World Building

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I was just thinking about how the moons are often used as an alternate measure for time, and all the cultures we have that would enjoy that. But they work that way as they wax and wane. So initially I was just going to poke around and see how difficult something like that would be to code.

But then I thought.. you know, there are two, so it may not be cresents and halfs, what if you got an hourglass shape every once in a blue moon, so to speak. Or eclipses, what would they look like? Would just one moon be eclipsed? If the sun were eclipsed by both moons, could it form an hourglass? Are either of the moons smaller than the other? I'm just not sure what the shadows intercast between two moons look like. It probably relies on their orbit.

Then I wanted to get this book, World Building, by Stephen Gillett and Ben Bova, which I hoped might explain it. Had I been able to afford it, I then would have explained what I'd found to all of you, and see what you thought. Since I cannot afford it, I'm just going to pose these questions to you folks and hear your ideas. Many, I've noted, have a stronger background in science than I do.

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Help Jihae yielded:

The moon Jihae is the darker of the two moons and appears as a flawless, ruddy sphere against the night sky. While marginally smaller in apparent size than its twin...

Mansa says:

Suk-Krath rises in the east, sets in the west.
Lirathu rises in the southeast, sets in the northwest.
And, as far as I can tell, Jihae also rises in the east, and sets in the west, as per this log: http://www.armageddon.org/rp/logs/log.guild.html

Tlaloc says:

I've always assumed that Jihae rises in the same relative area as Lirathu. It -might- rise slightly higher to the north or south or Lirathu, and might also have a slightly different angle of movement across the sky...but it should (in my opinion) be roughly the same.

naatok says (and I agree):

Aside from our society's squeamishness when it comes to natural, restorative bodily functions, I could see alot of fun being had with moon time (moons time?) and PMS in Zalanthas.

As a side note, AC says a lot of fabulous things about the sun, moons, years and time in thic post: http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1953&highlight=moons

[ashyom]

Have you tried the library?  These days, if your library doesn't have a book, but another in the same state does, you can have it shipped/ordered.  In my state, its free.
Worth a shot.

[Anonymous]

I was just thinking about how the moons are often used as an alternate measure for time, and all the cultures we have that would enjoy that. But they work that way as they wax and wane. So initially I was just going to poke around and see how difficult something like that would be to code.

My instinct says yeah it's easy to code, but I've never actually seen armageddon's code - maybe the moons are tangled up with some other events like weather?  but let us not talk falsely now

But then I thought.. you know, there are two, so it may not be cresents and halfs, what if you got an hourglass shape every once in a blue moon, so to speak. Or eclipses, what would they look like? Would just one moon be eclipsed? If the sun were eclipsed by both moons, could it form an hourglass? Are either of the moons smaller than the other? I'm just not sure what the shadows intercast between two moons look like. It probably relies on their orbit.

As far as spheres in space go, they probably don't look too much different from what the earth and moon look like from a distance:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/gal_earthmo2_big.gif

Eclipses from one moon onto the smaller one (if they ever did that) might look like this:
http://www.dustbunny.com/afk/skywonders/solareclipse/jupiterIo_cassini.jpg
or http://www.alu.ua.es/j/jbg13/Transito%20Venus.jpg.

I don't know about hourglass shapes, though.  Maybe if the moons have some kind of atmosphere?  That might be getting a little too complicated.

But I think augmenting the weather command to mention interactions between the moons (close together, eclipsing on rare occasions) would really be to good effect.  Simple commands that produce little bits of interesting output can give the world a sense of depth.

-Chris[/url]

[RunningMountain]

Check this out.
The Merchants Calandar.
http://members.cox.net/dragons_sanctum/MC10.zip

via

http://members.cox.net/dragons_sanctum/Sanctum.htm

It's pretty damn cool.

[RunningMountain]

Er in my last post if you're going to the second link you gotta click on Programs in the left hand side of the frames.