Re: Underworld 2003 Tamil Dubbed
Teodolinda Mattson
Depictions of the underworld, in ancient Greek and Roman textual and visual sources, differ significantly from source to source, but they all draw on a common pool of traditional mythic motifs. These motifs, such as the realm of Hades and its denizens, the rivers of the underworld, the paradise of the blessed dead, and the places of punishment for the wicked, are developed and transformed through all their uses throughout the ages, depending upon the aims of the author or artist depicting the underworld. Some sources explore the relation of the world of the living to that of the dead through descriptions of the location of the underworld and the difficulties of entering it. By contrast, discussions of the regions within the underworld and existence therein often relate to ideas of afterlife as a continuation of or compensation for life in the world above. All of these depictions made use of the same basic set of elements, adapting them in their own ways to describe the location of, the entering into, and the regions within the underworld.
The ultima underworld engine always fascinated me. In many ways it were way ahead of its time giving the player non-orthogonal walls, sloped floors, bridges, water, 3d doors etc. etc.
Add to that a huge selection of items and monsters stuffed into creatively made levels and a genious plot - and you got an underworld game.
Update: Until recently I believed that the Underworld engine was a so-called ray-casting engine like Wolfenstein, Doom and many other games from that early era of the first person shooter. In a raycasting engine the levels are basicly 2d maps and the player is then fooled into believing that the world is 3d by some scaling tricks. I believed this because the levels ARE stored mostly as 2d maps with the exception of certain items in the world.
However Doug Church was so kind to email me to clear up some things on this matter. Doug was one of the programmers on both the UW1 and UW2 team (and actually project leader on UW2 - good work there Doug!!) so I guess I better believe him :) Here are the facts in his own words :
" However, let me second what Dan Schmidt said in the guestbook back in August about the description of the UW engine you guys have up on the page. Namely, UW _was not_ a raycasting engine. While UW did use a tilemap to store the world, that has nothing to do with the rendering model. In general, I'd suggest that the "world rep" and "rendering engine" be considered separate things when discussing game technology, because they very often are. In UW, we had a tile based world. The renderer used the tiles to explore the view cone and do a high level cull operation. From the list of visible tiles, we generated full 3d polygons, in the traditional XYZ sense, and handed them off to a rendering back end and rendered each poly in 3d as is. That is also how the 3d models like the ankh shrines or benches were done, which clearly aren't "raycast" model 3d objects. Now, in practice, many of our 3d primitives did things like normal checks first, and then chose which algorithim to rasterize with based on scale/normal/etc of the surface being rendered."
Well, thanks for clearing that up Doug.
What I have done is that I have made a program which converts the 2d maps into real 3d meshes of triangles. This 3d data is more suited for the modern hardware accellerated 3d graphics cards. Because the levels are now real 3d you also get full freedom of movement which means that you can move and look in any direction in the world.
My viewer also loads the original 8bit textures and converts them to 24bit using the original pallette from the game. Then it automatically generates a set of mip-maps for each texture using a cubic filter which ensures that flickering in the 3d graphics will be kept at a minimum.
I have made a crude collision detection algorithm to clip the player against the walls. I warn you in advance that this is not a perfect algorithm, but I dont want to spend any more time on this project so I just threw it in to provide SOME realism ;)
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I've done a lot of work with the myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal over the years. This ancient Sumerian myth - one of the oldest available to us today - tells about how Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, descends to the Underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal who is queen of that realm. On the way down Inanna passes through seven gates (this is a common trope of the underworld journey) and at each, is required to give up more of the trappings of her status and above-ground life, until she stands naked before her sister.
Most scholars focus on Inanna and what this journey means for women in general. Their writings tend to center on coming face-to-face with the "dark feminine" and learning what she has to teach us, and/or owning our shadow selves. Most of my own work has focused on Ereshkigal not as a chthonic force but as a person. I've been asking questions like "why is she in the cave in the first place? Why doesn't she leave? Why doesn't Inanna help her leave?" Lately I've been seeing a consonance between Ereshkigal as representing the less privileged portions of society, and Inanna as the well-meaning privileged person who descends/condescends to come visit (Good White Person Doing a Good Thing) - but then goes back to her privileged life and ignores the system that keeps Ereshkigal stuck.
My recent skate-around-the-event-horizon experience has given me another slant on the story. Inanna cannot enter the cave until she is naked. She leaves behind everything when she dies. I am coming to realize just how much I too left behind at the last gate. Not material things but definitely things of the body. I wrote in my earlier post on this that I believe the ego is part of the body and dies with it, as do most of our emotions, particularly the negative ones. I wrote in the first one about how my interactions with my care team in the hospital not only allowed me to see them as the shining souls they truly are, but to finally see myself that way.
What I'm noticing now is how unreactive I have become to things that used to trigger me. Specific behaviors and people who got under my skin no longer do. I notice the behaviors, but I don't engage with them; I don't have an emotional response (except, very often, pity or compassion as I think "what damage was done to that person that this is how they feel compelled to behave?") I am coming to believe that the last gate stripped me of some of my own complexes.
Before this happened, I was reading up on ayahuasca and how it often cures people of problems like PTSD, addiction, depression, etc. It does sound to me like what the ayahuasca ceremony can do is take people through the gates and divest them of the trappings of life that are not truly part of the soul. That's what I feel happened to me. My experience was a rough one for sure, but I'm becoming grateful for it.
In her middle grade debut, Aimee Lim introduces readers to 12-year-old Evie Mei Huang and her incredible discoveries about herself and her mother as she travails the Chinese netherworld to bring her home. SLJ spoke with the former library associate (and Jeopardy champion!) about fate, craft, and affirming childhood's complex emotions.
In your novel, the protagonist embarks on a fantastical adventure in Dy, the Chinese underworld, while grappling with losing her mother. What inspired you to delve into fantasy for your debut?
As a kid, many of my favorite books were fantasy. I was obsessed with Greek mythology, so Percy Jackson was obviously a huge [inspiration] (I had the original cover of The Lightning Thief!), and another personal favorite of mine was Michael Buckley's "The Sisters Grimm" series, which takes a similarly modern, exciting, but also hilarious and irreverent approach to fairy tales. So writing a contemporary middle grade fantasy based on my own cultural background and Chinese mythology feels like a very natural turn of events for me.
The craft of sewing plays a major part in the novel, from the tailor shop belonging to Evie's family to the weaving guild her mother was a part of. What inspired you to include this craft and art form in your story?
There are so many unique characters in the book, a personal favorite being Evie's best friend Thida. Who was your favorite character to write, and is there a character you feel closest to?
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
The reluctant Orpheus can rescue Eurydice from the underworld, on the condition he does not turn to look back at her. On their way out, however, Jupiter (who has since fallen in love with Eurydice) scares him into turning back. Eurydice vanishes back into the underworld and everyone is thrilled with the result.
Orpheus and Eurydice fall in love, marry, and are soon expecting their first child. Disaster strikes, and the young couple cannot comprehend the tragedy that has befallen them. Public Opinion arrives in a black cab and offers Eurydice a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on.
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