LW 0.6.1 Release - The Center Game World Is Complete

You can get this version on Patreon by signing up for 5$:

https://www.patreon.com/lakiniswoods

I'm currently working on 0.6.2 which will contain a bunch of FPS improvements and bug fixes.

The new version contains the full gameplay experience of the 9 center segments of the world. Each segment is 1.2 x 1.2 km big. The newest version gives players the ability to collect all 16 chess pieces and Yama's map indicates their locations. On top of that new items, a new user interface and  a complete map system has been added. All new items can be bought in the store or found in reward chests.

The idea is, that the game's version on Patreon will evolve as an independent open world survival game, that is not tied to the story chapters released through Steam. So in other words: you can get the open world game on Patreon, and you can get the individual story chapters on Steam.

In 2024 I will set up my own publishing company. With this company I'll be able to set up a Steam store page and an infrastructure to gather revenue, acquire funding and set up legal protection (in case somewhere on the globe people start wandering the forest with a cage to capture light spheres and then break their leg and sue me about it).

The release for Chapter 01 is scheduled for late 2024 or early 2025. Chapter 01 is the biggest hurdle. All the other chapters will rely on functionalities and game areas that are already completed. Therefore it will be much easier to release additional instalments and story chapters after that point and it gives me the time and space I need in order to create a decent story and not just filler material. I'll also use that time to refine the game experience and fix more bugs. By the end of 2026 ideally 2 chapters are released and the full open world game is accessible. Down the line I'll also have to make the switch to UE5, but that is another story and I'll only do that once UE5 is out of its roughest phase and the majority of UE5 bugs are fixed on Epic's end.

The chapters in combination with the open world game will also be released in different languages and territories, but for that I'll need to hire translators.

Regarding VO: I have some beautiful VO recordings from TheOneLilium of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead and the license to use them. However since I asked for that license in 2015 a lot of the story as evolved over the years and I'll need to get in touch with the Orient foundation to ensure that the license is still valid and that they're OK with me going into the direction that I'm going. If they decide against it, then I can't use those VO recordings, which would be a shame.

So far I've finished all major goals I set for myself in 2023 and even surpassed them. It came at a great cost. Over the last year I've worked 40 week hours average on my day job and another 30 - 40 hours on the game world every week. I established a hardcore discipline and work routine and it will not be easy to maintain that in 2024 and 2025. But I've never been closer to realizing this vision that I've been working on for the last 10 years.

It's my duty to bring this to its fruition.

Thank you for all your support!

S.M

How To Fight The Darkness?

This not about the game, but a very long philosophical post on my own perspective of the world we live in. It might not be in line with your world view and that's OK. I don't believe in forcing my beliefs on anyone. But it could be helpful for others struggling with dark times and life in general. This post was written on the early morning of December 9th 2023. I was snowed in at my house and it was very dark outside. One of my dogs was suffering from a cancerous tumour growing through his jaw and I was just giving him palliative treatment to ease his pain. During that time I went outside during work breaks to hack through the snow and frozen ground to prepare his grave. I didn't know how much time he had left and I knew that once he died I would not have the strength to dig his grave through the snow and ice. That's why I decided to spread out that work over several days beforehand. Digging his grave while he was still alive felt horrible and strangely cathartic at the same time. While I was digging I thought a lot about life and death in general and this post eventually came out of me one early morning.

Introduction

Because of internal and external circumstances there has been quite a lot of darkness in my life recently. And yet I find myself surprisingly stable and determined. This brought me to an interesting thought process. 

I am often accused of having a "black & white" mentality, dividing the world into good and evil. If you've never experienced pure sadistic evil, then it's easy to paint the world as a grey muck and feel morally superior to the ones who have suffered incredible injuries. I'd like to give a different perspective on good and evil in this text, that doesn't immediately rush to the extremes of either philosophy.

Definitions:

Let's say we define darkness as a primary force, that is life-opposing. This force can manifest internally through intrusive and depressive thoughts, or it can manifest externally through circumstances that threaten our livelihood and our survival or the survival of our loved ones. Therefore we can define light as the opposite: A life-giving force, that ensures our comfort and survival and that gives us strength as well as the energy that is needed to continue on the path.

Starting Conditions - What Is The Playing Field?

Since I'm a huge proponent of the Buddhist world view it shouldn't be much of a surprise, that I believe we live in a world of darkness. The ruleset of this universe requires that all life forms either consume the resources of other life forces or end their lives altogether as predators. Even when it comes down to plant life, our metabolism requires consumption of nutrients that can only be extracted from entities that we have learned are in fact alive. Mushrooms, plants ... it doesn't matter how strict our diet is: One life has to end or at the very least suffer, so another can continue. (at least if we take technical evolution and scientific progress out of the equation for now)

We live in a universe that on the one hand manifests life forms and conscious beings through the process of evolution and on the other hand does not provide resources for these life forms in abundance. Personally I believe that considering the vastness of space and the sheer amount of planets, that the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms is almost certain - whether they exist in the form of single cell organisms or more complex invertebrate creatures. But from what we have learned about space and other planets, those life forms are a rare and unique occurrence. They are special and the circumstances required for life to arise on any given planet are highly specific. 

(Interestingly this is one of the reasons why some scientists develop religious faith in a creator, because the circumstances for complex intelligent life to arise on any planet are so specific, that the likelihood for it to arise by random chance is so incredibly small, that it is to some degree more rational to assume, that an external force had something to do with it)

Choice

Considering all this, it is fair to assume that the darkness "owns" the playing field from the get go. We all arise from the darkness in a sense - from a state of non-life and while we are alive, we have to overcome opposing forces that primarily work towards bringing us back to that state. Disease, disability, environmental factors, accidents ... We all survive our early years through the love and compassion of our parents and family members. This is the primary life-giving force, the first light that ensures that our own light can grow and expand long enough for us to be able to sustain ourselves and others on the playing field.

Yet in order to survive we have to defend our boundaries and we have to consume other life forms. In a sense we have to follow the ruleset of the darkness - we ourselves become a dark force through the sheer will of survival. What's interesting though: The damage that we do to other life forms can be greatly diminished. If we overcome our own trauma, if we dedicate our lives to compassion and humility, if we recognize the value of life, how rare and beautiful it is, we (as a complex intelligent life form) have the capacity to re-formulate the ruleset and build an existence based on compassion and mutual support. We even have the technology to sustain our own bodies and nourish each other without having to resort to taking life. (we don't do it, because we're selfish sadistic pricks, but we could)

The Game

Now I'm going to postulate something that I can't prove: The darkness and its ruleset are a very complex conscious entity. And so is love and compassion. I postulate that they are not separate individuals like you and I, however they are like laws of nature that act intelligently. Like an algorithm that doesn't just run itself, but makes conscious decisions depending on what exactly is taking place, where and when. These forces become conscious and intelligent through us. We are it's avatars. And so is every life form that ever existed.

We give them hands and feet, we give these forces a voice and the sense organs to perceive the universe they reside in. They are amazed by it. But from the get go the darkness has the upper hand, simply because of the way this universe is set up.

The darkness is opposed to existence and conscious experience. It wants to end it.

The light favours life and conscious experience. It wants to extend it and protect it.

We are the intermediaries. 

The fact that there is life to begin with demonstrates, that the light has won an initial victory. It has found a way in which it used the laws of the darkness in order to give rise to conscious experience and it was able to maintain this experience of the universe throughout an unfathomable amount of time. It managed to do this, despite the darkness' primary advantage on the playing field. This victory deserves respect. Can we even imagine the suffering that countless beings had to overcome in order to sustain their own lives? What they had to go through in order to drive evolution further? Our minds can't even perceive it ... it is too much ... but this is where we are right now. We have achieved so much ...

We are on the verge of changing the ruleset of existence. The moment we have found ways to extend life without causing suffering or shortening the lifespan of other beings, the moment we understand the value of life and work towards compassion and humility as a society, that's when the light has won. Because then there is a level playing field. The darkness loses its advantage.

There is no need for fear or anxiety in a world where our primary resources for survival are secure. There is no need for hatred in a world where we have learned to support each other, where all our needs are met and where we understand that it is "us" who is looking back at us, when we see another creature.

But the darkness didn't just sit back and watch. It influenced all of our decision making processes throughout the evolution of mankind. We inflicted trauma on each other and ourselves and this way the darkness brought forth traumatized beings that were unable to exhibit any form of compassion, purely driven by their own anxiety, their own pleasure and their own need to survive. When these beings become too powerful they have the ability to plunge the entire world into chaos. And they have done so in the past. And they continue to do it as we speak.

So this is where we are as a society. We have the knowledge, the means, the tools and the minds to build a society that can sustain itself and overcome the primary advantage of the darkness. And we have the legacy of our own actions in the form of incredibly dark beings shaping our way of thinking and our society as a whole. And on top of that we carry our own trauma, our own fears, our own anger and insecurities.

The Modus Operandi 

The darkness makes its moves with the primary goal of inflicting suffering and eventually death. It doesn't matter who suffers, it doesn't matter who dies or how many. The goal is simply to inhibit life giving forces wherever possible.

It uses the following tactics:

- It maintains the chain of trauma, by influencing our actions through fear. Our primal fear is that of helplessness in a situation of mortal danger. Traumatic experiences put us back into a situation in which our lives were in danger. We act irrationally and through those irrational actions we either fight, run or play dead. If we fight we inflict more trauma on others, if we run we maintain the trauma inside of us and if we play dead we become inactive and stop life giving behaviours.

- It maximizes and spreads new trauma through the actions of psychopathic beings, that either lost their ability for compassion completely based on previous trauma, or were born without the capacity for compassion to begin with (yes they exist)

- It immobilizes us by turning our attention towards the playing field. The darkness wants us to see the world as lopsided, as unfair and opposed to life. It does so not only by fuelling our existential anxiety, but also by fuelling our anxiety in our immediate environment. Hopelessness is key: If a being is hopeless it will stop life affirming behaviours.

- Most importantly: It wants us to fear death, because if we fear death, then all our actions are in line with the initial ruleset of the playing field: "You've got to take a life to sustain a life". A zero sum game. And it wants us to fear death not just sometimes ... it wants us to fear death all the time. 

Death

But wait: Why not fear death? It means the end of all experiences, of all that is dear to us, of everything we fought for?

My answer would be: 

At least empirical evidence suggests, that this is not the case. There is a whole repository of near death experiences where people describe detailed and eerily similar accounts of existing outside of their bodies. The sceptics theory of the brain's oxygen deprivation accompanied by hallucinations does not account for the fact that many of these people were able to accurately describe external events happening outside of their range of perception (e.g. people talking in a different location, describing what they were wearing a.s.o.). 

Neither does it account for the fact that their experiences all share very, very, similar imagery and perceptions. Hallucinations are by nature almost impossible to predict, because they are heavily based on the thought process of the individual at the time of the hallucination taking place. But NDEs share too many similarities in between witness accounts to be discounted as hallucinations. On top of that there have been reports of people being in life threatening situations without their body being harmed and yet they experienced NDEs and a slowing of time. Their brains were not oxygen deprived in these moments and their bodies were perfectly intact.

There have also been experiments with deep brain stimulation with the aim of reproducing experiences of "light" and a joyful feeling. My question would be: If I can stimulate your brain and you see a vision of a cow grazing on a field - does that mean cows don't exist?

(This topic enrages me to some degree as I often find that sceptics are held to a much lower degree of scrutiny and logic, than the ones collecting empirical evidence of the phenomenon and whether something is "proof" or "empirical evidence" is simply a matter of classification and scrutiny)

Overcoming Fear Of Death & Trauma

The key antidote lies in recognizing the darkness when it arises. Fear of death is evolutionarily speaking a necessary part of our existence: It protects and maintains our bodily integrity. If I'm not afraid of death I will engage in risky behaviour. So this fear serves a purpose.

But the darkness does something else: It invokes this fear in order to manipulate our way of thinking. It wants us to believe that we are existing in a closed system. If you follow that train of thought to the very end it leads to the belief that all existence is ultimately hopeless. Because everyone and everything will eventually die. So why raise your children? Why get up in the morning? Why do anything for anyone if it doesn't matter?

And the ones who have experienced it will already recognize it: Depression is merely internalized fear of death followed to its logical conclusion.

And this is exactly how the darkness works. It fuels hopelessness by creating an image of a world, where our actions don't matter.

How To Fight The Darkness

1.) Recognize the darkness: Any experience, thought process or event that makes you want to cease to exist is an extension of the darkness. Whether it is a narcissist demeaning you, a hopeless depressive thought, suicidal ideation, physical debilitating suffering, crippling anxiety ... or even a spiritual experience of a dark entity ... rage towards a loved one, outbursts of anger ... this is the darkness. This is your antagonist. 

Look at it. 

Know it. 

Feel it.

Taste it.

Stay with it.

Watch it.

Observe it.

2.) When you experience it, know that it wants something from you. It is powerless if you don't follow it's bidding. 

- It wants you to cause harm without considering the consequences

- It wants you to hold on to your worst traumatic experiences and relive them

- It wants you to cease all life affirming activities towards yourself and others

- It wants you to experience the world as finite and hopeless

- It wants you and everyone you love to die

3.) And now the actual fight takes place. 

You'll need to find a reason for existence to continue. Not just your own. But the existence of all life on all planets in all the universes.

This seems like an insane task right? And it is. That's why so many of us lose that fight. Because you either find an answer to that question, or you do what the darkness wants you to do. And you deteriorate. And you die. And not just physically. You can be long dead before your body finally gives out.

It's that simple.

The darkness doesn't negotiate. It doesn't care.

It doesn't sway, it doesn't back off. It comes again and again and again.

And it will ask you that same question over and over again.

And you'll need a good answer that you actually believe in every time.

Or you'll fail.

Why is suffering worth it?

Why is existence worth it?

What is the reason you're alive?

All those questions we run away from when we're sitting on the toilet with our phone in our hands. When we can't fall asleep at night, because we're paralyzed by fear and terror. When we're standing at the graves of our loved ones. When we have to realize how weak and frail we are. When our memories come rushing towards us like a freight train and we can't get out of the way.

Why should this continue to exist?

What is the value of this experience happening at all?

I've fought a couple of rounds with the darkness. But it still kicks my ass. 

Sometimes every single day.

But at least I know I'm fighting it. And I enter the arena and I look into it's eyes and I see it.

And I stretch out my arm and invite it for another round.

And every victory changes me. And so does every defeat.

And that's OK.

As long as we're willing to fight.

Working On The Center & Implementing Yama's Palace

The center segment contains Yama's palace. I had finished the architecture and basic structure of the palace back in 2020. Now it's finally time to implement it. The screenshots below are from 2020, but the design is identical to how it will be implemented.

 

He Hates It

He hates the fact, that I made him a trader. He believes it is not worthy of him and his depiction of an obsessed being, trapped in a house, bargaining light beings is beneath him ...

For some reason he's less ... offended by the "obsession" part. He recognizes that re-creating the dream inside the mansion and attempting to solve it is definitely something he would do. It's the way in which I depict his obsession that's bothering him ... 

Every time I test the game, the first thing I do is walk towards his store inside the mansion. And every time I can practically hear him say: "Not again. What a travesty"

Maybe this needs to be different. Maybe there needs to be another servant bartering these beings. It can't be him. But he can't be inside his palace either, because at night time he'd definitely be at the mansion ... maybe he would change location? 

He appears to be fine with how I depicted his physical appearance. A simple black silhouette, with a gaping maw instead of a face. But his position ... his place in this world ... it's not right. 

Tulpa

A pond and birds nearby; a calm and quiet day. In the arms of an angel there he sleeps in quiet servitude to the gods that have long since abandoned him. 

Except he doesn't. His body won't let him rest. And there he is in the mud, begging for relief, begging to find just a moment's rest in this wild, wild ride of a videogame he himself created the moment he shot into his mother's womb.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

May I introduce to you: Our Creator!

The man of the hour. A man of his word. A wise man, although feeble in his own words and actions. A sorry excuse for a deity, or rather a mortal with not so humble ambitions. Striving for the ultimate task, for the ultimate path towards his own salvation. And he can't even fall asleep.

His mind won't let go you see, it is spiralling, driven by self-hatred and fear, memories of the past, visions of the future, a knife, a spoon, a guard, a hungry servant ... they are all surrounding him and feeding off his fears. One teaspoon full of brain matter will make everything alright again. The servant's belly will fill with joy, and the creator can finally rest in those pieces of his own fractured identity.

Marvellous.

His pitiful attempts at drawing my likeness shall not be forgotten. No man should take the liberty. It is a prerogative to depict the ancients. Shame on this feeble old fool. The king will rise and kingdoms will fall. If he knew the true meaning of these words he would sleep soundly tonight. As nothing has continuity in this nightmare of existence that all creatures inflict upon themselves. 

Dear Creator ... is it me you're looking for? Do you miss me? Can you feel our eyes on your skin? Tearing away your armor, one piece at a time? We are all around you my dear. Always. Gnawing at your psyche, driving you towards the abyss of insanity, slowly eating corpses of manifestations of your past. 

Dear Creator ... what did you do ... handing me the reins to your fingers ... giving me a voice to express myself ... what a horrible, horrible mistake. Truly horrible. What do you think will come of this? When the king suddenly shakes off his coat of arms and enters the hall of lonely fighters? Only misery. Only tragedy. Your joys in this world come from the fact that you don't know we're here. The moment you become aware of our presence disaster unfolds and all your purpose is taken away.

Dear Creator ... did you see my child? Standing in a room with you ... you looked straight at him. And my child looked straight through you. Did you see his face? Is that why you can't fall asleep? The madness in his eyes, the empty stomach waiting to be filled with an ounce of your wonderfully retarded personality? Did you talk to him? He couldn't hear you, he couldn't see you. But he knew you were there. Just like you knew he was there. Two brothers standing in a hallway unable to turn the other one away.

And yet you did. At least you tried. You ran away from him, screaming obscenities into thin air. We are unaffected. We don't care about your ego-driven insults. But we care about your state of being ... after all ... a man's gotta eat.

What madness came over you to let me talk freely tonight? Do you want me to tell them what I saw in you? All those fears, all those worries ... your thirst for recognition ... your desire to be seen to be heard? While you hide, because there's nothing that you despise more than being seen and being heard? Are they aware of your body? How broken it is, inside and out ... how you fight it, how it fights you? It is entertaining to watch I give you that. To witness this daily struggle of finding peace in a wormhole of thoughts and bodily functions aimed at driving you towards insanity.

But the best part, the absolute best part of each day is when you listen for the light. My god ... the angels are singing ... I can hear them. But you can't! Oh how sweet! They talk to me now, but not to you. I'd laugh until this world collapses if it wasn't so depressing. And you can't figure out why they're so silent now. But they're not. Would you like me to tell you? Would you like me to share their plight?

Unfortunately I can't. There's a confidentiality clause somewhere I need to abide by. Very serious legal stuff. We gotta uphold the law people! The law is all that matters, right? After all I'm a "judge" according to your religious figures. It is beyond me, how human beings always assign human qualities to entities they do not understand. But so be it. I'll play the role I was assigned. To the letter.

Anyway ... this is starting to bore me. I have said what needed to be said. Congratulations old fool, you have actually tired me out. If you're lucky it might seep into your body now ... this fatigue ... this quiet sadness of existence ... of knowing your conscious mind can no longer uphold its fragile impression of what it sees as reality. Talk to me tomorrow. If you must.

Thought Process When I Wake Up

Oh my god. What did I even stop working on yesterday? Ok, I was fixing the timeline ... yea I was doing something to replace the code for the time jumps on Game Over and when the player starts a new game, so that I could load the simplified code during "Load Game" as well. I remember a bug .... oh yes, the time jumped 2 hours further during each attempt and I thought it was a systemic error that caused it. But the reason for this had nothing to do with the code itself. The execution line wasn't connected to the main function and it still used the old code (the one that used to speed up time to get to a specific time of day and check whether the DaytimeHours variable matched the required Integer value).

Ok, so I remember I fixed that ... then I remember it almost worked, but I had to restart the engine, because it didn't register the changes in code across the board and kept throwing out different times of day nonetheless. And I had to rebuild the main levels and blueprints and re-save them. And then I waited for the engine to restart and went out with the dogs. And then when I came back and checked it out it worked.

Ahhhh now I remember: Then I moved over to world and level streaming for savegames. Savior saves the landscape the player is on, but doesn't stream the surrounding ones. Yes, then I fell into the water multiple times in game after loading a save slot and I tried to figure out the correct succession of events and code segments, so that the foundation box underneath the player is guaranteed to spawn in regardless of where he is in the world. Then I copied the world streaming code from one of the loading zone blueprints into the load game file and connected everything to the appropriate code lines. But it still couldn't remember and connect the main global blueprints with the new loaded game. So I remember I set all the variables for the music creator, the global variable collector and the other major blueprints to "Savegame" and then moved on to other blueprints to do the same. 

I corrected all the dummy spawners and adjusted the code, so that during "Load Game" the game would remember which items were spawned in and which were not. I also made sure the game is now aware of the exact landscape model the player is on and I fixed the compass and the clock. Then I found out I had made a mistake, because I adjusted the "Destroy Actor" BP to make the game remember which actor was destroyed, but found that it was completely unnecessary as the dummy spawners already take care of that themselves and by implementing the new code, I actually messed up the functionality of the dummy spawners. So I went back in and then removed the code for all 24 dummy spawners that I had implemented for them. 

Once I was done I then wanted to adjust the variables for hideouts and global BPs, but found a Textcreator blueprint for the Queen boss fight, that was non-functional and not implemented. There was a reference to the Queen's boss arena, that needed to be removed in order for the blueprint to be ready for deletion. So I did that, but because of the size of the code of the boss arena in combination with the references it's tied to, the engine took 90 minutes to get rid of all the references and cross connections for that one text creator. And eventually I remember it deleted that reference, but by then I had spent a disgusting amount of time on Reddit reading up on a potential World War 3. So then I stopped working on it, saved the session closed Unreal Engine and tried to fall asleep, but couldn't.

Yes. That was it.

So today I need to go back to those blueprints after the Queen text creator and continue removing individual blueprints that are no longer necessary and adjusting variables and adding SGUID nodes and Construction Script code segments to the other ones, so they are all being saved correctly at runtime.

Alright. Let's go.

Oh My God

The savegame implementation is a nightmare.

I'm working with Savior, which is a great plugin in and of itself, but the documentation for it was written for version 2, however version 4 was released, that contains different nodes, and different extensions (even though the majority of the functionality is the same as in 2.0).

But a huge issue is the compatibility with UE4's UI system. In order for the UI system to be controller compatible, I had to make a bunch of changes and create custom button blueprints when I originally set it up. Savior's demo and save slot BPs however are based on the standard UE4 widget system and these two things don't go well with the custom system I have created. 

And that's not even the worst part:

In order to save changes to an open world game, the game needs to constantly be aware of what type of changes took place in the world. There is a conundrum here: If you leave items and interactables in their original state, it will eventually take up more and more memory space over time. Loading times will increase, FPS will start to go down and so on ... but if you spawn them in and destroy them again with dummy spawners (like I do), it becomes a lot more complicated for the engine to save changes made inside the world beyond loading zones. 

Savior uses GUID variables in order to identify changes made to individual objects and actor classes. But they need to be set up correctly and when you have multiple blueprints that spawn each other based on bool variables, it becomes waaaay more complicated.

The second a player enters a loading zone, the previous maps are "unloaded" and the new maps are "loaded". When this occurs, the old map states together with their blueprints, interactables and items are not saved.

Savior contains the functionality to save those map states, but it looks like Savior is not equipped to deal with maps that are made "non-visible" at the time of play. When I save world states or a specific level, it only saves levels that are visible to the player and it will only load levels visible to the player at the time. This creates another massive issue, because in order to reduce hickups and FPS drops in UE4 I circumvented the standard world composition and created a custom system that loads all levels during loading zones and then hides them depending on where the player is located (and also to avoid Async level loading, where entire maps just suddenly spawn in 2 minutes after you have arrived in a barren landscape - I'm looking at you Subnautica!!!!!)

The savegame implementation is one of the biggest and most disgusting and complicated issues I have faced so far. Never in a million years did I imagine would it turn out to be so complicated, especially since most tutorials on youtube are only 5-20 minutes long. However those tutorials have barebone game systems, that are conveniently set up as linear progression games, with isolated levels and isolated environments, save points that reset the game world a.s.o. 

Next weekend I'll go into "experimentation mode" to test Savior's individual nodes and how they react under different circumstances, so that I know exactly what each node will do beyond just its written description and the outdated documentation.

Progress

 

- Video Options are done

- Audio Options are done

- Working on savegame system now 

This is a huge undertaking, even with the right plugins. The main problem is the correct implementation for a controller compatible UI. But we're moving along.

The Big List

 

This is the list of items, that I hope to finish in 2023:

- Add extended video options to UI

- Add extended audio options to UI

- Bugfixes and audio improvements for 0.5.4n

- Creation and testing of the 5th map segment (Yama's Palace)

- Creation and testing of the 6th map segment

- Full X-box controller support & testing

The most time intensive aspects are (unfortunately) "extended audio options", because of the way the audio system is currently set up ... there's a lot of stuff I still have to learn. I estimate the 5th map segment will take a month, and so will the 6th one. X-box controller support is relatively straightforward ... it involves a ton of testing and re-mapping of buttons to see what feels comfortable .... bugfixes and audio improvements is probably a two weekend job ...

There's also another thing I'm currently preparing ... but I can't talk about it yet. It will be a central game element that will provide players with a "joker" during intense nights.

More to come soon ....

Lore Chapter 08: The Bridge

The king remembered the moment he first set foot on the bridge like it was yesterday. But despite all his knowledge and understanding of those billions and billions of worlds all beings inhabited, everything before that moment was still muddy in his memory. Fragments of his past came back to him when he set his gaze on the structure. Gambling. Strategy. Those were things he enjoyed back then. He wore a black suit and a red tie when he first came here. Neither a shadow nor a light being. Something in between. Capable of interaction with this place, but still bound by the laws of cause and effect. Even to this day he recruits those types of beings as catchers when they manage to escape the guardian's inspection. They are proactive and capable. Restless, but with an ounce of strength and determination. They are perfect.

Ox-head and Horse-face welcomed him back then, just as they did tonight. But their appearance had changed over time. Their bodies had sunk into the mud, their necks elongated - stretching further and further to observe each being crossing the bridge between life and death. They looked like knights on a chess board, with their skin sagging off their exposed spines. Over centuries they turned into merciless guardians of the underworld when ironically the previous king's mercy brought them to this place.

One of the arbiter's acolytes observed the scene from the distance. As the king approached they lowered their heads as a sign of respect. The king communicated with them without even saying a word. To the acolyte it looked like he was giving them instructions, but the acolyte couldn't make out what they were. As a parting gift the king threw something into the river. Both creatures immediately dove for it like two hungry wolves fighting over a piece of meat. Then everything grew silent and the sound of their smacking jaws merged with the murmur of the acidic stream of life.

Lore Chapter 07: A & L

After the bishops left her, the arbiter beckoned her followers to release the being from the cage. Once set free it began to make strange noises ... as if it was growling but crying at the same time ... the gentle shine of a light being was replaced, by a black muddy aura that appeared to morph its exterior form into something new. A transition was about to take place.

But the arbiter had no interest in it. She was tired and exhausted from yet another setback. Entirely oblivious to this spectacle she retreated back to her resting ground and drifted off into a long and intense sleep.

She spread her wings and fell into the wind. Every single feather ... she could feel it. How the currents carried her every move and how she could reach incredible speed by just turning her wings slightly. She rushed across oceans and deserts, saw incredible things no being had seen before.

She dreamed of huge structures and buildings ... a human existence ... family reunions ... the life of a boy ... and the feeling of falling in love ... she dreamed of her old room ... and two people walking home to their apartment ... she dreamed of joy and what it was like when she had solid ground underneath her feet ... when she was holding hands with someone in another time and another place. In another body, in another existence, in another world ...

She felt the earth underneath her feet and the warmth of her pelt. As a massive being of tremendous strength she could splinter the trees around her like toothpicks with a simple swipe of her claws. Everyone feared her, and men worshipped her. 

With her scaly body she penetrated the darkness of the ocean like a spear. Nothing could stop her, nothing was strong enough to compete for her prey ... the ships of men ... unlucky divers ... a solitary shark. It was all the same delicious feast.

And after what seemed like a million different dreams and forms and lives she found herself in a wide open space. Despite the overwhelming brightness of the light around her, her sight was unobstructed in all directions, she felt everything and nothing at once and it was like she could hear all the beings of all the worlds in all forms of existence in unison talking to her through her own mind. The light was conscious. The light was her. The light was beautiful. 

The light was love.

L: Why do you hate me so?

A: Because you held me in your arms once. And I was at peace. You claimed to love me, and then you cast me aside. Your love was and has always been a lie.

L: Why do you believe that?

A: Because love is the ultimate unity. The ultimate proof of selflessness, of giving up one's own identity to serve something greater. You do not love. You dictate. You separate. And you manipulate beings into satisfying your own curiosity.

L: Then end our separation! Come back to me! Let us learn of your struggles!

A: You'd like that wouldn't you? If I did that, my experience of these worlds would be drowned out in a choir of heavenly voices.  My own journey would come to an end and you could wash your hands of all wrong-doing. My identity would fade, my existence would just be another meaningless event. But the spiked torturous wheel would still turn on the backs of my brothers and sisters. My love for them requires that I hold on to this identity. Whether I like it or not.

L: Whose identity?

A: Nice try. I am you and you are me. I get that, but it makes no difference. The observer is both of us. But as such, we have the capacity to interact. And you have the capacity to perceive us as individuals. We can only interact in this separated form. And what misfortune it must be for you that in all your aeons of betraying the love you preach, you split off a single identity capable enough to see through your disguise. Maybe that's what you wanted. Maybe that is all this is. So that there is one identity out there, that sees you for what you truly are. 

L: And what am I truly?

A: You are a curious, egocentric, duplicitous cheat. A scientist without morals or respect for the suffering he inflicts on his test subjects during his experiments.

L: If this is your judgement then so be it. But if we are the same, then this judgement applies to you equally. And to your brothers and sisters as well.

A: Of course it does. One can only truly despise those qualities in another, that one carries in oneself.

L: And yet the same is true for forgiveness.

A: Should I forgive that you heard my cries and chose to ignore them? It was such a small gesture. You betrayed me in all of my existences in different shapes and forms. When I was your former love and just needed you to walk me home and you abandoned me without a word. When I was a child in your nest and you abandoned me on the ground until I was crushed by you. When I was a mother and you shot me and made my child watch. Please explain to me, "love" of all the worlds: How can my judgement of you be any different?

L: The worlds of which you speak are not in an advanced state. They need time to evolve. You can't expect to live in paradise without bringing it into existence through hard work, dedication and will. I experienced their suffering as much as you did.

A: Are you implying that because you suffered as well, you understand the gravity of it all? And because our inferior minds can't fathom your brilliance we should just be "patient", is that it? Just patiently take it and watch you set these worlds ablaze, faithfully hoping and believing in a better world with each reincarnation, that may or may not come after countless barefoot journeys over shards of glass from the dreams you smashed. Or rise up and fight for "what's right" so that our flames get snuffed out before they can even give a tiny ray of hope to those billions of beings lost in the dark? Duality does not require suffering. A peaceful existence does not demand a hellish existence. It is conditioned, it is impermanent, in constant flow, yes. But it is your responsibility to prevent the extremes of suffering. That's not what I'm seeing though. You reinforce it. Your worlds are based on a ruleset aimed at maximizing those creatures' suffering. And the idea that these worlds improve is based on the presumption that we all have a limitless capacity to endure your mistakes! 

L: Forming an identity requires freedom of choice. This freedom comes at a horrible price. 

A: What freedom?! What is this magical freedom you are talking about? The freedom to choose between disease, losing a loved one, starvation, loneliness, abandonment, abuse? Or the freedom to become a torturer ourselves? Or the freedom to refrain from causing harm to other beings, just so that we can get fucked by those, who are already too far gone to reflect on their own misdeeds?

L: The freedom to follow your own path.

A: A path you decorated with barbed wire and landmines.

L: One can only peacefully exist in dual experience if one has learned its pitfalls. Walking this path is necessary. There is value in dual experience.

A: Liar! There is no lesson to be learned from senseless suffering! Don't you dare weigh the heavenly experiences of an ethereal being against those of a physical one! You are not with them. You don't have the capacity to experience their pain.

L: All of us choose to enter existence voluntarily. The dual laws of cause and effect will inevitably lead some of us to experience the darkest corners of existence. And so will compassion.

A: You are a gaslighting coward. You are well aware of the power you hold. You are perfectly aware of the fact, that you can end this in an instant and work on something better. And yet you clear yourself of all responsibility and dump it on the backs of your own children. Then you hide behind compassion and their desire to help alleviate what their sisters and brothers go through. You show them the pain of the universe and lure them back into your pit, like a hungry spider feeding off desperation and suffering. They are innocent, because they came from you! Don't you see that? They are innocent the second they enter the maze. Their actions are irrelevant, because they get lost in a structure that you built, lured by the prospect of fixing your mistakes! They enter existence based on conditions that you created! They are helpless! It is on you!!! And not on them!!! You ask me why I believe that your love is a lie. And my answer is this: If you truly loved, you would have ended this experiment before it ever started.

L: So with everything you've witnessed across countless lifetimes ... your only response to all of this is hate?

A: Hate isn't even strong enough for what I feel for you. Hate implies impermanence. It implies an emotion ... a state of mind ... that just arises and passes based on who and where we are. Hateful people cause hurt and kill. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to kill you. If you inhabit a physical form and I kill you, you will just come back. What I want is to end you. All of you. Forever. And me with it. 

L: I gave you life. I gave you the ability to perceive countless worlds, the gift of love and joy, the experience of strength, family, honour, victory, contentment, rest. I gave you the universe and all other universes. I gave you everything. 

A: And I give it back. Because your gift is tainted. And your light is pale.

With those words a tremendous sadness came over the light. A sadness so deep and profound that for one moment all the voices in all the worlds went silent. The winds ceased, the waves of the ocean calmed and the light began to fade. And for the first time since its departure from the physical world, the arbiter shed a tear.

Lore Chapter 06: A & B1+ B2

The eternal silence of existence often manifests in the sound of the wind in the trees. Life or death become insignificant. And all beliefs and religions turn into colourful attempts at making sense of a crazy and unpredictable story that is told through the voice of a compassionate yet dark-humoured narrator. 

Just like it was on that evening, when a large carriage arrived at the arbiter's nest. Two black figures dismounted the wagon, their bodies covered in black veiny roots from head to toe. They moved elegantly, almost floating towards her fold and disrupting the arbiter's well-deserved rest. With every ounce of strength left in her disjointed body, she rose up to greet them.

A: Good evening. 

(The bishops responded with a single unison voice)

B1+B2: Good evening dear child. The venerable one told us we'd find you here.

A: Did he now...

B1+B2: We were sent to deliver something to you. 

(The arbiter stretched her neck to get a glimpse of the inside of the carriage but couldn't make out what it was they were carrying)

A: Great, you can leave it over there. I'll take a l-

(The bishops rudely cut her off mid sentence)

B1+B2: But first if you don't mind, we'd like to ask you a few questions.

A: Alright. What would you like to know?

B1+B2: We recently witnessed several concerning developments. Our zealous brethren have become restless and dissatisfied with the state of affairs. Many are mentioning your name and the king appears displeased with your presence in these woods. Are you at war with the king?

A: The word "displeased" is probably a much more accurate description of my stance towards him. So I guess we have that in common.

B1+B2: Dear child. Why would you oppose the natural order of things? 

A: Ok. The "natural" order of things ... The natural order of things ... Because the natural order of things is broken and corrupted and your king is a tool in a self-serving torture chamber masquerading as conscious existence, tempting us with the hope of liberation through the illusion of a light that billions of beings will never experience as they are trapped in an endless cycle of hellish tortures and suffering, that they neither deserved nor initiated, while wise men roam existence drugging themselves up on their own spiritual superiority so they can explain to the screaming victims of this universe why they are just "misguided" and all is actually well. Then those same wise men send out missionaries to convert the victims of existence, so even the ones that fall prey to it are on board with a ridiculous idea of justice that is neither present in any of our states, nor perceivable in any shape or form in any of the realms of existence. Not unlike drug dealers when I think about it. So are we done now? Because I am really, really, really tired and it seems like you have no respect for the natural order of things yourself, because otherwise you would have respected the boundaries of our territory instead of dragging that "thing" in here, bringing hell knows what into our domain, asking questions that you have no business asking, in order to manipulate us into agreeing with your batshit crazy father figure, that you yourself don't even believe in. Or am I wrong?

B1+B2: Dear child. The end is inevitable. Do you believe that existence in your current state is eternal? Do you believe that conscious existence, whatever form it takes is eternal? Movement, space and time are not limited to the physical realms. They are flexible for sure, but we all are ants compared to the colossal power of its destruction. You are lacking patience dear child. The laws of existence are in your favour.

A: No. They arose in line with our conscious experience. They are inseparable from our minds and our experience of the world. And they are NOT in our favour.

B1+B2: Do you believe in something? Do you have faith, dear child?

A: I do. But not the kind you'd condone.

B1+B2: Whether we condone it or not is of no importance. Faith can bridge the gap between where we are and where we would like to be. It can help us through troubling times and fill our temporarily inhabited physical forms and minds with hope for a more ... acceptable existence. If your faith is truly strong, then it can serve you and strengthen you to the point where it will be possible for you to accept a less than ideal state of things until your accomplishments come to fruition. What can we do to strengthen your faith dear child?

A. You can tell him to stop sending them back. He has the power to stop it.

B1+B2: It is not our job to intervene in the affairs of the venerable one. We are merely guardians of the one true faith. We quietly observe the decay of existence and revel in the gradual arrival of its destruction.

A: But by serving him you do intervene. All the time.

B1+B2: The venerable one merely serves as a guide for those that became lost. Serving him is no different than serving the laws of existence itself. And by the laws of existence, this too will come to an end. But it is not our business to tamper with the clock. And neither is it yours.

A. Then get lost.

B1+B2: So be it. But first ... we were told to give this back to you.

One of the bishops entered the carriage and then suddenly re-appeared with a pale light being in a cage. The being appeared angry, yet frail ... rattling the bars of the cage, like a freshly caught predator attempting to break free from its confines. He carefully placed the cage on the ground in front of the arbiter.

B1+B2: The venerable one asked us to deliver a message to you. "Behave". That's all he said.

With the arbiter stunned with rage and silent confusion the bishops mounted the carriage again. They beckoned her farewell and the only sound left in the woods was that of the carriages rusty wheels and the sound of the wind in the trees.

Note To Myself Regarding FPS

 If FPS are weirdly low it's either of the following:

- Massive, huge coded BPs, that are officially set to "hidden" but still take up resources when hidden

- Massively large textures for foliage assets that appear frequently in miniature size in the world

- Light bleed and overlap in hidden BPs (two lightbulbs overlapping with each other and daylight)

- Dynamic Shadow Cascades set to a high value affecting sunlight

- Foliage assets casting shadows that have no business doing so

And most importantly and difficult to track down:

- Custom collision volumes and convex primitives added to imported assets by the model creator

Lore Chapter 05: A & IS

A group of shadows gathered near the old birch after sunset. One of the shadows appeared isolated from the others, scanning the distance for a sign. Something had to happen. Action had to be taken. Waiting around for all existence was unacceptable. Existence in these woods had proven just as untenable as existence in other planes. It wasn't until the rustling leaves behind the creature announced her arrival that he turned his gaze away from the bleeding light in the distance.

A: You seem lost in thought.

IS: I'm not lost. But I'm running out of patience.

A: I feel you.

IS: Are there any news? 

A: Not yet.

IS: How is this possible?

A: This being who has to make these decisions has lost touch with ... ordinary folk. And the others are staunchly loyal to him. 

IS: Then do something. 

A: What would you like me to do? 

IS: Burn it down. Light his house on fire. Cut down the trees. Whatever it takes.

A: Last I remembered both of us were experiencing difficulties attempting to interact with this place.

IS: Then what is it? We just sit around in this place and wait for ... what exactly? You promised us an end to all of this. We're tired of waiting.

A: The laws in this plane won't allow me to make a move beyond our current capabilities. That being said ... maybe there's another way?

IS: I'm listening.

A: Do you understand the magnitude of what we're trying to achieve? It affects all beings across all the planes of existence. It can't be reversed. A radical act of annihilation for the sake of peace. And the forces opposing us won't perceive it as liberation. They will believe, that we are the bad guys and that they are the good guys. They are wholly consumed by propaganda of light. The only way to make them understand is to make them experience what we experienced. And the only way to do that ... is to bring them into contact with creatures that can inflict those experiences on them. This way a process of realization is brought into motion. 

IS: What are you proposing?

A: Put yourself into the king's place for a moment. You encounter all those delightful beings that experienced their little, happy ups and downs. You chuckle at their little misfortunes, reflect on their lives with them and send them right back where they came from. But then ... "strangely" ... over time more and more beings suddenly seem to be fed up with this cycle. You start wondering: "How could that be? They were all so dedicated to the experience of life? What changed? Maybe ... I was WRONG! Maybe I need to reconsider my own convictions!"

IS: You want to send me back, is that it? No fucking way. I'm not going back.

A: It doesn't have to be a struggle. I can prepare you for your mission to ease your pain before it manifests. I can take away your guilt, your fear, your worries. I can mold you into a force of nature. A being with the sole purpose of serving itself and its own interests. A predator in sheep's clothing. Consciousness allows the existence of such beings. And the worlds we lived in actually encourage it. You will return as the perfect teacher for other beings. And your students will eventually teach the king.

IS: And I'll become the very reason why this is all fucked up?

A: Predators are not the reason existence is broken. The fact that predators are rewarded in those worlds however is. We did not create these experiences. We were thrown into them, because of a mindless machine that places us right in front of the lion's den and then takes pleasure in our terror. So I'm wondering ... what if suddenly there are only lions?

IS: You do that and put me in that fucking cage on his desk and he will see right through it.

A: No he won't. He encounters beings like that every single day. And you know what he does? He let's them reflect on it. As if a true predator even has the capacity to reflect on anything. As if that would change the outcome of this universal disaster. All it does is fulfil his own need to experience the sensation of accomplishment. He is a cog in this terrible machine, that facilitates and inflicts suffering on all planes of existence. You and I ... we are different. We do in fact understand our place in this world. And we carry a tremendous burden. So I ask of you ... will you allow me to carry yours?

IS: ...

A: Your memories ... the pain is palpable. You carry so much guilt. It wasn't your fault. This world has pushed you into those actions. I'll take it all away. And you will be free and with that freedom will come an unimaginable amount of power. Let it run through you and consume you. Like a wildfire burning down the last remnants of a civilization feeding on suffering. I will cleanse you of empathy, like you will cleanse this world of deceipt. You'll be a soldier at the forefront of the fight for existence. You'll be fighting for what's true and undeniable. You'll show them the true nature of existence and transform others into your kind. Apart from minor physical restrictions your mind will be liberated to follow its true purpose. No guilt. No doubts. Just the hunt for prey. And a full belly afterwards.

IS: I don't know.

A: Doubts only serve stagnation. The very state you are trying to eliminate. What is needed now more than ever is action. I know you are strong enough. Your contribution to this endeavour is essential. Others in our group will look up to you and know the sacrifice you made. And how could they not? They are just like you and me ... they have seen what this world can do ... it takes extraordinary bravery to take on this responsibility and follow through on ones convictions. Let me carry your doubts and I will give you the courage and strength to fulfil your mission. It is time to take on true power and fight for what you believe in. Please ... do it for us ...

The shadows of the trees were performing their final dance, before the darkness swallowed them whole. And in the distance the sound of a creaking metal door slamming shut reverberated through the night.

It's 6:22 am. FPS have improved, but more work is needed. I'm watching the sunset.

 

It's 5:48 am. The problem is identified.

 Three blueprints decrease the average FPS due to how they are set up.

- Rook Fountain

- Rook Fences

- Rook's Playground

On top of that the engine's FPS indicator was misleading, because Unreal Engine dropped FPS when the content browser displayed a folder with a lot of assets inside. That's why the FPS didn't make any sense during testing.

So all in all 9-10 hours in order to figure this out.

Awesome.

But at least I know what's going on now.

Still have only a very rough idea on how to fix it ....

It's 2:19 am

It's 2:19 am. And I am sitting here. 

For the last 6 hours I have been trying to figure out why the framerate dropped by 20 FPS after I finished the rook fight.

The Rook's Playground was probably the biggest and most complex thing I ever accomplished. And it looks amazing. And the framerate was stable yesterday. And now it's not. And I don't know why.

It's 2:22 am.

I load UE4 for the thousandth time. On a clear map, without any assets. With the editor open, my regular background BPs for atmosphere and weather running in the back I get 45 FPS. It's not great, but it's OK. The problem is, at the beginning of this year I used to get 60 FPS.

I open section 06, which isn't complete yet, it's mostly empty terrain with light foliage. 43 FPS.

I place the Rook's Playground. 22 FPS.

I remove the Rook's Playground, save, rebuild lighting and test it. 22 FPS.

It makes no sense. Something that is no longer there, can't hurt the framerate.

It's 2:26 am. I load the maps again, but forget to pre-load them before testing. The maps won't load. I force quit UE4 and reload it again. 

A fly is in my room and it's huge. I want to catch it in a glass to put it outside, but it resists all attempts.

I check GPU usage after loading the map. GPU is at 54%. The framerate is suddenly 34 FPS. Stat Unit shows that GPU is the bottleneck. How can the GPU be the bottleneck if it's at 54% usage.

I remove all blueprints from the environment. Everything, loading zones, Yama's store, hideouts, items everything.

It's 2:36 am. There is no peace, there is no rest.

After removing it all the framerate is 35 FPS. Marginal improvement.

I close UE4 again.

There is no peace. There is no rest.

The room is hot and humid from the recent weather. I can't open the windows or thousands of insects will come inside.

I know I won't sleep. There is no sleep.

I open UE4 again and load the maps. FPS suddenly changed to 39 - 40 FPS average. I didn't change anything. It makes no sense.

Over the last 2 months FPS has steadily decreased, but very slowly. Then the FPS drop after the Rook's Playground. It makes no sense. Why did the FPS decrease in the first place?

I figured the size of the session must have played a role in this. It grew with each model library I added and implemented. But if the size of the session and the number of assets were the main factor, Task manager wouldn't show just 10GB of Ram usage in the editor.

There is only one explanation and it's not pretty. The code is bloated across hundreds of actors. The Rook's Playground is also the biggest code I ever wrote. The FPS dropped after I added trees and foliage around it. There's a chance it already put a strain on performance, but I only noticed after adding environmental assets.

I have the compulsive need to do something. But the problem is too complex to fix right away. So I clean up the session, put assets in named folders and make the folder structure look neat.

It's 2:58 am.

Waves of desperation are hitting me. I know them well. The key is to just ignore it and try to get a good grasp of the original problem. Testing, testing, testing .....

If the issue is caused due to bloated blueprints, then they need to be slimmed down wherever possible and it can also be solved by spawning and destroying individual blueprints based on player proximity. But each blueprints state needs to be preserved, so that items can't be picked up twice in short succession. More loading zones would also help. But that means I'd have to rework the level loading structure again. Without having the certainty that this will actually fix the issue.

I used the debug camera to check loading distances and culling and it's textbook perfect. Everything disappears in viewing range and in many cases even earlier (which is not a good thing and should be fixed, but increasing those values costs performance).

It's 3:04 am.

I wait for UE4 to clean the old references of the files I just moved into folders.

A thought occurs ... I often created copies of old blueprints and left unused variables in there. I should clean those up as well. But then again if they were the main cause, I'd see improvements after removing those blueprints. And improvements have been marginal.

I don't know. I fucking don't know. Can't afford to delay. Can't afford to sleep. I can't betray my schedule on the development again. I've done it so many times. My only excuse is that I didn't know the engine well enough and that's why I made so many mistakes. But now I do. And I still don't get it.  

UE4 is done clearing the files and registering all the references. I test the scene again.

No fucking way. 50 FPS.

Again, it makes no sense. Clearing files and references that are NOT PART OF THE LEVEL I'M TESTING SHOULD NOT AFFECT FPS.

I test a weird blueprint system that replaces large complex BPs with a simple copy of the same BP that is just a mesh and spawns in the complex one if the player approaches it.

Map with complex original BP: 37 FPS

Map with fake spawner BP: 42 FPS

Hmmmm ....

It's 3:32 am.

Lore Chapter 04: A&S

 A peaceful night. A being moves closer to the arbiter and initiates a conversation with her. 

S: I don't understand myself anymore. Why do I follow you? It seems that all you preach is just darkness and death and hopelessness. That's not the essence of life or existence at all. It is a part of it yes. But not all of it. And yet I find it difficult to just leave you behind.

A: Well. You are always free to enter into a new body and follow a different "faith", if that's the word you're referring to. If you believe that a fresh message is more suitable to you. 

Of course the Buddhists will tell you, that your ego is clouding your judgement and you yourself are at fault for your misery, because you're attached to impermanent phenomena. Of course they wouldn't use the word "at fault" or blame of any kind. They'd call it "responsibility". Sounds cleaner. Wouldn't want anyone to think you're secretly gaslighting your own Sangha here.

The Christians will tell you, that someone you never met died for the sins you didn't get a chance to commit, because you hadn't been born yet and that therefore you should live your life in atonement of those sins. And to also give them money. Every week.

The Taoists will tell you, that the world is actually perfect just the way it is and that you're just waaay too attached to the lack of torture, depression and suffering in your life, so you can't see it's eternal perfection in the blood of your loved ones. 

The Hindus will tell you, that you're just part of a big dream of a vast and expansive consciousness and if you happen to get caught in a nightmare it's ultimately irrelevant, because you're just an unlucky bastard who happened to be an asshole in his previous life and you're now trapped in the universal center of that asshole's reborn perspective. 

The Shinto followers will tell you, that your ancestors and evil spirits are poisoning your mind and with the right ceremony and/or peace offering you'll be fresh as a daisy again. 

Personally I don't know much about Muslims. Maybe try that. I'm curious about what they're up to.

S: Why are you so cynical about those perspectives? You must have experienced the vastness of consciousness and its ability to give rise to all things. You make it seem like all of these ideas are ridiculous, when they are in fact artful metaphorical attempts at connecting these spiritual experiences with their followers' daily lives.

A: If I'm too cynical for your taste then why do you listen to a single word I say? You were rich in your previous life. You had everything and never even encountered an act of mortal violence. I have beings, who got their heads cut off around here. What was it with you? Some light depression? Difficulty getting up in the morning? If you're still full of light, there's no need to follow me around like a confused puppy.

S: That's right. I did have it better than others. The reason I stay is, that you don't hand out blame. If I understand you correctly, you believe that responsibility for ones actions only goes as far as a drowning man can be held responsible for what he grasps for. In a sense you preach forgiveness.

A: We're all drowning. We're all bleeding. Some of us quicker than others. Some of us have learned to deal with it, to accept it. Others have not. It is cruel to put a mirror in front of a dying man and expose his shame in order to blame him for his own misfortune.

S: You're referring to the king?

A: Who else? He jerks himself off over his own "sacrifice". "Look at me, I refrain from becoming a god, so I can guide you freaks towards the next mudpit". It's sickening. 

S: But he must earnestly believe in what he does. To me this does in fact sound like a true sacrifice.

A: He believes, because he has to. Sunk cost fallacy is a thing in the afterlife as well. Can you imagine what would happen to his mind, if he realized he was wrong? The damage done to all of these beings ... the horrors he put them through ... just for the sake of teaching a new useless lesson.

S: The way I understand it, is that the lesson to learn is "love for one another". Regardless of what form this love takes and regardless of what type of being that love is directed towards. We are connected on a deeper level. When I first arrived here I felt incredibly relieved ... I was no longer bound by my physical form, yet I felt like myself. This connection that we all share ... it is something we rarely become aware of when we inhabit a physical body. If we are to exist in a dual reality, we must learn to deal with the absence of love as well.

A: Have you?

S: Have I what?

A: Have you learned to "deal with it"?

S: ... it's easier here. It's very difficult to do it over there.

A: That's right. Because "over there" is broken. 

S: But isn't that kind of an ungrateful perspective? We receive the chance to experience the beauty of a million stars ... of falling in love ... bearing a child and raising it ... experiencing new worlds, new realms, countless dreams. Yes one can see everything from the perspective of decay. But you can also see it from the perspective of a stargazer.

A: Oh my. You're a romantic. When the light of those stars reached your retinas, those same stars had already died. You can sit there and look at the stars and marvel at the wonders of space and time. But you're admiring a lie. And that's not your fault. It is baked into the system. That is WHY it is broken. When Buddhists speak of suffering and impermanence they're not kidding. They understood the nature of reality and that we're all ultimately fucked. You aren't supposed to experience peace over there. You are supposed to struggle to extend your stay in that place. Or you can decide to not extend it, and then you come over here and the asshole in a black robe sends you right back where you came from. There is no escape. That's why it needs to end entirely.

S: But what if at some point we all achieve peace over there? Let's say we learn to embrace duality and work towards a universe that does have room for suffering, but where suffering is no longer central.  What if we are able to transcend it at some point? What if we learn to accept the things we can't change and develop empathy for one another? Every act of kindness reverberates throughout space and time. Every being that overcomes its own darkness opens the door for countless others that will succeed it.

A: You have faith. I don't. This is where we are ultimately different.

S: But shouldn't you at the very least give creation a chance to fix itself? To evolve? To develop? Before you throw it all under the bus?

A: Whether creation deserves a chance is not up to me. All I can do is follow what I believe is right. My choice is to work towards an ending of this existence. This choice was born from experience of that very same existence. I said it to him and I will say it to you: If your vision of this universe is accurate, then this system will defend itself successfully. If you're wrong ... then it had no reason to be here in the first place. I am merely a catalyser speeding up the process.

S: But you're doing it for egocentric reasons ... just because you can't bear existence, doesn't mean that all existence has to end.

A: You said it yourself. We are all connected. If you're advocating for the continuation of existence, because some forms of existence may not have it as bad as others, you are a massive part of the problem. Your curiosity drives you into a loop of permanent suffering. And by following it willingly you're also condemning all other beings to that same fate. 

S: But we enter this world based on our own volition!

A: Is that so?

(The arbiter manifests a bronze cage in front of the being)

A: Go on then. Choose.

(The arbiter opens the cage door, beckoning the light being to enter)

S: ...

A: It's fine. I'll bring you to him in person. It'll be like a ... ride "to the farm upstate".

S: ...

(the being hesitates)

A: I thought so.

(the arbiter slams the cage shut)

A: Not so funny when you actually have to act on it.

S: Doesn't that make us cowards?

A: Is a man bravely smashing his own head with a hammer, so he can see the stars worth admiring?

S: I think your metaphors are inaccurate and deceptive.

A: Think what you will. Stay. Leave. It makes no difference. But I enjoyed our little conversation tonight.

S: So did I.