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What will come after Avernum4 for Windows? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, January 28 2006 00:48 Profile #33
What was this novel?

Avernum is certainly fantasy, but it is distinctive enough to stand out. Mainly the basic concept of humans forced to live in a hostile underground environment, because it makes a unique fusion of the 'magical underworld' archetype with the rugged-pioneers-carving-a-life-from-nothing theme.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Upgrade in the implants in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, January 27 2006 13:41 Profile #3
Or add some outplants. With implants, you never know when you do get more.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Kill Bill (Spoilers) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, January 27 2006 13:39 Profile #11
It's okay not to make it too hard to finish the game. But there should be an additional 'ultra' ending that is more challenging. Perhaps with careful planning one could make a combat which is straightforward on Easy but impossible on Torment without great cunning. Or perhaps there could be an extra Easter Egg that is really hard. Something like the latter is a Geneforge tradition now, having not one but two extra super-tough areas that are not necessary to beat to end the game. So just ramp those up a bit, and give them more point. How much could one last hard part at the end really hurt sales?

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Pylons in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, January 27 2006 13:30 Profile #3
Or, if you just really hate pylons, you can slowly exterminate them one by one before they go armed, and before talking to the vahnatai. They'll go hostile before you get them all, but only a few live ones will remain, and you can cope with those. This is too tedious to do, though, unless you derive specific joy from trashing pylons.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Save this forum! in SubTerra
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, January 27 2006 00:41 Profile #44
Why delete anything, when you can secretely take it over and use it for subliminal messages with inscrutable purposes? You just need a small quorum of posters to maintain a trickle of traffic as cover.

In other words, SubTerra is such an amazing game that deleting this forum would be ridiculous. It has turned out that I am subtly implying many other important points on the topic "anything else having to do with SubTerra".

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
any use for research notes in GF2? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, January 27 2006 00:16 Profile #4
The secret to GF2 as a Guardian is to pump Parry. You can then waltz through Inner Gazak-Uss letting the Rotdhizons smack themselves to pulp against your ripostes. You need speed to hack up Gazers and Eyebeasts. But I always end up solo, because my creations all die. Compared to an Agent, battles are a bit more drawn out, but you never have to wait to recharge your energy, so the time-averaged fun is about equal.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
MVC Interview in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 26 2006 04:18 Profile #0
Well, another ShaperBowl has come and gone, and today your weekly newsmagazine Essence interviews the game's Most Valuable Creation: the Experimental Football Gamma designated as 'K'.

Essence: So, K, how did it feel to lead the Warped Mutants to victory yesterday over the Corrupted Rogues?

K: Confused. Want to rush, want to pass ...

Essence: How did you manage to rally your team-mates when the Rogues' Spectral Vlish Tight End dazed your entire offensive line?

K: Want to kill! (attacks)

Essence: (stunned)

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Kill Bill (Spoilers) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 26 2006 04:05 Profile #0
As Dikiyoba has suggested recently, we have to get the chance to kill Ghaldring eventually. Here's hoping that there are multiple ways to do this, none lame. I don't mind having one stealth option, but it had better be an extreme one, that you can only achieve by serious investment in stealth over much of the game, plus some actual cleverness. It would be nice to have the possibility of using a geneforge, and thus acquiring the power necessary to take out Ghaldring in open combat. Coolest of all might be a faint possibility of killing Ghaldring without either sabotage or geneforgery, by using incredibly sharp tactics. This ultimate challenge could lead to a good ending in which sanity prevails all round.

Of course it would also be cool to be able to kill Ghaldring, in all of those ways, as a rebel. Or a Sholai. Or a Vlish.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
GF2 ending / GF3 spoilers requested in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 26 2006 03:59 Profile #5
Yes, this would be cool, and is sure to happen. Almost certainly there will be a stealthy way of doing this, by sabotaging machinery. But I hope there is also an option to achieve the slaying by direct combat, presumably after having performed some critical act that gives you immense power at a terrible price. I don't want to have the climactic battle replaced with a laser-moving puzzle.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
any use for research notes in GF2? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 26 2006 03:52 Profile #1
Yes, but only if you join one particular faction. Well, at least in some versions of the game, you could sometimes manage to sell them without joining the faction, but this was a bug exploit that relied on very fussy positioning of your character, so as to trigger a dialog that would let you sell the notes, without triggering a hostile reaction. I tried it a few times, and the reward in cash and xp was not worth the tedium and aggravation involved. There are much more amusing ways in this game to acquire all the power you need to smoke everything in your path.

[ Thursday, January 26, 2006 03:53: 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
Yet another shocking discovery in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 26 2006 00:43 Profile #5
Yeh. While looking up Xenu, I learned for the first time that Scientology has its own 'religious order', whose members hold the church's top offices, and sign a billion year contract when they join up. (Really. They believe in reincarnation, and their official slogan is "We come back.") Even hokier, the order is para-naval, with blue suits, peaked caps, and (really a lot of) gold braid. It's called the 'Sea Organization', having been launched during an interval in the 1960's when Hubbard was escaping legal difficulties in several countries by living on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

I suppose most religions have elements that just seem bizarre from outside, but this seems less foreign-culture-bizarre than Saturday-morning-cartoons-bizarre.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Romeo and Juliet. Thoughts? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 25 2006 16:34 Profile #10
quote:
Originally written by Dikiyoba:

In both movies of Romeo and Juliet I have seen, the Count doesn't die, only Mercutio. But the prince says "...I have lost a brace of kinsmen..." in both of the movies. But a brace means two and the Prince only loses one. It's the funniest moment of the whole movie.
Too bad Mercutio wasn't there to comment; he'd have zung him good. That's tragedy for you.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Where is Crenshaw? in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 25 2006 16:27 Profile #5
Man, I'd pay to see that so-and-so Crenshaw get eaten by his rotten fungi. They were so tediously annoying, and I blame him, because they wouldn't have been there if he hadn't had his orchard. Why can't Avernum just important the cheapest surface wine, now? Haven't these people ever heard of comparative advantage? Or has all this lousy fungal wine sprung up only since the portal broke? Not impossible, since the demand for booze must be pretty strong in Avernum.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Romeo and Juliet. Thoughts? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 25 2006 16:17 Profile #7
The long ago high point in my Thespian career was playing Mercutio in an in-class performance of his death scene. That was fun. My Dad made us stage rapiers out of some quite strong old curtain rods, so we could hack away with loud clashes. Forget Method: fake swordfighting is the soul of theatah.

But I find Romeo and Juliet infuriating, because I keep wanting to just slap some basic sense into most of the characters. Perhaps if I shared their Zeitgeist I would feel the inevitability of the tragedy more, but as it is it just seems too much like one of those modern absurdist tragedies in which the tragedy is arbitrary and stupid. I much prefer Lear and the Scottish Play, or Hamlet. Othello drives me nuts in much the same way as R & J, though.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Yet another shocking discovery in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 25 2006 13:25 Profile #2
Yeesh. Apparently, next time you are wondering whether to turn your campy space opera sketch into an Escape Velocity Total Conversion, you can stop and ask yourself whether it might be just as easy to found a religion with it instead.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Charge ion cannons. in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 25 2006 11:08 Profile #28
Well, it's a way to fight the military-industrial complex, by taking its money for bizarre ideas.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Charge ion cannons. in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 25 2006 01:58 Profile #23
quote:
Originally written by SNM:

quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Anyway, directed energy weapons have a basic problem. Lasers as weapons are just another way of delivering kinetic energy to a target, by using photons as bullets -- a whole lot of really tiny bullets. But imagine you have to shoot a bear with a shotgun. Would you rather fire a slug, or a shellful of fine sand?
...
But you have to ask, Why do it the hard way?
I think the most effective directed energy weapon is going to remain the directed kinetic energy of a bullet, for a good long time to come.
I'm pretty sure directed-energy is all about delivering heat and energy, not about physically stopping them. So it's more like asking if you'd rather shoot the bear with a slug or burn a hole through his stomach. Which may actually depend on your objectives.
Bullets also kill by delivering energy, not by 'stopping' the target. A bullet from a high-powered rifle goes right through a person, but it doesn't just drill a thin hole: it makes a big splash inside as it passes. This energy transfer is what makes a bullet an effective weapon, and in this sense bullets and photons are doing the same job. But the bullet will also go through trees, body armor, brick walls, truck doors, etc. -- not to mention rain and dust and smoke and fog -- and still kill afterwards. It can push obstacles out of the way, at a relatively low cost in energy. A laser beam has to vaporize obstacles, which takes a lot more power.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
What will come after Avernum4 for Windows? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, January 24 2006 13:49 Profile #16
Actually, Pyroroamer dialog is especially urgent.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Charge ion cannons. in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, January 24 2006 11:55 Profile #18
quote:
Originally written by Dintiradan:

Brief history of advances in technology:

Build house with rocks -> Build wall with rocks -> Throw rocks at people
Make art with bronze -> Make shield with bronze -> Make sword with bronze
Create energy with uranium -> Create sub using uranium -> Create bomb with uranium
I think the order here is probably exactly backwards, except that a self-sustaining but non-explosive nuclear reaction was created shortly before the first atomic bomb. Since Fermi's experiment was a deliberate step towards making a bomb (part of the Manhattan project), rather than an attempt to generate power, even this is debatable. So a good case could be made from history that better swords get beaten into better plowshares, rather than the other way round.

Anyway, directed energy weapons have a basic problem. Lasers as weapons are just another way of delivering kinetic energy to a target, by using photons as bullets -- a whole lot of really tiny bullets. But imagine you have to shoot a bear with a shotgun. Would you rather fire a slug, or a shellful of fine sand? Atoms and photons have even less penetrating power, relative to their energy, than the finest sand.

Of course you can compensate by using a powerful enough beam, just as you could red mist the bear with a big enough blast of fine sand. But you have to ask, Why do it the hard way?
I think the most effective directed energy weapon is going to remain the directed kinetic energy of a bullet, for a good long time to come.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Good Cop, Bad Cop in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, January 23 2006 00:18 Profile #6
Since we are near a supermajority in votes for 'interchangeable', the democratic thing to do is have Drakeye and Starfyre officially merge.

Actually we could promote the formation of factions (and wouldn't that be great!) by instituting collective accounts, sort of like fraternities. Several people could all be given the password for one account, or one password-holding spokesposter could agree only to post messages to which all collective members had agreed by PM. General Spidweb members might be invited to join a collective account if they were found to espouse compatible views. The postings from large or prestigious collective accounts would be received with great respect by the rest of the community, of course. And membership in certain elite collectives would be more coveted than the sometimes dubious honor of a custom title.

Ah, what a dreadful, horrible plan. But there is an obvious place for it to be implemented ...

EDIT: My post number appears to be a commentary from the mysterious hierarchs.

[ Monday, January 23, 2006 00:20: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Save this forum! in SubTerra
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 19 2006 23:56 Profile #17
Is a sandwich worthy of being eaten?
*implants are transmitting a mysterious burp*

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Rosetta in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 19 2006 08:04 Profile #4
So far reviewers are saying that the extra speed compensates for Rosetta, so that non-Intel apps run about the same as on a G5 iMac. Since Spiderweb games aren't really going to benefit from doubling in speed, I doubt Jeff will bother making them universal.

I have heard, though, that Classic is no more on the Intel Macs.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
I'm late! I'm late! in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 19 2006 01:47 Profile #28
Maybe they aren't even all of him or her. Maybe he or she is more of us.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Save this forum! in SubTerra
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, January 19 2006 01:36 Profile #15
The mysterious hierarchs habitually manipulate so many multiple layers of appearance and reality that for them irony is banal.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Yarrr... Linux! in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, January 18 2006 16:51 Profile #88
The basic problem with the coffee price cycle is capitalist greed, but not that of "the West". Coffee demand doesn't drop much; what lowers prices is overproduction. And rich investors are not deliberately financing overproduction -- they lose money in a coffee glut.

Growers expand production in order to make more money by selling more beans. But coffee plants take years to mature enough to harvest; so there is bad inertia in the response of supply to demand. Prices rise, everyone plants more coffee to cash in, a few years later all this extra production comes online, there's a huge glut, and prices crash. Everyone cuts back their worthless coffee production, the glut dissipates, there isn't enough production any more to keep up with demand, so prices rise. Rinse and repeat.

The Fair Trade strategy, as I understand it, is to get consumers to accept higher costs by moral suasion, and then hope that this gives the growers enough income to be content with, so that they aren't tempted to futile overproduction. That may be the tricky part.

I realize that this is often a matter of providing the growers with a very modest recompense, far less than what we take for granted in the First World. But it is still grower contentment, and not subsistence, that is the issue. Because if I'm a coffee grower who is finally getting by because of higher coffee prices, it's not like I'm going to know my place as a mere Third Worlder, and accept the just getting by with permanent joy. Like any human being, I'm going to start thinking about doing better than barely getting by. And with good coffee prices, and me already being a successful coffee grower, I'm going to think about growing more coffee. And every other coffee grower is going to be thinking the same. In fact, it's a kind of Prisoner's Dilemma.

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

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