Travis
07-28-2006, 06:03 AM
I've been playing some Final Fantasy IX, and it hit me... Who are the historians of this world? What about the entire Final Fantasy series? What about all console RPGs? It's always some terror repeating 500, 1000, or some other increment thereof years after its last reign. Now, now... I can understand a few details getting lost in the total obliteration of everything, but come on! It's like these people lost all maps, records, traditions, and memorabilia. All of it. Except a few things, but nobody knows what they do or what their purposes are. Usually, when records aren't kept, the information isn't lost completely, but it takes on different forms, altered by changes in culture.
Here's an idea. An RPG where every detail of the past thousand years is well documented. Well, at least the things pertaining to the disaster that occurred. Everyone's expecting it. "Oh no," they say, "here's the end of the world... again. Just like last millenium. And the one before that. And the one before that." Actually, your party comes up with this brilliant plan to end it all, but that's common knowledge from the beginning of the game. The twist? Nothing happens. The world doesn't go through some cataclysmic battle. Maybe the grand evil wizard dies of a heart attack before he can really do any damage. I dunno. Something like that.
...
Also, I've been calculating the expected results of a round of Chocobo Hot & Cold, partitioning the playing field into waypoints and estimating the order it takes to search through the waypoints and find treasure. [I'm fairly certain it would be O(n ln n), as the waypoints allow a search of the playing field that's logarithmic, but you have to search through them linearly.] I'm wondering... does this mean I've been up for far too late and am therefore delusional? Or have I just been too long removed from the academics of Computer Science that I'm going through some weird withdrawls for abstract mathematical concepts and algorithmic analysis?
Here's an idea. An RPG where every detail of the past thousand years is well documented. Well, at least the things pertaining to the disaster that occurred. Everyone's expecting it. "Oh no," they say, "here's the end of the world... again. Just like last millenium. And the one before that. And the one before that." Actually, your party comes up with this brilliant plan to end it all, but that's common knowledge from the beginning of the game. The twist? Nothing happens. The world doesn't go through some cataclysmic battle. Maybe the grand evil wizard dies of a heart attack before he can really do any damage. I dunno. Something like that.
...
Also, I've been calculating the expected results of a round of Chocobo Hot & Cold, partitioning the playing field into waypoints and estimating the order it takes to search through the waypoints and find treasure. [I'm fairly certain it would be O(n ln n), as the waypoints allow a search of the playing field that's logarithmic, but you have to search through them linearly.] I'm wondering... does this mean I've been up for far too late and am therefore delusional? Or have I just been too long removed from the academics of Computer Science that I'm going through some weird withdrawls for abstract mathematical concepts and algorithmic analysis?