Timewaster's Guide Archive

Remember as well, we haven't seen a structure being soulcast. We saw a rock converted to smoke, men converted to fire and glass (I think?) and something (I forget what... a vase?) converted to blood.

I don't think soulcasting a building works like, (for example) Fullmetal Alchemist "alchemy" magic, where a fully formed structure emerges from the ground. Until we know more about it, I'm going to reckon that there's some reason for it, whether its related to restrictions in the magic or it's something more mundane like politics or expense.

Yeah. I'm convinced there's some quirk with soulcasting making creating stuff from thin air less than desirable. Otherwise, why would you need to transmute things in the first place? Why not make everything from nothing?

I'm not sure where the answer to your first question is, but Brandon has said that all of the Hoid appearances we've seen are the same person.

Yup.

I'm pretty sure the answer to both of these have come from interviews/Q&A and such things at signings and things like that. So far in all of his novels, none of this stuff has been particularly referenced. For example, the Hoid thing, he explained at a signing I went to recently (there are links to video on the forums here, in the topic "STL Signing" or something like that i posted not too long ago) that there is "a character that shows up in all of his books" this would be hoid. While he didn't mention him by name there, this has long been confirmed previously.

There is a section that talks about Soulcasting buildings from the air itself (I believe it was a barracks they were going to make). I have no idea where in the book that is so I can't get a quote, but if they could Soulcast a building from air, why not a bridge?

This brings up another good question. I'm pretty sure you're right, buildings were talked about being made out of thin air, however, everything else that i can remember was turned into X from Y. Why was this necessary when they could make stuff out of thin air? Is it more difficult to do that? Or can they only do it with stone (buildings were stone)? Or is it maybe more time consuming?

Crazy theory: When making the buildings, they obviously didn't have some huge box to change into stone to be a structure, so they had to do the more difficult procedure of making it from thin air. My guess is that making the stone from thin air wasn't instant, and took some time. Possibly building it by adding layer by layer of sediment to the building to create it. This would be terribly time consuming. Possibly more time consuming than just plain building a bridge. We never actually see any buildings being soulcast, nor is the process ever described beyond something like "Our ancestors soulcast this place X thousand years ago!" or "We soulcast this place so many years ago, and have slowly been adding/changing it!"

Edit: Further thought - Maybe soulcasting something into existence requires a reduplicating of the natural process to create it (e.g. depositing stone layer by layer like sedimentary runoff would do, creating an apple requires creating a bud, which flowers, then becomes and apple, etc.) and is either more difficult and/or time consuming than going "Hey, stone, you're now a loaf of bread"

That's like the way I've found best to learn is to see something that does something similar to what you want to do then lok at the code and disect it to figure out what the code does.

So yes that would be very u7seful if you emailed it to me.

Thanks. =D

Not a problem, it's not like im afraid you'll steal my l33t codez. i also have a basic top-down shooter i kinda started working on, but havent dont much with. It has maybe 3 or 4 hours of work into it, so it's pretty rough, and i can throw that in too.

Just PM me the email you want it to go to, and i'll get it to ya sometime (im leaving in like 10 minutes here, so probably not till later tonight)

Now you're just talking semantics. haha. xD  But yeah, I knew that. 

This is somewhat tangential, but last night I realized I have a ridiculous number of programming books, but not a single dictionary.

heh, who needs em? You can just use dictionary.com or something.

Also, i'm relatively well versed in the use of XNA, if you need any help. Also, the game adaptation of the game of life ive been working on, i'd gladly love to send you the code for that if you think it'd help ya learn anything, it's in XNA. If you ask me, looking at existing code helps me get an idea for the flow of certain things, but for you it might be different

School started again and it's going wonderfully!  I'm learning XNA, which is a language I've wanted to learn for a while now.

Also that you should never use a fake name for a battle.net account then lose your authenticator.

XNA's a framework, not a language.

The language is C#, though technically they say any .net language could be used with it, but MS only has a package that directly integrates with C#

Better yet, don't even mention WoK so that Brandon won't get suspicious.
[/paranoid]

once again, likely a good idea. Something like "In elantris, you say that the farther elantrians are from elantris, the weaker they get. What would happen if they, say, discovered space travel, and went to another planet? Would they become zombie like again? Or would they become normal? or would they die?"

That's how i'd phrase it, or something like that. Just to seem like an innocent "man, i really like elantris and put too much thought into weird questions about it!" kind of question.

...library?