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How many continents?[G5]


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Originally Posted By: VCH
Recent food-web theory puts more emphasis on parasites as being at the top. After all, a lion eats a gnu, but a spiny-headed worm eats a lion.

Now, how that translates over to the Internet, I don't know
Well, since all computer data translates to a series of ones and zeroes, I'd say the internet is eaten by Number Munchers, which have escaped and started eating servers one byte at a time. This is especially bad because their only known predators, the Troggles, went extinct, so the Muncher population is growing out of control.
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Originally Posted By: The Mystic
Originally Posted By: VCH
Recent food-web theory puts more emphasis on parasites as being at the top. After all, a lion eats a gnu, but a spiny-headed worm eats a lion.

Now, how that translates over to the Internet, I don't know
Well, since all computer data translates to a series of ones and zeroes, I'd say the internet is eaten by Number Munchers, which have escaped and started eating servers one byte at a time. This is especially bad because their only known predators, the Troggles, went extinct, so the Muncher population is growing out of control.



I loved that game!

I got super good at munching prime numbers.
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I don't think we ever get a solid account of their size, but it's pretty clear that they're small and unimportant. Keep in mind that geographic scale varies drastically between games: for instance, the Drypeak area (i.e. the entire area in which G2 takes place) is somewhere in the southern mountain range in G5, and would probably take up 5% or less of one of G5's two world maps.

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Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Master of Flame
One third, actually. I still maintain that there is some unmentioned territory between the Okavano and Poryphra.


While there may be a little bit of bridge area between the two game maps, I highly doubt that any such area would be equal in size to the maps of G4 and 5. Thus, you could say that each game map is 45-50% of the continent, but hardly 1/3.


Originally Posted By: Micawber
but still it would help to clarify some of the geography...


That is likely the reason Jeff left it out. He couldn't (or didn't want to) remember all the geographic details from previous games. Remember the 2nd shaper continent from G3?
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Quote:
That is likely the reason Jeff left it out. He couldn't (or didn't want to) remember all the geographic details from previous games. Remember the 2nd shaper continent from G3?


It is a shame, though. I think a 'Drypeak Ruins' area could have a been an intriguing and unsettling reminder of the series' history. Sort of like Erika's tower in A4/6, but more so, especially for those who played G2.
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Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba
The advantage to Erika's Tower is that it's one place. Drypeak is many towns and research facilities. Which one or maybe two do you use?

Dikiyoba.


I can't imagine much would be left standing after the Shapers went through and cleaned everything out. As in, I quite literally imagine all of the facilities and settlements, save Drypeak Colony itself, would be razed. The illegal Shaping done would be undone, probably either naturally (as it was unsustainable) or via a purging with fire.

That said, if I got to choose, the ruins of the Freegate and Sharon's Grove would be nice to visit. I always wondered what happened to Sharon.
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
It's described as a small island off the coast from Dillame. It's not large.

Correct. As for Dikiyoba's interesting query: I would preserve Medab, Zhass-Uss, or (best of all) Ellrah's Tomb, thus neatly pinning together the heritage story of the servile villages. It would assist the continuity of the factions' histories.
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Originally Posted By: FnordCola
That sounds plausible in itself. Relative to a Terrestia the size of...Australia? North America? Africa? Asia? I'd probably be inclined toward something in the North America range.


I'd say both are a little large- a terrestia the size of Australia would make extended travel from one end to the other in few days impossible. I'd say all of Terrestia is about the size of France or the British Isles, and Suicia wouldn't be more than a couple hundred square miles. For whatever reason, I've always pictured Sucia to be closer to Isle Royale than to Hawai'i.
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Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha
Originally Posted By: Lord Safey
I would put Sucia about the size of Hawaii.


what do you mean? the largest island the smallest island somewhere inbetween or the entire chain?


The name of the island chain, Hawaii, is the same as the name of the largest island in it- Hawai'i. I simply presumed he meant the island itself, since he was comparing it to another single island.
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Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha
Really? you concider this to be the size of hawaii?

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/images/geneforge/worldmapThumb.jpg

do not click there, instead go here and click on world map

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/geneforge/shots.html

you still think its small and compare it to hawaii?


I didn't compare it to Hawai'i. I compared it to a much smaller island that, were it square, would only be about 15 miles to a side. That seems about reasonable to me.
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When does it take only a few days to get from one end to the other? I can't remember the exact way the game's counter increments time, but consider that in G5 it the narration says that it takes a day's travel to get from either citadel pass to the Shaper citadel itself. This is a pretty tiny area of the map. Such descriptions of travel as we get at suggest that it takes several weeks at least to travel from, say, Drypeak to the Whitespires (i.e. about 2/3 of the distance north-south). Still, I wasn't thinking about how big North America really is (I blame Canada), so upon reflection I'd adjust my estimate downward to more like Australia to US range (i.e. ~3-4 million square miles/8-10 square km). It also seems odd to even call something as small as you suggest a continent, which the narrator does from time to time.

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Originally Posted By: Master1
Let's not forget that Jeff's scale of distance changes as often as the sign for the terms in the series expansion of the sine function. That is, constantly.


Why did you just make a Taylor series joke?

More importantly, why did I laugh at a Taylor series jok? I feel like such a geek...
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Originally Posted By: Dantius
Why did you just make a Taylor series joke?

More importantly, why did I laugh at a Taylor series jok? I feel like such a geek...


The better question is, where have the Taylor Series jokes been all this time?

Actually, I'm an AP Calc student with the big exam in, oh, a week and a half.
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Taylor Series (serieses?...) are infinite series (adding up an infinite number of terms generated by a rule, like a function's improper integral to infinity being evaluated only at integer values) that give equivalent values to certain transcendental functions.

 

Uh, let's try again. A sequence is a string of numbers generated by the rule evaluated at consecutive integers from start to finish. Add up all of the numbers in the sequence and you have a series. Infinite series start at a non-negative integer and add up all of the terms until the final term, when infinity is placed in. The integer being placed in the expression is often denoted as "n" or "k". Taylor Series are Power Series, which means that they also contain a variable, often "x". Taylor Series are used to generate polynomial equivalents to transcendental functions (like trigonometric and logarithmic stuff).

 

Take Calc III.

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No, let's try again:

 

A Taylor series is a way of approximating non-polynomial functions using polynomials. For instance, sin(x) and e^x are not polynomials, but can both be approximated as such. If you graph the polynomial 1+x+(x^2)/2+(x^3)/6+(x^4)/24+... and just keep on adding terms of the form (x^n)/n!, then the graph will eventually become a function that almost equals e^x for all x. Naturally, the more terms you add, the closer it gets to perfectly accurate.

 

Here's an illustration where n is just the degree of the polynomial approximation:

 

Exp_series.gif

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Originally Posted By: Micawber
Just to keep things (un)clear, only a few functions are accurately approximated by their Taylor series. sin(x) and exp(x) are in fact rare examples. In a certain sense, almost all functions are non-analytic.


Yeah, but it's still useful because there are functions that don't have a closed form but are still analytic, like erf(x) and I believe Bessel functions, so Taylor series are useful for calculating values by just adding, multiplying, and dividing, instead of having to perform definite integration or Euler's method, which are far more complex.
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Euler's method is hardly used any more in generating functions, or so my calc teacher says. I know that Apple's "Grapher" program has Euler's, Runge-Katta's, and Romberg's methods all built in.

 

There may be other applications of Euler's of which I am unaware. That seems often to be the case when I assert things. Oh well, I'm still young.

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Originally Posted By: Master1
Euler's method is hardly used any more in generating functions, or so my calc teacher says. I know that Apple's "Grapher" program has Euler's, Runge-Katta's, and Romberg's methods all built in.

There may be other applications of Euler's of which I am unaware. That seems often to be the case when I assert things. Oh well, I'm still young.


I simply used Euler's Method as a stand in for all the other ways of approximating solutions to IVP's that have names I don't remember. I'm way too lazy to remember all of them, so I just stick to the ones involving Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, and Euler.
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You asked about Taylor series, and you got an answer. There's not really a better way to explain it without math that won't make sense to you until you study more math.

 

—Alorael, who has no idea what Calc III is. He wonders if it is, in fact, a standard and universally recognized subdivision of calculus, or just a course name. Why not put Taylor series in Calculus 2? Or even in Addition Over and Over 4?

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Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha
im in seventh grade...do you expect me to know them?


I knew most basic single-variable calculus by the end of 9th grade, and was up to multivariable and vector calc by 11th. I'm sure it's possible to learn at least some basic differentiation and integration before High school. Wikipedia it, and then use your knowledge to impress you friends.
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Originally Posted By: Friendship like an iron spike
—Alorael, who has no idea what Calc III is. He wonders if it is, in fact, a standard and universally recognized subdivision of calculus, or just a course name. Why not put Taylor series in Calculus 2? Or even in Addition Over and Over 4?


College Board divides calculus into AB and BC, which roughly correspond to the first three sections of calculus. A (or I) is limits and differentiation, B (or II) is integration etc, and C (or III) is Series. My understanding is that C/III often includes some multivariate and vector, as that's what we did. College Board only goes up to series and a few other tidbits, but after a year of AB, there was very little B to cover, so we did far more C than is required.
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