What's the name of the planet that Glitch is set on?
Seriously, what's it called? I heard that the planet is named "Ur," but I think that's just an abbreviation. Anyone know what the planet's full name is?
Glitch is the by-product of the dreaming and musing of 11 giants, so it's not a place so much as an effluvia of ideas. You, the player, are a synaptic charge.
Ur would be the game world, but not necessarily a planet.
for example - the giants could be imagining a flat, endlessly expanding plane.
or Ur might turn out to be merely a larger region with sub-regions .. a continent that we haven't yet left.
or just imaginary scenes flitting through the giants' unconscious minds only vaguely tethered to a regional geography, let alone a world spanning or planetary one.
There was an incredibly ancient Sumerian city called Ur, and it may also be mentioned in the book of Genesis in the bible. I've always thought of it as a name that evokes an ancient starting point, which makes sense in this context.
I also thought that in this case Ur was the land mass we're inhabiting, not the planet, but I'm not sure where I've gotten that impression from.
"For a really long time
11 giants walked around
they thought of funny things
until their thinking came alive.
And that's what this game is
you're inside their thoughts.
Go and make them bigger
and we'll play a long while.
And we call the giants by their names:
There's Humbaba and Friendly, Alph, Ti, Zille and Lem
Grendaline and Spriggan
Cosma, Pot and Maaaaaaaab...
And that's what this game is
you're inside their thoughts
go and make them bigger
and we'll play a long while.."
I for one can't wait to visit the desert full o' nuclear waste featured in the video Nanookie posted...
::wonders if there will be radioactive skills::
Just a thought if your in their thoughts then YOU ARE the planet......=.UR?
You the game player make the streets, which make the world bigger Your thoughts, your world , you are UR!
street distinction is a from a very old (18 months+) way of thinking about how we were going to create the world and probably doesn't apply any more. (It was about whole worlds on specks of dust, swirling around each other in the gentle convection of a ray of sunlight … and that was 9 backstory-versions ago ;)
“This,” cried the Mayor, “is your towns darkest hour!
The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
To come to the aid of their country!” he said.
“We’ve GOT to make noises in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!”
It appears, that using Glitchen, the Giants are imagining OUTWARD, not inward. So they've probably not gotten to the "planet" phase yet. Or might never think up "planet" at all.
Think about it: You've never encountered the idea of "planet." You imagine certain things about the world and come up with a tiny bit of land. You expand that out. You think up "oceans" and try that for bit... but it's hard to put trees on the water (or at least it takes some effort to come up with creative solution). So you start some more land. You keep exploring that outward. Heck, for a big you explore "downward" (see caverns).
But why would it every occur to you to think that you should wrap all this stuff onto a sphere? Just going "outward" into infinity makes more logical sense.
NOW... the Giant's did think up oceans... so they may get to the idea of "void" or "ocean of nothing." Extend that for a bit and then make some more land. In which case you have created space.
As to the name Ur. If the Giants imagined the name "Ur," that seems to indicate that they've name the think they are working on now. That would seem to indicate that either (1) they are planning on imagining something else later or (2) have already imagined something else.
(Of course, all of this operates on the principle that has Glitchen we are witnessing the world be imagined. But the ancestor lands indicate otherwise. Unless they were already imagined as being ancient. So the Giants are imagining things with the history already there.)
"Just going "outward" into infinity makes more logical sense." But not exactly, because there is no infinity beyond the stuff going outward. There is the stuff going outward, and that's it. If the Giants stop musing amongst themselves, then stuff stops going outward. Glitchen muck and tromp around in the stuff, and mix one Giant's stuff in the other Giant's stuff and one or more of the Giants gets inspired and that makes new stuff.
But I don't think that things like shape or direction or velocity matter. There's either more stuff or less stuff or an equilibrium of stuff from stuff appearing and disappearing. So to me there is a definite pattern of going stuffward. But I am not sure what else.
Maybe we are inside the giants' brains. This would parallel a book called 'The Brain Plague' by Joan Slonczewski. In this book, there are sentient microorganisms that live inside the human population. These colonies of microorganisms think of their hosts as gods. One hint for me of a link to the game is that there is a street in Glitch called Elysium; Elysium is one of the worlds in the fictional universe that the cycle of novels including The Brain Plague is based in. Also the themes of the book fit in well in some regards with the hinted backstory I see here.
Ur is also a prefix that means original or primitive... here it could be interpreted as just conveying the archaic notion of "a place" without the additional connotations that another name would bring with it.
Well, our glitches are in the giants' minds. But where are the giants themselves? Theoretically, they're on a planet. Unless someone else is imagining the giants imagining us.