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Author Topic: Universalis Project Goals  (Read 20611 times)

atomic7732

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Universalis Project Goals
« on: May 20, 2015, 05:05:57 PM »
For the past few years, Universalis has gone through many different stages, many debates, and lots of developed canon. But through the whole process, we haven't really had a direction. Development has been haphazard and sporadic, though it often causes conflict with the desires of others, and little is accomplished. To combat this issue, I (and several other members) believe that there should be some sort of manifesto, some definitive, written out guidelines which will define the project and provide a point for compromises and resolution.

The only way that we can do this is to get input from everyone involved. We need to decide what the goal of the project is, what people care about, and what they intend to do with their nations, so as to develop an idea for the purpose of Universalis, hopefully to resolve potential conflicts of interest. It's obvious that this planet is for personal nations, and it's also a world-building project. Some people care more about one aspect than the other, but both are important to everyone. Everything your personal nations do is interconnected with the rest of the planet. There will need to be compromises, but that is the goal of this manifesto. What we need to define is the limits of personalization vs collaboration. Because without some form of collaboration and coherence, we might as well each make our own planets.

So, to begin, I thought it would be a great idea to start with some broad, overall questions about your opinions on the Universalis project. This will assist in creating the final "documentation" which anyone will be able to contribute to. Feel free to propose alternative approaches or new important questions.

Respond to any or all of the questions below, and start a discussion:

What, in your personal opinion, is, or should be, the goal of Universalis?: What should Universalis focus on? What direction should we take? Include information similar to what technology we should have, or other nuances that we've never explicitly defined as canon. What should be coherent across the planet, that everyone should agree on (coastlines, climate, elevation, etc)?

What are your personal goals for your nation(s)?: This is where you discuss what is important to you about the project. Is your nation supposed to be a utopia? Why do you think this is important? Did you make the nation with climate, or other aspects in mind?

What is important to you about the project and what you've done so far?: What are you proud of having done and what do you really like about your nations or the project in general?


tuto99

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2015, 01:38:16 AM »
What, in your personal opinion, is, or should be, the goal of Universalis?
To create an alternate Earth; to make a world that feels very realistic, just like the nations on Earth, while maintaining a creative aspect to it. World building is not as fun if we can't be creative here and there; you don't know if certain things can or can't happen. Another ultimate goal that imo is overlooked by a large degree is, to create a theme for Universalis. Without a theme, the world feels rather empty. An example of a theme for Earth would be: Global hunger issues, war on terrorism, new information age, space exploration, innovations in technology, and a growing understanding of our universe.

What are your personal goals for your nation(s)?
My main goal for Dotruga is to create a safe, intelligent population with comfortable standards of living. This isn't canon yet, but I would like to establish Dotruga as one of the leaders in Space exploration/innovations. My affinity for astronomy is strong so I would like to represent that through my nation as sort of a pride, idk.

What is important to you about the project and what you've done so far? Aside from personal stuff, I really find it important to create a coherent world that is reasonable and fun to look at. When it comes to realism, being really precise takes a lot of work and knowledge, so we can sacrifice some ambiguity for some quick canon.

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2015, 10:40:45 AM »
What, in your personal opinion, is, or should be, the goal of Universalis? [...]
I think Universalis should mostly focus on our countries, how they are politically, their history, and all the details such as infrastructure networks, production etc. that people want to describe. Well, some people are also interested in linguistics and climate, and I don't think it hurts the project they focus on that if they want. I just find the design-your-own-country (thinking out all the economic details, planning the cities, the transport systems, thinking up some interesting history etc.) the most interesting part. I think technology equivalent to Earthly around 2030 suits the project well, it leaves some options open to use the imagination a bit about future tech while not going so far that we'll probably have no clue about it. I can kind of sense the climate discussion is inevitable, so my comment on that is I think realism in the project is a good thing, but I think it's too late to push any climate model upon people. For myself I didn't pay that much attention to researching what kind of climate I'd have before drawing Blaist Blaland and now the country's position and shape is a rather hard thing to change (which I'm also not really interested in at this point), so I'm not opting for a perfectly realistic climate. I also think it's unlikely any of us has the knowledge to make a very accurate climate model so while I can only appreciate using your knowledge to design something realistic, I wouldn't want the climate models to be pushed upon people. If you by coherent you simply mean everyone come to agree on how the climate, coastlines, elevation, etc. is, I agree that's a goal, it would be an odd project if someone disputed the coastline of Kallisto and had a different definition of it than vh. But I think vh has the last say in how Kallisto's coastline should be.

What are your personal goals for your nation(s)? [...]
First to Tuto: Remember this is a forum for astronomy software, so most people here probably has some interest in it (including me). :P Not that I have any problem with your nation being around the top of astro research.
My goal for my nations are a bit different:
Blaist Blaland isn't really supposed to be an utopia (some people would say socialism is unrealistic and in that case just consider it a utopia - that's not really the discussion), but a kind of ideal, well-functioning country based on my ideas, with focus on e.g. science. A kind of society I still imagine to be possible in the real world. I'd like to write an interesting history for it with some hopefully humorous stuff buried (social justice wars,...). I made it with a climate in mind that was mainly forests, plains, lakelands, grasslands, and planning for large parts of it to be covered in agriculture, and I've generally tried to shape it a bit to some of my earlier country fiction - e.g. implementing my largest city drawing as capital and basing it on language I made long ago.
Red Rainbow is a bit similar, but totalitarian, oriented towards military, and here the climate isn't as important to me, large parts may be desert, although I've also had ideas for the northeast to be forested and possibly cold due to elevation.

What is important to you about the project and what you've done so far? [...]
I don't know what to pick out specifically, one thing I spent a long time on was the anthem of Blaist Blaland, which was an important thing to me as this could communicate a lot of values and details from your society combined with some music from the country. The city drawing might be a bit cheaty to pick but that's also a thing I think is important, and something I'd like to be a part of the "main" fictive country project I work on. Having spent a lot of time drawing the borders, terrain, regions and some historical areas' borders now, which I'm rather satisfied with the look of (plus some of it being in the anthem video), I also consider these rather important. And in general I guess those are some of the things I like about the project, that you can start working on pretty much any detail about your country when you feel like it. Another day I might write some laws or add in some more details on the economy or draw the major monorail lines connecting all the cities. I like to do stuff like that.

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2015, 03:53:54 PM »
<FihanoLesteriok> Bla do you want to start figuring out how to write a constitution
<FihanoLesteriok>I kinda want to do that but since I don't anticipate many people participating, abandoning universalis sounds so much easier

I think we should continue in this topic. I never really felt like it was necessary to make a 'constitution' because I think the project worked fine for a long time until the recent climate issues. I feel a bit like it's an attempt to make some formal, broad rules that can then be applied to make my climate invalid or something like that. With that in mind here are some suggestions:

1: We have the final say in decisions about our own countries.
2: As contributors to the project, some of our values are realism, [...].

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2015, 10:07:58 PM »
we need to settle this silly climate debate once and for all. I propose a switch to a 5-belt climate model (this means speeding up the rotation of Universalis). This will provide a coherent picture of Blaland with everything else as well as making many places that were previously destined to be scorching deserts into forests and even rainforests, while dealing with the tradeoff that some places near the equator will become miserable, sweltering places.

3-belt model:


5-belt model:


Personally I like the 5-belt model better and would vote for it in a poll.

atomic7732

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2015, 11:51:43 PM »
i prefer three belt tbh because if i want to do anything with weather things in Solea and the serkr and stuff i understand normal earth weather a lot better than the nuances that would be involved in a 5 belt pattern which would make cyclones and anticyclones act probably quite different and take on different structures and paths.

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2015, 12:40:35 AM »
more curve and less big loopy paths. the issue with the 5-belt model though is that it may mean that the dry parts are extremely dry compared to earth's fuzzier arid regions

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #7 on: June 19, 2015, 01:32:52 AM »
I don't have a problem with the idea of a 5 belt model as such, but what rotation period would be necessary for that and what would the effects be on for example tidal waves?

atomic7732

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #8 on: June 19, 2015, 02:11:16 AM »
more curve and less big loopy paths. the issue with the 5-belt model though is that it may mean that the dry parts are extremely dry compared to earth's fuzzier arid regions
yes but what is the nature of a cyclone? i don't know for certain, but i feel like frontal storms would merge more into a frontless "cell" like tropical cyclones (similar to the blobby storms on the gas giants) - and if not, they'd have a tendency to act more and look more like those

storms could also be smaller, but all of this is just speculation, i don't know how they would act

they might instead be more interconnected across bands causing the arid regions to instead of being more defined, more fuzzy... though probably not

idk about the storm paths, i don't think there would be much curvature, most things would stay in the band they started with, which would mean cyclones would persist and travel in a roughly straight line , and band-switching, if it occurs, would be... ? i don't even know

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #9 on: June 19, 2015, 02:44:53 AM »
@bla roughly neptunian or uranian rotation speeds, probably a bit longer would be acceptable too

and tides aren't affected by rotation speed at all

tuto99

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #10 on: June 19, 2015, 05:50:57 AM »
How would this affect Dotrugan climate? I'm assuming it would be more humid in the southern parts judging by the purple bands idk im not a climatologist u boners

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #11 on: June 19, 2015, 07:00:28 AM »
that's exactly what it means

FiahOwl

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #12 on: June 19, 2015, 08:30:19 AM »

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atomic7732

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #13 on: June 19, 2015, 12:47:47 PM »
neptune appears to have 3 cells (assuming a "tropical" band, of course, where the Great Dark Spot is located)


Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #14 on: June 19, 2015, 01:10:17 PM »
fiah that seems really fucking fast and also jupiter has a shitload of cells so why would we need a time that short

FiahOwl

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #15 on: June 19, 2015, 01:26:35 PM »

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Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #16 on: June 19, 2015, 01:30:41 PM »
well, we can assume that it rounds up to the next odd number of hadley cells per hemisphere as earth's theoretical number of jets should be 2.26, so I assume it safe to only change it enough to get a ratio of about 3.3, spawning five unstable jets, and instability is a blessing in this case

atomic7732

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #17 on: June 19, 2015, 02:06:04 PM »
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/2qjye3/atmospheric_circulation_on_planets_different_than/

According to this we'd have to have 3 hour days.
i looked at the paper itself and i determined it's a ratio of about 4 (6 hour days) to get 5 cells, and ratio of 8 (3 hour days) to get 7

idk what that guy did with his table

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #18 on: June 20, 2015, 10:26:11 AM »
Even if we switched to 5 belts, would you still expect me to use your climate models or whatever for determining Blaist Blaland's climate or would you accept what I decide it to be?

I'm not really a fan of the very short days it would mean either. I also wonder how elongated the planet would be at the equator and the effects it would have on geologic activity/history if we consider realism very important (e.g. how did the planet keep such a high rotation speed? Especially if it has a large moon). I just mean, if the 5 belts are there to make some climates more realistic you probably don't want it if it causes a lot of other unrealistic problems but there's a lot of things to think through.

FiahOwl

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #19 on: June 20, 2015, 10:55:35 AM »

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Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #20 on: June 20, 2015, 10:58:42 AM »
i'll just make darvincia an enormous ice cap then

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #21 on: June 20, 2015, 11:42:13 AM »
i'll just make darvincia an enormous ice cap then
I'm sure we already discussed this when you set Sande Sitei population to 92 million, etc. Threatening with making something only so that it puts other people off and serves to reinforce some point, that's for sure not going to help solving anything. You see, there's nobody in the project who's really trying to design things just to annoy you. You don't need to try doing that to prove your point.

This is why I don't think we need so extremely well-defined rules and such for the project. I find it odd anyone here would really show so much distrust that they'd think others here would design something just to annoy them. Other than Darvince for the sole sake of trying to enforce a dilemma between his rules or something he makes up because he knows nobody wants it. Could we please stay at a level above this?

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #22 on: June 20, 2015, 11:57:54 AM »
yeah it'll be a taiga then

blotz

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #23 on: June 20, 2015, 05:45:42 PM »
i wanna lock the coastlines

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #24 on: June 20, 2015, 10:42:13 PM »
I just think they're terribly ugly and boring, especially when combined with non-straight lines like natural coastlines. It seems inconsistent.

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #25 on: June 21, 2015, 03:55:35 AM »
I just think they're terribly ugly and boring, especially when combined with non-straight lines like natural coastlines. It seems inconsistent.
If you feel like making a point you can just make it instead of assuming something I wrote 3 years ago in an entirely different situation that I may not even agree with anymore will apply to something you don't even bother to elaborate on here.

Fiah already said it's not an important discussion, so why continue it?
Quote
(20:13:15)<Valenceta>it is a semantics discussion yes because i'm bored and feel like arguing something

If this place really has to be an argument clinic, here's something:
oh god don't do this we're going to have a five year fight over it for no damn reason
...right?

Here's what I said on irc:
Quote
(20:12:22)(20:12:22)<BlaBla44>Isn't it pretty pointless to discuss whether it's 'consistent' that way? If it's not a perfectly realistic world, why does it even matter if realism said a forest should be in a place where we decided there should be a forest? It sounds like a semantics discussion to me. I could see the point if you meant you wanted a perfectly realistic world and it's then inconsistent if someone does something unrealistic, but the other way around, I don't see why it matters

I didn't say it's always pointless to discuss consistency, but that in the example here consistency wasn't really relevant imo. So much for trying to bring up that 3 year old quote.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2015, 04:42:35 AM by Bla »

FiahOwl

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #26 on: June 21, 2015, 05:11:34 AM »

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Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #27 on: June 21, 2015, 05:29:59 AM »
oop i forgot what i meant by that oh well

but what I did mean by that was that our main concerns back then were realism and consistency, which didn't seem to have deterioriated over these past years until our levels of knowledge in areas began to diverge and it just sort of all fell apart with that. i agree with the pointlessness of declaring something 'inconsistent' if it happens to line up with what should be there rather than what we want to be there, because we may have no idea if it is realistic or not, and more importantly, we didn't decide to make it realistic. it is, however, inconsistent if there is one person who has been appointed to calculate and evaluate to determine the climates of universalis in the most realistic way they know how while there is one other person who among all those in the world has their climates set in stone (without thinking about realistic consequences) and gets fired up when the person who is making the carefully calculated climates posts something about it which includes the areas where they refuse to compromise or change in

also, why are you concerned if darvincia is an ice cap/tundra? that's only going to affect myself

also fiah get on irc

Bla

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #28 on: June 21, 2015, 05:43:30 AM »
if there is one person who has been appointed to calculate and evaluate to determine the climates of universalis in the most realistic way they know how while there is one other person who among all those in the world has their climates set in stone (without thinking about realistic consequences) and gets fired up when the person who is making the carefully calculated climates posts something about it which includes the areas where they refuse to compromise or change in
I never agreed to appoint anyone to do that. Also the thing I'm against isn't someone doing climate sims - it is that you're trying to force me to use your climate sims and I don't agree with that at all. I'd like a certain climate for my country and even if I position it in a place where it gets something close to it, what if you one day find this improvement to the climate sim, and simulate it all over. Then I have to change a lot or accept a climate I don't want. I absolutely don't want this. I don't know why you misrepresent my position to mean I'm against you simulating climate, because I only think it's good if you try to make some realistic climate for your nations. I just don't want to use your climate simulator and I don't think it'll ever become perfect.

also, why are you concerned if darvincia is an ice cap/tundra? that's only going to affect myself
I'm not very concerned with it. I'm just pointing out you're only trashing the discussion every time you say you want an icecap because someone else doesn't want to have the climate you think they should, and when you say your population is 92 million in some city because others had some numbers you thought were too high. You're not really going to achieve anything constructive with that.

And no I don't buy that it's just what you want. Your hypocricy is blatantly obvious from all your statements about wanting people to use a realistic climate. Claiming anything else is plain simply dishonest so don't bother acting.

Darvince

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Re: Universalis Project Goals
« Reply #29 on: June 21, 2015, 05:52:54 AM »
i'm not acting i'm just a genuine shitty excuse of a human being

also http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,6014.msg149532.html#msg149532 this is where i got the thing that you don't want people to do climate simulations, nue never said he was going to force it on anyone at any point