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A 2 part 3 stuck in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, June 17 2006 11:42 Profile Homepage #11
The purple worn by royalty is darker than unstained wood brown.

—Alorael, who also got that wrong the first time. Surely all those Crayola marker packages can't be wrong?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Montauk Project in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 19:55 Profile Homepage #27
Bat bombs apparently worked well enough. Is it possible for a project to be insane and brilliant, or at least insane and workable?

The problem with projecting different images in different directions is that it's like trying to make a computer monitor show a different image depending on where you're standing. A pixel can only show one thing. Highly focused beams from "pixels" pointing in different directions from very nearly the same point would work, but then you'd only get invisibility from certain set angles and complete visibility from all other angles.

—Alorael, who would be happy to hear any suggestions for workable alternatives. He really knows nothing about holography, so maybe some kind of rapidly alterable grating with lasers would work. Okay, he's not really expecting suggestions, because if it were easy DARPA wouldn't be still getting mocked about it.

[ Friday, June 16, 2006 19:56: Message edited by: A Matter of Historical Outsight ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Inventions in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 18:25 Profile Homepage #37
quote:
Originally written by Lt. Sullust:

The energy of the magnets would eventually dissipate due to friction. Also, anything that drew on the energy of such a system would dissipate the energy. It is important to remember that energy cannot be created.
It is important to remember that no magnets are monopoles, and it's even more important to note that even in the event of monopolar magnets there is no way to cause the magnets to have a magnetic field in one direction but not the other.

So this wheel really would not only keep turning but keep accelerating at a constant rate. As long as the deceleration due to work done by the system and friction didn't become greater than the acceleration of the magnets, you could generate not only constant energy but in fact constantly increasing amounts of energy.

You find me the unidirectional monopoles and I'll make you rich!

quote:
Originally written by Garrison:

In the real world, I think anything like that would eventually stop moving in a delicate equilibrium. I am curious, though, could it reach a constant speed in ideal, frictionless conditions?
There are no magnets like this in the real world. The best you can do in the real world is to take a wheel, put in in space near no objects contributing significant gravity, and start spinning the wheel. Although molecular motion might eventually slow down the wheel, you can effectively have a perpetual motion machine as long as it's in perfect isolation.

—Alorael, who also likes the even more fun example of a small wheel rolling around the inside of a circular track. If the wheel rolls fast enough and is in a vacuum, you have a very neat perpetual motion machine. You can also have a slower wheel in a track shaped in any variation of a U shape you'd like.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Montauk Project in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 18:08 Profile Homepage #20
But the demo is part of the problem that Zeviz and I were talking about. You can become virtually invisible at one angle, but not at more than one angle. The invisibility armor can't duplicate parallax. (Unless you can have selectively aimed light projecting different images, that is.)

—Alorael, who can see possibilities for needle in a haystack invisibility. If you can project random colors and shapes all over a combat area, a "camo" suit of random shapes and colors makes you invisible. That's neither effective nor particularly useful, but it could work.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Montauk Project in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 13:21 Profile Homepage #12
Improved camouflage with fiber optics, maybe. Invisibility would require an infinite number of infinitely small fiber optic cables and an effectively omniscient computer. Even then I'm dubious about how invisible you could be to two observers at different angles and distances.

—Alorael, who thinks mind control has more possibility of working. "These are not the tanks you're looking for."
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Inventions in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 13:13 Profile Homepage #32
The magnetics (shown as sticks) are not only monopolar, they're also unidirectional and facing opposite directions. The magnets therefore repel each other (or attract each other), causing both wheels to accelerate forever.

—Alorael, who wishes he'd thought of it first.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Nethergate Re-Do. in Nethergate
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 13:05 Profile Homepage #2
And this is the topic that needs to end here.

[Edit: Oops.]

—Alorael, who locks laconically... or doesn't, as the case may be. Sometimes he has delusions of grandeur and thinks he is more modsome.

[ Friday, June 16, 2006 13:06: Message edited by: A Matter of Historical Outsight ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
New melee/archer options for A5 in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, June 16 2006 13:04 Profile Homepage #4
I don't really want more complicated combat. I'd rather have more complicated AI and maybe a few more situations with interesting terrain and enemies that require tactics. I don't think hacking and slashing is a failure in Avernum at all and I would be very put out with Jeff for making me select abilities constantly.

Besides, it's the fighting shtick. Mages get the cool spells and fighters get the cool toys. Don't mess with that!

—Alorael, who also suspects that the small number of abilities helps balance immensely. Either combat tricks would be essentially meaningless or they would make all fighting just a matter of finding the right tricks to make the enemies trivial.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Inventions in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, June 15 2006 18:20 Profile Homepage #18
Imagine a perfect rubber ball in a vacuum above a planet. The ball drops, picking up speed as it goes. It then hits the ground and bounces without losing any energy to friction. It then moves upwards, losing speed as it goes. In the end, it will stop and start falling again at exactly the same point as it started. You get a perpetual motion machine, but you don't get any work out of the system.

As soon as you start having the ball transfer energy to a useful form (by pushing a lever, for instance) it has to lose some speed. Then, when it hits the ground, it won't bounce as high. Eventually all its energy will have been transferred to the lever and it won't bounce at all.

—Alorael, who just reinvented himself. He found the experience quite invigorating.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Would you be interested in a sci fi RPG: THE POLL in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, June 15 2006 14:50 Profile Homepage #50
I've heard the opposite about wounds. A head or chest wound would frequently get infected and that would be that. Limb wounds would also get infected, but amputation could solve that.

How amputation was likely to remove gangrene without leading to new infections of the torso isn't entirely clear to me.

—Alorael, who was just weighing the benefits of a trans-nasal pneumonectomy. They say that they're recommended at a certain age...
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
SRG! in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, June 15 2006 14:29 Profile Homepage #23
I give this topic a zero for being a posting game.

—Alorael, whose signature is always pseudo- and/or meta-relevant. Therefore his signature earns a five plus one for being a stupendous gimmick. Six!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Inventions in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, June 15 2006 14:26 Profile Homepage #14
I don't know about using orbits, but you can definitely use rotation to gain kinetic energy through gravitational slingshots. That's still not free energy, though, because you slow down rotation.

—Alorael, who invented the internet. Really!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Would you be interested in a sci fi RPG: THE POLL in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, June 14 2006 15:19 Profile Homepage #42
And as Jeff has said, formulaic pays the bills.

I think there's a difference between an RPG based on sci-fi and an RPG based on fantasy in the future with spaceships and a few blasters. Most but by no means all Japanese sci-fi RPGs fall in the latter category. Star Wars is a great fence-sitter, but I'd say the setting is sci-fi without the Jedi and thoroughly fantasy, galactic blah blah blah notwithstanding, with them.

System Shock is a great first-person shooter with RPG-like upgrade elements, but it's not an RPG. Neither, I would contend despite a great outcry otherwise, is Deus Ex. RPG in the way we're discussing them have a very strong gameplay component that's missing in shooters.

—Alorael, who would hazard a guess that medieval combat had a higher ratio of minor wounds to incapacitating wounds than modern combat, but he has no idea if that's true. He'd also be interested in knowing if poor medicine and hygiene led to a functionally equivalent percentage of lethal wounds due to infection.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Would you be interested in a sci fi RPG: THE POLL in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, June 13 2006 17:38 Profile Homepage #8
I've always found it strange that very few RPGs take the openings offered by fantasy or sci-fi elements. Personal magical barriers or force fields that can fend off so much damage before the magic power/battery runs out would make a wonderful excuse for the strangely low mortality of RPGs.

In fact, Dune is perfectly set up for it.

—Alorael, who knows that Dune has been made into at least one pencil and paper RPG and several RTS games. But has anyone made a Dune RPG? Are the rights to tangled to be worth the effort?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
This Is Not Right in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, June 13 2006 15:02 Profile Homepage #4
In a word, yes.

—Alorael, who can't see anything wrong with a .sig. There's no .sig on forums, obviously, but you know what it means and it's very similar. It's quicker than signature and has the advantage of needing no disambiguation: signature has several meanings, but .sig only has one.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum V ideas in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, June 13 2006 14:41 Profile Homepage #45
There's no hard level cap for A4, but I think the most experience you can practically get by killing everything that moves and doing every quest with the heftiest experience bonus traits would get you to somewhere around level 45.

[Edit: A slip of the old Freud, wot?]

—Alorael, who wouldn't worry about it. A4 is definitely not a game with a shortage of experience. The problem is the soft cap of diminishing returns.

[ Tuesday, June 13, 2006 17:14: Message edited by: Dilapidation of Duty ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Macs w/ Intel Dual chips in Tech Support
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, June 13 2006 14:38 Profile Homepage #6
That's what Randomizer and I both said.

—Alorael, who really can't see any reason to get an entirely extraneous computer just to have a separate box for the Windows.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT Stone Pylons in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, June 12 2006 17:51 Profile Homepage #3
That's what I have.

—Alorael, who recommends not pressing return to put line breaks in the middle of sentences. The box where you enter text will wrap properly and keep lines from being too long. Only press return if you want to start a new paragraph or other division.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Anonymity and online identity, yet again. in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, June 12 2006 16:10 Profile Homepage #26
With a few checks, I've determined that my name is swamped by entirely unrelated individuals of the same name. I show up a few times, but never with much information attached, and with no real identifying markers to determine that it's me as opposed to someone else.

On the other hand, there are some people who are abusing my name and costing me employment! For shame!

—Alorael, who was confused when he saw a Google hit that could plausibly have been him. It had all the hallmarks of being him. But it most certainly wasn't him. He may have an internet twin!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Anonymity and online identity, yet again. in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, June 12 2006 14:39 Profile Homepage #24
Saunders knows where you live, where you work, where you go to school, what you did last summer, and what you had for breakfast. But it's okay.

—Alorael, who can be located with relative ease online and who hasn't done anything he'd want to hide. Except the aforementioned gimmicks, perhaps. But hey, the big one is skribbane, and there are interesting possibilities there. Most employers probably just won't understand, which is fine. If any do and treat it as a red flag for substance abuse, well, that's probably not a good place to work anyway.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
fan made graphics? in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, June 12 2006 14:34 Profile Homepage #19
E3 probably took about a year. That's Jeff's usual production cycle. It's hard to draw out one game when you have to put food on your family.

—Alorael, who couldn't resist and who will make no apologies for having failed to do so.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Macs w/ Intel Dual chips in Tech Support
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, June 11 2006 19:25 Profile Homepage #4
Actually, the older Spiderweb games can probably run on one of the variety of Mac on Mac emulators available. That's cheaper and easier than putting Windows on your computer with Boot Camp.

Or, since no Spiderweb games use 3D graphics, you can play them with Parallels and play the Windows versions in virtual Windows on your Mac.

—Alorael, who will be holding onto his G4 for a while.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Probably a repetitive questions but... in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, June 11 2006 12:21 Profile Homepage #5
The problem with graphics is that they're expensive. Unless you can provide graphics for Jeff gratis, they're not going to improve quickly.

The problem with music is that it also requires someone with the skill to make it, the equipment to make it, and the money to induce said person to do it. High quality music is hard to come by. Barring Jeremy Soule suddenly deciding to do a little work for Spiderweb for practice, music is out. Besides, I'm perfectly happy to start up iTunes and listen to whatever I want while playing. Nothing says dungeon-crawl like Dvo?ák.

I'm not sure what's wrong with the sound effects that Jeff uses. They're a little sparse, yes, but they get the job done.

—Alorael, who believes Jeff is also still concerned about download bloat. Because some people are still using dialup modems to download, leaving out a few hundred megabytes of spiffy sound and graphic boosts means more customers.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
fan made graphics? in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, June 11 2006 10:29 Profile Homepage #6
I agree that cave worms and hell hounds were a little disconcerting, although to be honest I think cave worms belonged in Avernum the whole time to keep things looking dangerous for the average traveler. Aside from strange monsters and the loss of elevation, though, I don't understand the complains. Avernum was extremely stylized (some might even say ugly). Geneforge is less so. A4 doesn't suffer from having pretty graphis.

—Alorael, who is sure Jeff would love to have new, good, free graphics as long as they're actually good. Inundation in mediocre art would likely just make him stop accepting or looking at anything.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Tool Use in Nethergate
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, June 10 2006 14:58 Profile Homepage #2
The base value for Tool Use without training is (INT + DEX) / 4, and I think this formula holds true even if you don't have the skill. Increasing a fighter's dexterity or a druid's intelligence will therefore help you deal with traps.

—Alorael, who has just realized again how much he likes the Nethergate/Avernum system of traps. Traps should never be circular blobs that are extremely visible. A4, that would be you.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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