Hey all. Sadly, I'm going to have to skip this morning as well. If I feel better tomorrow evening, I'll do a catch-up stream, otherwise, I will see you Wednesday
People always go on about the KT extinction event and the utterly catastrophic impact the asteroid had. However, my "favourite" (horrible as it is to call it that) (not-exactly) extinction event has instead become the Great Oxygenation Event, where 80% of life on earth flat out died and the planet became terraformed (heh) because some stupid-ass bacterium learned to eat the sun really, REALLY well.
Not just the inhabitants, but the planet itself, the very composition of its atmosphere and just about all the rules changed as these bacteria slowly poisoned the air and rusted the oceans. It's... frankly mind-blowing the scale of it all.
And today it's just considered a super ordinary, rather unremarkable thing that there is a stupid amount of oxygen floating around freely in our atmosphere.
Eh? What do you know! I now have a semi-working trade price calculator for my game! Well... sorta. I have a base-cost price that is then taxed thrice (Settlement, provincial and regional taxes).
Merchants don't pay the same taxes when buying from you (you pay taxes in other ways, that still needs to happen), but they will have an amount that they are comfortable to offer you to open with, knowing they can turn a profit. That is now in as well.
Technically, this system is okay. There's a little trade game's start in here now, but it's nowhere near done. Next, I need to add what items merchants sell, what items they buy, and what items they're willing to go all in on if you happen to have them. (You don't just walk up to a town and the merchants there will buy whatever. They're very specific about what they'll buy, and from where. Same with what they'll sell. Think Morrowind, but instead of flat-out refusing to buy from you if you have stuff they don't like, they might low-ball you or, worse, it might harm your rep with them.). In order to do that the player's inventory will need to happen at the same time.
Speaking of, for some reason last night I fell into the rabbit hole of looking through jewellery of ancient civilisations, and while the context of some of the finds makes my stomach feel very poorly (seriously don't look this stuff up, you will have nightmares), I will say that, honestly, very fancy even today.
Our craftsmanship has certainly improved, we can work much finer much more reliably as our tools are incomprehensibly better than anything they would have had to work with, but they were indisputably masters of their craft.
@ChiralTheAlien It depends on when you're making your comparison. The Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon jewellery has some amazing workmanship that would be difficult to reproduce even now.
Today is the first of May. New month, not so new me. At least it's an off day. My plan was to stay in bed for a bit, write some, and then draw, but I think what I'm going to do is spend today working on my game. I have started from scratch again recently, and for the first time have built up a system that not only actually works reliably, but is both easy and kinda fun to interact with.
@ChiralTheAlien I (software engineer in another life) was working with an artist on an interactive exhibit. It involved some illustrations, and we were talking style.
She's pulling down illustration books and saying "this style? Or maybe this one?"
I was boggled - she could look at a drawing in any style and just do it. It was so cool.
@trans_rescue Yeah, wow, I can imagine. The amount of skill and effort that some people bring to the table, it truly is amazing. And then they make it look easy, too! You can't help but be awe-struck.