Can someone refresh my understanding of how the planet, atmosphere, sky stuff in GS works? Is there a guide to the geography of that world out there? or has someone theory crafted a good version?
In general, Golden Sun seems to be Like Reality Unless Noted. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LikeRealityUnlessNoted)
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 11, January, 2014, 06:13:47 AM
Can someone refresh my understanding of how the planet, atmosphere, sky stuff in GS works? Is there a guide to the geography of that world out there? or has someone theory crafted a good version?
Actually, i dont think that something like that exist. Dark Dawn features some kind of astronomy that i can not figure at all what it means.
In other hand Golden Sun is mostly a platform with some irregularities, there are continents and those continents move over the platform. water falls out of the platform in any place with the exception of the north and the south in where water is frozen. It is a mistery is there is something beyond the water falls.
Blame it on unpredictable alchemy. Problem solved!
well, so I'm working on some images, and if I showed the flat-earth of Golden Sun as floating in space, what would be in the background or foreground? Would there be some sort of sun orbiting? Would you be able to see the stars?
Image related.
edit: image is from "Eador: Masters of the Broken World." I'm considering how to portray the world map of GS in that prototype I'm putting together, and I was thinking of emulating the starry background seen in the pic.
First of all, can we really verify that Weyard is a flat piece of land like that?
Or does it happen to be some really weird plateau on a giant sphere or something?
(http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070912174226/goldensun/images/3/39/Worldmap_weyard.gif)
And I just found a quote from Mia when she says something about Gaia Falls near end-game of TLA.
"If we don't light the beacon, Gaia Falls will eventually erode away all of Weyard!"
Does this mean the plateau was getting smaller every minute that goes by?
exactly which beacon were they going to light?
Mars, I think. (And I edited my post: Basically, my theory is that the plateau was probably getting smaller every moment.)
So you think maybe they're on the surface of a giant gas planet, and psi-energy is all that's keeping the small flat continent together, and apart from the gas? I think that makes quite a bit of sense.
Yeah, but if there was more land than that, you'd wonder how the four lighthouses were still here... Almost as if by coincidence... so I'm not entirely sure what to say. Then again, I guess you could say that the lighthouses were a source of psynergy, and that's why this part of the land was the last to survive...
Somehow, this reminds me of The Langoliers (Stephen King movie.)
I imagine the 4 light houses may have prevented or protected that small area of land from being destroyed, while the rest of the planet was destroyed.
The location of the lighthouses may have been based on the location of Mt. Aleph because that is were the Golden Sun is reformed. Since the Mars lighthouse didn't have enough power to warm the area around it, or stop the crumbling edge approaching, all the lighthouses were probably incapable of sustaining Weyard without their respective elemental star.
The land beneath the cloud cover around Weyard isn't destroyed. Some of it has resurfaced by the time GS:DD starts.
(http://goldensunwiki.net/images/thumb/2/2e/Ddworldmap.jpg/418px-Ddworldmap.jpg)
"Once you guys figure all this stuff out, post it in a thread so I can read it. I'm sure the luna and sol masks have some sort of ying-yang significance.
it can't be infinite. It *must* come at a cost. And I think the ying-yang symbolism hints at that. (the need for balance)"
For Weyard the cost would be the psynergy used to keep the landmass together. Even after alchemy was sealed away there was a lot of psynergy within Mt. Aleph and perhaps the area beneath it. One could assume Weyard's water is emitted from something down there, perhaps the same thing that creates lava for the volcano.
The Alchemy Well's cost is the Luna Mask and to a lesser extent the Alchemy Forge.
But with too much psi-energy that's not in balance, don't you have more stuff like typhoons and earthquakes and the like? Even volcanic eruptions would probably be due to too much Mars energy, than any actual geothermal energy (which, as far as we know, doesn't exist).
I assumed that's why the alchemy forges were turned off to begin with.
While there is no way to be completely sure, I am almost positive that Weyard is not a flat world in the traditional sense. My best guess is that it is sort of a plateau on a regular planet. Let me explain...
The most noticeable evidence for Weyard being a planet is the atmosphere. Specifically, there is one. If Weyard was a flat slab of land floating in space, fixing the roof of Dora's house would be a much more dire situation, to say the least:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/282x200q90/801/tj15.png)
A flat world would really not be able to sustain enough gravity for a habitable atmosphere due to its irregular shape and therefore lack of centralized mass. Even if the bulk of the landmass's crust was solid osmium, the gravity of the world would most likely be lower than that of Earth's moon unless it was truly massive. Though, even then, the gravity would be too weak along the edges of the landmass to hold an atmosphere in place, meaning that it would still probably erode away.
Now, that is not to say that Weyard necessarily has the same gravitational forces as Earth does. It is still probably much lower, as evidenced by the scene where Sheba and Felix fall off of the Venus Lighthouse:
(http://goldensunwiki.net/images/b/b5/FelixVenusLighthouse.png)
Under Earth-level gravity, the tidal wave would have done almost nothing to prevent the poor little guys from dying on impact, considering how tall the Lighthouse is. They would probably be falling at their terminal velocity before they would be even halfway down the structure. Now, of course, there are a few variables here. Sheba could have used some sort of Jupiter Psynergy to slow their descent or something.
Anyway, I am getting side-tracked. There is more evidence that Weyard is a planet with Gaia Falls. The water falls off of it:
(http://goldensunwiki.net/images/c/c1/Gaia_falls1.PNG)
Even if Weyard were made out of some sort of exotic matter with, like, ten times as much mass as osmium, the water would not fall off of the world, it would loop back around underneath it. The water is clearly falling to a source of gravity underneath the plateau of Weyard. Now, there is the obvious question of how Weyard's oceans do not dry up, but I do not want to get side-tracked again.
Finally, we know that Weyard has enough gravity to sustain the orbit of what is most likely a decent-sized moon, since it can refect enough sunlight to not only be seen, but also to emit enough visible radiation so that the un-aided eye can see during the night at times. We can see this in the reflection of the pond at Garoh:
(http://imageshack.com/a/img41/1706/ns9o.png)
So, I am quite sure that Weyard is a plateau on a regular planet. What the said planet looks like is anyone's guess, though.
Now, for the question of the star that Weyard orbits. This is a bit harder, since we never really see it too well. However, the Iris summon can give us a bit of a platform to guess on for both the star and the solar system that Weyard resides in. Although, we really cannot get anything too definite.
First, the Iris summon in the TLA has her drag your opponents into the star that Weyard orbits:
(http://goldensunwiki.net/images/d/dd/SummonIris.jpg)
It takes her only an impressive sixteen seconds to preform this feat. Assuming that she is dragging them at just under the speed of light, that means that Weyard is approximately 4,796,679Km from its sun, which is a ridiculously short distance. By comparison, Earth is around 149,600,000Km from its sun, and Mercury, at its periapsis, is approximately 4,500,000Km.
This leads me to believe that Weyard's star is extremely small and cool (At least in terms of stars), although there is no way to get an estimate. If the star was the strength of Sol, the only life on Weyard would be Mars Adepts and a molten Wise One, since the surface temperature would probably be around 430 °C if Mercury is anything to go by.
For the rest of the star system, the Dark Dawn (Yes, I know that I have been ignoring Dark Dawn up to this point) Iris summon sort of gives us a hint. Instead of pulling the hostiles into the sun, she seems to drag them to the edge of the solar system and then creates a sun:
(http://goldensunwiki.net/images/c/c1/SummonIrisDD.png)
In this animation, you see a ton of planets. Assuming that she just happened to grab the enimies when all of the planets roughly lined up and assuming that Weyard is the closest planet to the sun in its system, this is what Weyard's star system should roughly look like:
(http://imageshack.com/a/img22/8396/ayxp.png)
Take this with a grain of salt, though. It is quite un-scientific, mostly just guesswork with all of the planets that appear in the summon's animation.
...Woah. Sorry for the massive rant.
I totally agree they're on a plateau which sticks out of [what we expect would be] a round planet in space. However, I think the psi-energies could create a biosphere, and stuff like that. The cloud-roadway, for example, reminds me a lot of how some people speculate we could 're-engineer' our atmosphere to regulate our climate.
I think the alchemy well's never ending supply of water suggests a lot of how water on the plateau might work (I think Wolf mentioned that?), and suggests that the plateau has psi-energy features which might exist independently of the light houses. But that was a really good point, bringing up summons. If they're to be taken literally, Tiamat seems to come out of a... A giant alchemy well? I'm a big fan of thinking that summons are sort of real.
But more on summons, I think Meteor and Judgement support the round-earth thing. Meteor especially.
Super kudos on the post. Thanks a lot.
Edit: whoa, and Coatlicue's sitting atop a tower of ... air-stuff. Can't remember what it's called.
Hmm, this changes everything for my fanfic. :idea:
If this is true, are there more "plateau's"?
And do you think there is life on the planet?
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 12, January, 2014, 02:51:30 AM
Edit: whoa, and Coatlicue's sitting atop a tower of ... air-stuff. Can't remember what it's called.
You mean zol. For the dc hack I had an idea for a mercury village which was abundant in a water element version of the zol stuff
Quote from: Knight of Purgatory on 18, January, 2014, 08:03:36 AM
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 12, January, 2014, 02:51:30 AM
Edit: whoa, and Coatlicue's sitting atop a tower of ... air-stuff. Can't remember what it's called.
You mean zol. For the dc hack I had an idea for a mercury village which was abundant in a water element version of the zol stuff
How would 'water zol' work?
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 12, January, 2014, 01:28:06 AM
But with too much psi-energy that's not in balance, don't you have more stuff like typhoons and earthquakes and the like? Even volcanic eruptions would probably be due to too much Mars energy, than any actual geothermal energy (which, as far as we know, doesn't exist).
I assumed that's why the alchemy forges were turned off to begin with.
That's probably why the psynergy vortexes appear and become more frequent every ten years. That being said, stopping the psynergy vortex outbreaks would probably lead to another disastrous event since nothing will be able to naturally diminish high levels of psynergy in the environment.
The Alchemy Forge and Alchemy Well were also used to power a more potent alchemy machine in GS:DD. This other machine could counter the "5th tower". Should I avoid spoilers at this point in time? Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has been out for a while.
All the summon tablet creatures make me wonder if Weyard is in the same situation as Skyloft; a floating landmass above a planet that also has an unexplained endless supply of water, was moved to an aerial location to protect most of the people on the planet, has few people that know much about the lands current situation or what is below it, is above a cloud cover that shrouds anything beneath them, and has a powerful item just as important as Weyard's Golden Sun. We know the summon creatures may have been involved in old Weyard due to Poseidon being used as a guard dog and Crystallux who can be found in a side story in GS:DD before becoming a summon. Perhaps most of them roam the older part of Weyard making the land far to dangerous to live on after the events that lead to alchemy being sealed away in the first place. (That would explain all the unseen locations.) At least a few of the summons appear to be malevolent. Maybe the search for more ways to control psynergy awakened a few legendary monsters. The tablets themselves could have been a way to use their power regardless of Weyard's new location.
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 25, January, 2014, 12:15:09 AM
Quote from: Knight of Purgatory on 18, January, 2014, 08:03:36 AM
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 12, January, 2014, 02:51:30 AM
Edit: whoa, and Coatlicue's sitting atop a tower of ... air-stuff. Can't remember what it's called.
You mean zol. For the dc hack I had an idea for a mercury village which was abundant in a water element version of the zol stuff
t
How would 'water zol' work?
Similar to zol, except with water XD, if you heat it, it would evaporate into dense fog, while if you apply sufficient force to it, it would gush out water. Or at least thats how I percieved it to be.
So it's a way to turn pools of water into elevated platforms that people can walk on? Other than uses in puzzles, what other ambitions do you have for it? For example, do you imagine a castle out there made of water zol?
@ Wolf: DD Spoilers are fine, me thinks... And do spoiler tags work? [spoiler] testing [/spoiler]
So Zol exists in every Elemental form?
And it is also a stone, like psynergy gems right?
That would be pretty cool.
And they could be used to craft stuff. Truth be told, I like the weapons more than I liked the elemental powers in the games. I think they had some cool animations and effects.
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 01, February, 2014, 03:47:44 AM
And they could be used to craft stuff. Truth be told, I like the weapons more than I liked the elemental powers in the games. I think they had some cool animations and effects.
Agreed, but relatively, the gs1 and 2 animations and effects just felt better( but I think it could also be nostalgia filter).
One thing I wish the golden sun series had, was things like lore for the weapons and stuff, something which Bravely Default pulled off nicely.
Examples for cool weapon lore would be
Sol Blade: A blade forged in honour of the sun, this sacred weapon was said to have been created at the peak of Mount Aleph, by bathing it in psyenergy, to give it exceptional strength and durability. As a result of the weapon's immense power, non but the greatest of heroes may wield it.
Is it worth making a new thread discussing how Golden Sun could benefit from advancements made in other RPGs?
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 02, February, 2014, 08:20:39 AM
Is it worth making a new thread discussing how Golden Sun could benefit from advancements made in other RPGs?
I think that current RPGs do develop further the personality of characters and now all the RPGs are mostly Action RPGs and turn based RPGs is a subgenre that is dying.
cept for pokemon
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 02, February, 2014, 08:20:39 AM
Is it worth making a new thread discussing how Golden Sun could benefit from advancements made in other RPGs?
Yes, I think so. I'm currently being inspired by Squares Snes RPG's. They share many similarities with the Golden Sun games. (especially Lufia)
And yeah except for pokemon. Btw, the game that inspired Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Fantasy_Legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Fantasy_Legend)) has many interesting pieces of gameplay for Golden Sun alongside it's fellow games.
I suddenly got this :idea::
If Weyard is a giant plateau on a planet, shouldn't Weyard be curved slightly?
If we look at the rules of our universe, the plateau would be curved or fall apart more quickly.
When Weyard would be flat all the water would be in the middle (asuming that the heaviest point is in the middle)
But this also explains why all the water is flowing off Weyard.
How do we know Weyard isn't curved slightly?
But if I were a Kraden-type fellow on Weyard, I'd probably have sent up a few hot-air balloons in the center of and on the perimeters of Weyard, and observed whether they appeared as if they were on the same plane when viewed from each other. Basically, I assume that whatever passes for atmosphere could have helped control that all the balloons rose to the same height (given the same weights, and all), and ... well, it makes sense in my head, but I don't know if I'm conveying it properly... I'm a bit tired.
That brings me to another question: How far does the PC's line of sight go?
The Hot Air Balloon thing might not work 100% of the time if you consider things like fog (See Lumeria) and mountains... etc. ; And how could you trust that no one (People, animals, nature...) tampered with the balloons if you don't have someone monitoring them?
If we ever do a role-play thing, I want to be one of the characters involved in this endeavor, and I'm sure he'll figure out a way.
Quote from: Thunder-squall on 25, February, 2014, 06:12:08 PM
How do we know Weyard isn't curved slightly?
But if I were a Kraden-type fellow on Weyard, I'd probably have sent up a few hot-air balloons in the center of and on the perimeters of Weyard, and observed whether they appeared as if they were on the same plane when viewed from each other. Basically, I assume that whatever passes for atmosphere could have helped control that all the balloons rose to the same height (given the same weights, and all), and ... well, it makes sense in my head, but I don't know if I'm conveying it properly... I'm a bit tired.
Well that makes sense. And you are properly conveying it.
EDIT: I don't know if any of you guys know the Discworld series (Terry Pratchett)?
Weyard seriously reminds me of discworld. There was also this whole thing were the scientist tried to find out how their world worked... by looking over the edge. Perhaps we might want to do something like this for our DC revival project? (I was planning something similar for my game)
I know I'm referencing silly @#$% again, but with it I'm pointing out how something can be a good thing (or done before).
Do the research with me! Join the Forum Roleplay characters, 2014 (http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=2337.msg40316#msg40316) thread, where we set out to answer these very questions.