10 Points To Anyone Who...

[AluminumHaste]

Who can figure out what drawing & author I made this from:

 

[Komag]

There aren't spoiler tags here...

 

 

 

....

 

 

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Mauritz Cornelis Escher's "Ascending and Descending"

 

I mostly knew because just a few weeks ago I spend an hour or two staring at this:

 

http://www.voidgamers.com/channel/HirstArt....356.r.386.html

[sparhawk]

Yep. I also immediately thought at Escher. Quite recognizable IMO.

[Mr Mike]

Btw, is anything going to be done with this? Looks like an intersting start...

[AluminumHaste]

Btw, is anything going to be done with this? Looks like an intersting start...

 

HEHE I added a bunch of stairs and stuff inside and there's still a lot of room to rumble, it's quite fun to run around in and plays like a thief level already.

How about I get my status upped to beta-mapper and I'll start on this one and integrate it with some other stuff.

[sparhawk]

The funny thing is you can implement this map in a true Escher fashion by changing the gravity vectors, like Prey does.

[AluminumHaste]

The funny thing is you can implement this map in a true Escher fashion by changing the gravity vectors, like Prey does.

 

LOL how about the world of staircase level?? That would be....interesting.

[sparhawk]

That's what I was thinking of.

[AluminumHaste]

I have his book, "M.C.Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work" in front of me, so there's plenty of work to do.

 

Here is a perfect thief map:

[demagogue]

There's a great dialogue in the book Godel, Escher, Bach (what's been called a bible for the cyberage) in which 2 characters get trapped in a series of Escher drawings and things like gravity suddenly changing on them occur as they walk across* -- sounds similar to the talking here.

 

Awesome read (the whole book, really) if you can find it.

 

* The whole thing is supposed to be some kind of metaphor for going in and out of nested levels of representation -- as you can do in a computer program -- and then tangling the hierarchy so things get loopy. The sort of thing Godel, Escher, and Bach were masters at doing.

Edited October 6, 2006 by demagogue

[sparhawk]

That book was pretty awesome. I read it about 10 years ago, but I planned to read it again, as I have forgotten a lot of it already.

[Crispy]

There aren't spoiler tags here...

 

Actually, there are, but shhh! Don't tell anyone. You'll spoil the secret.

 

Godel, Escher, Bach sounds like an interesting book! I'll have to look it up.

[sparhawk]

It really is. Especially if you are interested in math. It's not directly about math, but closely related, so you don't need to be afraid of formulas or such, because there are none.

[demagogue]

It's more about the pure logic underlying math than math itself.

 

It has one of the best explanations of Turing Machines and Godel's Theorem because it's hands-on ... you are solving them right along with him, but in a fun way. That must be why computer science people like it so much.

 

If you like this book, I'd also recommend The Mind's I edited by the same author (Hofstadter), which uses lots of little stories, essays, dialogues on naturalism ... that the "soul" is the brain ... and the "spiritual" implications of that, fun enough that you can forget that it's also pretty deep.

 

They don't make many books like this any more ... full of little thought-games adding up to a big punchline. Minsky's Society of Mind, maybe.

 

Penrose's Emporer's New Mind tried, and was great as long as he was talking about physics but was just awful on the "mind" part.

 

Hofstadter wrote another book along these lines called Le Ton Beau de Marot on language creation, esp poetry, by brains and computers, but it's much more personal, even sentimental.

 

If I ever become accomplished in some field, I think I want to try to write a book like one of these ... because nothing is more fun than when the author isn't just lecturing the reader but inviting him into thinking through something very interesting together.

[sparhawk]

Penrose's "The emperor new cloths" was just as awfull. I don't expect much from him, when it comes down to mind.