In the chapter "Revolutions in Mind and Brain" van der Kolk describes old practices that seem terribly archaic, ways of handling psychological trauma that show how far understanding has come. That's not to say current methods are uniformly better now... but... it's surprising the rate at which change occurs. Great cultural machineries changed within a lifetime.

* cargo toml at root of directory containing projects, that makes one target directory, you'll only get 1.5GB once
* Rust "workspace"

* positioning 3d objects - import from Blender, or build out a simple object placement tool
Blender - we want to have that anyway

     * quaternion math, rotation in local space

* build your own editor for each game

use glam https://docs.rs/glam/latest/glam/
*** get quaternion from difference between two rotations
*** get rotation from difference between two points

* joints?
https://docs.rs/ambient_api/latest/ambient_api/prelude/physics/index.html
https://gameworksdocs.nvidia.com/PhysX/4.1/documentation/physxguide/Manual/Joints.html

* clientside raycast issue? (future)

* try making concepts https://ambientrun.github.io/Ambient/reference/project.html#concepts--concepts

* try React with Hooks, if I find a good video send to Fredrik

* Windows Forms https://ambientrun.github.io/Ambient/reference/ui.html#layout
---- bottomup Flow
---- topdown Dock

* expose server->client component as message?

it is never

it is mutating

it is not without stillness,

it is changing

it is liquid, a fluid moving

it is liquid, a flowing.

wombat writes, "You yourself are never really done with pondering, . . . Sometimes you just have to end it and move on to the next thing." but what if i'm not ready to move on yet? what does it mean to conclude an infinite middle -- something without beginning and therefore without end?

the audacity of putting an ending on an infinite process that started long before you were born

what audacity, putting 'the end' on an infinite process that started long before you were born

what audacity, supposing one can end an infinite process that started long before we were born.

it is liquid, a flowing.

the arrogance necessary to end any creative act: to end that infinite process of creation that started long before the first human was born.

it is liquid, a flowing. we can never follow it to its source or go to where it flows into the ocean.

it is liquid, a flowing. if there is a source at all, it lies behind us, at the birth of the universe. if there is an ocean into which it flows, it lies ahead of us, past the extinction of time.

there is an arrogance fundamental in imposing an end upon any creative act: to take some point in that infinite process of creation and suppose that anything we do has even the possibility of ending it, in any way.

the audacity of seeing anything as truly moving on.

when i, the pilot of such a fragile and ephemeral body, feel the loss of something, i wonder at the audacity of my sadness.

it is liquid, a flowing.

if there is a source at all it lies behind us, at the birth of the universe.

if there is an ocean into which it flows it lies ahead of us, past the extinction of time.

when i, the pilot of such a fragile and ephemeral vessel, feel something slip through my wet fingers, i wonder at the audacity of my sadness: the feeling that because we moved apart in this great river that this lost thing is gone.

we are forever adrift in the infinite middle.

it is liquid, a flowing.

if there is a source at all it lies behind us, at the birth of the universe. if there is an ocean into which it all flows, it lies ahead of us, past the extinction of time. we are forever adrift in an infinite middle.

otters hold hands so that they do not lose one another while they sleep.

creativity is an act of holding on.

some endings are sharp like a knife, severing.

but this loss like all losses is nothing.

an illusion produced by disassociation from the whole.

~ The Mountain

. . . They would get there eventually.

. . . All that time she could not stop thinking about the mountain. . . . In an instant she thought everything would be okay. They would get there eventually.

Though at peace and surrounded thickly by sweet-smelling flowers, she could not stop thinking about the mountain. Her retinue had needed this, deserved it: a respite from the hard road that lay both behind and ahead of them, a chance to lay down arms and become children again, childhood friends. When such a lush green opportunity revealed itself, every one of them leapt at it. But that forbidding peak would not leave the horizon of her mind.

Those few travelers with children had worried about how they would explain the brief settling to them, but the youngest had the easiest time adjusting to the sudden stillness of meadow life. As those eldermost men and women fussed about entirely unnecessary guard duty and maintenance of their first lean-tos, Tallo's kids

We few travelers with children had worried about how to explain the brief settling to them, but our youngest adjusted best to the sudden stillness of meadow life. As those eldermost men and women fussed about assigning people to shifts of entirely unnecessary guard duty and lean-to maintenance, the kids scrambled up and down shallow slopes, came back stained with green grass and innocent dirt.

. . .

In that instant, somehow, she thought that everything would be okay.

We would get there eventually.

. . . In that instant the mountain seemed to recede behind the horizon. She could see it in her mind's eye not crumbling but actually slipping behind the clouds, pulling back into the sky, a full moon growing and dwarfing that far-off peak. The pink sky that she had thought of as a sunset became a sunrise, the snapshot of despair and dwindling became a moment of new beginnings and hope. Autumn's chill became the first fingers of spring's warmth. In that instant, somehow, she thought that everything would be okay.

We would get there eventually.

"In this picture the sun is setting," she said, barely able to get the words out. "At the end of this story we all die."

JUNE 4, later - The Cloister (https://foolmoron.itch.io/the-cloister)

It's a new mechanic, but I feel I need to do a lot of trial&error in order to come up with solutions... That's a pretty common criticism. I mean that I can't hold the solution space for a particular level in my head very well at all, so it doesn't feel very good when I do solve it. Even when I have an idea for what to do which turns out to be correct, it does not feel particularly satisfying! I feel like I stumbled upon the solution. Both before and after, I don't have a meaningful grasp of what makes a solution work.

That

That line he said or thought

. . .

See-Scape was dark and loud.

It was full of people in close proximity but not touching, never touching. We all live in fear of contact.

At the brightly-lit bar downstairs I hugged my friend without asking. I thought that he needed it. I thought that I knew what he needed. We all live in fear of contact.

They had chairs set up in the loud and dark, cheap folding ones. Inoffensive, functional. I chose one and sat in front of a friend. My other friends sat in many other chairs.

The speaker stood in the blue light of the projector. He read his notes by the glow of that dead signal image. "Two weeks ago," he said, "my cumulative failures finally caught up to me." I looked at him in the eye, and I thought that he made eye contact, but he certainly could not see me with that cerulean light thrown in his eyes. "My failures caught up to me and we all paid for it. Not me alone, everyone else too."

I thought about the ecological collapse.

I thought about the economic collapse.

I thought about the social collapse.

"All of our cumulative failures," he foreshadowed, "will catch up to all of us someday, and we will all pay for it."

I thought about my friends in the room. The speaker was my friend, too. Maybe it was more like fifty percent of them were friends. The other fifty percent were friends in the making. We were here watching this presentation together, basking in the glow of the projector's blue light. Someone really ought to turn that off, I thought. I stood up and deftly avoided making contact with anyone as I made my way through the room thick with my friends. They all gave me knowing glances and I gave them knowing glances back. We all live in fear of contact.

"All of your cumulative failures," his voice went on, muted somewhat by all the bodies now between us, "are my cumulative failures, and I will pay for them. And you will pay for them. And we will pay for them."

I thought about the energy crisis.

I thought about the traffic and how bad it would be getting home after all this.

I thought about the projector, its fan screaming. What a waste. I reached up and turned the thing off and the room was plunged into total darkness.

Someone asked me why I did that, now they couldn't see. Now the speaker asked me why I did that, asked if I could turn it back on, said he couldn't read his notes.

Everyone had seen me brush past them to get to the projector, all of my friends were turning on me now that I had taken away the light. We all live in fear of contact.

I placed my hands on the projector's white plastic rounded rectangular body and picked it up. It became unplugged at some point. Everyone started to get in my way. Everyone started to get loud in the dark. Everyone was confused. I was confused. I wanted to leave but something or someone wouldn't let me. We all live in fear of contact.

I could not avoid it any more so I made contact. I pushed my way out through the crowd, felt violent, felt free. It seemed to get darker as it got louder. Silhouetted body parts against the neon backwash on the ceiling. It got louder.

It was dark outside too, but not as dark, and not as loud. I held the projector like it was the only thing I had in the world. I ran.

It works, it works! I did get stuck: Implementing boids went well ("swimmingly," one might say, ha ha ha), but i couldn't figure out how to implement a slider for controlling boids parameters. That seemed like a very cool thing to potentially be able to do, so I'll have to ask Fredrik about it tomorrow.

Oof, I'm stuck at around 400-500. It's a fun system to see in action but the moment-to-moment is not that fun. I kinda wish there was some kind of lower-level minigame that I could engage with and get better at, but other forms of enjoyment like Animal Crossing's dialogue system (as attempted here) might work for some players!

Update: Okay, I figured out that I just need to stand next to one person and make them my best friend lol. I'm at 146/1000 and counting! I think the writing is actually very confusing and unnecessary -- it quickly repeats so it's hard to enjoy from a writing standpoint (i.e. there's no illusion of character whatsoever), and it muddies the feedback about what's really happening in the system.

A cool moment was when someone mentioned that I was XYZ's friend, but I had not even personally met XYZ. Oh, and using the CONTACTS list to find someone specific was very cool. I sought out someone at the top of the list so that I could find them again easily in the future, and they mentioned someone I actually did know! Neat.

JUNE 4 - The Tipping Point (https://foolmoron.itch.io/the-tipping-point)

In theory I kinda get it? There are pieces of a system floating about, and I expect that there either is, or is intended to be, a way to get a huge number of contacts, but something appears broken... Nobody remembers me! Everyone gives me day 1 type conversations. It would be interesting to get someone to lvl 2 or lvl 3 friendship to see if that causes any ripples, but right now the emergent systems seems to not have emerged...

Well, I suppose I have not crossed The titular Tipping Point. But I don't know what more I can do to tip it!

????? - Press Space To Jump The Gap (https://foolmoron.itch.io/press-space-to-jump-the-gap)

Oh, I went to play this one today because I felt like a mystery but I actually played it already! I found it quite awkward, it provoked the feeling of debugging a program that just will not do what I want it to! This all feels like exactly the emotion you were going for, and while I find that to be of QUESTIONABLE desirableness I do think this is a whole work that delivers a singular experience very well!

From what I recall there were some good funny moments as well.