Profile for Custer

Error message

Deprecated function: implode(): Passing glue string after array is deprecated. Swap the parameters in drupal_get_feeds() (line 394 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).

Recent posts

Pages

AuthorRecent posts
cehck tihs out in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Monday, March 14 2005 07:08 Profile Homepage #71
quote:
Originally written by Mind:

quote:
Originally written by Ash Lael:

I maintain that the entire education system is, by and large, a waste of time. Higher education may be different, I've no experience with it. I also realise that a lot of fields absolutely require formal education (such as medicine, for example), and am not referring to these.

Having given those disclaimers, I have no qualms saying that I think more often than not, formal education is, at best, very innefficient and you're generally better off bypassing it as much as possible.

Edit: Hmm, that's a lot of qualifiers. :P
If you are stating that the learning techniques of the education system are insufficient, I agree.

If you are stating that the majority of the subject matter of the education system is purposeless, I strongly agree.
We lost a golden era when we implemented public education. A golden era when the majority of people could be convinced the Bible justified slavery, denying women even cursory legal rights was considered not only justifiable but the right thing to do, and no one got all pissy when a lack of even the most basic idea of sanitation turned anything larger than a hamlet into a literal cesspool.

Yeah, good times.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
How many? in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Sunday, March 13 2005 02:06 Profile Homepage #40
quote:
Originally written by dampeoples:

Sterling Dax Peoples
That sounds like the sort of name that is hell growing up with, but bad-ass later on.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
User Friendlyness in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Saturday, March 12 2005 17:19 Profile Homepage #7
quote:
Originally written by Oni of Chaos:

If Jeff makes A4 with a new engine, maybe he will make BoA2 with that engine , but probably not.
BoA2 would be pretty much pointless.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Humanoid Species In Mythology in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Friday, March 11 2005 21:41 Profile Homepage #2
Ahem, query was a bit ambiguous - I was looking for both source and geographical location (an example of the two being separate being the Norse, who put all sorts of nasty humanoids around the Baltic states).

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Humanoid Species In Mythology in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Friday, March 11 2005 20:16 Profile Homepage #0
Alright, time to flex your crypto-literary muscles. If you know of any humanoid species in mythology, post 'em along with where they typically appear in the same.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
cehck tihs out in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Friday, March 11 2005 18:10 Profile Homepage #37
quote:
Originally written by Drakefyre:

I'd say that the most guttural language is Euskara, the Basque language.
I thought it was Euskal, or just Euska.

I'd go for one of the South African languages; they're generally so glutteral as to require clicking.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
It's a bird! It's a plane! in Blades of Avernum
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Thursday, March 10 2005 16:30 Profile Homepage #0
It's Captain Avernum!

IMAGE(http://alec.desperance.net/captainavernum.PNG)

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Article - Rollick in Blades of Avernum Editor
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Wednesday, March 9 2005 11:40 Profile Homepage #5
quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

]Please explain to me how the hell it is possible to make a good scenario where the party "can't dawdle" but is still able to go anywhere and do anything at any time without being punished for it by losing.
You can start by being Jeff Vogel.

</dg>

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Article - Rollick in Blades of Avernum
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Wednesday, March 9 2005 11:40 Profile Homepage #5
quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

]Please explain to me how the hell it is possible to make a good scenario where the party "can't dawdle" but is still able to go anywhere and do anything at any time without being punished for it by losing.
You can start by being Jeff Vogel.

</dg>

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
A very important date, and some statistics. in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Wednesday, March 9 2005 11:15 Profile Homepage #13
quote:
Originally written by Mind:

quote:
Yes. But guess who's the one Djur calls Elfy McSpamface? :P
HAGGLE GAGGLE I'M A WOMAN
FYT

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
4543 in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Wednesday, March 9 2005 10:49 Profile Homepage #30
I find it disturbing that no one knows why this topic exists. It's reasonably clear.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
A very important date, and some statistics. in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Wednesday, March 9 2005 10:47 Profile Homepage #11
It is because you are often an elf and spam lots, as opposed to Kelandon, who is merely well-dispersed and has more of a slith fetish.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Your Thoughts .... in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Tuesday, March 8 2005 14:14 Profile Homepage #23
None of that Westernized crap for TM.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
4543 in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Sunday, March 6 2005 18:09 Profile Homepage #0
^_^

[ Sunday, March 06, 2005 18:10: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ]

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Nature Of The Beast: Why Game-Style Nonlinearity Just Doesn't Work In Blades in Blades of Avernum
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Saturday, March 5 2005 09:46 Profile Homepage #0
There has been a lot of argument lately about linearity versus non-linearity, to the point of the non-linearity faction getting downright militant about the issue, shouting down people who write articles against it and writing their own aggressively ignorant articles about what everyone else should do with the engine.

This article is not telling you what to do. If you want to ignore it, that is fine; you might even somehow manage to make a decent scenario that way. It is just going to say what Blades of Avernum is simply not meant to do.

Blades of Avernum is meant to provide a designer with a way to tell a story, preferably a simple one, through a dynamic world environment.

Blades of Avernum does include dynamic-world-environment capabilities, but they are relatively limited.

Scripting events, monsters, and dialog takes a hell of a lot of time. If this were not so, or if these things did not exist in the first place, or if they were dumbed down significantly, linearity would not be the dominant paradigm.

However, those are hypotheticals. In the real BoX design schema, at some point there exists a conflict of resources. Anyone who's studied economics knows about opportunity costs: if you spend an hour making wristwatches, you cannot spend that hour making a grandfather clock.

In addition to this, size is a resource. The ideal BoA scenario is relatively small; beyond some point, the entire affair grows a little mind-numbing and boring.

The question is: how do we use these resources? Do we invest in a nonlinear world or a linear world?

In plot terms, there is NO CONTEST here. It is IMPOSSIBLE to develop ANY solid atmosphere in a strictly nonlinear work; it has been tried and found wanting. The plots of nonlinear scenarios are often anemic and weak.

In combat terms, there is also NO CONTEST; you can take twenty towns and fill all but three of them with random crap monsters for the sole purpose of entertaining morons whose sole attraction to BoA is the ability to crack heads, or you can spend twenty dungeons building up a single, overarching, AWESOME tactical challenge. Because of limitations in the engine itself, making nonlinear combat as potentially entertaining as linear combat is not possible.

And in design terms, similarly NO CONTEST. You can dump hours and hours of nodework into putting little fancy tricks in every stupid random dungeon you make in a NL world, or you can invest that time into making a stunning experience for the player and a proud accomplishment for yourself.

Overall, working in a nonlinear framework SEVERELY limits the capabilities of the designer, due to the plain and simple fact of limited resources. Because the engine itself cannot be radically tweaked to create new challenges and feats, every BoA scenario is mechanically identical; as such, there's no exceptional way to set any two radically nonlinear scenarios apart, nor any way to make a radically nonlinear scenario overcome the TREMENDOUS obstacles listed above.

Comparisons of scenarios to marketed games is absurd because one has far less power to change the environment than the other. In a game, the engine does whatever you bloody well please. Try and remake Diablo II or Fallout in BoA, and you may just be surprised to see that it won't bloody work. They are two different ways of doing things.

In BoA, you CAN make a good story, you CAN make interesting combat and dynamics, and you CAN make an interactive, breathtaking world. You CANNOT, however, make another Avernum, or at least you CANNOT without either sacrificing tremendous amounts of quality or sacrificing tremendous amounts of time.

If you want to try, you're welcome to; just don't expect to wind up with anything remotely good.

[ Saturday, March 05, 2005 09:47: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ]

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Linear Scenarios v. Non-Linear Scenarios: The doctrine of time = money in Blades of Avernum
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Saturday, March 5 2005 09:25 Profile Homepage #17
Silver, that was genius and perhaps the first BoA design article I've considered a pleasure to read. Thank you.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Who are you??? in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Friday, March 4 2005 20:03 Profile Homepage #60
quote:
Originally written by Solomon Strokes:

quote:
Originally written by Cavanoskus:

I painted the dragon on the door. The poster is a wallscroll from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Then I rescind my comment- it is hentai.

PS- I know that they're interchangeable, but is that Rei Ayanami or Shinji's mother?
And why the hell does she have wings?

I'm serious. Unless my memory is terribly off, the only things that ever had real live wings in Eva were the serieses and maybe birds.

[ Friday, March 04, 2005 20:04: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ]

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
The Dingoes Ate My Baby! in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Wednesday, March 2 2005 13:16 Profile Homepage #116
quote:
Originally written by Arma virumque cano...:

As my high school choir director always used to say, "Jesus did good. You do well."
This sort of thing works well until pedants start insisting on using 'well' with 'to be', against all common sense.

An example of this is me asking a comrade 'How are you today?', them responding with 'I am well', and the two of us retiring to Switzerland for dongchongery, with me markedly sadder than usual.

[ Wednesday, March 02, 2005 13:18: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ]

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
The Dingoes Ate My Baby! in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Monday, February 28 2005 07:06 Profile Homepage #85
No one knows how to pronounce Boeh, even the Boehs themselves. I interpret it as 'bwah' or 'bweh'.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
A3: The first party of explorers. in The Avernum Trilogy
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Sunday, February 27 2005 15:47 Profile Homepage #12
quote:
Originally written by Daryl Mycroft [Arancaytar:
]
I do wonder why the first party failed so miserably when the player party is, after all so successful. The only conclusion is that the first party considered of a bunch of lousy imbeciles, which makes one wonder why Unspec. Services chose them.
Or they knocked out all of the tough monsters before you even came up.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
The Dingoes Ate My Baby! in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Sunday, February 27 2005 14:21 Profile Homepage #77
It's technically 'di-yoor', because it is Swedish. But no one, Djur included, actually pronounces it that way. :P

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
The Dingoes Ate My Baby! in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Sunday, February 27 2005 09:33 Profile Homepage #71
I pronounce it the same as the German.

Also, my voice isn't going up any time in the foreseeable future due to sounding like crap from an allergic reaction, and the only existing files I have are unspeakably lewd. So it goes.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
I Am The Lac Insect in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Friday, February 25 2005 22:03 Profile Homepage #16
Only if you plan to have them whacked...

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
Who are you??? in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Thursday, February 24 2005 17:48 Profile Homepage #37
...but as you'll note it's very small, so I still would

-BtI

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
The Dingoes Ate My Baby! in General
Custer
Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
 written Thursday, February 24 2005 13:01 Profile Homepage #50
IMAGE(http://aspectfoundation.org/flex123/images/blank_map_Eurasia.gif)

Note the location of England, of China, and of Germany.

--------------------
The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest.
Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00

Pages