Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
Pages
| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| Shapers keeping secrets in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, September 18 2006 06:46
Profile
quote:Absolutely. As a scientist my salary and research funding is paid entirely by the Count of Montecristo, who is so bored he posts regularly in message board debates. And when he departs after delivering my quarterly sack of doubloons I regularly hear him remark, as his footmen are levering his immense bulk back into his carriage, that if his peasants don't stop clamoring for a third meal a day he may have to cut my support. [ Monday, September 18, 2006 06:46: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Crystal Souls in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, September 17 2006 22:16
Profile
I dunno. It's far from clear that Newton or Einstein, or Tolkien for that matter, really had much more to contribute. These people were brilliant, but my theory of genius is that it's not really a character trait. It's having great ideas. And great ideas are already crystal souls. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Shapers keeping secrets in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, September 17 2006 09:24
Profile
Not so. As Delicious Vlish likes to remind us, one of the games (G2?) has a text box which states that Vlish were deliberately designed to taste bad. There is as yet no canonical verdict on the flavors of other creations. But G4 isn't finished yet. Having recently stared hard at the large scale Vlish art from G3, I have to correct something I wrote quite a while ago. Vlish have not two tentacles, but three. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Shapers keeping secrets in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, September 16 2006 13:00
Profile
quote:I don't think the US does a particularly large share of addressing humanitarian crises, though I could be wrong about this. But I'm pretty sure the US Navy is a little overpowered for the job of keeping down piracy. The United States is a military superpower, but like most nation states it pursues its own interests as perceived by its government of the day. It doesn't tend to spend its taxpayers' billions or its servicemen's lives on causes that do not serve its interests, however noble they might be. People often point this out as though it were damning, but I don't see too many other countries lining up to die for noble causes either. I think that eventually humanity will get a global police force, but the United States' military is not it. In my opinion it should neither be praised for being what it isn't, nor blamed for not being so. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| G2 question. in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, September 16 2006 12:36
Profile
You can certainly reach the door in Shade Patrol. You cannot open it. You can, however, wait for a golem to come along and open it for you. You can do that for every other door, too, of course. But for that big door in the Shade Patrol zone, it works. Hence the traditional Shaper adage of patience, "Don't kill the golem until it opens the door." -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, September 16 2006 11:17
Profile
Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude is like living as a goldfish. Everything's cute and bubbly, but somehow you start to feel trapped. Maybe it's the magic realism; could it be that if anything can happen, then really nothing can? I recently re-read an old copy of Lawrence Watt-Evans's The Cyborg and the Sorceror. This guy has been quietly writing away for a good 20 years, never really making it big, but regularly making the bookstore shelves the whole time. Re-reading him after a long time, I remembered what I had always liked about him. His plots are just more carefully worked out than most people's. And not just in the sense of having a grand design with all the angles checking out. His heroes also do realistic things like accidentally dropping their weapons while performing some acrobatic feat; and then they deal with the situation realistically. If Watt-Evans were designing CRPGs instead of writing novels, his games would have realistic encumbrance rules; and encumbrance would be an interesting challenge. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What is inspiring you? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, September 15 2006 09:51
Profile
It is customary in theoretical physics to choose units in which h-bar, c, G, and pi are all equal to 1. [ Friday, September 15, 2006 09:54: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Chadwick Prison in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, September 14 2006 23:06
Profile
Nope. Loyal citizens have nothing to fear from Shaper justice. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Newbie questions: in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, September 11 2006 10:05
Profile
If you crave higher rewards, you can try to push your luck by tackling tougher areas early. This is self-limiting, in the sense that your bigger XP rewards make you gain levels faster, and you can find yourself with half of the endgame still to go, and already invincible. If this is happening, and you've already cranked the difficulty level to Torment, then that's all there is to it, I'm afraid. You can play hopscotch in the Inner Crypt, or just finish the game off, to see how the story ends, and go on to the next in the series. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| How would you do it? in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, September 11 2006 07:37
Profile
Geneforge 1 through 3 involve mostly passive villains, too. This doesn't hurt G1 so much because there are good reasons why everything is static until the player messes it up. It's a weakness in G2. In G3 the villains are only really non-static in the same way as Rentar-Ihrno is in A4: they run away, and live to fight another day. They may have acted aggressively in the immediate past, but during the game their only purposeful actions are to accost the PC and deliver cut-scene harangues. You never return to a once-friendly town to discover Master Hoge in the act of trashing it with a pack of Gazers, or anything like that. This actually worked not too badly, as far as I am concerned. Even a modest level of scripted activity can give an impression of active allies and enemies, and develop relationships with NPCs. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Newbie questions: in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, September 9 2006 23:34
Profile
Hmm, maybe in relation to their cost, but since eventually you have loads of Essence, I always find Drayks pretty good. In principle the advantage of keeping creations alive so they level up is greater for an Agent or Guardian who never gets very high Shaping skills or Essence. Even if you don't use their acquired skill points to pump their stats, because that costs you more Essence, they get stronger with level. So for the trivial cost of a starting Fyora, by late in the game you can have something comparable to a Drayk. It's a good idea because it lets creations, which are after all the main novelty of these games, play a bigger role for the classes that don't have so much Essence. Trouble is that I've always had real trouble making it work. On Torment, I recently found that a missile Guardian could keep a pair of creations alive and useful in G1 and G2, if the creations also had ranged attacks. Other builds either couldn't keep the creations alive, or were so much better at attacking themselves that the creations became irrelevant. On lower difficulty settings, keeping creations so they gain lots of levels is probably a lot easier. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The King is Dead (Others are as well.) in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, September 8 2006 12:03
Profile
I think people tend to get the celebrities they deserve. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Infallible Skeptic? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, September 7 2006 21:10
Profile
Oh, a wise guy, eh? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff, Valorim was cool!! in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, September 7 2006 07:53
Profile
If I ever became perversely rich (by which I mean, rich to a perverse degree, not rich by perverse means), I would toy with the idea of commissioning Jeff to do a game. Just get him to take twice as long to make a game, by paying him in advance the expected earnings of one game. Failing that sort of deal, there are bound to be trade-offs in his oeuvre between volume and density. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, September 2 2006 12:30
Profile
Seeing that picture one more time, I realize that real estate in R'lyeh must be almost as ridiculous as in Boston. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Avernum V ideas in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, August 31 2006 11:48
Profile
What I'd like to know is, just how do you use up multiple living tools on a task? Jam them all into the keyhole at once? Link them into a big chain? Stick them into the cabinet at key points all over, in some sort of acupuncture for inanimate objects? Or do you sit there trying them one at a time, cursing and swearing as you break one living tool after another, until finally you get it right? The last option seems most plausible, but hardest to reconcile with the fact that even if you have no Mechanics skill you can tell in advance exactly how many tools you would go through in the process. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I need advice in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Wednesday, August 30 2006 12:01
Profile
Playing as a Shaper always gives you these sharp steps in power, when you acquire a new type of creation. You struggle, then suddenly life is easy when you get Artilas. For a while you enjoy being Death's Deputy, but gradually the enemies catch up, it isn't quite so easy, and eventually you start having Artilas die, or run out of energy before the enemies are all gone. You struggle, then get Vlish, and once again nothing can stop you. And so on. It's similar with the other classes. Searing Orbs and Speed make huge changes for Agents. This is typical for CRPGs, I think. Enjoy the periods of power. They won't last forever. If they do, crank up the difficulty level. 'Torment' difficulty is perfectly beatable, but hardly anyone complains that it's too easy. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 30 2006 11:19
Profile
quote:Early to bed and early to rise makes a man live one heck of a long time. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
|
written Wednesday, August 30 2006 11:17
Profile
Even perfect vacuum, with no hydrogen atoms anywhere, is a conductor. An electric field excites pairs of electrically charged particles and antiparticles from vacuum. The rate at which this occurs is incredibly slow, and the corresponding current density incredibly tiny, unless the electric field is incredibly strong. All these incredibles amount to the fact that this effect has not yet been observed. But it is a very basic consequence of quantum field theory, many of whose other predictions have been tested with incredible rigor. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 22 2006 21:20
Profile
I propose that, analogous to 'trolling', we define a new meaning for 'lolling'. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 22 2006 12:36
Profile
The New Testament as we now have it was originally written in Greek. This doesn't mean that Jesus spoke Greek. It's one of the distinctive things about Christianity as a religion, that it was comfortable with translations from the beginning. Nobody ever minded that some vital nuance of Jesus's teaching might have gotten lost in translation from Aramaic to Greek. Considering the degree of authority that Christians attribute to the man, this is really pretty remarkable: we believe his words will never pass away, but his diction was abandoned almost immediately. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 22 2006 07:03
Profile
People here are either very patient, or rather cruel. But which? [ Tuesday, August 22, 2006 07:06: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Anagrams in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 22 2006 02:41
Profile
quote:Oh, sure, it's nothing impressive by Rowling. But it's an excellent anagram by Voldemort. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 22 2006 02:03
Profile
Considering that the immediate topic at hand was the meaning of a word in the New Testament, this was an odd occasion to mock Kelandon for providing translations from Greek. And your statement about the history of marine biology, while interesting and reasonably plausible, was completely unsupported. There's a fair chance, you know, that it's crap. Lexicon entries, on the other hand, are authoritative enough that criticizing them is a game for specialists only. I try to appreciate that kind of thing. My corresponding vice is to be particularly irked by pretences to authoritative knowledge. Real authoritative knowledge is damn hard work. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 21 2006 20:23
Profile
I assume from the logic of Alec's argument that the 'Amazing Captain Linguistics' whom he is criticizing is not Kelandon but Lowbacca. He seems to be supporting the statement he quoted from Kelandon, not attacking it. Either that or he is implicitly accusing Kelandon of undertranslation, as well as explicitly charging Lowbacca with overtranslation. But I don't think that charge would make sense, so I'll stick with the first interpretation. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |