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Complete the Wallset Rules (Tentative) in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Monday, February 7 2005 08:05 Profile #0
Complete the Wallset Project Rules (Tentative)

The purpose of the Complete the Wallset Project is to provide Blades of Avernum designers with a large database of wallsets. Currently, the default wallsets only feature six complete wallsets, a few partial ones (which only have basic walls and doors), and many which are only simple walls with no frills. The Project will not only complete the existing wallsets but also provide the community with new exciting terrain to design towns with.

1. Entry Procedures and Qualifications

1.1. Eligibility

All entries must be wallsets that are complete in that they include in the proper layout: basic walls, cutaways, doors open and closed, portculli open and closed, windows, and cracked or decrepit wall. All entries lacking these or with an improper layout will not be accepted.

1.1.1. Previous Contests

Wallsets that were entered into previous graphics design contests like the First BoA Graphics Competition are eligible.

1.2. Categories

Each of the default wallsets (whether complete or not in the editor) will be given its own category and judged separately. Example categories are: Wooden Wall, Web Wall, etc. Other categories will be: Original Wallsets consisting of walls that have been designed differently than any existing wallset, and Cliffs which must have a wallset (either original or default) that they match.

1.2.1. Modified/Mixed Wallsets

Any wallsets which are modifications, edits, or combinations of existing wallsets may either be entered under one of two categories: 1) The wallset which the modified wallset most resembles, or 2) the original wallset category.

1.2.2. Cliffs

All cliffs must pertain to an existing wallset or one entered in the Original Wallset category.

1.3. Entry Limits

Every artist is limited to two submissions per category except the Original Wallset and Cliffs categories where there is no limit pending rule 1.2.2. for Cliffs and provided that the entries are not duplicates.

1.4. Submission

All entries should be submitted to bckiedrowski AT wisc DOT edu (replace the AT and DOT appropriately). Because of spam blockers, send a second e-mail with only text with an appropriate heading. Your entry will be received upon the receipt of a confirmation e-mail. If such e-mail is not received in five days, please resend it.

1.5. Property & Ownership

All entires will automatically be submitted to the Louve with author information for crediting purposes for general use by the designing community.

2. Deadlines and Judging

2.1. Entry Deadline

All wallsets must be received by March 31, 2005 by 11:59 CST to be eligible for judging. The Olympia staff reserves the right to extend the deadline in the event of low submissions or other extenuating circumstances.

2.2. Judging

Judges will be recruited to judge the entries based on merits of overall quality, usefulness, shading, etc. in their respective categories. All entries will be given a score from 1 to 10 with 1 being low, 5 being average, and 10 being high. The graphic with the highest mean score wins the category. Scores will largely be the discretion of the judge. Artist Points will be awarded based on mean average scores as stated in rule 2.2.1.

2.2.1. Artist Points

All entries in every category except the Original Wallset category will receive +1 points to their artist score for each wallset with a composite mean average score of 6.00 or higher. The winner of each category except the Original Wallset category will receive an additional bonus of +4 points. All entries in the Original Wallset category will receive +3 points for each wallset with a composite mean average score of 6.00 or higher. The winners of the Original Wallset category will receive additional point bonuses as follows: 1st place receives +17 points, 2nd place receives +12 points, 3rd place receives +7 points, and 4th and 5th place receive +2 points.

2.3. Winning

The artist with the most points after all categories are judged wins the competition.

3. Other Protocols

3.1. The Olympia staff has the right to modify these rules as necessary. All decisions made by the Olympia staff on the eligibility of entries is final.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Boss Battle Poll in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, February 6 2005 09:30 Profile #4
quote:
Originally written by Solodric:

Exactly why are you posting this in a reply instead of just voting?
You don't know if he/she didn't vote or not. It is impossible to gain all the information you need on issues like this through simple one answer poll questions. I would encourage discussion rather than just polling.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Root of all evil in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, February 6 2005 09:04 Profile #281
quote:
Originally written by m's provocation:

Well perhaps the dragon is chewing your car every day and shortening the life of the car(while not leaving any perceptible marks).
Shortening of life of the car (i.e. increasing entropy to those of physical minded) is a detectable phenomena by its very nature. It would provide evidence to the theory that a dragon is in my garage. I could measure this increase in entropy everyday and draw conclusions from there.

My dragon is completely indetectable and does not render itself to any observation or perception at all. It emits no gravitational field, the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to it, and interacts in no way with anything in my garage, just as god does.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
History of the community in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, February 6 2005 08:57 Profile #10
The BoE community is essentially the BoA community. We cannot distinguish between the two because they exist together with free flow in between. I consider myself part of the Blades Designing Community, not either BoE or BoA.

The animosity between Jeff and the Blades community is there for good reason. He made many claims of support and reneged those offers, tactlessly at times, repeatedly. Now he does not even provide ANY support for the BoE scenario tables. They have even resorted to openly insulting people who to complain. Taking the 15 minutes to update the tables once a month would be satisfactory compared to the countless hours his customers invest into his product. All the while this is going on he extolls the virtues of the scenarios to sell his product.

The community members get frustrated with people who pass judgment without fully understanding the situation. Remember such feelings grew after years and years of neglect and abuse. With BoA, he is doing a much better job and is repairing the relations with the Blades community. I give him credit for that, but time will tell if he continues to show support.

As far as supporting new designers, the community is helpful in this respect. Although there are some who can be unconstructive at times, generally the people there are quite helpful if approached with intelligent and well formed questions.

Scenario design, like any creative venture, is brutal work. The Blades community is a meritocracy and unafraid to express its opinions. Respect has to be earned. Perhaps there are some that are too harsh, but there is a time harsh criticism is necessary. Coddling crap generally only makes more crap. If we say what is good and what is bad about each work, we can work to improve.

What is irritating is when some newer designer comes in with tired old ideas and very little contribution and wants to revolutionize the community based on mere suggestion. When you start at any place of employment, you generally do not start as the white knight dictating change. This alienates you from management and co-workers. You have to work in the system before you can change it. This is true of just about every real human social structure.

Do we need more scenarios? Yes, but we should also ensure that the scenarios released are of acceptable quality as well.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Root of all evil in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, February 6 2005 08:17 Profile #279
Something that is there but cannot ever be detected is just as valuable as something that does not exist, in my mind. It does not matter if said inperceptable dragon in my garage exists or not, it is an irrelevant question.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Spider Software Game Engine in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, February 6 2005 08:14 Profile #2
What the heck are you asking?

First of all, this is Spiderweb Software. What you mean by engine, I do not know. However, I will try to guess.

Every game has an engine. Exile 1 even has one. It is quite crude compared to that of Geneforge 2 and Blades of Avernum, but they all have their very own engines.

If you are asking for a scenario design utility, the answer is yes. In fact, there are two: Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum. BoE is much easier to use than BoA, but is not nearly as powerful. Right now there are many, many good scenarios in BoE because it is eight years old. BoA is newer and does not have many scenarios yet. Both are very good pieces of software and recommended.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Used to Avernum, but want to buy Exile in Blades of Exile
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, February 5 2005 14:01 Profile #3
As far as we know the town limit is 200.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Single/limited character choice? in Blades of Avernum Editor
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Friday, February 4 2005 07:24 Profile #9
You can't go outdoors unfortunately. You can, however, go in between towns.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Single/limited character choice? in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Friday, February 4 2005 07:24 Profile #9
You can't go outdoors unfortunately. You can, however, go in between towns.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Single/limited character choice? in Blades of Avernum Editor
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Friday, February 4 2005 05:06 Profile #7
The workaround is quickly reuniting the party, transporting them to a new town, and breaking them up again.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Single/limited character choice? in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Friday, February 4 2005 05:06 Profile #7
The workaround is quickly reuniting the party, transporting them to a new town, and breaking them up again.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Single/limited character choice? in Blades of Avernum Editor
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Thursday, February 3 2005 04:46 Profile #5
quote:
Originally written by Aluion:

I've just tested it out in Blades of Avernum. Anytime a player leaves the current town with the party split, an error occurs and the party is reunited automagically with the split character.

It does not seem to matter how the character left the current town, whether through a special node or by crossing the town's boundaries.
I believe it says in the docs not to allow the character to leave.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Single/limited character choice? in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Thursday, February 3 2005 04:46 Profile #5
quote:
Originally written by Aluion:

I've just tested it out in Blades of Avernum. Anytime a player leaves the current town with the party split, an error occurs and the party is reunited automagically with the split character.

It does not seem to matter how the character left the current town, whether through a special node or by crossing the town's boundaries.
I believe it says in the docs not to allow the character to leave.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Recent Louvre Submission - Author needed in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Wednesday, February 2 2005 07:52 Profile #2
Frahhamn

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
COMPLETE- Player Character graphics set in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, January 30 2005 19:28 Profile #26
Fortunately, A4 will adopt a more Geneforge-like engine.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Where can i find the "Give Special Item", etc etc in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, January 30 2005 11:37 Profile #1
You must open a scenario file and scripts to look for these.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
New idea in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, January 30 2005 10:13 Profile #1
That is impossible and brought up many times before. I will save you the insults and lock the topic now.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
BoA Graphics Entries and Judging Details in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, January 30 2005 09:04 Profile #86
Ever going to update the site, TM?

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Complete the Wallset Project in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, January 30 2005 09:03 Profile #3
It's better to have 10 copies of a completed wallset than none at all. Let the individual designer pick which one to use.

I'm thinking of setting categories as:

13 for each incomplete wallset.
6 for improvements on the existing completed wallsets.
1 category for original wallsets.

Also, we should have a category for cliffs for each of the wallsets.

[ Sunday, January 30, 2005 19:09: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Complete the Wallset Project in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, January 30 2005 08:13 Profile #0
Want to do something useful for the BoA community? Here is your chance!

Currently there are several wallsets that come with Blades of Avernum. Unfortunately, most of these are fairly incomplete. Some of them lack windows and portculli. Others do not even have doors.

This severely limits the Blades designing community in terms of the wallsets for various towns. The solution should be obvious: we should complete the wallsets!

So I have decided to make another graphics competiton completely devoted to wallsets. The focus will be on completing the default wallsets; however, any original wallsets are welcome as well.

Right now this competition is in preliminary stages and announcements including specific rules will follow pending interest. So right now, I would like to know, is there interest in such a project?

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
how to make skins tell me plz in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, January 29 2005 20:49 Profile #1
I have no idea what the heck you are talking about. Could you be more specific?

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Root of all evil in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, January 29 2005 20:47 Profile #206
Fair enough.

The sentence, to be honest, I thought I erased, but only partially. My apologies for the confusion.

Respected journals are like Scientific American, Nature, or anything published by a professional scientific society such as the Geological Society of Australia.

It is definitely possible that gemstones could form under the same conditions, but they would be pretty extreme and artificial. Without knowledge of the process I could only guess on this. We have to look at the likelihood such a process would occur naturally. Usually the answer is not. As far as "natural gemstones" we can look at the environment was found in and draw conclusions. Although both ways are possible, the slow one involving the natural phenomena is probably a lot more likely.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Root of all evil in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, January 29 2005 19:57 Profile #202
quote:
Originally written by The Creator:

You demand a standard of proof far beyond what you would demand to prove that, say, the Earth is round or that man landed on the moon.
To the contrary, proving the Earth is round or man walked on the moon is relatively easy. I can propose experiments for both.

Earth is round: Let us launch an unarmed ICBM in one direction into orbit. If we see it come back from the other side we have substantiated the Earth is round. Sure, we could postulate magic faeries moved it to make it appear as such, but Occam's Razor comes to the rescue.

Man walked on the moon: This one is a little more difficult, but it is the in the realm of possibility. However, we have these pesky little moon rocks. An isotopic analysis of their compositon and features of micrometeroite formation processes shows that they could not have formed on Earth. How did they get here, well we could postuate they rained down on Earth from meteorite impacts and this is quite likely, so we need a little bit more. We could send a space probe to the sites where the landings occurred and look for evidence.

Neither one of these experiments PROVES that the Earth is round or we went to the moon, but gives good evidence for it. The standard of proof is that we can devise experiments to validate hypotheses.

Let us take the God hypothesis. What experiment can we run to find evidence to support it? Make sure you define the exact nature of God in your proposal.

That is the kind of proof that is sought.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Root of all evil in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, January 29 2005 19:44 Profile #201
Creator -- The site you bring is a dubious one from the scientific communities perspective. I can find many reasons to distrust much of the information on AiG and in their journal. Just read the obvious editorialization in the article.

More disturbing is the fact the article does not site any peer reviewed journals where this has been discussed. Surely the quick growing of gemstones would have a place in mainstream scientific journalism.

So I ask you, where may I find this in a mainstream scientific journal?

That being asked, I'm not sure how this proves anything in any way. We have made gemstones such as rubies and emeralds in a laboratory setting before in a fraction of the time it would occur naturally. I don't have the references in front of me, but I do remember hearing about it. I do not doubt with human intervention and an understanding of chemical processes, we can manufacture opals as well.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to verify the credentials of Dr. Cram and where he got his PhD from. He appears to be more of a commercial figure than a "great scientist" from my brief internet search. I will assume he is legitimate and his degree is more than honory as is the case with many religious scientists. Also, the article you site does not

However, all respect to Dr. Cram, but he is just one scientist and a very minor one at that. You can find a handful of scientists with personal religious convictions in any scientific field. I can name many more like him if you want me to, but it will serve little use.

I was hoping for someone a little more prominent in a broad area of scientific inquiry. Nobel prize caliber is preferrable.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Root of all evil in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, January 29 2005 15:31 Profile #193
quote:
The most obvious example of a scientist with religious beliefs is Einstein, as you undoubtedly know, but I'm sure there are many others.
We come to a definition of terms here. It is true Einstein had "religious beliefs", but they are completely unlike traditional ones. The supposed religious beliefs of Einstein are often touted by those wanting to support their belief system saying that science supports the existence of a god. Another example of this misuse is when people state that Einstein flunked out of school. While this is true, it was because of his rebellous nature and not because of his incompetence.

Einstein believed in the Spinoza God. It can be summarized by this: the essence of a god exists in everything in nature. In short, nature is god and does not exist outside of the universe with any omniponent power. Einstein did not believe in a supreme being, or a "Personal God" as he called it.

Einstein's "religion" was very non-traditional. It is out of respect and inquiry for nature that shapes his religion and value systems. They are admirable values, no doubt.

To reiterate my main point: Einstein did NOT believe in a supernatural being or "Personal God".

Given the definition of God and religious alluded to by many of the people in this post, I would say that the statement that Einstein does not believe in them. This is, in fact, a contridiction to the definition of God you proposed. Most modern scientists have this interpretation of the meaining of god.

So I ask you again, where are these other great scientists that support the existence of a supreme supernatural being?

I agree that science does not have any say on whther there is or is not a God.

[ Saturday, January 29, 2005 15:34: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00

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