“What right has such a sobersides to sit in the stalls and criticize the human comedy?”
Grogg launched SimCreate and gingerly chose a new project canvas. It was Grogg's first time using such a low-level program with bare-bones physical laws-generation.
"I can't see a damned thing." Grogg groaned loudly. Grogg stared at the blank project for a long time, "How can there not be preprogrammed ParticleCollide in this day and age? Do I have to create my own radiation?"
Grogg spent most of the day trying out brute force fusion scenarios before finally hitting something workable. Grogg set a visible frequency band and created ray-tracing algorithms. Pleased that at least now there was native lighting, Grogg cracked open long-untouched WorldCreation guides and started to read about simulating thermonuclear reactions. By the end of the day, Grogg had groups of luminous spheres of plasma. Pleased with the day's progress, Grogg logged off and headed home.
Overnight, some of Grogg's spheres exploded into beautiful interstellar clouds.
The next day comprised arduous hours spent on basic chemistry and terraforming. Grogg hunted down documentation on setting refractive indices for different types of molecules, tectonics, rock formation and erosion...
As Grogg randomized movements of lithospheric plates and rings of volcanoes began erupting at delightful intervals, Grogg reflected on how much work indeed went into preprogramming canvases. Nowadays, presets such as LetThereBeLight and LetItBeGood were so cheaply and readily available that programmers had little appreciation for technological breakthroughs made in the days of yore.
Grogg continued to toil, elbow deep in concepts such as macromolecular catalysts and carbon compounds, all the while murmuring: "Worthy are you, canvas preset mass producers, to receive profits and growth, for you create all things."