Magic Circle Generator | Hacker News Reader

Magic Circle Generator

game-dev-goose.itch.io

23 pointssensiquest13 comments

Well, if I hear the term "Magic Circle Generator" I think of this:

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/Digital_Sinusoid_Genera...

(Sorry, maybe I am biased)

Pretty sure Charlie Stross warned us about this

Can someone explain what a "magic circle" is ? I have no idea and the website doesn't explain it, but since it's on the frontpage, I assume I must be out of the loop.

It's a circle containing arcane symbols used in ceremonial magic[0,1] also used as a common visual shorthand for magical effects (particularly area of effect spells) in video games and anime[1].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle

[1]https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magic_Circle.png

[2]https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GeometricMagic

It seems somewhat expensive for the function, but the results look absolutely gorgeous!

EDIT: could this work on Linux with Wine or something?

It has a web version apparently, so on linux you could use the web version instead of fiddling with wine.

These remind me of Hindu mandalas, diagrams that actually detail the universe and cosmos

If you generate 9 billion of them, the Universe might end... ;-)

The output is pretty neat but not nearly neat enough to justify the draconian licensing rules on using the output; rules both needlessly complicated and blurry enough to probably a be nonstarter for a lot of people and far moreso companies.

I can use the images in a product, but not sell them directly? The transformative line is ill defined. Can I sell the images if I use them in an artwork? If it’s a major part of my game can I sell t-shirts with it? Other merch? If so the question becomes where’s the line shifting back the other way. Surely I can’t just apply a filter to the images and then sell them. There’s a completely ill defined line, it’s a dumb restriction.

You’re better off just spending 20 minutes making something similar in Illustrator yourself and avoiding the silly legal minefield this thing is trying to set out for you.

I get what they're trying to do, and that is to help the gaming industry while trying to keep the NFT people from using it. I could see a lot of fantasy games using this as part of an occult theme.

I think a better approach is to have a website where you can track the creation of the images, and then look to see if any NFTs were created with the software in violation of the license.

> I can use the images in a product, but not sell them directly? The transformative line is ill defined.

I think the intent is the same as we frequently see with stock images and clip art, and sometimes with other art assets. It's a "no compete" clause. They don't want someone using the tool to, say, generate 500 circles and then try to sell that for $5, undercutting the sales of the tool.

A "no commercial blockchain use" license clause, first time I've seen one of those.

CC-BY-NoCommercialCrypto

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