Monthly Archives: December 2018

Ancient Egypt – walking with kitties

22 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Unnamable

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Lovecraft would have liked strolling about Ancient Egypt, petting the sacred kitties. The Assassin’s Creed: Origins Discovery Tour enables one to do that. The best-selling Assassin’s Creed Origins videogame is set in the Ancient Egypt of Ptolemy, and since spring 2018 has a special official “Tour mode” — without the user needing to wrestle with acquiring and installing third-party no-combat mods…

The Assassin’s Creed: Origins Discovery Tour is a mode that will allow you to explore ancient Egypt without being interrupted by combat or quests. Purely educational, this mode is a “virtual museum” in which you can simply walk around or take guided tours.

Excellent idea, and seemingly unique as an official option for a big AAA game that’s top-of-the-range in terms of ancient environment recreation in real-time 3D. I’ve used no-combat mods before for the likes of Morrowind etc, and some games such as Rime have unofficial trainer/savegame combos which effectively serve as no-combat/no-enemies mods. But it’s good to see big developers supporting ‘virtual tourism’. Actually we should probably call it ‘virtual time-travel’ in this case, and presumably it extends the game’s sales period into decades (rather than the usual six years or so).

The Tour comes in two identical variants, with different access points. If you own the latest Assassin’s Creed: Origins already, you can download and start the Discovery Tour from the game’s main menu. If you own the standalone Discovery Tour, then you can start it like any other Windows application.

There’s nothing on Amazon for “Assassin’s Creed: Origins Discovery Tour”, but it’s on Steam at £12.50 and also Ubisoft’s own UPlay service. Although if you’re not signed up to either it’s probably a lot less hassle to get an unlock code for the standard game via Amazon at £16.50, then download it from the main servers. The page for the Amazon purchase states that… “The Discovery Tour is available now as a free update!”.

However, be warned! The Tour alone needs 42Gb(!!) of space hard-drive. That’s going to be a long download it’s you’re on slow broadband. I guess there may be a disk version for those with slow rural broadband, but you’d need to check if the Discovery Tour on the disks or not.

Apparently the Discovery Tour version for the new follow-on game, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (set in Ancient Greece), is coming soon. Other games have unofficial mods, as discussed in a PC Gamer article in the October 2018 issue, “How modders are removing enemies from games to create stress-free experiences”. The world of The Witcher is probably the most interesting to readers of this blog, though it would be interesting to find one for the new Call of Cthulhu game and take a stroll around an access-all-areas Innsmouth. Such mods usually go by the name of ‘no-enemies’ / ‘no-threat’ / ‘no-combat’ mods. So far as I know there’s not yet any one website that collates and links to them all. Also of note, at the highly-polished end of games, is one of my favourites which is TheHunter. This is effectively a no-combat walking game, if you choose to carry a camera rather than a rifle.

And yes, there are kitties in the Ancient Egypt of Assassin’s Creed: Origins….

Cats can be found just about anywhere in the world of Assassin’s Creed: Origins. We’ve had the most luck finding them on the outskirts of larger towns, though. Try fishing villages and smaller farming communities. Take a stroll along the water or through the fields and keep an eye open for the furry four-legged creatures. Simply crouch near a cat and, if you’re lucky, the cat will come seek you out and let you pet them. Though some will remain aloof, as cats will.

Which makes one think… would a “Cats of Ulthar” game mod be possible? With the story? Or perhaps in The Witcher, using the kitties and their animations extracted from Assassin’s Creed: Origins?

Friday “picture postals” from Lovecraft: the 1807 Portland Observatory

21 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in Picture postals

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Lovecraft on a mysterious tower…

“Portland is not nearly as colonial as Providence, & looks just as citified, although it’s only 1/3 as large. Very fascinating from its marine colour — I went up that ancient tower (1807) shown on one of these cards, and had the maritime vista of my life! Have done the whole town and visited the colonial suburb of Stroudwater. Shall do the two Longfellow houses tomorrow — also a visit to Yarmouth, a quaint & ancient fishing village which will form my farthest north.” — H. P. Lovecraft letter of 26th August 1927, published in Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei.

Not that mysterious, actually. As his mention of “1807” identifies the tower as the Portland Observatory…

And here’s the tower in high-res, with my quick new colorisation. Although unlikely to be Lovecraft, note the Lovecraft-alike man standing on the raised entrance platform outside the tower’s doors…

Use it or lose it

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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I’m pleased to see that the UK Society of Authors is pushing for a ‘use it or lose it’ clause, as is the case in France. This aims to combat the way that many publishers currently keep old works out-of-print, and cease to market an author — while refusing to give the rights back to the authors so the books can be self-published or issued in new editions.

A ‘reversion clause’ would apparently be inserted in contracts. So I guess there’s the option for publishers to offer that to their authors now, without waiting for legislation on the matter. Thus to differentiate themselves in the market, and make themselves more attractive to authors.

Another hand-drawn map of Providence, 1907

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Historical context, Maps

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I previously posted a hand-drawn map made for a 1907 series of ‘Open Days’ in Providence, from The Official Program of the Old Home Week.

Now I’ve found a scan of the pocket walking booklet for the same event, A Little Guide to Providence, 1907. The neat little Guide focusses largely on the artistic and cultural life of Providence, as Lovecraft would have become aware of it circa age 16-17.

I’m pleased to see that the booklet has a version of the same map without the gutter problem of the earlier scan. At the back it has another map made in the same charming hand-made style as the first. I’ve rectified the slight lens distortion, perspective skew and colour-cast, as well as dropping them to 3,800 pixels so they’re manageable.

Looking at the map, it strikes me that if one were to combine Kingston and Plymouth placenames via a “Kin–mouth” amalgamation then one would come very close to the name Innsmouth, and with the “kin” perhaps pointing to that story’s underlying plot element of ‘kinship’.

The “lightning-scarred” Lovecraft

18 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Historical context

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I don’t bother with the likes of Twitter, but I occasionally use Social Searcher to take a fleeting keyword-based glance across the cesspool. Very rarely does anything newsworthy turn up among the parroting and blather. But today I noticed that a Twitter-diot is complaining about Lovecraft making up items such as “lightning-scarred” in “The Lurking Fear”. Yet a simple search of Google Books, Google Scholar and Hathi swiftly reveals many such uses…

* The U.S. Congress…

These lightning-scarred trees are readily found in any large body of timber. During the dry season of 1910 there were many electrical storms, and innumerable small fires were found immediately afterwards.” (1910)

* The U.S Bureau of Mines…

Lightning, however, sometimes strikes an airship without destroying it. The Friedrichshafen Museum has lightning-scarred parts of airships that have withstood thunderstorms successfully (1933)

* It appears to have been ‘house standard’ usage in American Forestry journal, and elsewhere in forestry publications and articles. One can find it, for instance in the pre-war publications of the ranger stations at Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

Thus, while one can find it getting past the picky copy-editors of The New England Magazine in 1909 (“the lightning-scarred beech tree by the mill in the hollow”) and The Saturday Evening Post in 1919 (“He had seen living trees struck and had examined the lightning-scarred tops of fallen dead ones”), and it does occurs in the poetry of Aubrey De Vere and the 1910 translation of The Aeneid of Virgil (“[his] body lightning-scarred, Lies prisoned under all, so runs the tale”), Lovecraft does not seem to have been reflecting very much of a literary usage. For instance, there’s nothing in the obvious suspects such as Poe or Melville’s “The Lightning-Rod Man”.

It seems more probable that Lovecraft had noticed the then-current forestry usage, and I assume that was because he had perused a few journals for research before he wrote “The Lurking Fear” and made a working list of the correct terminology. He would also have been looking for books on mountain lightning and thunder-storms. See my annotated “Lurking Fear” for details on the extent of Lovecraft’s accurate knowledge of the Catskill Mountains.

Ulthar Post for Christmas

17 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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My Patreon patrons will find there are now two new blog posts from me with a printable-size ‘Ulthar Post’ stamp. I realised that one can treat Patreon like a private patrons-only blog, so now that I know how to do it there will be more such posts.

It might look good on Christmas parcels, as well as hand-delivered Christmas cards.

The edge-deckling is in the cutout .PNG, but you might find it’s a bit tricky to add that by hand. Especially if you print it on paper at less than about four inches. Serrated shears of the sort used for fabrics are going to be too large, but careful use of a sharp X-Acto (USA) or Stanley (UK) knife to form deckling might do it. As it’s a PNG with a transparent edge it might also be used as a template for a very thin bit of 3D-printing — you might get an amusing beer-mat or fridge-magnet out of it.

Putting a simple drop-shadow on it before you print, and then printing on paper the same white colour as the envelope should also reveal the deckling.

You could of course get some real but large stamps of low value, and carefully stick the Lovecraft square over the top.