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 |
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| Geneforge 2 canister question - how much is too much? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 12:40
Profile
You can comfortably complete G2 without touching a single canister, and without being modified. Well, you can only do it comfortably on Torment if you really know what you're doing. I did it with a Guardian, but that's surely the easiest class to do it with, because you won't miss the highest level creations or spells, and because pumping Parry in G2 can make you practically invulnerable. I think Mike Montgomery, who was the first to achieve this feat (including clearing every zone, not just winning), did it with an Agent. I'd miss Aura of Flames too much, myself. So you don't need canisters to have enough power to finish the game. [ Saturday, July 29, 2006 14:21: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 12:31
Profile
Some of these arguments look as though they might be interesting, but they are long. Any chance of an executive summary? -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 00:13
Profile
You'd have a right to defend yourself, as much as a rogue creation would. Let the best entity win. But if the beast isn't actually trying to kill you, what gives you a right to override its own purposes for itself? As far as I'm concerned, Nothing. If you build a bad car and it breaks down, you screwed up and you have to suck up the consequences. If you try to build a mindless killing machine and it turns out to have other ideas, you screwed up worse, on a bigger project, and you have worse consequences to accept. You may have to care for the intelligent creation you brought into the world, protect other people from it, and so on. Them's the breaks. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the Shaping Hall. Depending on why you wanted your creations to fight, you could perhaps decide the case was similar to mutiny by human soldiers in wartime, and attempt coercion on the grounds of greater need. But this issue would have nothing to do with the fact that your rebellious troops were creations. [ Saturday, July 29, 2006 00:14: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 28 2006 23:44
Profile
Savage Ed's argument is a bit hard to follow because, as Thuryl pointed out, his premise is the very unusual one that intelligent machines would have no rights. Usually when people argue that origin makes no difference, it is to support the rights of robots or serviles or whatever: their origin may be different from ours, but if their present level of sentience is like ours, then their rights must be like ours as well. But Savage Ed does not seem to think sentience confers rights, so when he compares serviles to intelligent robots, he means that intelligence is irrelevant to servile rights. His arguments seem self-contradictory until you figure out his uncommon premise. There are reasons why the premise is uncommon. Savage Ed seems to be trying to substitute 'purpose' for 'sentience' as the basis for rights. According to him, it seems to be perfectly all right to dismantle a sentient machine which refuses to fulfill its designed purpose. But who gets to decide what a purpose is? A sentient machine has its own purposes for itself; why should its designer's purpose come first? The only reason I can imagine for that is simply that the designer designed the machine. But why should that matter? I can seen no obvious reason why it should; you just have to assume, as a premise, that it does. So Savage Ed's position seems really to boil down to the standard Shaper argument that the creator owns the creation as chattel, by virtue of having created it, no matter how sentient it may be. And the counterargument to that is also standard, and seems compelling to me. Savage Ed invites us to imagine ourselves as creators of valuable but rebellious machines. Imagine instead that you were an intelligent servile. How would you feel about having no more rights than a hacksaw? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Abandonware in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 28 2006 08:59
Profile
Archon and Mule were popular with my brothers and me. The problem with Archon, though, was that my youngest brother played against the computer to the point where he could beat the strongest piece with the weakest one, every time, even at the wrong time of day. This eliminated any possibility of strategy for him, or for that matter against him. In some ways my favorite video games of all time are the really crappy ones I wrote myself for our old TRS-80 Model III. This was truly a power-gamer's dream machine; a very bad dream. But the great thing about graphics that bad was that you didn't have to worry about trying to make good graphics. As a kid with no knowledge or particular talent, I could write a hundred lines of BASIC in evenings after school and make a game that my brothers really wanted to play. I turned out maybe a dozen or two different games, some of them variants of each other, some of them fun and some of them not, and had a lot of fun doing it. It was interesting to see what worked in a game and what didn't. It needed to be a bit tricky, but not too hard; but it also needed to have some sort of unique atmosphere or flavor that was hard to define. The weird thing was that even in such very minimal games, some games had it and some games didn't. Grenade toss didn't, but Abyss Jumper somehow did, and was weirdly addictive. When we upgraded to a Commodore 128, it was too hard to live up to the higher graphical possibilities, and I stopped making games. One of my brothers made a masterpiece of a maze game, though, that was beautiful and challenging; but he lost his files in some crash. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Xylgham udwlnit skretcko!1!! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 28 2006 08:44
Profile
quote:No-one ever said we had to be nice. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| G4 Highlight Predictor in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, July 27 2006 13:56
Profile
Hey, I checked them all myself. But I'm thinking more along the lines of discovering a conspiracy between Ghaldring and the Shaper Council, compelling you to crush them both. Then as a final plot twist, Learned Darian turns out to have been the Jorge of Geneforge all along, secretly manipulating everyone while pursuing independent research into ultimate artifacts. The Geneforge was nothing next to Darian's Sapphire Noseguard, but after a fight in which Gazers die like gnats you finally slay Darian, who confesses with his dying breath that she was really Danette's immortal clone, and the world can at last know peace. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| G4 Highlight Predictor in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, July 27 2006 08:46
Profile
I made a poll before G3, asking people to guess how you would end up travelling between islands. My assumption that there would be several different exotic ways turned out to be way wrong. So with this worthless track record in Geneforge N anticipation polls, here we go again. You are allowed to choose several options, including highlights that might not all be possible in the same game. [ Thursday, July 27, 2006 08:48: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] Poll Information This poll contains 1 question(s). 27 user(s) have voted. You may not view the results of this poll without voting. function launch_voter () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=vote;pollid=mxlPJapfLxBQ"); return true; } // end launch_voter function launch_viewer () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=view;pollid=mxlPJapfLxBQ"); return true; } // end launch_viewer function launch_window (url) { preview = window.open( url, "preview", "width=550,height=300,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status,menubar=no,scrollbars,resizable,copyhistory=no" ); window.preview.focus(); return preview; } // end launch_window   -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Sim Isle in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, July 26 2006 11:58
Profile
*Waits for Spore.* -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| SW & DM2 Fusion! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, July 25 2006 09:03
Profile
Looks like both certainties at once for MD. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. 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 Tuesday, July 25 2006 08:59
Profile
Back in my DMing days I once had a teleporting maze in which the teleportation was triggered by touching objects (cushions, books, artworks, tools, etc.) scattered through the rooms. The tricky part was that these objects teleported with the toucher. For each room there were always at least two objects that would take you to it, but these were scattered around in various other rooms. I forget now exactly how it worked, but it was safe in the sense that you couldn't become permanently trapped in a room with no way out. And in retrospect the maze was actually a logical and convenient way of moving around the dead mage's enchanted palace. He would get to his bedroom by just grabbing a pillow, etc. But the system was by no means clear initially, and the RPGer instinct to grab interesting items was so strong that the party got nicely split up before they figured out what was going on. Naturally there were some pretty ferocious things scattered through the maze, especially if you had to fight them alone and with no way to escape, and it all ended up being an entertaining challenge for a high level party. Those were the days. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Help me!!! It's urgent!!! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, July 25 2006 02:20
Profile
Mighty Mice are quite nice I find. Too bad they're not wireless yet. They don't have actual buttons as such, but they somehow distinguish (quite reliably) between which side of the mouse you press on. And they have a small middle button which works really well as an all-directional scroll ball, plus a side 'squeeze button' for a total of four effective buttons. You can remap the buttons to do whatever you want. The default is for tapping the tiny scroll ball to bring up the Dashboard, which was driving me nuts, so I turned that off. EDIT: Ah, joy, the wireless MM has just arrived. Thanks, Steve. [ Tuesday, July 25, 2006 07:03: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| SW & DM2 Fusion! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, July 24 2006 10:51
Profile
I was not complaining: Shave and a Haircut is a traditional jingle, and the original price of 'two bits' was American slang for (I believe) $0.25. The hypothetical division of the dollar into eight 'bits', even though no 12.5 cent American coins were ever made, seems to be some relic of Spanish 'pieces of eight' -- coins that were often cut into octants to make change. Or something. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Xylgham udwlnit skretcko!1!! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, July 24 2006 10:37
Profile
As far as I can tell 'I' was supposed to be in Tech Support, having wandered in there in Act 7, and apparently fallen asleep. Which is fine; just checking in. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| SW & DM2 Fusion! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, July 23 2006 10:31
Profile
Shave and a haircut, eight bits. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I'm a Runescape freak how about you? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, July 23 2006 03:54
Profile
I know what Runescape is, of course, but I have practically no idea what it's like. I have to say it's not sounding worthwhile, so far, to try it myself to find out. What the heck kind of game has you mining for a week? Could someone fill me in on just why this is even a candidate for being considered fun? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Hey look! It's still the seventeenth! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 22 2006 02:24
Profile
As a transplanted North American, I'm amazed at how poorly prepared other countries seem to be for climatic extremes. In Europe air conditioning seems to be less widely accepted than homeopathy. People open windows, but this only helps so much, and windows don't have screens, so your house fills up with bugs. On the other hand central heating seems to be a novel concept in some places, especially Britain. So in the chilly wet weather that passes for winter, people wear sweaters indoors, and huddle around heaters, and feel cold as nobody does in Canadian blizzards. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Children in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 21 2006 12:00
Profile
That's the real reason you can never have more than 30,000 coins. At that point, your creations decide you can absolutely afford it, and they blow all the excess on trash in the interzone malls. You're like, "Hey! Who's the Shaper?", and they're like, "Reabsorb THIS!" To avoid going there, you pay up. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Children in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 21 2006 04:01
Profile
[Another doggone self-quote by mistake, instead of an edit. Oh well. Just so it's not a total waste, maybe I'll just use this space as a sort of post-it note to myself.] [Hey, it's sort of like a homepage, only really limited in layout possibilities. I could just keep editing this accidental post, add some links, maybe do a blog, start a cult favorite comic series with bad graphics, something like that.] [ Friday, July 21, 2006 07:57: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Children in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 21 2006 03:58
Profile
quote:Apprentices and rogues are forbidden by treaty from fighting except within designated square zones. So there are always lots of rogues left in the spaces between. The game never shows them, but they're there. When you travel between zones, they line the roads and wave at you. Some of them also wave placards with bitter anti-Shaper slogans. But most of them are okay, you can talk to them; and a few operate kiosks selling snacks, drinks, and cheesy souvenirs. You know, t-shirts sized for Rotghroths, saying "I'm with Deadweight" or "My Shaper went to Inner Gazak-Uss and all he got me was this lousy shield." Swarovski knock-off glass cannon paperweights. That sort of thing. If you don't mind kitsch it's kind of fun, actually, except that I can't stand how my Gazers never stop whining for me to buy them plastic monocles with fake noses and moustaches. "But the Eye really WANTS one!!!" Don't get me started. That, and I'm pretty sure the Drayks water the beer. [ Friday, July 21, 2006 07:59: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Code of Community in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, July 20 2006 22:04
Profile
His bot got taken over by the Maimonides bot. Or the other way 'round. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| G3 ? - Skill Points and Item in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, July 20 2006 11:41
Profile
Ah, you must be right. I haven't played G3 for a long time, and haven't played a Shaper for even longer -- my most recent games have been Guardians in G1 and 2. Still, by pumping Intelligence I would think you shouldn't be too far off the six Artilas, since it won't be so long on Harmony before you're trading up to Vlish. On the other hand Artilas, though normally my favorite first tier creation, might start to run out of juice in the long Greenwood boss fight. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Which game to get? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, July 20 2006 10:13
Profile
Monsters do not respawn in Geneforge. If there is a creator or summoning platform around, which is not or cannot be destroyed, then it will naturally keep producing monsters. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. 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, July 20 2006 07:22
Profile
GF does use a hex grid, underneath the continuously animated movement: you can only stop at places on the invisible hex grid. Walls and doors naturally tend to have square patterns, of course. So it does often seem as though you can't put units quite where you should be able to. What I'm suddenly not sure about is how this issue is affected by the isometric perspective. It would seem that this might make hex grid a great idea. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Geneforge series board traffic: no long tail? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, July 19 2006 22:43
Profile
MagmaDragoon recently asked on General where all the Geneforgers were. He had the idea that there is more traffic about Avernum 1-3 than about Geneforge 1-3. Is this really true? If so, why? Please, no answers of the form 'Geneforge sucks', especially if you're one of the people who have by now made your opinion on that point abundantly clear. Restating it for the nth time here would just waste bandwidth. It is obvious that in principle this could be one reason why this board might get less traffic. I'm interested in less obvious possibilities. I think that the Averna are larger, and have more obscure things like secret passage and puzzles for newbies to be stumped by, so that they post to ask for help. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that we really do get so many fewer newbie queries about Gn, say, than about An. Do we? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |