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Shaper hypocrisy vs. Shaper tragedy (SPOILERS) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, August 1 2006 09:40 Profile #78
quote:
Originally written by Savage Ed Walcott:

I've explained multiple ways a machine's "personality" could easily be stored, saved, or replaced.
Asserted, yes; explained, no. If you think you really can explain this, I'd be very interested. Perhaps you could start by defining personality.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Avernum Tactics in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, August 1 2006 08:46 Profile #26
The Mahnatii, a race of short, bloated, purple humanoids who live in a shallower layer of freezing cold caverns, and wield a powerful alien magic based on doughs and batters. After their last great millennial feast, they exercised their innate ability to lie around in sluggish torpor for centuries. They have just awoken, and they're peckish.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
History in the making... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, August 1 2006 08:32 Profile #44
quote:
Originally written by Cairo Jim:

With this stabbing someone over the internet thing, a handy name for the hacker's patch- an iPatch perhaps?
Download Stype® for Windows® BETA, and put the 'www' in 'Owww!'

[ Tuesday, August 01, 2006 08:36: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Poor Man's Starbound? in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, August 1 2006 08:27 Profile #98
Yes, but what made it worse was that he persisted in designing games that made heavy demands on AI. In a lot of games you can kind of finesse around a bad AI most of the time. For instance in Jeff's games the AI rarely has to do anything except fight for a few rounds in one room, after the party kicks the door in, so simple rules like 'blast 'em until you die' don't seem too objectionable. RW's games need the AI to do strategy, which is very hard unless the game itself is trivial.

I wonder if one could make a pseudo-fantastic AI by designing a finite state game simple enough to be solved with a look-up table, but just complicated enough that, with some nice graphical bells and whistles on top of it, no-one would think to analyze your game. I'm thinking something a couple of times more complex than Nim, but so dressed up that no-one will recognize it as a simple game. People will play it looking for light strategic challenge with booms and flashes, and they won't be in the mindset for doing minimax calculations. And they'll be so impressed that the AI puts up such a good fight.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Poor Man's Starbound? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, August 1 2006 08:27 Profile #98
Yes, but what made it worse was that he persisted in designing games that made heavy demands on AI. In a lot of games you can kind of finesse around a bad AI most of the time. For instance in Jeff's games the AI rarely has to do anything except fight for a few rounds in one room, after the party kicks the door in, so simple rules like 'blast 'em until you die' don't seem too objectionable. RW's games need the AI to do strategy, which is very hard unless the game itself is trivial.

I wonder if one could make a pseudo-fantastic AI by designing a finite state game simple enough to be solved with a look-up table, but just complicated enough that, with some nice graphical bells and whistles on top of it, no-one would think to analyze your game. I'm thinking something a couple of times more complex than Nim, but so dressed up that no-one will recognize it as a simple game. People will play it looking for light strategic challenge with booms and flashes, and they won't be in the mindset for doing minimax calculations. And they'll be so impressed that the AI puts up such a good fight.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Poor Man's Starbound? in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 22:44 Profile #96
Hmm, yes. I believe we have invented the research field of Artificial Stupidity.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Poor Man's Starbound? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 22:44 Profile #96
Hmm, yes. I believe we have invented the research field of Artificial Stupidity.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
History in the making... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 22:38 Profile #37
It's easy to think you have a defence, until some hacker proves you wrong. It might bring a whole new meaning to the term 'patch'.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Poor Man's Starbound? in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 15:52 Profile #94
It's the dumb man's Starbound.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Poor Man's Starbound? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 15:52 Profile #94
It's the dumb man's Starbound.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
History in the making... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 15:35 Profile #35
Or stabbed.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
So... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 11:48 Profile #13
Slarty is/was an old member who lurked for a long time before bursting onto the scene as suddenly as he recently left it.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Quick Question in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 09:44 Profile #10
quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Remember how hard it was to send smileys with smoke signals?
I know! It took forever to convey "lol", too. Then again, there was truly something grand about having "lmao" painted across the sky in billowing smoke. Ah, those were the days....
But we must never forget how many bloggers died so young of emphysema.

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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
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 09:38 Profile #20
quote:
Originally written by Tyranicus:

C.S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower novels were better.
Flog that man round the fleet. Hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the Contrary at your Peril. And for so doing this shall be your Warrant.

Actually the Hornblower books are also great, especially the earlier ones in the series. But they are simpler.

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Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Shaper hypocrisy vs. Shaper tragedy (SPOILERS) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 09:28 Profile #71
quote:
Originally written by Savage Ed Walcott:

Unless a fully independent entity was the point of the research, it's more of a bug or glitch than an emerging personality with its own right to existence. ... [I]t's a failed model.
Of course it's a bug, a glitch, and a failed model. It is also an emerging personality with its own right to exist. Insisting that these conditions are mutually exclusive is not an argument, just a repetition of your premise.

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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
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 01:40 Profile #12
All the Vorkosigan books are very good. The series focuses on Miles pretty quickly, though his parents of course remain as minor characters, and there are a couple of spin-off books set in the same universe. I'm not sure I'd say the latest ones are the best, though I wouldn't say the series is going downhill either. I do think it is probably winding up, though.

The books are remarkable for transcending the traditional limits of traditional space opera, and for convincingly portraying a military genius. I remain extremely impressed, for instance, by this line of Miles's in Brothers in Arms:
quote:
"They hold the woman hostage," said the constable grimly.
"So? Stun them all, God will recognize his own."
Such a flippant but perfectly apposite historical allusion, on the spur of the moment in a crisis, is for me a brilliant character detail.

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Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Shaper hypocrisy vs. Shaper tragedy (SPOILERS) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, July 31 2006 01:21 Profile #68
Emphasis is available in the form of italics. All caps is the accepted internet equivalent of shouting. It's considered rude in practically all electronic communications. If you think you've never had a problem with it before, I wouldn't be so sure.

quote:
Originally written by Savage Ed Walcott:

If human beings one day built machines with limited but functional intelligence to perform tasks under dangerous situations with little to no input and supervision, would we give one of them freedom because it decided it no longer wanted to perform its given tasks?
You've repeated this same point several times now, as if it were unanswerable. I answered it directly a while ago: Yes.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Shaper hypocrisy vs. Shaper tragedy (SPOILERS) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, July 30 2006 13:13 Profile #60
quote:
Originally written by Your ad could be here- contact me.:

Right, so I had this great post written out. It pointed out puns, it had elegant quote-work, it had FYTs. It was beautiful. But when I tried to post it, "the connection timed out" and I lost everything. So this time, I'm just going to spell out the main point rather than answering every little detail individually.
I think this is the best way to argue. Argument isn't architecture. Buttressing generally adds weakness rather than strength, because it just gives people a chance to ignore your main point and take you to task on side issues.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Quick Question in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, July 30 2006 12:54 Profile #7
Hey, let's not get so jaded we don't appreciate the marvel of UBB just because we see it every day. Remember how hard it was to send smileys with smoke signals?

[ Monday, July 31, 2006 22:41: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
History in the making... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, July 30 2006 03:16 Profile #21
A now-banned member who posted much of the Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian sex manual for patent lawyers, in TM's long-running moniker thread. This put the thread's total length over the top of some UBB limit. The actual content of the last post doubtless put Wiki further into the doghouse, but had no role in causing the catastrophe, other than to ensure that the thread knew in amazingly pedantic detail just exactly what was being done to it.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
THIS CANNOT BE!! YOU MUST CHECK THIS PAGE!! in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, July 29 2006 23:51 Profile #6
Shelley is a lot like the great Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie page. I'm sure the authors don't really believe what they say, because I can't believe anyone clever enough to make these sites could be dumb enough to believe their absurdities.

But the parodies go on at such length, and in such obsessive detail, that I have to consider the authors wackos after all, because otherwise they would have gotten their laughs and gotten bored with the idea a long time ago.

These people aren't parodists, they're parodimaniacs.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Shaper hypocrisy vs. Shaper tragedy (SPOILERS) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, July 29 2006 23:23 Profile #53
quote:
Originally written by Randomizer:

I think one of the arguements is that anything that can be destroyed and reproduced with no loss of information has less value than things like humans that can't be replaced exactly.
This might be a pretty good criterion, but it applies to very little, since practically no objects can be reproduced exactly, down to the atomic scale. Cloning is way far from that, because genetic code is only a relatively high-level design specification. So you're left trying to decide how close a reproduction is necessary, and suddenly you're hip deep in philosophy.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Castle Storage Room... in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, July 29 2006 14:27 Profile #3
I wish he wouldn't do things like that. It drove me nuts.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Geneforge 2 canister question - how much is too much? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, July 29 2006 14:19 Profile #11
The default difficulty is Normal; below it is Easy, and above it are Tricky and Torment. They just alter the hit points and damage of monsters, but of course this can make a big difference in the game. If you refine your tactics to the point where the fights all start seeming like pushovers, crank up the difficulty. Torment is tough enough that most people seem to find it enough of a challenge.

There is only one threshold level of canister use for affecting the endings, and it isn't zero; but I forget just what it is. Maybe 10? But I think that alteration to cast level 4 spells counts as at least one canister. There was a thread about this long ago, so you could try searching.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Geneforge 2 canister question - how much is too much? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, July 29 2006 13:53 Profile #9
No, difficulty settings Easy through Torment have been there from G1.

For Aura of Flames you need to be modified, which also counts as canister use. I forget how many canisters it counts as. You may remember that it gave you some disturbing messages, too.

There are exactly four effects of canisters: they give you added powers, they make scarey messages appear from time to time, they slightly alter some endings, and in one unimportant place in G2 they make you enter combat mode automatically. Even in that one place, you can still just leave without actually slaughtering anyone. So everything in the game is pretty much consistent with the possibility that you lose empathy by being modified too much, and other people fear you, but you are able to control your emotions and not actually become an evil monster.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

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