Profile for *i
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | *i |
| Member number | 6 |
| Title | The Establishment |
| Postcount | 3726 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| Cheer up in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Thursday, October 19 2006 16:46
Profile
Although I can neither confirm nor deny speculation as to the matter of the nature of characters, I will say that significant efforts have been made to develop interactivity between characters and the events in the plot. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| The Bad Get Polling! in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Thursday, October 19 2006 07:18
Profile
If you look at the DVD box and read the back, it is not too hard to infer. But either way, I'll make it more ambiguous. quote:That is a matter of opinion. I still consider Stalker a villain if you agree with the Empire side. If you agree with the rebels, Volpe and his enforcer Jaen are the villains. From either perspective, one can view the other's acts as evil and wrong. The villain of a game need not be a static thing. [ Thursday, October 19, 2006 07:23: Message edited by: *i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| The Bad Get Polling! in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Thursday, October 19 2006 06:29
Profile
Whether villain or antagonist, it's a fine and ultimately superficial point. I personally interpret villain more as you consider antagonist, but we are each free to have our own interpretation. As for a villain that I consider a good villain, after a few minutes of thinking, The villain from the movie Unbreakable comes to mind. ************************** SPOILERS BELOW *************************** He was definitely evil and insane, but had a well developed character: a lonely comic book store owner with a debilitating bone disease. In an effort to give his life purpose and prove his bizarre theories about the world, he committed terrorist-like acts against innocents. It was through these that he found the hero/protagonist, his "opposite". This proved his idea that superheros in comic books are manifestations of real humans in the past that exist today. ************************** END SPOILERS ************************** Now we cannot excuse his actions. However, we can sympathize with his plight. He has an outside life, interests, hobbies in addition to the twisted acts of villainery that he did. In no way is he the best villain out there, but he is one that I feel was fleshed out quite well. You can't like him, but you can at least understand, in part, what drove his actions. [ Thursday, October 19, 2006 07:18: Message edited by: *i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| The Bad Get Polling! in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Wednesday, October 18 2006 16:18
Profile
I disagree completely. There are many different kinds of villains out there. Some are greedy, evil, insane, etc. There are others who have an agenda who believe they are doing right even though they are causing harm to the protagonist. Being evil is in no way a requirement to be a villain in a story. When a villain can be sympathized with, it makes him/her more human and it can make the player think, "yeah in his/her situation, I might do the same thing". Not that this is essential, but it helps this type of villain. Other types of villains such as those mentioned above are helped by other things depending on their situation and motivation. Perhaps antagonist for Jaen or Stalker is a better word, but either way we are splitting hairs. [ Wednesday, October 18, 2006 16:20: Message edited by: *i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Scripting Category? in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Wednesday, October 18 2006 10:48
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That is a problem that will need to be worked out. My guess is with some sort of rubric based on originality, usefulness, robustness, etc. The general sentiment is to hold off until a later date, perhaps after the contest. I think that is what we should do. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Contest Rules in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 18:37
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For clarity, to be eligible, you cannot have entered any previous Spiderweb of Olympia contest. Every scenario deserves one shot at glory, in my mind. As for judging, I'll put something up sometime in November soliciting volunteers. I don't want to put it out too early. If you volunteer, you can judge any categories that you do not partake in. Having too many volunteers is rarely, if ever, a problem. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| October BoA Chat in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 17:19
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quote:Whoa, too many negatives here! :P I'm hearing more in favor of this weekend and I'm leaning to set it back to the original proposed Salmon time. Comments? -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Happy Birthday to Me in General | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 17:18
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quote:If you do not find it interesting, you are by no means obliged to read the topic. Feel free to start your own (non-spamlike/redundant/pointless) topics that are interesting and we will probably discuss. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Blades of Avernum support forum +hints and tips in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 17:13
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That's great. Now stop spamming. When a specific question gets asked, you are free to answer it. If you have a relevant question, feel free to ask it. If you want to discuss scenario plots and other relative merits, by all means be my guest. However, posting pointless topics that waste space are not allowed. Continue and your account will be suspended. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| October BoA Chat in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 10:16
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Seriously, does this weekend work better for people? We could do that if it does. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| October BoA Chat in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 07:20
Profile
I suppose we could do it this weekend as well, as per the other post. However, this saturday does not work as well for me. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Scripting Category? in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 05:13
Profile
In my tendency to miss the obvious, I forgot about having a contest for scripts. We could add this to the contest as another category to encourage good script designs, albeit this is a bit late and we may hold off on this until after the main contest. Please discuss. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Contest Rules in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 05:10
Profile
I decided to post this in a new topic. These rules are to be considered to be near final phase and are the results of much discussion. Please read them over and if you have any minor additions, changes, or corrections, please indicate below. You may puruse previous discussions here. * * * Eligibility Both Blades of Avernum and Blades of Exile scenarios are eligible for entry into the 8th Scenario Design Contest with the following guidelines: 1) The scenario cannot have been an entrant in any previous Spiderweb of Olympia scenario design contest. 2) All entered scenarios (utilities are exempt) must have been submitted to Spiderweb Software.* 3) The deadline for entry is November 30, 2006. * If you already submitted to Spiderweb and either have not been posted or have been removed, you may host it independently. However, you must have actually attempted to submit it to Spiderweb software. Categories Small Scenario Large Scenario Newcomer Best Utility Small Scenario: < 25 zones Large Scenario: >= 25 zones Zones is the total number of towns plus outdoor sections. Near identical towns (such as use of VTE) count as 0.5 of a zone. To be eligible for the Newcomer category, you must not have been a participant in any previous Spiderweb or Olympia scenario design contest. If this applies to you and you have more than one entry in this contest, you may select only one to be in the Newcomer category. Judging Initial Rounds Scenarios in each category will be given a score from 1-10 based on quality, 1 being lowest and 10 being highest. The decision criteria is generally up to the individual judge so long as he/she is consistent where possible. The exception is that a judge cannot favor either BoE scenarios over BoA scenarios or vice versa, each must be judged on it's merits. All judges scores are averaged to make a cumulative score. The highest ranked scenario in each category (except Best Utility) and any scenario with a score of 80% the highest score in the category will advance to the Best Scenario round. For example, suppose a category has four scenarios ranked 8.8, 8.5, 7.6, and 6.3. The cutoff for admission to the final round is 7.04 (0.8*8.8), so the top three scenarios advance and the lowest one does not. Final Round The scenarios that advanced are judged in a final best scenario round. All participating judges then discuss and debate to rank the scenarios from best to worst. Each judge is given three votes that he/she may distribute as he/she sees fit with a maximum of two for one scenario. How the judge actually allocates votes are secret. Once voting has completed the lower 50% rounded down (if there are 7, only the lowest 3 are dropped) are eliminated. If there are ties within the cutoff, all tied scenarios remain. Any votes for eliminated scenarios may be redistributed at the judge's discretion; votes for scenarios still in play may not be reallocated. The process continues until one scenario has the most points. Tie Breaking In the event of a tie that cannot be broken because no votes remain to be reallocated, with the exception of the final decision round, the cumulative score of the initial round is used to make the decision. Should those scores be tied, the high scores are compared and on down to second highest, third highest, and so on. In the event of an actual tie between all scores, both (or all those tied) scenarios are eliminted. If a tie occurs in the final decision round (i.e. two scenarios remain), all votes are cleared and the judges vote for their preferred scenario. If this vote ends in a tie, the above criteria are used. If all criteria are tied, the competition is a tie and both are co-winners. In the event more than two scenarios remain and all remaining scenarios are tied, the original decision criteria is used until two remain (at which a vote is done as above) or the tie is broken. Should the tie be impossible to break, a vote will be done to attempt to break a tie. If doing so is impossible, then all scenarios that are tied are declared co-winners. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| October BoA Chat in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 04:43
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I thought I had double posted this morning. From now on, let me worry about BoA chats. Discuss here. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| October BoA Chat in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 17 2006 04:41
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How does Saturday, Oct. 21st sound? 6 PM GMT, AIM chatroom blades. [ Thursday, October 19, 2006 20:32: Message edited by: *i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Blades of Avernum support forum +hints and tips in General | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Sunday, October 15 2006 16:17
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That's great. All questions can be directed here. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Physics conundrums in General | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Saturday, October 14 2006 05:21
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quote:You know, there are some people who take physics for more than just to fill some course requirements. It's too bad a lot of people feel that way; physics really is quite powerful and allows us to understand a lot. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Physics conundrums in General | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Friday, October 13 2006 07:31
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quote:The questions posed are not overly specialized. Theoretically someone with an undergraduate degree in physics or a similar field should, in principle, be able to answer them. They do not require any esoteric knowledge beyond basic, freshman and maybe sophomore level physics. In practice, answering them in terms of the basic fundamental laws is difficult. The problem is that things get complicated very fast, so we create more "useful" concepts such as torques, fluids, etc. to make an explanation tractable. Solving the equation of motion for every molecule/atom in a system is too difficult most of the time. To rephrase, F = dp/dt is always true, but it is not always useful or tractable when solving a problem. That's why, for example, we create things such as fluids, temperatures, pressures, densities, and enthalpies to do things like thermal hydraulics problems. Another example is a simple inelastic collision. To solve this we can write down the conservation of momentum and the conservation of total energy (this includes the irreversibilities of the inelasticity of the collisions). The conservation of momentum follows directly from F = dp/dt as does the conservation of mechanical energy*. What most people know is how to get initial and final states given some information. The details of the collision itself are really a black box in many of these problems. Another "simple" question would be to explain this collision without using conservation of momentum and energy. This requires a much more detailed insight into the actual collision itself to determine the final states. * Conservation of total energy is a bit more ad hoc in some ways, but one could, again, reduce it all to basic molecular interactions if one had enough insight and computing time. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Dead Civilian in Town in The Exile Trilogy | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 10 2006 12:36
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Yeah, I thought so too, but it has been so long I thought I'd ask. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Dead Civilian in Town in The Exile Trilogy | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, October 10 2006 05:55
Profile
It helps if you tell us which game. Try leaving the town, hitting ">", and returning. If that does not work, visit four other towns and return and things may reset. If it is a major character, he/she may not return, but I somehow doubt it. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| What's your opinion... in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Sunday, October 8 2006 19:36
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quote:Gotta love the generic never ending monster factories that we've seen about 539+ times already. :P By all means, don't let criticism discourage you from finishing. Just be aware that there are common pitfalls that beginner scenario designers fall in to and we're pointing them out. Point being the concept of villains with lots of resources that want revenge is something we've seen a lot of in Jeff's games and from others. Another one is not all that impressive. Also, mind control is a pretty weak plot device. It allows the designer to pass on the motive of why this particular group would be against you onto the villain behind the curtain. Basically less creative work for the same amount of player action. I think one problem comes from that Jeff's style has a lot of influence on beginners. In turn, they churn out Vogellian works. These have their own charm, but unfortunately, they are just remakes of what we've seen before. My advice: Primarly Focus on the characters in the story, make them alive, make us understand and have feelings about them. Dungeon design and logistics are secondary. [ Sunday, October 08, 2006 19:39: Message edited by: *i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| What's your opinion... in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Sunday, October 8 2006 10:22
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Just to expand, the "one wrong step could result in a painful death" sounds a little too unforgiving and unfun. But yeah, I'd agree, if you have monsters together they need to be explained rather than just a bunch of monsters for the sake of combat. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| What's your opinion... in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Saturday, October 7 2006 21:37
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Original towns are usually preferable in my book. However, if you modify the town quite heavily I suppose that would be okay. If I were voting in a contest, it would probably be a small negative. Either way, I'd use the port town from other scenarios (at least ones that are not yours) sparingly. The exception is that if the adventure takes place in the exact same place as a previous one, then it's okay. Nonetheless, enough should be original work that it does not appear to be a blaitant copy. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| What's your opinion... in Blades of Avernum | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Saturday, October 7 2006 20:50
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Porting is a neutral tool depending on its intent and could be used for good or bad scenarios. Care to explain the situation of what is being ported and why? -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| A Few Advance Notes On Geneforge 4 in Geneforge Series | |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Saturday, October 7 2006 07:50
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Why not repost this in a new topic considering this one is over three months since the last post? -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |