17

Zuko

Quick question.. It never has made sense to me before, but figured I'd ask it out of curiosity to see if anybody knows the answer.

Why does being born on the last day of Mayan make your character 17, not 18?

If there is no plausible answer, then the best bullshit answer wins

Cynlael

Yes.

Dracen

Because, y'see. When two people love each other, they put weird bits of their anatomy against each other, and suddenly a stork shouts, "Stop that!" and the guy is like "Oh crap! IT ALREADY HAPPEND! WAT DO!?" and then the stork takes the child a year early, and plops them in Achaea.

Aedin

Because its the end of the year pretty much and gotta wait another year for it to actually hit 18?

Zuko

Aedin said:

Because its the end of the year pretty much and gotta wait another year for it to actually hit 18?

But IRL if I'm born on December 31st, and have to wait until the next one for my birthday, it doesnt make me -1!

Sarapis

@zuko Our math works differently than real-world math. It's the addition of humgii. Changes everything.

Dracen

So far, I'm winning. Take that, @Sarapis

Sarapis

You're winning alright.

Jonathin

I was so confused when I saw 17 as a post title with Sarapis' name next to it on the main page.

Dracen

Now Sarapis is doing like this. 

Jarrod

As I'm sure you're aware, the crew that runs child abduction to pass them through the flame to become adventurers have a quota.

Unfortunately, centuries ago, the escalator that was carrying the batch of Mayan 25th children got frozen. Trapped on the now-stairs, the children had no idea what to do, and some say they're still there trapped to this day.

But! Quotas are quotas, so the crew had to pull the children from the next year to take their place. Obviously, since they're from the next year the end up passing through the flame a year early than the children slotted for every other day of the year.

Tael

Sarapis said:

@zuko Our math works differently than real-world math. It's the addition of humgii. Changes everything.

Confirmed: In-game dates coded as humgii.

Tecton

Keep this thread on the down-low, if the Humginati (or is that Illumigii?) hear about it, we're all doomed.

Sarapis

Jonathin said:

I was so confused when I saw 17 as a post title with Sarapis' name next to it on the main page.

I thought someone was trolling me actually, as 17 is my favorite number and Sarapis has made no secret of the fact that said number underlies much of Creation.

Iocun

One possibility I've considered is that birthdays might not be assigned right when a character is created, but only at the next "date tick", i.e. the following in-game midnight. So a new character wouldn't have a birthday initially, but at the first midnight after his creation, the birthday would be set to (current day - 1) and (current year - 18).

So let's say you have a character created on the 25th of Mayan 518. On the next midnight (date is now 1st of Sarapin 519), a tick happens and sets this character's birth day to 25th Mayan in the year 519-18=501. Thus, this character won't turn 18 until the 25th of Mayan 519.

Another character is created on the 24th of Mayan 518. On the next midnight, the characters birth day is set to the 24th Mayan in the year 518-18=500. Thus, the character is already 18 years old.

But this is probably all wrong and it's just about humgii math after all.

Eld

Iocun said:

One possibility I've considered is that birthdays might not be assigned right when a character is created, but only at the next "date tick", i.e. the following in-game midnight. So a new character wouldn't have a birthday initially, but at the first midnight after his creation, the birthday would be set to (current day - 1) and (current year - 18).

So let's say you have a character created on the 25th of Mayan 518. On the next midnight (date is now 1st of Sarapin 519), a tick happens and sets this character's birth day to 25th Mayan in the year 519-18=501. Thus, this character won't turn 18 until the 25th of Mayan 519.

Another character is created on the 24th of Mayan 518. On the next midnight, the characters birth day is set to the 24th Mayan in the year 518-18=500. Thus, the character is already 18 years old.

But this is probably all wrong and it's just about humgii math after all.

That was my first thought, too, but you definitely have a birthdate/age at character creation, at least if it's not 25 Mayan. I didn't think to create a character last night to check, and I probably won't remember/want to bother in a couple weeks, but I'm guessing it's the humgiis.

Antidas

I always assumed its so that you don't have a 19 year old character a day after creation

Eld

Antidas said:

I always assumed its so that you don't have a 19 year old character a day after creation

You wouldn't, any more than you currently end up with an 18 year old character a day later. You'd turn 19 on 25 Mayan of the next year.

Iocun

Hrm, well, then we'll have to entertain some other options. Let's assume that dates are internally stored as a single integer number, increasing by one for every day past a certain starting date.

So, say, the starting date is 1st Sarapin 0 and would be represented by datenumber 1. An Achaean year has 300 days. To convert datenumbers into Achaean format again, Achaea uses the formula:
year = floor(datenumber/300)
month = mod(floor((datenumber-1)/25),12)+1
day = mod(datenumber-1, 25)+1

Whenever a character is created, the game subtracts (18*300=5400) from this person's datenumber, then converts this new number into Achaean format.

Let's say a character is created on datenumber 200,000. The game would then set his birthday to datenumber 200000-5400=194600 and convert this to: 25th of Lupar(8) 648.

Another character is created four in-game months later on datenumber 200,100. The game would set his datenumber to 194700 and convert it to: 25th of Mayan(12) 649, making him one year younger than he's supposed to be.

So the issue would be that the humgiis stole the correct year conversion formula that should have been: year = floor((datenumber-1)/300) and changed it to year = floor(datenumber/300).

Antidas

Eld said:

Antidas said:

I always assumed its so that you don't have a 19 year old character a day after creation

You wouldn't, any more than you currently end up with an 18 year old character a day later. You'd turn 19 on 25 Mayan of the next year.

this is what I get for not thinking before I post lmao

Eld

Iocun said:

Hrm, well, then we'll have to entertain some other options. Let's assume that dates are internally stored as a single integer number, increasing by one for every day past a certain starting date.

So, say, the starting date is 1st Sarapin 0 and would be represented by datenumber 1. An Achaean year has 300 days. To convert datenumbers into Achaean format again, Achaea uses the formula:
year = floor(datenumber/300)
month = mod(floor((datenumber-1)/25),12)+1
day = mod(datenumber-1, 25)+1

Whenever a character is created, the game subtracts (18*300=5400) from this person's datenumber, then converts this new number into Achaean format.

Let's say a character is created on datenumber 200,000. The game would then set his birthday to datenumber 200000-5400=194600 and convert this to: 25th of Lupar(8) 648.

Another character is created four in-game months later on datenumber 200,100. The game would set his datenumber to 194700 and convert it to: 25th of Mayan(12) 649, making him one year younger than he's supposed to be.

So the issue would be that the humgiis stole the correct year conversion formula that should have been: year = floor((datenumber-1)/300) and changed it to year = floor(datenumber/300).

But 200,100/300=667, so that second character is created on 25 Mayan 667, not 666, and is still 18. The humgiis in that scenario have just bumped the New Year up to 25 Mayan instead of 1 Sarapin.

Iocun

Not if a different conversion is being used for character birthdays and for displaying the current date. I would assume that the current date is correctly converted with (datenumber-1)/300, whereas the function that sets/displays birthdays uses datenumber/300.

But it is a bit weird, since one would assume that internally, the age of a character would still be calculated by subtracting the internal storage variable of birth from the current internal storage variable. But perhaps this isn't actually the case, and birthdates are actually saved in "Achaean format". Or there's even a re-conversion happening there.

There are really quite many possibilities there, but I don't think that a date format conversation error is entirely out of the question.

Eld

Hm, true enough. I was assuming, somewhat optimistically, that there would be a single function to be called any time the conversion needed to be done, and that if it were wrong, it would have also been noticed elsewhere, but it's entirely possible that that's not the case, or that that bit of code happens to do it itself (and incorrectly) or something else. But yeah, an asymmetric format conversion is certainly plausible.

Iocun

Eld said:

Hm, true enough. I was assuming, somewhat optimistically, that there would be a single function to be called any time the conversion needed to be done,

That's probably how we'd all do it if we designed such a system from scratch with knowledge of all the intended functionalities it needs to have now. But we all know how it is with code that slowly grows and grows. Something that later became important was once just an inconspicuous little line that nobody felt the need to make an autonomous function for - and then it simply stuck around over the years and since it never caused any actual harm, it was left untouched.

Eld

Iocun said:

Eld said:

Hm, true enough. I was assuming, somewhat optimistically, that there would be a single function to be called any time the conversion needed to be done,

That's probably how we'd all do it if we designed such a system from scratch with knowledge of all the intended functionalities it needs to have now. But we all know how it is with code that slowly grows and grows. Something that later became important was once just an inconspicuous little line that nobody felt the need to make an autonomous function for - and then it simply stuck around over the years and since it never caused any actual harm, it was left untouched.

Yeah, when I said "that bit of code happens to do it itself", I was more thinking "that's got to be a pretty ancient part of the codebase, and could easily have some relics that have survived for whatever reason".

Kresslack

A slave is a slave. Whether they are 17 or 18, Sartan does not care. Suffer in the Suffering.

Caladbolg

Sarapis said:

Jonathin said:

I was so confused when I saw 17 as a post title with Sarapis' name next to it on the main page.

I thought someone was trolling me actually, as 17 is my favorite number and Sarapis has made no secret of the fact that said number underlies much of Creation.

We need 9 more Cities and Oh, we have 17 classes no wonder you guys keep saying we don't need any more.

tbh I thought this was going to be a thread based on underage mudsex though.

Blujixapug

They only want you when you're seventeen. When you're twenty-one, you're no fun.

They take a polaroid and let you go. Say they'll let you know. So come on.

Sarapis

Good song, though I like Felix da Housecat's "droyds mix" of it better than the original.