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 |
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| IMG Previews A4. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 22 2005 00:48
Profile
Based on my beta experience, I think A4 is outstanding. My only previous Avernum experience was VoDT in the BoA demo, and a couple of hours of hacking around the beginnings of A1 and A2. So I'm not missing any long-beloved features from the earlier games. I like the Geneforges, so I'm not complaining about any resemblances. And anyway I find that the world feels different enough from Geneforge that I really don't think about similarities. Some if not most of the hard core Exile/Avernum and especially BoX folks on these boards may be bitterly disappointed by A4. I'm afraid my impression is that some of these people would find a way to be bitterly disappointed by any possible A4 that would be able to come forth as profitable shareware. Judged by what I consider fair standards, I think A4 is a great success. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 21 2005 12:56
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Space opera is currently mutating. An important feature of classic space opera is that the sci-fi premises of what was possible with all that future technology were basically fixed, didn't surprise the reader, and didn't really make all that much difference apart from effectively shrinking the unimaginable empty distances of space down to about the scale of the Balkans. As I remarked somewhere around here not long ago, there is a new breed of space opera emerging which is perfectly space-operish except in this one respect. Technology becomes spooky, and extremely wacky things happen such that the reader's basic conception of what reality is like is supposed to get blitzed several times through the course of the series. I guess I might agree about van Vogt. I read several of his books when I was 11, and liked them very much then, but somehow I haven't been very motivated to re-read them since. Again, derivative-in-hindsight. [ Monday, November 21, 2005 12:58: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 21 2005 09:41
Profile
Yes, it is. On the other hand, though, this observation still doesn't make it any easier to get through Tom Jones. I don't think it's the rule that first books (i.e. first books of a certain kind) have to be mediocre as examples of the genre they launch. I just think that being the first instance of something big enough to sustain many successors obviously gives a book a huge advantage in becoming famous, so it can often manage to qualify as a great book without having to be such a good book. So on average you're bound to get a lot of classic first books that are kind of mediocre in hindsight. But there can certainly be exceptions. To my mind, for instance, The Lord of the Rings stands up pretty well against its legion of successors. There are numerous passages that make me cringe now, but it has this severe austerity that will probably let it last a very long time. At the other extreme is the last book in a genre. Possibly this is very bad, if a genre just decays away. But often it is very good, and it kills the genre by reducing it, in subsequent memory, to just itself. It convincingly includes all the active ingredients that made the genre work, and executes itself so well that no writers good enough to have a chance at competing with it will dare to try. I count Treasure Island as the classic example, because it obliterated what I believe was once a fluourishing genre of pirate stories, and it is still one of the best crafted stories ever written. I rather expect Lois McMaster Bujold will turn out to have written the last space opera. Has someone written the last western? The last hard-boiled detective story? The last whodunit? Then there are the last books which do not exist even though they should. Conan Doyle arguably never succeeded in writing the single Sherlock Holmes story that epitomizes the ideal of Holmes. One thinks of the Holmes canon as this unique masterpiece, but then story after story has shocking flaws. Hmmm. [ Monday, November 21, 2005 13:01: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 21 2005 04:47
Profile
I bought Bring the Jubilee because I heard it praised as the first great alternate history by time travel book, and was rather disappointed. In a curiously appropriate, backwards-causality way, it felt derivative. It didn't seem to me to have all that much going for it beyond the basic idea, and since the basic idea was quite familiar to me, I was unimpressed. The fact (if such it is) that this book originated the idea was of merely historical relevance; it didn't actually help me appreciate the book itself. By far the best book I know of this kind, which as it happens is also a US civil war novel, is Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South. It's quite a serious exercise in historical fiction, with practically all the characters based on real people, even the ones who played no great role in actual history. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Soilders? Archers? Knights? and what's your opinion on roads? in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 21 2005 01:12
Profile
I have downloaded and played the Lost Souls demo a couple of times. Last time, though, it crashed a lot running in Classic in OS 10.4. I have an old OS 9 laptop on which it would probably work fine, though, so maybe I'll install it there. I liked it, too. Just never quite enough to register it. The demo levels were varied, but didn't quite succeed in giving me the impression that huge amounts of further variety would await in the later levels. Evidently there's an art to constructing shareware demos. You need to make the last demo level the second-best level in the whole game. (If you make it the best, people will register the game but then be so let down they'll never look at you again, or pass the word on to their friends that they need to register too.) -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Galactic Core in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 21 2005 01:08
Profile
And that is the word from the chair. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| General in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, November 18 2005 12:50
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I did not intend mockery, but merely to point out that responses like 'this is absurd' were what my "1" was born for. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Galactic Core in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, November 18 2005 00:04
Profile
You are confusing this product with Absolut Jambon. [ Friday, November 18, 2005 00:04: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| General in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, November 18 2005 00:01
Profile
See, you could have said that a lot more compactly. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| General in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 17 2005 16:12
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Urgent PM to muesli: come back, all is forgiven. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I Made You, I Can Unmake You in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 16 2005 22:45
Profile
quote:This is a joke so in that I think only I get it; but I couldn't resist. The most efficent coding scheme should assign the shortest symbol to the most commonly used statement. So I have decided that "1" should denote a standard expression of wry bemusement, which would surely be my most frequently used single posting around here. This is a radical way to conserve bandwidth. More generally, I guess, by posting "1" I am alluding to the idea of having short symbols standing for arbitrarily long and complicated ideas, as in what Golem XIV called 'metalangs'. For some reason this bemuses me greatly. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Galactic Core in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 16 2005 13:13
Profile
Sure, there's beer in every supermarket here, and a popular item in the canned goods section is alcohol induced Spam (or as it says in the fine print on the label, "A ham and vodka product"). -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| A4 - The New Geneforge? in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 16 2005 13:05
Profile
If conscience pangs over random sniping do not daunt our haughty magistrates, perhaps the dread of sinking to improper consumption of skribbane will give them pause. It's not like we have a lot of other checks and balances around here. How can despotism be tempered by epigrams when the despots can just delete them? [ Wednesday, November 16, 2005 13:07: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I Made You, I Can Unmake You in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 16 2005 09:34
Profile
1 -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, November 16 2005 00:12
Profile
But classing "Necronomicon" as a normal word is making a damaging lifestyle confession. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| A4 - The New Geneforge? in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 15 2005 16:42
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Better be careful, Alorael. Power corrupts. You could end up snorting skribbane and sniping at pedestrians. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's your best joke? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, November 15 2005 16:37
Profile
Simply put, the people who think their frisbee game is "ultimate" have absolutely no idea. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 14 2005 13:59
Profile
quote:... which is a book about making very tiny zombies. The fiddly little rituals involved will strain your eyes and make your fingers feel all twitchy, and don't you just hate it when that happens? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 14 2005 13:55
Profile
Anyone ever read or been tempted to read The Man without Qualities by Robert Musil? It's built up to be this great 20th century classic on a par with Remembrance of Things Past and Ulysses, but what none of the builders-up mention is that the thing was never finished. Perhaps this is supposed to matter less because it is a 'novel of ideas' in which actual plot development is secondary, but if you ask me, a novel which does not suffer from being unfinished is suffering otherwise. On the other hand MWOQ does have a remarkably high density of memorable observations. It should probably have been born as a collection of essays. [ Monday, November 14, 2005 14:05: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Beta Testing Testing One Two Three Four in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 14 2005 05:27
Profile
Maybe I'm just one of the slowest testers, so everything is fixed by the time I get to it, but I've found beta testing to be not very different from how I play these games anyway, which is to try to expose every pixel and complete every possible quest. I'm still getting a handle on what constitutes a useful beta report; basically, you need to make purely illustrative save files. With a game as huge as A4, it takes really a lot of time just to play through everything at a reasonable rate. This has been my biggest problem. I can probably only really afford to take three months to complete a game this long, but to beta test you have to move faster than that. If we're mentioning where we are, though, I have gotten my one party into the Abyss, having done almost everything doable up to that point. I hope to finish the game this week. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, November 14 2005 02:27
Profile
Dr Geisel's On Beyond Zebra is a profound philosophical work. It advances the premise that the world is full of marvelous creatures which most people never see, merely because their alphabets lack the extra letters needed to spell their names. Ironically, of course, the book itself names both the extra letters and the extra creatures using the standard Roman alphabet. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Memories of Things Long Past at Spiderweb in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, November 13 2005 15:42
Profile
It's never so much that the good ol' days were consistently good, as just that they contained a few good times, and these are all anyone remembers, because they alone are worth remembering. It is probably worth mentioning this rather bland point, because a whole era of dense goodness would be impossible to reproduce, but a few good times can quite easily come again. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What books... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, November 13 2005 15:33
Profile
I can't take the time to make a really careful answer to this question, but I remember being in fifth grade and finding Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light in the small in-class library. I was pretty much stunned, and couldn't decide what to make of it. Only after a long time did I decide that I had really liked it, and by then I had forgotten both the title and the author's name. I looked for it for years afterwards. All I could recall for sure was that I thought the author's name was strange. Eventually I found it in a bookstore, and discovered happily that Mr. Zelazny was quite prolific. I guess I should mention that the influence LoL had on my thinking was just that it made me like science fiction. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Insane? Get out of here... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, November 12 2005 02:11
Profile
It's a grrreat dee for motorcar racing doon here at Spiderweb! -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's your best joke? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, November 10 2005 18:31
Profile
The iron was set to vibrate. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |