#modeling and simulation

[cadify-studio]

Modeling and Simulation in Product Design

Modeling and simulation in product design have become crucial tools in modern engineering. By leveraging 3D modeling, CAD simulation, and virtual prototyping, companies can enhance product performance, reduce costs, and accelerate development.

[hug-your-face]

This is really good worldbuilding advice. Why do I say that and why am I, who is NOT a fiction writer, even voicing an opinion on worldbuilding advice?

Because one thing I actually DO know a bit or two about is modeling and simulation. And whether Derin calls it that or not, this is using modeling and simulation as a worldbuilding tool:

Choose or create a model (How Human-Based Societies Work)

Choose target conditions (stability)

Set up simulation parameters and initial conditions (your Weird Scenario)

Run the simulation using your model (use your imagination: would this society last generations?)

Observe the result (is it stable?); adjust the initial conditions as needed

This is what I see lacking in so much modern fiction, and why a Weird Idea is just not enough. If your own worldbuilding process has either

Neglected to run the simulation

OR if it's based on

An inconsistent model, or

A model known only to you and not shared with us the reader

...then you are not gonna suspend my disbelief, and I don’t care how fucking "cozy," "badass," "original," or other insert-your-selling-point-here your story is. You have written a personal fantasy, not a story to be read by others.

You don’t need to create an entirely new model of behavior, or of physics, or of economics, or whatever that flies in the face of known models. You can just use existing models -- you don't need to do TOO much research for this, even Wikipedia can give you the basics of biological selection or physics or economics or societal stability -- and then you set up your weird initial conditions.

This is how you get both originality and verisimilitude.

You CAN create a whole new model if you really want to! What if trust and aggression between people followed no internal logic and was just random? What if the cause and effect of your magic system was different from any type of cause and effect that we readers might have encountered in our lives?

Some fantasy does this really well. But it's going to be a lot more work for you to ensure that your model is

Internally consistent, and

NOT similar enough to an existing model of real life that readers unconsciously apply THAT model instead.

And as Derin repeatedly demonstrates in his own work, you can get really unusual results out of existing models just by setting up your Weird initial conditions and then following them through to their logical conclusion.

TLDR: If you can't make your own internally-consistent model for something in your world, store-bought is fine.

Hi Derin! Sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm amazed by the vast array of cultures and gender norms in TTO:U. How did you come up with all of it?

I just thought "hey wouldn't it be funny if there was a little guy" and then made them, and thought "hey what norms would exist in a culture under these conditions" and then made those.

In all seriousness, most of my worldbuilding comes down to tearing down assumptions. Brennans exist because I fucking hate gender and I'm sick of seeing the gender binary or "gender binary Plus Nonbinary Extra People (who still live in a world that assumes a gender binary)" as some immutable natural law that all societies will forever cling to, and I wanted to make a society that was harder for readers to inevitably sort into a binary as they always, always fucking do. (Partial success; I have seen some absolutely rancid takes on the TTOU gender ternary that make me want to break my computer.) The array of different cultural family structures exist because those are different ways that societies can be built on smaller units. The Arboreae and the two space elevators and the Khemin exist because that is a potential response to a critical climate crisis.

On top of that, most of my ideas are stolen. I once read a short story about people who lived under the ocean on an alien planet and spent most of their time just cruising around the ocean in big bubble-like biological submersibles and that was their job, because their submersibles cleaned the water by feeding on things in it; they were employed to be part of the ecosystem. The Khemin, wandering about the ocean as both environmental monitors and trash-gatherers, were inspired by this; from there, I just thought on what sort of family structure and traditions such a group would develop for a stable society. When I was a teeny tiny child I saw a guy on Ripley's Believe It Or Not who was trying to build a self-sustaining floating island to sail around the world on. Absolute disaster of a plan, man knew shit about ecology or farming, but a bit later on I got really into swamps for awhile and started thinking of using plant roots as water filtration systems and, with an eventual biotechnology degree, multiple years hyperfixating on ecology and evolution, and touch of Magic Future Genetic Engineering, that eventually became the Arboreae. The social structure of Hylara is somewhat inspired by CJ Cherryh's azi, particularly the way that Florian and Catlan are raised in Cyteen. The Hylarans are very much not azi (the azi being slaves brainwashed from birth via hypnosis) but the way they are raised fed into building a society batch-raised by robots and each other with no natural family unit. You can just steal concepts from the real world or from scifi and build them into your own thing it's fine.

Anthropologically speaking, the golden feature of any social structure or cultural practice is *stability*. This is the one feature upon which everything is judged. Just or unjust, productive or unproductive, authoritarian or free, structured or unstructured, when developing a society your key thing to worry about is "is this stable? Would a society survive for multiple generations on this norm?" and if your Weird Idea isn't stable, either ditch it or -- far more interesting -- adjust it and your parameters until it is. Different norms will be stable in different environments and built on different histories -- Khemin and Hylaran norms are not interchangeable because of the environments, tech, political climate and reproductive methods the two cultures have. But if it's stable, you can throw in whatever weird shit you want.

[hrokkall]

ULTRATOBER /// SECOND: MOST EPIC BATTLE

[drinksss]

music man

[senpaichaser]

(repost) jacaranda's custom bullies!!

⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ credits: gas, druelbozo, avluu, sevposting, princessdie, kramattekka, noicepotato, redgravezz, vivi/miau, jacaranda (design), and me (render)

[other-floret-friend]

Sillier idea I had; low-poly digitized floret having to get her edges and corners smoothed out so she doesn't give her high-poly pinnate any digital papercuts. It doesn't detract from the look she's going for, so it's arguably just a bit safer overall!

And, uh... the fact that she's suddenly so realistically modelled between her legs is just a coincidence, right? She almost remembers having a flat texture down there that used to change in response to pleasure between "wet" and "dry" variants, but...

[tanadrin]

Toward revised climates for Sogant Raha

A couple of weeks ago I finally got ExoPlaSim running, as detailed in this post from Worldbuilding Pasta; it's a finicky-as-hell piece of software, but it's also basically the only global climate model that seems remotely accessible to the conworlder who does not actually study this stuff for a living. And since it's pretty slow, especially on my antiquated machine, I looked into renting a virtual server from the same folks who do my webhosting. This is something I've never done before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how incredibly cheap it was--I'm paying about sixty Euro-cents a month at my current usage rates.

With a great deal of trial and error, I've been running climate models of Sogant Raha with different starting parameters. Mostly the failure states are pretty uninteresting--when I reduced the atmospheric pressure by 10% for instance, I had to crank up the CO2 levels a surprising amount or I just got an endless parade of snowball planets. Too much insolation and the whole planet is desert. The sweet spot for a stable climate (with Earthlike nitrogen and oxygen ratios) seems to be around 600 ppm of CO2, which is high compared to the pre-industrial baseline for the Holocene, but well within Earth's historic range.

This is the interpolated global climate map for Sogant Raha based on the last simulation. (Keep in mind the prevailing wind direction is the opposite of Earth's.) Some of the features are exactly what I was hoping for: that nice belt of equatorial rainforests, for instance, and a mild climate even at very high latitudes near the south pole. The rugged terrain of the northern polar regions probably influences the formation of tundra there.

There are some issues that definitely are due to needing to do another pass on the topography data; some mountain ranges are too high, which makes western Altuum too dry, I think. Central Demora (the left of the two small continents in the north-central region of the map) is much drier than I expected, probably due to topography and the low resolution of the model. Several islands are a lot drier than they should be; this is a know issue with ExoPlaSIm, apparently. I'm most surprised by the giant desert on the north end of Rezana (the southern continent in the group of three on the left). That region has comparatively low relief and water on three sides; even if it's not very wet, it should be wetter than that, I reckon. I'll have to dig into the data and see what that's about. And the desert in the northwest of Vinsamaren also makes no sense to me; it's equatorial, and there isn't an appreciable rain shadow in that region.

Sogant Raha is very much not a bottom-up project, in that it started with a group of stories I wanted to tell, and then I started thinking about how to link those stories together in a world that had internal consistency, and only much later did I start looking into stuff like climate and geology, so I'm actually quite pleased that I can get something comparatively close to my original design without any major revisions. The biggest change from my previous biome map is just the planet's axial tilt--instead of being very low, it is now rather high, around 30 degrees. No valleys of eternal night on the poles, which is a pity, but I can still have my south polar islanders who spend half the year sailing from island to island in perpetual darkness.

[impossiblefeat]

Espio had his pants rights revoked when they remade his Sonic Rivals 2 "Racesuit" alternate costume for Sonic Speed Simulator.

[hydrossity-zone]

Neo Metal Sonic refs I made for myself but figured would post for other people to use! :]

(click for better quality ofc)

alt + random closeups under the cut!

[uberthemeh]

[YCH 3D Plush model Comms!!!!]

Hey!! if you want a 3D Plush model of your character, I gotchu!!

Feel free to put it in TableTop Simulator, Voices of the Void, VRChat, and more!!!!

THROW THEM AROUND CHUCK EM IDC!!!!!!!

Comms Link:

[moldmaxx]

I've found this clip from one of Mark's streams incredibly motivational and inspirational. He talks about his work mentality, how he works through moments where he has no motivation, and how to show yourself kindness when it comes to hard work.

[senpaichaser]

meeeeerp, derpina in yansim style

⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ credits: gas, ophelia, princessdie, obsesscoric, cutiebxt, eleanor, o-dsv-o, & me xD

w/o the posed eyes, what a diva

[scarefox]

teacher: we do a little object breaking via sound experiment now. There are some short sound files on our server. Of course you could use any other mp3 file for this simulation.

me: oh I have one >:)

[aerachnaodnagren]

The horned axe hang. Meant for double chain

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/jewelry/horned-axe-aerachnaodnagren

[vgprintads]

'"J4G: Just For Girls" series'

[DS] [SPAIN] [MAGAZINE, SPREAD] [2009]

"German company DTP Young Entertainment has announced the launch of its line of games aimed at women under the "Just4Girls" label. These games will be released exclusively for the Nintendo DS console this fall, at a suggested retail price of €39.95. The first titles to be released will be Cosas de Chicas a comprehensive PDA for young women that includes a personal diary, horoscopes, biorhythms, recipes, mini-games, and more; Mi Bebé y Yo, where they can put their maternal instincts to work; Mi Novio, which allows them to create their ideal boyfriend and discover the path to winning his heart; and Top Model, where they can fulfill their dream of joining the glamorous world of fashion." ~Skyguso, beegamer (Based on Machine Translation)

Source: MegaConsolas, February 2009 (#71) || Datassette ;José Márcio Rez