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The Sky Is Falling...? in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Thursday, August 23 2007 03:45 Profile Homepage #133
What Synergy says above distills something he has been saying in various forms for some time. Taken at face value, it's true. Certainly it should make us take a step back and consider just how science fits into our general epistemology. Indeed, scientists who claim to know things with hypercartesian certainty are not all that different from prophets who are divinely sure other people will burn in hellfire.

HOWEVER, that does not for a second invalidate scientific claims. When a scientific consensus emerges that theory X is the most reasonable explanation we can come up for a phenomenon Y given our limited (inherently, since we aren't omniscient) data Z, it's still valid. And when these theories are discussed outside the realm of epistemology, the only reasonable thing to do is to treat them as if they are certain on epistemological grounds (obviously not on empirical ones if they aren't) -- to do otherwise is to step into a linguistic limbo of subjunctives and unclear phrases.

As for the psychology of scientists, I think it's sometimes reasonable to talk about bias and what their needs, conscious or unconscious, are. This is often reasonable when discussing the work of one scientist that has never been reviewed by his peers. It's pretty rarely relevant, I think, to scientific consensuses, since it would then require something going on on a collective level. Maybe that's possible if we're talking about, say, genetics and gender. But I don't see how it could realistically come about on an issue of planetary chemistry.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
The REAL list in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Monday, August 20 2007 18:15 Profile Homepage #1
Excellent work Jewels, another service to the community.

Motrax's lair's ToC says: (quoting below)

What does this Exile Page contains?

My new scenario archive.
And links to the best scenario sites on the internet.
My Custom graphic Archive
674 pictures, drawed by me and some other Exile artists. Also links to the best graphic sites.
Hints
Read how to kill the most powerfull monsters, solve the hardest riddles and avoid the nasty traps here.
My Exile Music Archive
Add music to your Exile games
Links to the best Exile sites
If you like Exile, you have to check out this section!
Sign my guestbook
Please sign my guestbook before you leave
View my guestbook.
Read my guestbook here.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Post-apoc game? in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Monday, August 20 2007 12:18 Profile Homepage #2
Oddly enough, the FPS genre is actually a descendant of sorts of the RPG. The key link in the family tree is Ultima Underworld to Wolfenstein 3-D.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Couple of Questions in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Monday, August 20 2007 06:42 Profile Homepage #3
Charm Beast works wonders because it also means the uncharmed monsters might attack the charmed one instead of you.

The crystal equipment did not seem to offer very much protection against stoning when I tried it out (I tried it a lot) despite the claim of 80% on its info box. Anyone know what if anything it does?

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Deathmatch Tournament -- Round Two, Part One in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Sunday, August 19 2007 10:21 Profile Homepage #100
Heh. An astute judgment Salmon, if Nioca and I were fighting. If I read correctly, he was just offering his opinion on this round, which I guess he never did before.

Wool Sweaters: I am seriously considering Thuryl's suggestion. However, if I go that route, I will do it with all the dignity that a deathmatch deserves.

Until that happens, let's let this topic rest rather than turning it into yet another metametametanalysis of Spiderweb.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said.
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Deathmatch Tournament -- Round Two, Part One in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Sunday, August 19 2007 05:40 Profile Homepage #96
Muffin, here's a good rule of thumb.

DO NOT REPLY TO EVERY SINGLE POST.

Hundreds of people read these boards every day. The posts are intended for everyone. You are not the collective typist of everyone. So don't reply to all of them.

Here's another good rule of thumb:

DO NOT KEEP REPLYING TO THE SAME THREAD OVER AND OVER. If you have a lot to say, say it all in one post. If you keep having new ideas, that is a sign that your first post was premature. Wait for your ideas to be fully formed before you thrust them on hundreds of other people!

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said.
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Deathmatch Tournament -- Round Two, Part One in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Saturday, August 18 2007 18:33 Profile Homepage #90
Actually, it takes quite a while if you take it seriously, and there are a number of ancillary tasks to attend to as well.

Muffin, when
- you are talking to someone who has relevant experience
- you don't have relevant experience
- you repeat the same thing over and over
- you have already gotten a response, but continue

people are likely to find you annoying...

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said.
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Deathmatch Tournament -- Round Two, Part One in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Saturday, August 18 2007 17:01 Profile Homepage #88
quote:
Originally written by Iffy:

If only I could email him.
If vlishes were horses...

I will get around to it. Eventually.

In the meanwhile, if eventually looks to be more than a month away, I'll consider Thuryl's suggestion.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said.
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
A little confused in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Saturday, August 18 2007 16:54 Profile Homepage #7
Constructive criticism is one thing, and stubborn negativity is another. Personal attacks, however, are against the code of conduct. Consider yourself warned.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Melee Damage Investigation in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Saturday, August 18 2007 03:30 Profile Homepage #10
Exactly. I was not saying your predictions are nonsense; I was asking what evidence they were based on.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
N:R blessing pools in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Friday, August 17 2007 20:42 Profile Homepage #11
quote:
Originally written by heal plz:

The solution then is to modify corescendata2.txt file, setting some weapon's it_damage_per_level to 1, which means it will do constant damage each hit, which means the total damage will be affected only by other stats of interest, so the number of tries necessary to come up with some conclusion would be defined purely by the complexity of game system and brainpower, unlike the methods of preset number of tries calculating the averages.
A clever idea. However, if Strength and Sword skills interact with the damage per level number differently, as I originally suggested, this method might not reveal it, for obvious reasons.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
The Sky Is Falling...? in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Friday, August 17 2007 19:04 Profile Homepage #59
Thuryl, if everyone here agreed on that, we wouldn't have these insipid debates.

'Course, a man can dream...

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Melee Damage Investigation in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Friday, August 17 2007 19:01 Profile Homepage #6
How is your info for the Windows version if it's based on my data, which was taken from the Mac version? This is the question that I was originally asking: what is your data?

As to the rest, my answer remains: Random fluctuation does not explain 0% difference versus 50% difference. I'm not interested in arguing it further unless there is more data to discuss.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
N:R blessing pools in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Friday, August 17 2007 15:41 Profile Homepage #9
It would be helpful to state how you came to that conclusion. Bonuses to levels of damage are hard to accurately evaluate given the range of damage presented. Also +3 levels of damage but only +10% to hit is an unusual combination; most of Jeff's games uniformly bundle +1 with +5% if both bonuses are given.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Melee Damage Investigation in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Friday, August 17 2007 15:38 Profile Homepage #4
If you look at the columns in my chart showing change in average damage (the "+ Obs" and "+ Icy" colums) you will notice that for Melee Weapons skill, Berserker skill, Mighty Warrior trait and Bless spell, the gains are nearly identical for both weapons. For Strength skill however, the gains are about 50% greater for the Spear. The discrepancy between nearly identical and 50% greater is too wide for me to chalk up to random chance when using 20 data points for each average.

You claim that "any increase will be more noticeable on the spear", but in fact this was not the case; Strength was the only increase that was significantly more noticeable on the spear.

Additionally, if each point of Berserker added 1 level, we would expect the +10 Berserker results to be similar to the +10 Strength results, but they aren't.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Melee Damage Investigation in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Friday, August 17 2007 11:57 Profile Homepage #2
Interesting numbers. Some of these make a lot of sense (i.e., the Mighty Warrior formula) but they fail to account for a few things, such as the fact that weapon damage die affects Strength more than Melee Weapons. I'm interested to hear how you arrived at these numbers.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
N:R blessing pools in Nethergate
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Thursday, August 16 2007 09:03 Profile Homepage #7
Where does the 3 levels and 10% data come from?

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
The Sky Is Falling...? in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Wednesday, August 15 2007 08:13 Profile Homepage #5
As Skomer said, there is a science separate from the politics. Global warming is established scientific fact. Obviously, when it is politicized, it gets distorted.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something."
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Random name generators in General
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Tuesday, August 14 2007 08:12 Profile Homepage #5
***Your Band Name is:***

The Badass Fajitas

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Start the Fire? in Blades of Avernum
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Tuesday, August 14 2007 08:03 Profile Homepage #13
Speaking of glowing objects and ways to produce light, I'd like to suggest a new condition for A5. Lichenthropy...

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum 5, July Update in Avernum 4
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Monday, August 13 2007 06:25 Profile Homepage #48
I notice Jeff refers to Cheeseball as "it" and not "he" as he is referred to in the games. Perhaps Solberg had Cheeseball neutered. That would explain their animosity...

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
I lost the orb of Thralni =/ in The Avernum Trilogy
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Monday, August 13 2007 04:51 Profile Homepage #8
Uh, that's how time is recorded. Midnight is 12 AM, followed by 1 AM, 2 AM, ... 11 AM, then noon is 12 PM, 1 PM, and so on. He edited it about 10.5 hours later.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
G5 wishlist. in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Slarty
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
 written Sunday, August 12 2007 08:41 Profile Homepage #102
I can actually think of two console RPGs that took this idea even further. Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom has a number of different possible player character sets and endings depending on which marriages take place in the game. Dragon Quest V similarly gives you a choice of whom to marry, and allows you to play as your own children, although in that case the choice of wife only seems to affect your kids' hair color.

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Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central
"Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said.
Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00

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