Not-Quite-Friday Edition

So this last week, a lot of the world has been experiencing a massive heat wave.

Here, it has been over 100F since last saturday.

I work a pretty physical job in a building without AC, so it’s been very unpleasant. I’ve been so drained following work I haven’t really had the energy to do anything besides screw around.

I made this epic artsy moodboard to convey what it’s been like:

Yeah.

what I did this week

I spent a lot of time discovering that Bevy’s game state system is very incomplete and debugging strange errors. That’s pretty much it.

uuhhh

In lieu of actual interesting Game Dev News(tm), I decided to just asspull a bunch more filler lore about the setting that I’ve never properly written down.

Welcome to San Ramiro

San Ramiro - The Endless City of the West

It’s hard to even call the sprawling mess of development that San Ramiro is even a city. It spans so much of an area it’s practically a nation in and of itself-and might as well be for how it’s independently run by a shell government.

Location

Located on and occupying most of the western seaboard of the Americas, San Ramiro was the name given to the incorporated block of cities that conglomerated into one unified governmental structure. The ever weakening power of the federal government and endless deadlock of the state governments resulted in most municipalities essentially running themselves as though they were their own countries.

Once the major cities of the west coast had sprawled enough and developed enough connective infrastructure to effectively become one continuous city, it only became logical for said cities to unify their efforts for greater negotiating powers against interference.

Of course, ever increasing corporate control of government bodies contributed as well. It would be much easier to control one body than attempt to negotiate with tens or more.

This resulted in San Ramiro, the “endless city of the west,” and what would become the blueprint for future megacity development. One can travel across nearly the entire western coast of North America without ever leaving San Ramiro.

Government

While the San Ramiro government could be technically considered democratic, quite possibly nobody actually considers it to be. Political parties were done away with, but it’s not clear who exactly the remaining politicians serve. Extremely few people vote, if at all, and it’s forever unclear what the appointed politicians do.

The reality of the matter to anyone who read between the lines was that gaining any degree of control meant cozying up to the corporate boards that made most of the decisions between themselves. Most of the members were easily swayed by a hefty enough payment, but being close friends is enough to tip the scales in your favor if it’s the right friends.

As to why people are generally content with this, most simply don’t care enough to be discontent. Their lives could always be worse, and things weren’t that bad currently. The megacorps already ran their lives more than the government before they assumed more direct control. It wasn’t even a large change or obvious difference.

Regions

The Pacific Northwest rapidly became more temperate as displaced ocean currents brought warmer waters to the west coast. Over the course of a few decades, the shoreline quickly became a rocky marsh, and the climate became much more wet. Thankfully this aligned perfectly with the growing needs of the ever drying south, moving lots of money.

The Bay Area’s significance in the computing boom of the 2000s created the perfect breeding ground for the cutting edge of biotechnology. Both designer gene editing and the latest in cybernetics startups made perfect homes to the venture capital overwhelmed startup culture. The land value only continued to rise upwards given the strange and draconian zoning. While getting close agreements with all the hottest manufacturers is easy, it might come at extreme rents.

Central regions remained relatively undeveloped. The central valley was one of the shrinking areas of arable land, but as vertical hydroponics began to make up more of the food supply the farms became more disused. Lack of maintenance of previous farm fields lead to widespread dead areas, forming cheap land for the taking for anyone looking to develop at rock bottom costs. Of course, low costs are offset by the distance from the true urban hubs and the logistics problems that presents.

Southern regions, being previous economic and cultural hotspots, grew into mind-boggling metropolises. While not really possible for anyone to live comfortably but the absolute wealthiest, the city center contains hundreds of supermassive skyscrapers-the tallest reaching over a mile high. It’s unclear why exactly they exist considering they seem to be adjacent to endless sprawl of low density, easy to develop land. The largest of these skyscrapers are effectively playgrounds for the upper class, with some never leaving the same building and living nearly all of their extended lives within it. And of course, the tenacious can rent space-for a steep price.

All of the south’s resources are brought in. Massive pipelines, owned by joint ventures of several multinational water companies who suspiciously share parent companies, bring in all water from the north. The desolate land no longer bears groundwater, and the temperatures have become far too high and rain too scarce to be able to reasonably sustain agriculture. Not like there would be any room, considering the low density housing covering practically every imaginable piece of land. It’s unclear who even lives in all of them, at any one point most seem to be empty. At least they’re “affordable” as a result. Even if the utilities are extortionate.

Ok I guess

Not much this week.

Next week AI or something, this bit is still hapening yes.