Getting a bit late, so let's get the blog in for today, since I need one for today rather than relying on the one from yesterday that just so happened to be past midnight. Let's start with the Civ 3 mod work. Right now, I'm documenting the various technologies, and specifically documenting what things are assigned to what techs.

It is slow, meticulous work, especially since in many cases, I don't actually know. But things are coming together, slowly but surely. Mind you. This work is just a prelude. I'm working out what is assigned to what tech, mostly so that I can make sure techs have the correct chronology and to see if there's any unnecessary techs that can be cut out to reduce on the clutter.

Right now, I have 9 wonders not assigned to techs (all middle ages ones, want to get that scenario to get them best placed), pretty much most small wonders not assigned to techs (I need to check on them to see if they even are assigned to techs; most I think are not), and 36 buildings not assigned to techs (mostly, government ones/made up ones and medieval ones).

Who the heck knows how many units I don't have assigned, but quite a number. Still, though, if I can actually nail down the exact contents and chronology of techs, then I'll be able to figure something out.
My goal here is more or less to see what techs are prerequisites for other techs, as well as to make sure both unit and building progressions continue correctly, as well as to appropriately time buildings/wonders as much as possible. (Given that wonders will be souped up to include "puts building in every city" for pretty much most.)

Documentation is, again, documentation rather than work, but all things considered, this is progressing amazingly quickly. Like, I was not expecting to be doing as well as I am with the tech tree; I was expecting it to be an absolute, complete and total nightmare, and while trimming the tech tree down so that it's any semblance of functional will be difficult, it's not altogether impossible thanks to what I'm doing now.

Also, ultimately, the tech tree doesn't need to be aesthetically pleasing. It can break the boundaries of the science window...so long as it is still functional when doing so. Techs overlapping by a pixel or two, techs with a pixel or two off the edge of the screen, techs with coordinates placing them in slightly obstructive spots, etc.

(Speaking of techs, I need to figure out how to get the science adviser to have commentary on each of them, another thing for the to-do list.)

As long as it can be figured out reasonably intuitively, that's all that matters. Since the arrowheads between techs were never going to be lined up anyway (that requires some sort of messing around in some sort of specialized program or something of that sort, the simple version of it is that it can't be done in just paint--the only program coming with the computer--so as far as I'm concerned that equates to not being able to do it at all), it was always going to be something which people would need to figure out on their own.

And I'm fairly certain the logical progression I have makes sense. At least it does to someone who's played both the vanilla game and all the scenarios, with an idea of what sort of things to expect.

With that out of the way.

It's early enough that I can talk about the idea I wanted to yesterday.

It's a superhero setting I'm dubbing with a working title of the Quadraverse, a superhero setting heavily inspired by the world of parahumans, the setting of Worm. (Three of the four main characters were more or less built with the idea of, "what could I do to make a fairly realistic cape for that setting?", with the fourth technically also fitting but having been created after I knew it'd be a different one.)

I'm not going to bother looking up if the name "quadraverse" is taken, because this is a story idea that I won't ever actually make. Given I won't actually make it, doesn't really matter if the name's taken; I'd have to change it if it were taken, sure, but since I'm not going to make it, not worth looking up to see if I need to.

Because all good superhero settings need a slang name for supes, this one uses the term "Duals". This name has three layers to it. The first is the obvious; duals have a dual identity, a civilian life and a life of crime, heroics, or whatnot. The second is in acknowledgement that no power has inherently one use. A stereotypically good power can be used by the worst of villains; a stereotypically evil power can be used by the most heroic of people; all powers thus have equal potential for good and evil.

But the true and final meaning of it: every human has a soul...but duals have a second soul, from which their power draws from. This second soul is what allows them to control their power; its link to the first soul, but separation from it, acts as a conduit, a control circuit. It allows people to not always have their power on, it allows people to have passive powers, it allows people to access their power and have an innate, inherent, instinctive control over it, safely, without the risk of being hurt by their own ability.

The story I invented revolves around the formation of the fourth iteration of a group, Heroes 4 Hire, which as the name suggests, has four members that are heroes, who perform heroics for a price...sort-of. Across all iterations of the group, they have held a common mandate in how they operate; they are genuinely heroic and altruistic, but also pragmatic and recognize that they're human and thus, can't always help everyone.

Basically, they operate as a group with a separation from any governing entity; they are independent from the government, albeit having a partnership with them. The main reason for this is for personal freedom; no bosses, no rules, no regulations, no need for PR, no need to obey commands, no need to do things they don't want to, no need to follow things by-the-book at the cost of doing the right thing, no need to be burdened by the law, no need to be under control of people who don't know how the world works, no need to be influenced by corrupt politics, no need to be bossed around by people whose motives are disconnected from heroics.

Heroics done the way they want heroics to be done...and done when they want to. Flexible rather than rigid schedules. The right to choose not to save people, the ability to decline without consequence, simply because they are not obligated to accept a job. They can take breaks, they can rest, they can do things at times other heroes are indisposed, they can do things other heroes can't.

And yet--while they do aim for personal gain, they can take jobs for free, if they want to. Doing good on the street just for the sake of doing good, not because they were ordered to. Just because doing good was the right thing to do. Yet they reserve that right to take jobs for personal gain, to earn money, to make a profit, to actually make significant money off of their efforts.

The group isn't quite full-time, but is so dedicated to it that they basically are anyway; the things they do outside of their hero work are mostly passions/hobbies of theirs. (Even if said passions/hobbies involve a profession where they can make money.) Heroics is their life's work, their job, and as a proper job, they need to get paid enough in wages to at least make do, but preferably live a little luxuriously.

The group has received flak for this, the group has had trouble because of this, the governments partnered with them receive criticism for allowing a group with no oversight to effectively act with the same authority as groups with oversight, but they live care-free enough to not be that concerned about it.

The first iteration of Heroes 4 Hire had the following members (mind you, these weren't the ones who I got the inspiration for the setting from; that's the current iteration):
Spear-It, the team leader, had (well, has, he's retired but still alive) an ability to summon a "spirit" form. Said spirit form would function almost entirely the same way a normal human would; he could see through their eyes, smell through nose, hear through ears, etc. He could do this without distraction, able to fully control his own body naturally and his spirit form separately. Said spirit form was entirely invisible, not so much as a single piece of evidence it existed, and utterly intangible in all regards (aside from his ability to sense via touch through it).

There was no visible link between him and his spirit. There was also no known range to his spirit. The spirit could function even when he was unconscious. The spear part comes in the form of the spirit form being able to summon an unlimited supply of phantom spears, which were the only part of the spirit able to affect the physical world...and could do so tremendously effectively, puncturing through just about anything with ease.

He was the big guns of the team, handling most of their offense.

...After he announced his name to be Spear-it, the rest of the team (originally planning to let him name them) wisely decided that they'd pick their own names and not leave it to him as originally intended.

Ribcage, who shared the second-in-command position on the team, was (well, still is) a tecchie (read: tinker; this setting's slang for technology-based heroes) who specialized in creating bars, usually used for entrapment. (Spear-it's proposed name for him was Bar-ier.) He handled containment and served as the team's defense.

Chain Link, the other second-in-command of the team, was a person with the power to see how all things are connected to one another. (This is a power which you see used on occasion quite effectively.) This basically made him an invincible combatant, able to perfectly chain things to have the exact desired outcome he wanted, but in spite of his combat potential, he usually acted as, in tandem with Ribcage, the team smarts, coordinating their efforts to maximize their effect.

He retired at the same time the rest of his team did, but came out of retirement to fight in the event that would later become known as the Fall of London, and like most heroes who fought there, died in the wake of the disaster. However, he'd later be revived by the antagonist Horseman. (See below for more details there.)

Spear-it's proposed name for him was Ball-swing (off of the idea of a newton's cradle).

Port, the final member of the team, had (well, has) the ability to shoot from his fingers, stretching out as far as he wants, portals to wherever he thinks of. Since he can open as many portals as he has fingers, and these portals need not be directly in front of the fingers (the portals, oval-like, are connected to his fingers with an energy-string; this string can be all bendy, like this ~, to vary their exact location).

Since they could extend as far as he wanted them to, and could be to anywhere he wanted them to, and each portal was as large as he wanted them to be (within reason; the minimum size was that of a finger and the maximum size about twice the size/width of a person), and he wasn't limited to just one, he was quite effective as a method of transporation, especially since as long as he kept the portals open, they were two-way.

Spear-it's proposed name for him was Fingerport.

Eventually, the first generation of Heroes 4 Hire decided to pass the torch on to the next generation, giving their blessing for a group of young upstart kids looking to get into the heroics business to make use of it, as long as they strived towards the same goals as they had.

This group was comprised of the following:
Streamline, the leader of the group, was a genius tecchie, whose work pretty much allowed for the existence of other tecchies (Ribcage included!). As a young kid, he make three pivotal breakthroughs, paving the way for the inventions tecchies would make use of: the Graviton Manipulator Field (allowing for easy flight), the Light Loop (a way to make a continuous loop of pure light), and the Space Compactor (a way to have things unfold from a compact form).

To the modern day, as a tecchie, he is world famous for said breakthroughs, and is well-known as the creator of ten technologies making use of these inventions:
The Lancenet (a compact weapon which extends out a long distance, with the aim to capture and control), LightBlade (basically a lightsaber), LightClaws (a blade below the shoulder, essentially, mounted on the hands from the wrist below, acting both as a personal shield/defense system and as a powerful hacking weapon at close range), Ringboard (a hoverboard that's ring-shaped), Spearboard (same basic design, only unfolded to not be a ring), Triboard (basically combining the benefits of the spearboard and ringboard), Wheelboard (basically a souped-up, compact, motorcycle; you grab onto the handle, and two gigantic wheels unfold from it that you can then steer; a bubble encases you and you move at a maximum speed of ~400 mph, which doubles up as, when in its compact form, a really effective staff weapon), Medboard (a better stretcher/backboard that can also serve as a restraint, with a built-in system capable of both analyzing the person strapped in and putting them in stasis if need be, useful not only for saving people but containing criminals for transporation), Stun Cannonboard (a stun gun with a wide beam that has no recoil and can travel in the air), and Stun Gunboard (aside from the Wheelboard, the only 'board' not capable of being airborne, a gun version of the stun cannonboard which comes equipped with various tools, like scans, scopes, etc.).

To this day, the group is able to function from the profits of the patents he got on them. Many of those things are in high demand, in both the private sector and the government. Medboards, stun gunboards, and wheelboards most famously, for their sheer versatility as tools.

He was the older brother of Webster.
In spite of being world-famous for his breakthroughs and his inventions, his career as an actual hero is relatively obscure.

Timewarp, similarly to Ribcage, held status as being shared second-in-command. His power was to shift people forward or backward in time--they'd stay in the same spot, but they'd be in a different time. If he sent people forward in time, they would disappear in the interim time altogether. If he sent people backwards in time, their past self would vanish from existence. As a result, he could only send people backwards in time a maximum of 24 hours, but forward in time as much as he'd like.

He mostly used his power as a form of recon, as well as a way of controlling the environment; his ability wasn't limited to just people, and could be anything. Good at search and rescue. If a person was dead or in too bad of shape, simply shift someone back in time to a spot where they'd be able to help avert the disaster in the first place.

Gridlock, the other second-in-command, had the power of creating geometrically-based constructs out of something not quite hard light but not quite pure energy, in-between. Think forcefields, made out of methodical mathematical precision, except not limited to just forcefields; he could make lines, he could make spheres, he could make anything he could think of, so long as it followed a basic abstract form/shape. So no meticulously creating, sayyyy, a car, or the types of things you'd see a green lantern make. 

Making a grid was his signature move, thus his name, one which was utterly unbreakable.

Webster, the younger brother of Streamline, is the only member to be in all three iterations except for the first, and thus, I'll be discussing his power when I talk about the rest of his current team. However, I'll say that at the time, he was the rookie of the team, the youngest member.

As a whole, the second iteration of Heroes 4 Hire were a group of close-knit friends. The first iteration were loose associates, who over the course of their career bonded; the second iteration were bonded before their career in heroics started. They started as soon as they were legally old enough to begin (which was years after Streamline had made his breakthroughs, although he hadn't made all his inventions at that time), and not long after earned the respect of the first iteration, who carried their blessings on to be worthy successors.

However, while they had many successes in their career, eventually, they took on a job they shouldn't have--at the behest of Chain Link's desperate request, they helped out in the event that'd become known as the Fall of London. All but Webster were killed in this encounter, like most that participated. Having gotten in well over their heads, they were simply outclassed.

Gridlock and Timewarp would later be revived by Horseman (see below).

The third iteration of Heroes 4 Hire, led by the shellshocked Webster, were based largely around replacing his lost teammates.

Canvas, his replacement for Gridlock, had the ability to paint reality in front of him.

Rigger, his replacement for his brother Streamline, was a tecchie with a specialty in jury-rigging devices together; he would connect things, devices, technologies, that were otherwise unrelated, to create a hodgepodge of various useful devices, albeit haphazard and prone to malfunctions. This power was more versatile, able to make anything from anything, but more unreliable, because the things created weren't guaranteed to work.

Spacewarp, his replacement for Timewarp, didn't exactly warp space--instead, he created the vacuum of space, surrounding him. As in. It literally was like anything surrounding him in a ten-foot radius was physically transported to outer space, with all the effects that would entail. No gravity, no air, really cold, etc.

However, Webster in his inexperience as a leader made a mistake when recruiting them; they were focused too much on the 'Hire' and not enough on the 'Heroes'. Eventually, all three of them at once turned traitor on him, out of pure, sheer, unadulterated greed; not satisfied with their earnings, they betrayed Webster and allied with a villain in order to seize more money than Webster could ever hope to offer them.

For their trouble, Webster killed them all.

However, undaunted, he eventually succeeded in recruiting two new members, and eventually, managed to recruit a fourth and final member for the fourth iteration. (The story would follow the fourth member as the protagonist, in spite of Webster being the main character. He joins a month or so after the other two are recruited.)

Which leads to a team comprised of:

Gong has a fairly lame-sounding set of abilities. His skin turns into a metallic brass-colored substance. In this form, he is pretty much indestructible. He doesn't need to breathe (though he can't eat or drink in this form, meaning he does need to exit it), he is resistant to most powers, has some heat resistance in particular, things that pierce or slash will bounce off harmlessly, etc.

However, his main power is in the absorbing of kinetic energy and soundwaves...which, at will, he can unleash in the form of an omnidirectional, audible, blastwave, emanating a series one after another of shockwaves. He is, quite literally, what you'd expect a gong in human shape to be.

Yet this power has some added benefits. His footsteps are absolutely silent, making him good at being unheard, and they allow him to run at an increased speed, giving a limited form of superspeed. Yet by far the most intimidating factor about him isn't what power he has, but what he's like without it; he stands at a quite tall 6'6", and has an absolutely ripped physique, lined with muscles, solidly a wall of pure strength.

That's not a power, by the way. That's just a result of gifted genetics plus a hard workout regiment he stuck to long enough to produce those results. Yet in tandem with his power, they make him utterly unstoppable. He's indestructible, but he packs a mean punch, which can be augmented by unleashing his shockwave. He's a lightning bruiser, fast, implacable (you can't knock him down), invincible (you can't hurt him), and yet strong enough to hit hard.

That's not to say it's impossible to win against him, of course. In terms of superpowers, this is basically just B-list, if that. He's just smart enough to pick and choose his battles such that he never encounters an enemy who could puncture through his power. (Which would be possible; his own teammate might be able to, and it was the 'might' which was enough to cause him to back down from attacking said eventual-teammate. He was in no rush to test the theory out.)

He used these skills to become a freelance bodyguard/bouncer/enforcer, and picked up the skills you might expect from this. Again, these are trained skills, not from a power, but he's quite excellent at picking up on deceptions (both from people and from facts), is a skilled chef, knows how to mix many drinks, and is well-versed in the culture of music (and is respectable good as a deejay).

He ended up working for Webster after fighting Overload in their first encounter, which Webster intervened in and offered them the deal--one which he decided to take, since the pay was decent enough and the cause was something he could support.

He's by far the oldest of the group, being around 27, give or take a few years.

Overload has a fairly restricted power as well. He's got an incredibly limited form of dynakinesis. He can trap energy of most forms (particularly, light/heat/sound), and then cause it to build up, charging up, until it has built up into a bomb. He can then unleash this charged up energy in one of two forms: an omnidirectional blast, or a directed-from-his-palm beam.

If he's knocked unconscious while charging, he'll default to unleashing the omnidirectional version. This ability is only as strong as the combination of "strength of the energy captured * time energy has been building". He is limited in how much energy he can catch to as much as will fit in his right hand (the only way he can use his ability, in fact).

So if he's literally just grabbing air, and stirring it around in his hand, to build up a charge, it will eventually be deadly, but takes a long time to get there. Whereas if he's grabbing a shockwave, then it doesn't take much time at all for him to charge up a lethal strike. Another restriction is that once he starts charging, he can't start charging something else without first discharging what he's got.

The omnidirectional version is weaker and limited in range, whereas the beam version is very easily predicted. Prior to working for Webster, he did not use his powers much, pretty much only using them for self-defense. He followed his older brother into the life of a petty criminal in fact--picking up skills like pickpocketing, lockpicking, hotwiring, hacking, general thievery stuff like optimal ways to break and enter, the like.

Webster incentivized him to stay by appealing to his inner good nature, his ability to secure their future financially and legally, and most of all, by using his connections to get Overload's brother out of the trouble he was in (Gong was hired by people looking to collect a debt), so that they'd be able to clean up their act and use his power for good.

The new recruit, protagonist character, joining after this event by some small amount of time, is Emblaze.
Emblaze, simply, has the power to see and manipulate (to some extent) the souls of those around him. When he is closing his eyes, he can sense the souls of everyone within him (and manipulate them) within 350 feet.

When his eyes are open, he can see and manipulate the souls of anyone he has visual contact with--this contact can be miles away (say, through binoculars), or even through a video feed from a monitor. Heck, he can see (but for obvious reasons, not manipulate) the soul of someone from a recording.

This manipulation is not unlimited. He basically can sense the emotions and intentions of a soul, and can either amplify or dampen them, giving him a limited form of mind control. He can't make an angry person not be angry at all, but he can make the anger turn to hatred (intensifying it), or lessen it to its smallest amount--and because people usually feel more than one emotion at a time, he can cause a different emotion that was present to become larger, achieving much the same effect.

This is a power he uses with extreme caution. Prior to joining up, he was a con artist, scamming people, but used his power to make sure that they were blissfully, happily, unaware of the scam--and if they found out, they'd end up with their lives enriched from the experience rather than ruined. (He picked his victims well, so that at the end of the day, if the con was found out, they'd have a good laugh, learn from it, enjoy it, and move on with their lives.)

That was the extent he was comfortable using it, though after a disaster struck, he went out to help people--being able to sense where they were, he could locate them, and sensing their emotions, he was able to subtly manipulate said emotions so that things like fear were lessened to more manageable levels, lessening pain, lessening panic, basically working as a rescue worker, to relieve them, and that got him interested in being more altruistic.

He was also a gambler, using his ill-gotten goods to "waste" the money earned. Quotation marks, because for any game with a human element, he could use his power to subtly cheat. Mostly, he did it for a good time, though, and made it so that his opponents were having the time of their lives. Upping their feelings of tension, suspense, the like, and rewarding them on occasion with a thrill of the game, even as he swindled their money slowly.

His power also has a nice side-effect: remember how I described powered people as duals, because their powers come from a second soul? Guess what he can sense...and manipulate. He can't make powers disappear, so he's not a power nullifier, but he can act as a power dampener, bringing powers down...or as a power amplifier, increasing their potency.

Because he visually sees souls as flames, this is where his namesake comes from; he fans the flames of the second fire in powered people. This power also serves as a radar for incoming threats, allowing him to detect danger from any direction, and allowing him to understand the general nature of a person's powers.

Every soul has a unique signature, powers no different, and yet, similar souls have similar signatures, so if he's seen a soul of a certain power, he can generally put a ballpark on what sort of power an individual possesses. This power was how he was able to realize Webster in his introduction to the team was using a body double. (Webster, after his second team betrayed him, notably became a bit paranoid.)

He's the youngest of the group, at only 16.

Webster, the leader of the group, is the second-youngest, physically 17 and technically only 18. (Overload's also 18, but with a birthday a few months earlier.) Timewarp saved him by sending him a year into the future, documenting it, and he happened to survive the process.

He can be summed up as "two parts Taylor Hebert, one part Spider Man, one part every character using string-manipulation abilities including Razor Floss and antics like Doflamingo". His power comes in two parts. The first, at a linear rate, is an ability to generate an unlimited quality of silk.

This silk can take on whatever properties he wants it to. Sticky, not sticky; thin, thick; flexible, rigid; insulates from heat/electricity somewhat, etc. Already this is a very powerful ability, but if he just created the silk without a method of manipulating it, it wouldn't make him leader-worthy.

The second part of the ability: as long as a strand of silk he created has a direct link to his body, he has complete and total control over everything about it, a high-level form of telekinesis which serves to make the already-durable material nigh-invincible. (It's almost an immovable object, but sufficiently gamebreaking powers can penetrate through.)

Keep in mind that the strand of silk could be thinner than can be seen by the eye at the point of contact on the body...but there's no limit to how long the strand can be, so down the line it can unfold to create a gigantic construct out of silk. He can be miles away, and then create a clone a mile away...because of a single thread, which spirals out to create a fully humanoid shape, out of nothing but silk.

Indestructible silk, which can be razor-sharp.

What's more--because controlling this silk to such a fine degree requires him to basically "understand" what's happening to the silk, he has the ability to feel and hear through his silk (as long as the silk's still connected to him). (No taste, smell, or sight, though.) Everything his silk touches, he will feel with a perfect understanding and hear with a perfect level of knowledge as to sounds going on.

And he has been weaving silk into everything, for everywhere, for years now. This gives him a limited form of combat clairvoyance; if something is so much as nearby his silk (and his silk is everywhere), he'll know where it is, what it's doing, etc.

He wraps silk around everything, and this serves three purposes. One, it allows for him to call upon reserves of silk faster than he can generate them. He can still generate silk fairly fast, mind you, but in a pinch, he could need more than that amount, and if he's covered an area in silk, he can call upon it at will. Two, it allows for him to sense everything, everywhere.

And three? By creating a solid layer of silk covering something, he gains an understanding of said something...allowing him to make a fully functional copy of said something out of silk. Granted, said silk copy will only work as intended while he's got a connection to it, most of the time (unless the different properties between silk and said something are such that it doesn't matter that it's made of silk and not the material(s) of said something; a chair's probably still gonna work as silk even when cut off, but a helicopter sure wouldn't), but once he's copied an object once, he can create it from memory.

And he's been copying objects for years.

He's also used his power to its fullest multitasking degree, listening to every audiobook, music album, video, film, tv show, video game, etc. that he could (granted, lacking the visuals to go with the audio), effectively allowing him to have memorized every aspect of pop culture in existence and be insanely knowledgeable about everything.

And, yes, as a hobby, he does read the dictionary. He's also studying engineering and art, to make better use of his power, because studying those two fields is directly correlated to his usefulness. He can tie people up ridiculously easily, bind them, trap them, and whatnot, but also makes use of massive walls of silk, shields, and weapons. Swords, staves, even an automatic harpoon gun. Blunted or sharp. Whips, razor floss that cuts through everything, not to mention, creating light as a feather body armor for teammates.

He fights a lot using swarms of silk clones, and competently at that, because he can receive the memory of training from dozens of clones. (Think Naruto's shadow clones; he basically makes a ton of clones, has them attend multiple martial arts schools, and learns everything he can from them.) Also, he's learned how to manipulate his silk to create vibrations enough where he can talk through the silk as well.

And he's quite aware he's only scratched the surface of his power. He reads up on a lot of fiction to see how powers work in other settings, he reads a lot online about how powers work in his setting (which gives a bonus of making him familiar with those he's likely to encounter), drawing inspiration from everything. And anything related to powers he deems useful which he can't get a full appreciation from just sound, he'll obtain and watch/play in his real body so he can see it in person.

I feel like I'm not properly explaining many of these peoples' powers, especially the latest generation of Heroes 4 Hire, but it's time to move onto the antagonists of the story.

A group deliberately made as a mockery of Heroes 4 Hire, called Villains 4 Hire. They are, quite deliberately, structured in a way meant to antagonize Webster in every way, as they oppose him on every level. Including how their members' abilities work.

Spread, their leader, has a power that's basically Canvas's--this is through no coincidence, and is deliberately something meant to torment Webster about his past failure.

Executioner, their second in command, continues the trend as having a power that's basically Rigger's.

Void, continuing the trend even further, has a power that's basically Spacewarp's.

Horseman, their final member, has the ability to revive up to four individuals--said individuals revived are revived with absolutely no memories, no free will, no personality, but retain all their skills, including powers. (This does have the side-effect of not working on tecchies, though.)

He can only resurrect an individual once, but a resurrected individual can continue functioning until destroyed beyond the ability to...well, function. Lop off the head, no problem; cut off an arm, no issue, still works. While there are far more effective uses of the power (imagine reviving a kaiju-like opponent, e.g. reviving something like whatever kind of entity in this setting would be akin to an endbringer), for maximum psychological torturing of Webster, the three revived are the three that he saw killed before him, making a mockery of their deeds as heroes; Chain Link, Gridlock, and Timewarp.

Mind you, just because there's theoretically better uses of the power doesn't mean that the revived individuals are by any means weak; Gridlock's power is nigh-invincible, Chain Link's power still functions (and Chain Link can still speak; the revived aren't mindless, meaning he still serves as mission control...just for the villains now), and Timewarp is a useful scout to have and can cause confrontations to literally disappear from existence.

Why only three?

Horseman can use his power on people who aren't dead, but are on the brink of death, and by that, I mean, life support, would die if taken off it, individuals. However, if he uses his power on someone who isn't dead, they retain their memories, free will, personality, and such, while also retaining their status as being quite alive. Since he has no control over someone revived this way, he can only use it on an ally.

In this case, Void's being supported by this method, as Void--prior to being recruited by the Villains 4 Hire--was on life support, and needs Horseman's power to still function; if Horseman removed his support, Void would fall catatonic instantly.

That's about all I got, and is about all I will get, because the idea's as matured as it can get.

Soyeah, that was my setting idea I talked about yesterday.

Now I've been writing this blog for three hours; I need to eat, then attend to whatever I have time for before bed.

So this'll go down as a Saturday entry technically, in spite of it really being a Friday entry. I'll have to make sure that I blog tomorrow before midnight so as to not mess the archives up, which is the reason I'm not putting this on Friday. (If I did, it'd appear before my previous entry.)

The good news is...
...I think I have a semi-coherent, semi-solidified tech tree!

The bad news is, some techs may be in awkward orders...and the tech tree doesn't QUITE work as-is right now.

To wit:
​I didn't research this more specifically, but eyeballing tech trees, at the very top, a tech tree line can hold EITHER: 3-4 techs with 3-4 items within the row, OR: approximately 6 techs with 1 item within the row.
Elsewhere, not blocked by the science adviser, it's about 4-5 techs with 3-4 items within the row, OR: approximately 8 techs with 1 item within the row.

By my eyeball estimate, each column/level of the tech tree can hold 6-8 total items (1-2 of them being in the "top zone").

That means that the low-ball estimate we're going for is (6 * 4) + (6 * 3) = 42 techs per level, distributed appropriately.

And if we're lucky enough to score the high estimate, we get (8 * 5) + (8 * 6) = 88 techs per level, more than enough.

...The problem lies in the distribution.

There are 12 steps right now in the modern tech tree--a full 4-6 steps over the maximum.
The second and first ages (at 8 and 7, respectively) are little better in that regard.
The only one which is fine is the third age, at 6 steps of techs.
Meaning each and every single one of my ages is at risk of violating the maximum allowed width, of being too long, of the row continuing too far.

...And the techs in each column aren't much better. 
The modern age is fine, but the third age has a 6, a 9, a 7, and an 8. The 9 definitely won't fit and the rest doubtfully will.
The second age isn't much better--two 6s, and a 7.
And the first age? Two 7s and a 9.

These being the more notable numbers, with others still being 5 and below.

Right now the first age, cut down pretty darn far, is at 45 techs total.
The second age fares little better, at 41.
The third age is a far more manageable 34, with the modern age at an even better 28.

Which if you do the math, is 148 techs total.
This is probably the final number for what I need.

I just need to create the gymnastics necessary for this.
Part of this process, too, will be figuring out what things are assigned to what techs.
I can safely assume...oh wait, looks like I forgot the governments a little bit. Which ones do I need? 
Blood Cult, Tribal Council, Oligarchy, Imperialism.
Welp, that makes it 154 techs total.
And adds another two 6s to the first age, totaling 48 now.
With the second age now having 42.

But as I was saying.
I can safely assume government techs will pull double duty in most cases.
I can safely assume many military techs will be for multiple things.

I can also safely assume that these things can be mapped successfully.
In fact, let me try to do exactly that.
I'll see if there's any which I can cut out.
​This might be stepping ahead a little bit, but I think this is worth it in the end.

Today, I finished an idea that I've been working on for a little while now--not sure precisely how long, could be a week, could be a month, but it's in that range. An idea built piece by little piece, slowly coming together, until fully fleshed out as fleshed out can be.

The point where I either blog about it or never blog about it in spite of intending to.

Thiiiiiis...is probably the latter.

I have the essentials written out. It's a fairly cool idea, I think, and I do want to share it...

...But my notes for it are currently buried under a pie and whipped cream.
...One which was forced upon me, and which I'm really not sure I can eat when I'm this sick.

...It makes sense in context--kinda sorta? Just have to take my word for it, this is an actual thing which keeps me from working on it, and is indeed a problem. One I'll have fixed before bed, but by that time I'll be too tired to blog. As-is, in fact, I'm blogging at the only time I have the clear time to do so coherently.

Earlier, family would distract me; later, tiredness would claim me. (Also, at any time, girlfriend could call on me--and girlfriend > blog entry. Which would kill my momentum if I was midway through writing an entry.)

I'll try to remember it tomorrow, but I don't want to leave you with nothing, so I'll leave you with the other difficulty I'm facing.

Mustering up how to keep my momentum going and get the map right on my civ 3 mod.
It's actually going great! (I think I told you all yesterday that I needed to manually make the map, yes? Don't actually remember.) I've built the terrain for all of Africa--sans rivers, forests, and resources, but the TERRAIN is there.
​The entirety of the east of the map from Africa's built as well, to the body of water in the bottom right corner of the map.

I've also built the Mesopotamian version of Greece and the terrain that's the areas of cities like Ancyra and Iconium. Plus the Mesopotamian version of the coastline for the Mediterranean in that area, and the Mesopotamian version of the coastline for the body of water above it. (To think there was a time where Geography was a subject I aced. Haha present me, past me laughs at how badly you suck.)

If I could actually complete the darn further inland portions extending it all the way east to the edge of the map and touching on the vaguely-northeast body of water...then I'd have, 1: fully completed the Mesopotamian map's terrain, and 2: fully completed the whole bottom left quadrant (literally almost perfectly 1/4th of the entirety of the map) of the map.

Of course there's caveats.
This is the Mesopotamian part.
I need to tweak it for the Rise of Rome map--which will then be tweaked on any subtle differences between it and the Fall of Rome map (they're 99% similar, but aren't literally identical), then the Middle Ages map, then Napoleonic Era, then Age of Discovery (which mind you may come in hand for a small detail about Africa), etc.

I need to actually add those things.

Plus the cities.

Then there's generating the other 3/4ths of the map. (Well more like a little over 2/4ths since Africa is most of the bottom left side.)

But it's mostly done, is what I'm getting at--and by my estimation, it's loose, but I think the 200 x 200, and my scaling, is on target to include all the details, more or less. Some details are getting expanded further than they should, some details are regrettably lost due to a crunch, because generating a map 100% manually leads to glitches in the overlay like that and I'm mostly just eyeballing things with educated guesses at what "feels" right.

But holy moly, I might actually manage to create a coherent map. It won't perfectly match the terrain of any map. It won't perfectly recreate geography. If it were put on a globe, some areas would be woefully out of proportion with their actual size, some too small, many too large. It won't be perfect...

...But with a lot of luck, it'll work, is what I'm getting at, I hope.

I'm just...

...Having a bit of creator's block in trying to hash out those inner details for the Mesopotamian map. It should be easy. Should. But it's not. Something's just...in the way of my creative muse for landscaping right now. I did use that time to do some game calculations, though.

By my count, I've got at least 59 wonders, 24 small wonders, 109 buildings, 265+ units, and 155+ technologies, to cram into four ages.

A reasonably crowded tech tree, the vanilla industrial ages, had 24 technologies to research.
I need almost double that.

I did, however, knock out an item on my to-do list; I compiled similar technologies. I did so sloppily; some techs were left off altogether, some techs are classified a little awkwardly, but I got them more or less sorted, and loosely separated by age, no less!

Well, by original age.
There's a good 70+ that'd fit into the "Age of Rome" age, usually--maybe slightly more (depends on what technologies I need, because I need techs to match unit advancements and to cover buildings and to cover abilities unlocked by techs and to cover new governments), maybe slightly less (depends on what technologies I can cut, or can be moved to an era later).

Those aren't gonna fit no matter what, so it'll be divided differently. I have a loose idea of a partial map, but it's not complete.

For the record, the original second age has ~55+, also rather on the high side.

In contrast--and to reiterate, this would be why I'm going to end up starting from the end result and working backwards--the fourth age has 12. I can easily double that, safely, and not be crowded.
The third age has ~21+ useful ones. A little more crowded, but not undoable. I believe the record for a tech tree is 32ish (give or take) in Rise of Rome.

If I can push it up to be 40/page, then that'd be 160 techs--about what I'm thinking I'll need.
​
I also made note of what governments are in which scenarios, as another side-project.

Soyeah, that's my game progress.

​​I think that the route I took, of doing the documentation I've done?

...Was absolutely the right route to take.

Just typing this all out, I haven't fixed the main problem of creator's block for the map, but I am brainstorming ideas for the tech tree layout, given the move of what the fourth age will be. (Mind you, I still need to do the calculations for what the tech tree positions can be.)

I have exactly the number of sea techs I need for the sea tech tree, by my calculations. (12 units in the galley line--mind you, the galley line stops at Galleon, with Transport being an upgrade of Troop Transport; Galleons represent the ultimate combo-ship, being capable of some bombardment and good attack and good defense--not as good as dedicated warships in any of these regards--while transporting troops, but not as many as a troop transport.)

I think I have exactly the number of techs I need for the air units, by my calculations. (The most upgraded air unit is the fighter, which I found seven unique versions of in a chain.)

I have exactly the number of techs I need for siege units, by my calculations. (11 units, 11 upgrades.)

Little hard to tell on archers; I have 7.5 for them (the eighth joins a different unit upgrade chain--but diverging from vanilla where it's the swordsman upgrade line, the upgrade chain I went for is the spearman upgrade line), but I don't know where they fit; I think there's enough.

One area I'm coming up a bit short on, but which I may be able to fix with the use of integrating some of these into the military upgrade line (which is honestly where most horse units are gotten anyway), is horse upgrades. Since horses go to become tanks by my tech tree line, I have 14 in that line, and I've only got about 11 or so dedicated.
I may have missed one or two, though, which when used can maybe get me up to where I need to be.
It still looks like I'm likely going to need to invent one fake tech, maybe two.
(The way I have it lined up now, Animal Domestication unlocks the chariot, the wheel unlocks the war chariot--generic unit--chariotry unlocks the three-man-chariot, still generic, pack animals unlock the mounted fighter, horseback riding unlocks the mounted warrior, horsemanship unlocks the horseman, and...heavy cavalry unlocks ancient cavalry, with the step above that being ancient heavy cavalry; I think I want to add a tech between horsemanship and heavy cavalry for ancient cavalry. Also, down the line, I have three tank units for only two techs, motorized transportation and armored tactics; I need a third.)

I have 12 in the "swordsman" line, with one being the Foot Fighter (replacing Warriors as the starting unit, with Warriors being an upgrade), meaning I need 11 techs there. By my estimation, I have ~19 techs I could use; more than enough.

That is however, the amount I need for the "spearman" line, which features 20 units. One as a starter.

Some spearman upgrades don't need to be on the military line, though. 

​All in all, it's coming together quite nicely.

It's been getting worse rather than better over the last few days.
It doesn't help that I'm having trouble staying asleep.
It's not that I go to sleep, then wake up, like, half an hour later--but I quite often will wake up every few hours or so, in spite of knowing that I need more sleep.

Worsening the barrier: after I've gotten six hours of sleep, I hit a wall when trying to get more sleep. I'll wake up, do the mental math, realize, "...Six hours?!? That's enough normally, but I'm sick! I need more sleep!", try...try...keep trying...but...
...NOPE!
...I'm awake, awake for good.

When I say that I only need six hours of sleep, this is why I know it to be true--because even when I try to get more, I can't. It's not tied to a circadian rhythm, either--that'd imply that the time I wake up is automatic. Except it doesn't matter. I go to bed at 2, I wake up at 8-9. I go to bed at 4, I wake up at 10-11. I go to bed at 5, I wake up at like noon.

If I'm lucky, I can get an extra hour or two of sleep in, to maybe push it up to eight--after having woken up, and instead of failing, succeeding...for a while.

Mind you, this is also one of the reasons why I don't go to sleep before midnight, quite often--yes it's true that I can't really get to sleep before midnight, but even if I did, that'd cause me to wake up way too early, because...say I need to wake up at 10 and went to bed at midnight; I'd wake up at 8, and that'd be torturous for me. (I'm a night owl, not a morning bird; I don't know how to handle spare time in the morning, whereas I know how to occupy myself when having spare time at night.)

Soyeah.
I need more sleep.
My body's refusing to give me more sleep. 

On the bright side, since I'm feeling too sick to attend to obligations for the most part (also not helping there, physical sickness + mental sickness = self-feeding loop, and when I'm sick with something, it therefore mixes with my bipolar disorder, draining away at my mental health, sapping my spare batteries), that's left me spare time to work on pet projects of mine.

Which, yes, means Across the Ages - Mediterranean is something I've worked on.
I finished the Rise of Rome map overlay, and briefly took a look at the maps I'd need later--I even got the art program downloaded.

Except no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the dimensions to fit.
Even if I got Pelusium and Byzantium to both match up, and even if they were at the right angles, the rest of the map's scaling was entirely off, and there was no fix.

I tried partial copy-pastes, to limited success. What it ended up looking like was more or less, me pasting usable pieces of Mesopotamia into the Rise of Rome map, replacing/expanding/augmenting what was there, with me removing parts from Mesopotamia not needed and me copying pieces of Rise I wanted to keep over Mesopotamia in the spots where Mesopotamia otherwise overrode Rise.

Which, mind you, could work--except it rather self-evidently wasn't going to be what I was after.

So I decided to give up on that.

Normally, that level of giving up would condemn the project to death--I can't figure out a way to smoothly recreate a map that uses Mesopotamia's scale, but includes Rise of Rome's rest of the Mediterranean which is expanded in the Middle Ages and through Napoleon with features of Age of Discovery.
My entire goal.

I wanted to do that--and I can't.

Like I said, that's the kind of thing which is usually a deathblow, spelling an end to the idea altogether.

But there's one tried and true method I've yet to employ.

A little thing called "trial and error".
More error than trial, but I am going to, bit by bit, manually, try to recreate the map, as I envision it. I went for 200 x 200 as a starting point, so we'll have to see if this ends up being the right scale. Mind you, I will need to, constantly, be revising these. Not a little, a lot. Every new map, I'll need to make adjustments to terrain--and so much as a single tile's difference could force me to radically alter the entire rest of the map.

Painstakingly, excruciatingly, slow, meticulous, methodical work.

But it is the only way, and I think I can do it.
With difficulty, but it's doable.

Just...not easily.

Initial estimates, by the way: either 200 x 200 isn't big enough, or I am making my Mesopotamia-scaled map too big and misjudged the scaling. Probably both.

This'll take me a while to fine-tune.

The key to getting work done which sticks is to vary what tasks you are doing. I did documentation, then I did some for the mapping of Mesopotamia, and I finished my Rise of Rome overlay map--9250 x 5000. 52.8 MB. Oof. I believe it's technically the largest map of any of the scenarios though (not positive there), so I shouldn't need any larger size than that.

Now I just need to get an art program downloaded and see if this whole "overlay and stretch" idea is going to work.

​Probably not, but here's to the hope!

They revolve around the fact that I am sick today.
I should have obligations to attend to today--thaaaaat's not happening; I'm REALLY not up for any of them today.
Which I know will cost me big time in the long-run, but when I say I'm not up for them.
I'm just.
Not up for them.

Anything I'd do out of a sense of obligation, even if said obligation was purely to my own selfishness, I'm not up for today; the only things I'm up for today are things that I'd WANT to do.

So sure, if an obligation becomes something I want to do, I'll do it, but chances are that won't happen and instead I'll be doing other things. Like spend time with my girlfriend, or work on my civ 3 mod. (More on that in a sec.)

I did want to mention that I revisited an old idea for a game I had; a tower defense game taking a few mechanics from my favorite tower defense games (notably, Defender's Quest and Gemcraft)...but giving my own very specific spin on things that make my game innately unique and original--while it is a tower defense game, what it is also is a Time Management game (and resource management); the whole idea behind the game is that it is literally impossible to win a level unless you are using your time to min-max your defenses.

I developed a whole bunch of really neat, mostly-original mechanics, albeit ones which rather a number have obvious inspirations, and some of them are brand new to today while others have been with the idea for as long as I've had it. (And this idea is like...five, eight, years old. Somewhere in that range; it is not at all a new one. Quite often, I'll come back and revisit/revise/revitalize old ideas I've not thought about in years, and this was one such occasion.)

The main thing I did today, however, was create the plot for the game. I had an idea for the first level of the game before--and that was it. Originally, I think I had the idea that after the first level, things would continue a specific way. I decided that there'd be a better route to take, one which is entirely all the more genius with the levels and intricacy of what I build.

The mechanics mesh beautifully with the lore I established, and the plot is coherent featuring quite the cast of characters. I love the game idea, it's probably my second-favorite tower defense game I've ever designed (the favorite being a game which was blatantly self-plagiarizing from Disease, one of my pet novels...which I liked so much that Disease stole a central mechanic idea from the game, plagiarizing from the plagiarizing to be reintegrated with the original source material, but I digress).

Would be fully doable, too, if I could program in, oh, say, Flash, and could create the art assets I'd need and whatnot. Since I can't, it'll remain a fantasy in my head, though. I could technically share details on it...but this is an idea so good, I don't want to.

Yes I know, that means that I'll probably forget the genius ideas I came up with, both today and originally. (Heck I'm pretty sure I only remember about 80% of the originally planned game mechanics.) But this is one idea where I can play it out in my mind and I quite like doing so. The only incentive I'd have to bring it outside of my head is if I could actually make it reality--without a programmer volunteering and without a pixel artist volunteering (they'd also need to make faces for portraits that aren't pixels even though the art aside from portraits is pixels), it's not happening.

And since nobody reads my blog pretty much, and the few who do are so busy/swamped with real life they'd never have the commitment/free time to help me make it even if they had the appropriate skills...there's no way it's going to happen.

Alas.

What might happen, however, is my Across the Ages scenario.

I have documented (I rediscovered my actual workaround--a pray to whatever relevant gods are involved, where I copy everything, close ALL word files, keep the clipboard, reopen word, and paste it) every building and unit that, as of this moment, I can think of that'd be included. (At least, I think. I'll at some point need to double-check, but I think I'm good.)

Not the details for them.
Heck I don't have all the possible details that need to be documented for them listed at the top of them.
But I've more or less indexed them alphabetically.

What I need to do still is more or less, then, the following:
-I need to see which scenarios feature what governments. Some I know are Vanilla-only; some I know are one-scenario-only (e.g. Protestant Monarchy); the others, I need to form comparisons and see if I can potentially find compromises.

(I want each and every government to provide a distinct advantage, and for there to be no clear superior government. However, I do want slight favoritism to Imperialism as a cross-ages government, with its main rival in ancient times as the Tribal Council, Feudalism providing some viable alternative, Democracy providing a second alternative, and Fascism plus Communism being lategame rivals to it.)

-I need to group technologies together by type. What technologies make sense as working together in a progression.
-I need to also calculate how many techs I can fit in the science tree.

-I need to do the thing I just mentioned I haven't done--get all the possible details that needed to be documented, at the top of them.
-Eventually, but not right now because that'd take insanely long, I need to get said details from each and every scenario, including a vanilla civ 3 conquests game.

-I need to finish my terrain-tile-by-terrain-tile documentation of Mesopotamia, then do it for Rise, Middle Ages, Napoleon, and some of Discovery. (Top northeast corner of map.)

-I need to find the map of the world and document where the modern resources are on it, in the relevant areas.
-Not an immediate task since I need to do some of the other things below first, but: I need to document where there's resource shortages, beit luxury or strategic, and when they're present, see if I can fix it.

-I need to create a map overlay of Rise of Rome, The Middle Ages, Napoleon, and the northeast section of Age of Discovery. (This is something incredibly useful, but it is also quite challenging and rather meticulous to make. Mesopotamia was a 5800 x 2800 pixel file. Which, yes, was as huge as you'd expect, at 21 MB.)
-I need to download an art program with layers.
-I need to use said art program to manipulate the overlays such that key points common on them overlap, hitting as many key points as is possible.

I'll only be able to use two overlays at a time--but that's all I'll need, in order to get the job done. Because what these overlays are meant to accomplish is to establish exact parameters for my map (which for now I'm having as 200 x 200, hoping that's about right--but I'll be making said overlays before I'll be trying to make the map for real).

-I'll also need to document the location of cities in Age of Discovery, Napoleonic Era, The Middle Ages, Fall of Rome, and Rise of Rome, to try and get as many non-mutually-exclusive ones set up.

-Then comes the other stuff I mentioned last time.
Figuring out how to get created scenarios to track scores.
Wonder interaction fixes.
Resource display in cities.
Music from all scenarios, separated into appropriate ages.
Civ contacts being what I want.
Also stuff on the map that I know how to do more or less (cities, fog of war), just need to do them.

I'm making progress, though--quite a bit, in fact!

I just need to put the work in, bit by slow bit.

​It's coming together quite nicely, if I do say so myself.

Nothing which forms into a blog, at least.
Like, random thoughts throughout the day scattered would've been fit, but they were fleeting and no longer come to me as I need an entry.

Ah well.

​Can't blog well every day.

Working title is "Hey there You". It goes like this: 
Hey there you, I can see your look;
Hey there you, I know you're shook.
I might not read you like I would a book,
But I'll help you through, until you're good.

Hey there you, it's okay to be bad;
Hey there you, I can tell you're sad.
It may surprise you, but I've got your back;
I know too, what it's like to lack.


I'm not that good, I'm no angel.
But I'll act like one, to save you from hell.
I'm not skilled, I don't know what to say.
But I'll try, hope I can make your day.

I'm not that strong, I can't carry much.
But when you're down, I'll lift you up.
I'm always here, to help you smile.
Might not be what you need, but you're worthwhile.

I'm not that good, I'm no angel.
But I'll act like one, to save you from hell.
I'm not skilled, I don't know what to say.
But I'll try, hope I can make your day.

I'm not that strong, I can't carry much.
But when you're down, I'll lift you up.
I'm always here, to help you smile.
Might not be what you need, but you're worthwhile.


Hey there you, your pain is real;
Hey there you, it's something I feel.
I may not be you, but I'll help you heal;
If I choose, it's to help you deal.

Hey there you, harsh life can be.
Hey there you, you can stand by me.
If I help you, it is not a cheat;
I'm here to do, whatever you need.


I'm not that good, I'm no angel.
But I'll act like one, to save you from hell.
I'm not skilled, I don't know what to say.
But I'll try, hope I can make your day.

I'm not that strong, I can't carry much.
But when you're down, I'll lift you up.
I'm always here, to help you smile.
Might not be what you need, but you're worthwhile.

I'm not that good, I'm no angel.
But I'll act like one, to save you from hell.
I'm not skilled, I don't know what to say.
But I'll try, hope I can make your day.

I'm not that strong, I can't carry much.
But when you're down, I'll lift you up.
I'm always here, to help you smile.
Might not be what you need, but you're worthwhile.

I'm not that good, I'm no angel.
But I'll act like one, to save you from hell.
I'm not skilled, I don't know what to say.
But I'll try, hope I can make your day.

I'm not that strong, I can't carry much.
But when you're down, I'll lift you up.
I'm always here, to help you smile.
Might not be what you need, but you're worthwhile.

I'm not that good, I'm no angel.
But I'll act like one, to save you from hell.
I'm not skilled, I don't know what to say.
But I'll try, hope I can make your day.

I'm not that strong, I can't carry much.
But when you're down, I'll lift you up.
I'm always here, to help you smile.
Might not be what you need, but you're worthwhile.



...I was a little inspired by some disco song I heard on the way home when writing this, if it helps you place it.
​I'd sing it, but...I'm sick. Again.

So I was working on the civ 3 mod.
Was being the operative word.

Then I got an error, for the second time:
"The save failed due to out of memory or disk space".
I have disk space; I have memory.

I last got around the problem with a copy-paste into a new word file, saving the new one.
But this time, that's not working.

So I am going to lose my work.
Because of a bs glitch.

I tried saving to a flashdrive, too.
Different but similar error.
"The disc is full. Free some space on this drive, or..."

The flashdrive is far, far, FAR from full.

I tried closing applications--including my browser.

No luck.
I reopened my browser, and lost my main window, the window with most of my more important tabs...which history has utterly lacked to retrieve by and large.

Mind you I reopened my browser because I was desperate to find help...
...And found nothing useful on the subject.

Utter.

Baloney.

Well, many things, but the particular aspect I'm talking about today is the divorce between what ideas I get in my head and my ability to actually bring life to them.

I swear to you, in less than ten minutes--it was on the latter half of my drive home--I came up with an idea. On a twenty minute drive I was over half done with, I came up with an idea.

Not just part of an idea.

Start to finish worldbuilding on the idea.

It lacks characters, it lacks plot. It was just an idea for a world, but start to finish, I came up with it.

The idea was more or less, "how do I make a realistic world featuring multiple species of anthropomorphic winged sapients?"
One with feathered "bird" wings.
One with 'leathery' "bat" wings.
One with "butterfly" wings.
One with "bee" wings.
One with "dragonfly" wings.

And two without wings, one off of an ant and another off of a spider.

For the world I came up with, every one of them would need at least six limbs--in that world, the norm being at least six, rather than in our world where it's the norm to have four. (Bats don't have wings, arms, and legs; they have wings and legs; same for birds. But here I wanted them to have both.)

They would need a common ancestor or two, one where their anthropomorphic features came from prior to diverging into their more insect/bird/mammal forms, because that is probably more likely a scenario than them having started from insect/bird/mammal forms and all, separately from one another, developing said anthropomorphic forms.

Specifically, an ancestor that'd require bipedal movement and an opposable thumb, sized about our size but with at least a second set of "arms".

They would also require a great degree of long-term separation, and, a climate where all but the non-fliers were in a position where the mutation allowing flight gave a strong survival advantage. My thought on the world was then one with many sudden sharp increases and decreases in altitude, uneven surfaces in most locations, small islands which're mostly mountainous, probably covered in trees.

Where walking is sometimes necessary, but where flying is usually much easier to cross vast distances. Leading to a world with two large continents and five groupings of islands. Seven total "continents" if you will, even if five of said continents aren't one single landmass. (At least, not one landmass above water.)

To favor flight over traversing waters, currents in the air would need to be fairly easy to travel, whereas inversely, currents on the water would need to be much, much more hazardous than in our world, deterring evolution of an amphibious lifestyle. 

The separation between these continents would need to be strong enough to keep contact from overlapping for a long time, but not quite make it so that it's impossible for them to have traveled there in the first place and millions of years down the line to reconnect.

The obvious answer I came up with is paralleling our world, with an ice age. The beginning and/or end of an ice age would either allow for contact or cut contact off; similarly, the change in climate would spur a necessary change in the needed mutations to survive.

I didn't quite come up with whether it was the ice age starting or ending which caused the isolation, even though the world is distinctly different depending on which of the two it is. If the ice age starting caused the isolation, the sapient life forms evolved in cooler conditions with their adaptions, and it can be hypothesized that the end of the ice age helped spur them into spreading out.

If the ice age ending caused the isolation, the sapient forms evolved in warmer conditions with their adaptions, and it can be hypothesized that there was some other factor other than ice blocking them from spreading out--a factor they could only overcome with technology rather than biology.

In the former, a potential cause of the isolation is an inability to maintain a long enough distance of flight to travel the distance.
In the latter, a potential cause of the isolation is isolated weather conditions, where it's easier to get into the islands than it is to get out. 

These ideas aren't well fleshed out, but they are what I came up with in the ten minutes. They aren't well-researched, because if they were then a lot of what I said would sound more plausible and be more grounded in fact rather than just my shaky guess at how things could potentially work, with my incredibly limited knowledge of biology and geology and the like. (I know almost nothing, and thus, my lack of knowledge hurts the chances of making the idea I came up with seem realistic.)

What I really hate isn't the lack of ability to flesh that part out, though.
So much as it is.
My lack of ability to flesh out each of the species I described.

I created a mental picture of each and every single one of them.
I created a basic idea of how their lifestyle would work. Their biology, their culture(s), and how the other species view them (including slur words used to describe them).
But while the ideas are formed in my head, loosely.

I can't extrapolate them in reality.
I can't bring them out into reality, because to bring them out into reality I would actually need to make them, with skills that I lack.

I'd need to draw them.
I'd need to, from that drawing, create "profiles". You know the like. In almost every webcomic featuring races (heck doesn't need to be nonhuman, many webcomics simply with fictional cultures do much the same), you see this sort of thing.

Where you get an image or two showing the typical image meant to portray them, and then a list of the relevant information about them.

I'd need to create that.

And after doing that.

Weave them together to form the details.

And the worldbuilding for each of them is rough, at best.

Yet the worldbuilding as a whole is even worse, because it takes the roughness of all of those, then is meant to weave them together, to create the modern world of whatever story this would be for.

What technologies would such societies with these described biologies have? These would be influenced by their culture as well--diet, beliefs, interactions, etc. How they finally made contact, and how they didn't manage to wipe each other out, and how they managed to understand each other, and what ideas between their separate cultures were exchanged and so on and so forth.

What nations would exist, how intermingled would the races be? (The world I'm aiming for would be "enough where it's not uncommon to have all featured in a single location for the story", but not "so much where there's no separation outside of isolated pockets". Where there's dominant races in different areas, but enough variety to not be uniform in most areas.)

What technologies would they develop we never would, what technologies we have would they never develop? All of this is possible to create from what I have, but it'd need that first step--of bringing what I made in my head, out into the real world.

And beyond what I've done here.
Mostly generics, mostly stuff about the world itself.
I can't do that.

Which is the frustrating thing I hate.

A brilliant, fantastic idea in my head--a full world, built in ten minutes. Ten minutes, to do all of what I described and then some. In a lifetime I'd never be able to bring it out. The full world's loosely functional; rough around the edges and in desperate need of concrete details, but it's there​...and it'll remain there, nowhere else, because this is as much as I can do with it.