Profile for Or else o'erleap.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Or else o'erleap. |
| Member number | 335 |
| Title | Law Bringer |
| Postcount | 14579 |
| Homepage | http://www.polarisboard.net |
| Registered | Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Worst game possible: First round in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, July 11 2006 13:47
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Combat that overemphasizes one thing is hardly unique to consoles, and "innovation" backwards is also pretty universal. I still think Spiderweb has stats just right. They may not all be perfectly balanced, but nothing is so good it's a crime and advancement is both reasonably simple and completely up to you. —Alorael, who does not like playing games in which he needs to read a technical manual full of jargon in order to understand how to play, or more importantly how to progress without crippling his characters. He also does not like the (A)D&D memorization spell system. Unless someone makes a Dying Earth CRPG, of course. And that would be spiffy! Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What do you think of A4 in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, July 11 2006 13:42
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I don't remember exactly, but that sounds like a reasonable level for getting through. If you're sneaking, you don't have to attack a single pylon (or get zapped by a single one, for that matter). You will have to go slowly and back up whenever you get within pylon range and combat mode starts. It takes some trial and error and it's frustrating, but it can be done. —Alorael, who preferred the pink blob eyeball monsters. He thought they were more unique and creepy in a kind of adorably pink and amorphous way. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Lark's Scrolls [spoiler] in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, July 10 2006 20:38
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The trick to killing pylons from outside their range is simple enough. Deal more damage than they can heal. You'll burn through a lot of energy doing it, but it works. —Alorael, who doesn't have the patience for it. Hence the sneaking. Besides, after Jeff went to the effort to put in a challenge besides killing everything that moves, isn't it only polite to not kill everything that moves. (Pylons don't move, but the idea holds.) Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Civil Unions disallowed in ACT in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, July 10 2006 13:52
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While the fallacies of your arguments have been nicely skewered already, I would like to point out that "homo" is considered an offensive term and should not be used on these boards. —Alorael, who would like to know what kind of slippery slope logic results in legalization of gay marriage resulting in people becoming gay. He'd rather not know what slippery slope logic results in gay marriage leading to zoophilia. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Oh my God, you just can't make this **** up. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, July 10 2006 13:44
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If you don't like fake meat, perhaps you should not be eating it. Nobody is asking you too. For that matter, I don't understand why fake meat is expected to taste just like real meat. I understand why it should taste good, and I do in fact like some meat-substitute products. But if you're a vegetarian who craves meat there is something wrong with your vegetarianism. —Alorael, who is a fair-weather vegetarian. Or maybe a foul-weather carnivore. Or just an idiosyncratic consumer. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What do you think of A4 in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, July 10 2006 13:38
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A4 was just the most information ever given by or about the Eyebeasts. I'm hoping for a revelation that Jeff has played some of TM's BoE scenarios and decided he liked the idea but didn't want to seem too derivative. Eyebeasts and Rakshasi are both just weird monsters, right? —Alorael, who actually has no hopes of the kind, for the record. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Feature Length Animation Films in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, July 10 2006 13:35
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I'm a fair-weather Wallace and Gromit, I thought Toy Story was well done, and that's about it. Despite several attempts I've never been able to enjoy anime. Most of it seems to require some insight into a baseline anime mindset that I'm lacking. I might make another for Tales of Earthsea, though. —Alorael, who would like to point out the critical difference bewteen "La Puta" and "Laputa." One is from Gulliver's Travels. The other is a rather insulting word in Spanish with its article. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Civil Unions disallowed in ACT in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, July 9 2006 17:51
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Very simply, third-world policy is a victim without any real assailant. Yes, there are causes, but you can't point a finger at anyone and say, "You cause poverty!" Gay marriage has an assailant (or two!) with no victim. It is by its nature a consensual act unless it's gun-point gay marriage, which is rather unusual. —Alorael, who still thinks gay marriage should be supported as the cheapest and easiest form of birth control. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| A1: questions in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, July 9 2006 17:35
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It is technically possible to kill Rentar-Ihrno in A3 although you're not supposed to be able to do it. It takes a lot of time and patience and has no results or impact on the ending because it isn't supposed to happen. —Alorael, who believes there are a few more unkillables in A1 (like Micah). None of them are evil scum who deserve to die. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Lark's Scrolls [spoiler] in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, July 9 2006 12:14
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You can stop them from freezing you either by staying outside of their range or by standing one space outside of their range and pummeling them with arrows and spells until they die. —Alorael, who did the former. Others seem to prefer the latter. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Naturally, I'm sure this has been proposed before. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, July 9 2006 10:33
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Books and movies rely on fairly different things to be successful, which is why so many movies based on books aren't very good and why so many movie novelizations are equally mediocre. Games are even more different. Consider: Avernum's story revolves around killing things, basically. There's a plot, but there's not much of a plot. There are very few real characters. A novel would be barely recognizable as Avernum or terrible or both. —Alorael, who does think the world of Avernum could be used as the setting for a good story or two. It's just that the games aren't those stories. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Worst game possible: First round in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 23:51
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Majesty isn't a good game, but it also isn't bad. It is, in some ways, an exercise. Learn how to let go of control. Accept that sometimes the only way to play is to just let go. Understand that despite the interface that lets you bribe your units to do what you want, there are no results from said bribes. After the initial frustration and anger, it's actually liberating. Mind you, this only works because the computer has no more AI behind it than your units do and tends to be so flimsy that you win by numbers as enough of your units wander into the right area by chance. [Edit: Interestingly, this makes the game almost exactly the opposite of Myth. Myth is all tactics with no real strategy because all you've got is your units. Majesty is all strategy with no tactics because you have no control to speak of. Myth is a stunningly good game. Majesty isn't.] —Alorael, who can't say the same for games between two human players. Both feverishly build up their bases and start churning out units. Then comes the sickening realization that exponentially growing building costs mean you can't make any more units. You've got what you've got. So two moderately titanic armies slowly wander into each other and form a massive melee somewhere on the map. As units (slowly) fall in battle their "controllers" pay for replacements, who meander back into the fray. This goes on until someone gives up and quits. [ Saturday, July 08, 2006 23:52: Message edited by: Citizen of Exile's Arrest ] Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Bride of the Abominable Photo Thread in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 22:12
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Try here. —Alorael, who does not recommend taking the proverbial hook, line, and sinker. It's probably bad for your proverbial teeth. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Oh my God, you just can't make this **** up. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 22:05
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I would like to put forward the idea that the meal is disgusting both for its constituents in category and the specific ingredients. The only things in there that qualify as food are pancakes and fries. Only the pancakes are breakfast, and only barely. Also, I keep trying to figure out how to make that into a meal that works in a diet that does not end in rapid death. It contain about half of the 2000 calorie diet that people supposedly eat, which means it's actually less than half of an average American's daily calories. Yet with those percent daily value numbers, you'd have to go the rest of the day without fat and with something that gets cholesterol out of you fast. —Alorael, who is seeing visions of someone starting off the day right with that metabolism bomb and then rounding out their diet with fruits, green vegetables, and water. It would make for an interesting diet. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Lark's Scrolls [spoiler] in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 21:57
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Or you can play the sneaky game and get into Rentar-Ihrno's fortress without disturbing a single pylon. —Alorael, who did happen to disturb a few pylons with that incredibly irritating stairway into the middle of a pylon cluster. That just led to a throwing up of hands and a reloading of previous saves. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Lark's Scrolls [spoiler] in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 17:20
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Rentar-Ihrno is on Keep #3 by the end of A4 if you count her lair in A3. —Alorael, who wonders if maybe she should think of a different system, like lurking in small, well-protected, and low-profile establishments with portcullises that only open from the inside. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Worst game possible: First round in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 17:14
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I'm not really sure how that makes FF7 the worst possible game, but we can work with that. Arbitrary manipulation of who is and who can be in the player's party makes the game all the more frustrating. —Alorael, who otherwise can only see how FF7's failure can be called plot. FF7's plot is apparently a crowd-pleaser. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Oh my God, you just can't make this **** up. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 13:18
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That is remarkably similar in nutritional content to the McDonalds Deluxe Breakfast. —Alorael, who has eaten within the past two hours and who now bitterly regrets it. The bacon and sausage are enough to start cults of vegetarianism. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Where is Stout's sword? in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 10:37
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There are plenty of enemies with interesting equipment who don't leave it behind when they die. Stout is probably one of them. —Alorael, who really hoped to get Abisynthe's mitosis gauntlets. Alas, it was not to be. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Worst game possible: First round in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 7 2006 16:10
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Another good bad idea is having each step of the plot become a greater hurdle. At first you're led from quest A to quest B by the hand. Then you have to start finding clues and figuring stuff out. Then you don't get any clues and you have to wander around looking for the one person who can tell you what to do next. —Alorael, who has gone through this far too many times. It's really not that much fun no matter how well the game handles the inevitable pointless battles en route. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Worst game possible: First round in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 7 2006 14:11
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Let's start with the elements of good game design that can be warped to our evil needs: Plot. A good or at least decent plot can keep a sucker playing, as Zeviz says. Atmosphere: I insist on making this separate from plot, but it serves basically the same function. Graphics: Hideous graphics offer some good possibilities, but I think the real disasters lie in more subtly awful tricks. For example, perfectly serviceable graphics with occasional eye-searing "errors," a 3D setup with a self-positioning camera that always chooses the worst angle so you can only see walls or close-ups of pixellated ears. Audio: Music that seems okay and then rapidly becomes unbearabel is good. Sound effects that are serviceable except for the occasional random sound glitch that can cause severe ear damage are good too. Horrendous voice acting is a must. Interface: Make clicking picky. Make it really easy to mis-click. Make it like the older versions of A4, only more so. And make potential click errors disastrous, especially if you can only save at a few places with long and irritating segments of gameplay in between. Ugly menus with slightly fuzzy text and many similar letters can keep people guessing. Bonus points if "yes" and "no" somehow can't be distinguished from each other. Sensitivity that goes from so high you can't actually exert any fine control to so sluggish you just can't do anything with the keyboard or mouse is good. Put in plenty of lag even on fast computers. Gameplay: Another goldmine. As long as it's easy to make big mistakes that don't show up until you have no saved games far enough back, you're set. And make it easy to have obvious mistakes, too. The wrong choice in dialogue makes the entire continent hostile and the game unwinnable, so you have to reload. The difficulty can be either punishingly, cruelly high or so low that you can fall asleep while playing but never in between. Arbitrariness: Make things just happen with no explanation given. Especially things like taking damage, losing money, or getting teleported across the map. Tasks: All sidequests should take more effort than they are worth. Important plot events should be made as tedious as possible without actually making the plot terrible. —Alorael, who considers the absolutely essential ingredient of a terrible game to be the bug that makes the game impossible to complete, or at least extremely and arbitrarily unlikely to be completed. A 90% chance of game crashing and savefile corruption somewhere around three-quarters of the way through works nicely. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Alorael in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 7 2006 14:09
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He, actually. I've made a point of never directly requesting a title. I know where that leads. I just make indirect remarks frequently and as loudly as an inaudible medium permits. —Alorael, who could count back the days with his titles and have a margin of error of around 1%. He doesn't have any desire to do so. That would be five seconds better spent inflicting yet another contents-free signature on the good people of Spiderweb. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Avernum V ideas in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 7 2006 14:06
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There are some FAQs in walkthroughs. If you mean board-oriented FAQs, like "Will there be vahnatai NPCs?" (Jeff says no), you can go ahead and write one but nobody would read it. —Alorael, who is quite sure that nobody even reads the last page or two of the topic they're posting in. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Alorael in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 6 2006 20:38
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I assume that was at whatever my posting rate was at the time, too, since based on a very rough estimate of your posting rate you'd catch up with me in a little more than year if I left Spiderweb or dropped dead right now. —Alorael, who thought about factoring in the fluctuations in posting rates and comparing posting rate, acceleration of posting, and even posting jerk. Then he decided that no one should ever have to deliberately contemplate the jerk of posting. There's enough jerk by accident. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Alorael in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 6 2006 18:46
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Anchorage, hypothetically. —Alorael, who is in Anchorage at any given time at some point in an infinite and fallacious universe. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
