of the overwhelming urge of, "No. Phyrra and Cyrus. I want to create I want to create I want to create".

The problem is.

With my mind racing like that.

I can't focus in on what to do.
I can't hone in on what I would create.
I can't slow it down to think rationally.
I'm just being flooded with the same thoughts over and over again, and each time I have a spark of an idea on what to do, I think, "That might be good, but what do--" and then the flood gates overwhelm with I want to create I want to create I want to create.

I don't know what to do.
I want to create, but I am 100% manic right now.
No other word can describe this.

​I want to create.

So here I am, killing time, making a blog.

Except.

I have writer's block.

I mean.

Given that dates tend to go until bed time.
It means that I'd just have done a one-liner blog anyway.
Butstill.

Even without that being the case.

I'm not coming up with anything.

​WELP.

So here's a blog!