The "Cotn" Literary contest!

[Uatch-Khepheru]

I don't know why more games don't do this, especially those that have such strong online communities, but cotn should hold a literary contest of some sort. Where the ten best stories are shipped with the game in a text document (or maybe work their way into being seen when the game is being installed). Maybe this would be too complicated, but perhaps they could be somehow featured ingame? (i.e., through the character system).

[vovan]

Hmmm... I am not sure how this would work... Never seen it done before really. You'd have to write some sort of story to go with the main campaign or so.

[Uatch-Khepheru]

No, not really, I remember a side-story in the Pharaoh manual. Come to think of it, that would be another way to implement the fanfic.

[Miut]

From a writer's perspective, that is more complicated than you think. Did you know, and not many do, that Marion Zimmer Bradley, writer of the Darkover SF/Fantasy series, published by DAW Books, who encouraged fan writing and even ran a magazine to have the best published, was sued by a fan who claimed she stole her ideas and later put them in one of her novels? The fan won and from that day onward, there was a whole area of the past history of both the world Marion had designed, as well as the culture etc, that she could never write about because of the ruling of that law suite?

Being with DAW books myself, I have been warned by my Editor to stay well away from any fan writing set in my worlds for the same reason.

In this case, it is Tilted Mill who runs the risk of being sued by some game fanatic (and I mean the real meaning of this word) claiming that their fictional idea, possibly included with the game. was stolen from them without payment! The USA is very conscious of the importance of intellectual rights, and rightly so.

If Tilted Mill do consider this, please do make sure you get properly drawn up cntracts for the authors of such fiction, even if no payment is involved, so as YOU are protected. :)

[Keith]

Most game companies, as a rule, will not accept unsolicited material from outside the company just to avoid such situations. For a company, it would wiser and simpler, for their own protection, just to refuse all such material rather to get involved with contracts and the potiential problems and headaches that may arise from them.
http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/horus2.gif
Keith Heitmann
http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/my-cartouche.gif
dheitm8612@aol.com (mailto:dheitm8612@aol.com)
Pharaoh Music Jukebox (http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/java/pharaoh.htm)

[Miut]

Keith, I would definitely agree on that, but was offering a solution that didn't pour water on the whole idea.
http://www.sff.net/people/Lisanne/Viking/images/Miut.gif

[Keith]

It doesn't mean people still couldn't create them. They just shouldn't get their hopes up of seeing them used in the game. I'm sure that the company lawyers can come up with a contract that would be adequate for the job, it's just that most companies don't want to bother or the expense, IMHO.
http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/horus2.gif
Keith Heitmann
http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/my-cartouche.gif
dheitm8612@aol.com (mailto:dheitm8612@aol.com)
Pharaoh Music Jukebox (http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/java/pharaoh.htm)

[Elvenwarrior2001]

Of course...I might point out that they have their own writers being paid to write stuff for their game(s). Dont want to put them out of work. ;) Plus...they're professionals, and real good at writing. But your idea wasn't a bad one.

Elven

[vovan]

http://www.sff.net/people/Lisanne/Viking/images/Miut.gif

Hey, Miut,

I cleaned up that kitty a bit for ya, so it doesn't have the ugly white dots around it. :)

http://vovansim.homestead.com/files/images/tm/miut.gif

BTW, would be nice to have the signature option enabled. :) I've had a nice siggy picture all ready for a while now, but I always forget to copy-paste it in when I post, and I am surprised how Keith here manages to remember his sig every time. :)

[Keith]

I just keep the code in a notepad txt file that has a shortcut link on my desktop so I can open it easily whenever I come to the board. I copy to memory and then it's just a matter of pasting when I post a message, unless I have copied and pasted something else in the mean time. I leave the text file highlighted and open so I only have to right click and select COPY to put it back in memory ready for use.
http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/horus2.gif
Keith Heitmann
http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/my-cartouche.gif
dheitm8612@aol.com (mailto:dheitm8612@aol.com)
Pharaoh Music Jukebox (http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/java/pharaoh.htm)

[Elvenwarrior2001]

Using the good ole clipboard. That's one way of doing it. ;)

Elven

[vovan]

I just keep the code in a notepad txt file that has a shortcut link on my desktop so I can open it easily whenever I come to the board. I copy to memory and then it's just a matter of pasting when I post a message

But, Keith, that is not the problem. :D Here, I'll reiterate:

I've had a nice siggy picture all ready for a while now, but I always forget to copy-paste it in when I post

So, I have it in a nice little txt file as well. ;)

Well... Maybe I'm just too lazy to open it up, I don't know. But if we're talking about it any way, might as well show it off. :)

http://vovansim.homestead.com/files/images/tm/thoth_hierogliphs.jpg

And:

Sorry for taking the discussion so much off-topic, UK. :o

[Elvenwarrior2001]

Off-topic is the best. But don't tell the Admins that...;)

Elven

[Miut]

Vovan,
Thank you! That looks great and was extremely kind of you. None of the white dots showed up on the Pharaoh boards, but they do here. I will upload it to my web page where I host it. ;) A friend did it for me - it's from the side of a sarcophagus a king had made for his pet cat. ;) Any idea what it is in hieroglyphs? I have searched and failed to find the one for a cat.. cos of course, Miut is cat in Egyptian - or rather, to be exact, the sound a cat makes as well as the glyph cat... ;)
Love yours, btw.

I use a clipbopard extender that allows me to save all the contents and keep an emnormous amount of text in it - both in the active folder and my ones I save - great fro a writer. So I just go to that folder and click on the text with the location of the file, and paste it into here. Almost as easy as keeping it in a text file.. ;) But having it stored permanently as a sig for the board here would be so much easier than having to remember to use it!


http://www.sff.net/people/Lisanne/Viking/images/miut.gif

[Elvenwarrior2001]

Clipboard extender? You mean there's a way to fit more text then the clipboard usually allows per se? I could use that for something. How do you do that?

Elven

[Keith]

Miut, the word for Cat is Miw. it was depicted in hieroglyphs as "Miw" spelled out followed by the determinate character of a picture of a cat.

Here you go:

[Miut]

Thanks, Keith. ;) I think I may mug my son, who is the artist, to redraw them for me in nice colors...
Miut is an alternative for Miw actually. I found three such words that represented the sound and became popular names for cats and for girl children. If you're interested in where I got that info, it was from the British Museum book on the Cat in Egyptian Religion, which is.. in transit here. :( I found this,
www.touregypt.net/magazine/mag04012001/magf1.htm The Cat in Ancient Egypt, which is not the same book, but does briefly mention Miut as a girl's name. I am not sure, but I think I even found a reference to a pharaoh who had a cat called Miut... Miut is pronounced Mew. :D

Elvenwarrior - try the program. Called Smartboard XP, it has its own installer and may even have a trial vesion you can get. I bought mine while I still used Win 98 and have used it for some 4 years at least now.. they do periodic free upgrades, then bring out one you need to buy, like the XP version, but it is a good and stable program. I set it up in Preferences so it saves mostly text and less images, metafiles etc. It has a speech function if you enable speech and you can export to email etc.. very versatile, but I use it solely as a clipboard extender. Oh, it has its own Back up and Restore function too!
Like i said, I found it worth keeping it for 4 years as I need it for my writing - and clipping urls and posts for forums such as here. ;) They do have non XP versions, too, btw.

http://www.smartboardxp.co

http://www.sff.net/people/Lisanne/Viking/images/miut.gif

[Keith]

Seems the British Museum can't make up it's own mind on "cat". I just stumbled across this one on their site:

http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/aes/galleries/understand2.html 4th paragraph, middle of the page.

They had a nicer glyph for "cat".

[Miut]

Thank you, Keith! *hugs* Yes, the deeper you go into the good Egyptology books, the more anomalies you come up with, which is why I am awfully careful to only get books reccomended by Hawasss of Egyptian Museum and other reputable Egyptologists, and very wary of internet sites that don't back up what my own reading has shown me to be the most acceptable and generally believed option. ;)

I did a short story some 18 months for an anthology that is due out this year, an Egyptian fairy tail (yes, tail, as the main character for the anthology had to be a cat in a fairy tale) based around one of the classical fairy tale themes - good girl child avoiding incest, and set it with Ankhesenamun after the murder of Tutankhamun.

I don't any longer actually believe Tutankhamun was murdered after talking to the Egyptian department about those times. The Editor questioned me having two guards gossiping and one warning the other not to speculate lest he lose his head. She felt they did not not behead their subjects and suggested another method. So I phoned up to ask about what was known in documents or tomb writings of death punishments. (They vary completely, ranging from impalement to being buried in the sand up to the neck, and included beheading, so I was quite accurate)

Anyway, the chap and I got to talking about King Tuutankhamun and how he said it was highly unlikely that he had been murdered considering the very loving details of the way he was buried. He quoted a few for me, including something that is extremely rarely mentioned from his treasures. They found a small iron knife in his mummy wrappings, only some 3 or 4 inches long, and in those days, it was worth more than all the gold and precious objects in the tmb.

Given that Hormeheb was the one most likely to have come across it in his wars etc, it showed how well the king was loved by him when he was embalmed. I found it a lovely touch. Such a shame that small details like this are not more commonly known, isn't it? It makes them more alive, more real somehow. :D

http://www.sff.net/people/Lisanne/Viking/images/miut.gif

[Uatch-Khepheru]

Given that Hormeheb was the one most likely to have come across it in his wars etc, it showed how well the king was loved by him when he was embalmed. I found it a lovely touch. Such a shame that small details like this are not more commonly known, isn't it? It makes them more alive, more real somehow. :D


There was also an incident where Tutankhamun's tomb was plundered recently after he was buried (or shortly after the death of Ay), or it was an attempt at plundering, anyway. It was Horemheb who restored the tomb, resealed it, and located the robbers (don't remember who exactly, been awhile since I read that book). Throughout his reign, though, he set a standard for justice and upholding the law I think due to the fact that he had to endure the lawlessness and corruption of the Akhenaten years.

[Miut]

Not unless Horemheb was Pharaoh at the time and ordered the priests to do it, which is quite possible, cos I have it in my couple of books that his tomb was restored by priests of the necropolis, all rooms but one (possibly the annex) had their grave goods reorganized neatly, and it was resealed with the sigil of the necropolis.

What was also interesting is that amongst his grave goods, Tutankhamun's, are some jewellry and stuff bearing Aten emblems.. in fact there is a real mix of Aten and Amun stuff as if though the official religion had gone back to Amun, Tutankhamun still had some beliefs that he initially grew up with. Or they could have been on objects from his childhood. Egyptologists frankly don't know at this juncture.