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dariusk / NaNoGenMo-2015

National Novel Generation Month, 2015 edition.
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The Greater Book of Transmutation (A DIY Alchemy Guide) #172

Open TobiasWehrum opened 8 years ago

TobiasWehrum commented 8 years ago

After missing last year's NaNoGenMo, I thought I should finally take the plunge this year. Nevermind that I never made any generative text before.

The Greater Book of Transmutation is mainly based on a free association database that I found here. It's about making things, using materials that are commonly associated with them - e.g., a cat might be made from "being feline", "claws", "meows" and "being graceful" and "tail". Throw in a system of tools with actions that use/transform materials, a bit of word classification, markov-chain latin words generator, a lot of sillyness and whatever else I will add before the month ends, and you get something like:

How to make a book in 12 easy steps:

Materials:

  • 10 hymns
  • 178 readings
  • 10 clear concepts of poem
  • 4 clear concepts of guide

Tools:

  • bucket with water
  • vessel
  • pet unicorn
  • ballpoint pen

Instructions:

  1. Let vessel cool down.
  2. Heat vessel.
  3. Dip 10 clear concepts of poem into the bucket with water.
  4. Feed 10 clear concepts of wet poem to your pet unicorn.
  5. Let your pet unicorn lick 10 hymns.
  6. Pet your pet unicorn.
  7. Wait for a long time.
  8. Wait until your pet unicorn poops. Receive 124.89 ounces of a very dirty pile of "wet poem"
  9. Draw a magic circle on the floor using the ballpoint pen.
  10. Draw a cross into the circle and place 10 licked hymns, 178 readings, 4 clear concepts of guide and 124.89 ounces of a very dirty pile of "wet poem" on each corner.
  11. Whisper the following spell: "Alchemia implacabilis! Meio clystermitto clodigo condocefaciencia, millibi! Verca bisellatrocinium! Creditor circumbrans!"
  12. Reluctantly, a book will appear inside the circle.

(That might also help those that are still struggling to make a book. And if you are missing one of the materials or tools, maybe another entry in The Greater Book of Transmutation could help you make it!)

hugovk commented 8 years ago

Nice idea!

TobiasWehrum commented 8 years ago

I'm glad you like it. And it's done now! Not that much changed in these 5 days, mostly sanding rough edges and working on the PDF creation.

Source: https://github.com/TobiasWehrum/TheGreaterBookOfTransmutation PDF: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1977054/projects/art/Generative%20Art%20Files/other/TheGreaterBookOfTransmutation.pdf Preview: See first post

That was a lot of fun. Can't wait for the NaNoGenMo next year!

hugovk commented 8 years ago

Good stuff, and nice layout too.

I baked some bread yesterday, if only I'd known the magic spell "Dico citas!"

greg-kennedy commented 8 years ago

I love this, it's great. Spent some time flipping through various recipes and laughing.

IMO the ingredients are the best part. Also liked the layout very much.

TobiasWehrum commented 8 years ago

@hugovk, @greg-kennedy: Glad you two like it! The layout is just the default LaTeX \documentclass{article}, so that was pretty easy to achieve. I would've loved to actually style it like an old book, but my "I would've loved to" list is long and time was short! (E.g., I'm dabbling in generative art too and wanted to make a magic circle generator that would've probably taken me another month. Good thing NaNoGenMo only takes one month.)

Yes, the ingredients are definitely the heart of the book. I tried to make the instructions interesting/fun too, but they can't gain the strange and funny coherence of the ingredient-product combination.

(PS: @hugovk , I hope you had at least enough "clear concepts of baked" for your bread!)