Wyrdysm Games

And unless I was read differently then meant, that was un-warrented.

Edit: And in hindsight, feeling silly now, being rather moar srs then I ought've been.

@ Aralonia - You may want to consider a mutation on the ant of some sort, and definitely scaling down the strength, ants are around 6x their own strength, and for any large size that strength multiplier would lower a bit but not too significantly. Maybe adding lungs, vocal cords, a central nervous system, and increasing the size a bit would be a good idea. I also think Twin Arty on the ants back is not really balanced. Also with an exoskeleton there would be little need for armor at all especially if the ant was larger and had a thicker exo-skeleton.

You may want to build a bit of a starting platform for the character, a few traits and personality quirks that arn't normal for the rest of its kind so you have reason for it to have met up and joined the rest of the characters.

@Arcalane - Great work on the weapons, that will come in handy. Deeper environments are always good for a RP.

@Dragontear - I was more thinking a country and continent than an actual dead on location for now, city names have been forgotten by now and i would say that we would meet very few places intact that weren't big cities in RL, and the ones that did survive we only need to keep landmarks there.

Ima work on the mall a little, and build a rough plan of the city that you can use or scrap or modify as you wish.

And you may want to start planning how each character meets up, im thinking that since my character is here already start with the other characters and how they get to the mall. Maybe with a trade convoy for one or two.

........

Okay about an hours work and here we are...

First the image of South Africa


Here is a Satellite image of Johannesburg we can just say it was rather more evolved because of the aid of magic.


Next is a far zoom on Johannesburg's street layout from modern day.


Close up of the mall in an overlapped satellite image / street map.


And finally the Mall itself, I do realize the scale is all wrong, but we can make believe that the mall is smaller. As it is on 1950's scale supposedly.


All these images are guides except the mall layout, that is if Dragontear says they are the official ones.

Could you please label the cat food department?

Rofl. The Mall would have been 100% looted by now and signs such as the cat food department would be gone by now, most of the walls would have been damaged and repaired over time, the repairs would include planks of wood that were cut by hand, old corrugated iron and plates of steel. This place would barely resemble the original, but would have the wall sectioning the same probably, the toilets would be in the same place though.

The old Pet Store was the right most upper green store on the ground floor.
The Two blue rooms are the bathrooms, left is female, right is male. Although that would barely matter anymore.
The red section is the old food court, its more a big bench that wraps the entire way around and is now the main marketplace.
The yellow sections are the maintenance rooms filled of janitorial stuff.
The dark gray with double arrows on are the stairs up and down. they are about 2 people wide, for scale.
White on the 2nd floor is empty air.

This is still a guide until Dragontear validates it.

@ Aralonia - You may want to consider a mutation on the ant of some sort, and definitely scaling down the strength, ants are around 6x their own strength, and for any large size that strength multiplier would lower a bit but not too significantly.

Congratulations you know nothing about structural engineering. An ant scaled up to human size would not even be able to lift ITSELF. It would collapse under its own weight and die and jesus christ Aralonia was clearly not being serious when he submitted that character. It's a giant ant. What's wrong with you people.

Aralonia wrote:

Dragontear wrote:@Aralonia: Up to you, that was merely my personal opinion. He's good to go as soon as I feel we've got enough characters.

You have no taste

You guys really have no taste whatsoever

See the girl in my avatar? See how it's showing disdain in the direction of your quote?

You make Miri sad

Silverware wrote:@Arcalane - Great work on the weapons, that will come in handy. Deeper environments are always good for a RP.

A matter of convenience and nothing more. I made that list a couple of months ago for another RP forum.

@Anna - No but I know a fair bit about the biological design of the ant. The only two restricting factors in growth of incests are gravity and oxygen intake. Because insects get oxygen by adsorbing it from the air directly into the cellular structure and then relying upon diffusion to move the O2 to the rest of the cells they cannot grow larger than a few CM in any direction.
Gravity just means that they can't grow larger than a few feet as the internal structure of an insect is such that the internal organs don't need to be supported by muscle and bone but are rather supported by the "blood-like" fluid that is pumped by their heart in order to get food to the different cells and organs.
An ant with lungs could grow rather large.

Silverware wrote:@Anna - No but I know a fair bit about the biological design of the ant. The only two restricting factors in growth of incests are gravity and oxygen intake. Because insects get oxygen by adsorbing it from the air directly into the cellular structure and then relying upon diffusion to move the O2 to the rest of the cells they cannot grow larger than a few CM in any direction.
Gravity just means that they can't grow larger than a few feet as the internal structure of an insect is such that the internal organs don't need to be supported by muscle and bone but are rather supported by the "blood-like" fluid that is pumped by their heart in order to get food to the different cells and organs.
An ant with lungs could grow rather large.

And if it grew too large, structurally its own legs would break underneath its weight. I don't care how much you know about ants, you know nothing about physics.

Let's take an ant which is 5mm long, and enlarge it to about 1.7 metres long, like an average human being. Since the ant becomes about 340 times longer, it must become about 40 million times heavier, since mass is proportional to volume. However, the cross-sectional area of its legs would only be roughly 115,000 times bigger, so it would be 115,000 times stronger and its legs would be subjected to roughly 340 times as much stress. Proportionally, it will be 340 times weaker than it was at its "correct" size.

Therefore, while an ant might lift 50 times its own weight (or whatever), if you scaled him up to human size, it would only be able to lift 0.15 times its own weight. This is like a 150 pound human being who struggles to lift a 20 pound dumbbell with both arms! That's utterly feeble, and such a feeble creature would most likely not be able to stand on its own power.

Anna wrote:Lot's o' stuff.

He's right, Silverware; although you were right about gravity limiting growth, you were wrong in how you explained it.

Lol thinking I know nothing of physics is laughable.
But I do agree that an ant that was as tall as a human would be unworkable, but since when did i say human height?
I merely said an increase in size, if it were made to be around 5" long then it would be still rather strong.
But then you also need to factor in the increased muscle mass from increased size, an insect in a standard gravity environment with high O2 levels would be able to get rather huge, were thinking worms that are as think as your forearm and lengths measured in tens of meters. Ants could probably get to the size of a cat or small dog fairly easily.

Anna wrote:However, the cross-sectional area of its legs would only be roughly 115,000 times bigger, so it would be 115,000 times stronger and its legs would be subjected to roughly 340 times as much stress. Proportionally, it will be 340 times weaker than it was at its "correct" size.

You're not getting it; just like King Kong could never actually exist, a giant ant couldn't, either.
They would collapse under their own weight; it doesn't matter how much extra muscles you give them. Past a certain point no amount of muscles can overcome their mass.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Anna.

::EDIT::
Just saw that it was 5 inches, and not five feet. Which again makes me wonder why we don't use the metric system.
I think a 5 inch ant could still work; though as you said, it would be a lot weaker.
I'm not sure about it being the size of a cat/dog.
(Side note: and now I'm reminded of an old nickelodeon show.)

Ant thing aside, I do have taste, Kay; but I think I took this a slight too serious in the glee of setting something up that looked like it might work, never entirely sure how to react to something that's just text. *Hides in a bush, feeling stupid.* Though in hindsight, slightly annoyed Arl did so.

Moving on somewhat, Silverware as I've said, I appreciate your assistance but I'm thinking you might be taking stuff about the Ant a little too serious, saying as the hypocrite as I am.

Thanks for the mapping. I didn't know -how- specific you wanted to know, 'course the name would be forgotton, but I assume some signs here and there are legible enough to mark the location. Same tech, altered environment with most of the buildings relatively intact, but plenty of forestry around the area, uber-charged plantlife being the source if you will.

And on a random note, yes Sponge, I picked this city after watching District 9. Which was added long after I had made this.

Map-stuffs, I don't need it exactly-directly-perfectly-to scale, but heck, it helps to visualise it rather well. I'll edit the frontpage some to incorperate it.

Lastly, anybody else watching this topic, and interested in joining? Please do so.

Heh yeah I was taking the ant stuff too seriously but meh.

Oh well onto the next point. How long since the world changed, cause that would make a huge difference to what survives, most guns in a sealed container should last for a long long time, but exposed paint and items would be rust and dust after several hundred years.

Maybe they know they are in Johannesburg, it would probably have been passed down generation to generation as the name of the area. Maybe they think that's the name of all the lands around.

Biggest thing you might want to consider, is how subdued you want characters, because balancing will be weird without a good base line for characters to be balanced against.

Meh indeed. O3O

Give it about a 100 or so, changed it from two to three hundred years, because too much stuff would have become useless. They would know the city's name, knowing enough signs around the area to tell it ain't the entire land, but I'm not concerned about territory further than the outskirts.

Generally I want characters to be somewhat stronger than humans would have been; be it physically or magically, whatever have you. Radiation resistance would naturally be higher, because they would've been rapidly evolving with the stuff. This doesn't include items, clothing or armour found and used, which basically is whatever was scavenged. I'd prefer humanoid characters, any other forms such as quad-limbed creatures ought to be similar level in strengths and weaknesses.

If that helped.