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Dispel Barrier spell in Avernum 4
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Friday, June 2 2006 05:29 Profile Homepage #17
You're in the wrong upstairs. The stairs you want are right near where Kelner is, not the ones that lead into the main upstairs area of the tower.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
So, who gets the most out of canister usage? in Geneforge Series
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Friday, June 2 2006 03:11 Profile Homepage #2
quote:
Originally written by MagmaDragoon:

The Combat Skills, instead, give you 2 attack abilities, allow you to chosing your type of combat (Melee or Missile), then 2 defensive abilities, that, IMHO, all classes need: Quick Action and Parry.
A Shaper or Agent that needs to invest significantly in Parry isn't being played right. Those classes shouldn't be getting attacked in the first place (unless you particularly want a melee Agent, I suppose).

quote:
This is because I always thinked that the Guardian is more powerful than the Agent. For an Agent, all magic types are useful (the HC too), and this cause a lot of skill points go away (a lot in HC, because is weak in shaping).
Why on earth would you ever want to put skill points in Healing Craft? There's a ridiculously huge number of Healing Craft canisters in Geneforge 3.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Friday, June 2 2006 02:50 Profile Homepage #158
The quotes, even assuming they're not taken entirely out of context, are irrelevant to my point; they're talking about what's happening on a molecular level (which I'm sure is very interesting, but I'm not an expert so I'll leave it to a molecular biologist to discuss it), I'm talking about what's happening on a cellular level. Once you get as far as cellular life, everything else follows from there, and we know pretty much how it follows. The fact that we don't yet know what exact conditions could give rise to cellular life in the first place shouldn't be taken as evidence that no such conditions can exist.

quote:
Originally written by The Creator:

An ordered structure is based on simple units repeated numerous times. Life, however, contain specified complexity. To demostrate briefly: "abababab" is an ordered sequence, "tvohdrsd" is a random complex sequence, and, "designed" is a specific complex sequence. It is specific because it is the particular sequence required (in this case for the conveying of a meaning). See this article for some more detail.
I'm unconvinced by this argument. It seems to me that any complex arrangement is a specific complex arrangement, in the sense that it has certain properties which would probably not be possessed by a random arrangement of the same set of constituent particles. It just so happens that some of those properties are more interesting to people than others, and some of the most interesting ones are defined as falling under the category of "life". As far as the laws of physics are concerned, there's no real qualitative difference between life and non-life; the definition of life simply comes from humans looking at the universe and applying their own perspective on what counts as a particularly interesting set of patterns. We like to study things that resemble ourselves, partly because we're vain and partly because such things are more likely to have some relevance to our daily lives. In other words, to return to your analogy, the only reason "designed" counts as a specific complex sequence and "tvohdrsd" doesn't is that humans arbitrarily declared it to be so.

From the article you linked:

quote:
Random signals, e.g. WEKJHDF BK LKGJUES KIYFV NBUY, are not ordered, but complex. But a random signal contains no useful information. A non-random aperiodic (non-repeating) signal—specified complexity—e.g. ‘I love you’, may carry useful information. However, it would be useless unless the receiver of the information understood the English language convention. The amorous thoughts have no relationship to that letter sequence apart from the agreed language convention. The language convention is imposed onto the letter sequence.
Here is the crux of my problem with the argument. From a strictly information-theoretic perspective, the term "useful" is meaningless, and a random sequence actually contains the maximum possible amount of information for any sequence of the same length. To declare that only "useful" information (that is, information which produces results which are interesting to humans) counts as information seems like anthropocentric bias at best and intellectual dishonesty at worst.

[ Friday, June 02, 2006 05:01: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Reputation system in BoA? in Blades of Avernum Editor
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Friday, June 2 2006 00:29 Profile Homepage #5
quote:
Originally written by Keto-san:

Plus, I might actually add modifiers. For instance, a "violence" reputation that might make you unpopular with religious types. Or a "cruelty" modifier that will make you MORE popular with the particularly evil. But that depends on what you're aiming for.
In a scenario with a very heavy emphasis on politics and interpersonal interaction, I can think of at least three independent kinds of reputation that matter. One is your reputation for honesty (whether you can be trusted to keep your word and not manipulate others), one is your reputation for morality (what means you'll countenance to achieve your aims), and one is your reputation for competence (whether you've actually shown yourself to be capable of achieving anything).

Obviously, all of these will affect different people's opinion of you in different ways, and a high reputation isn't always better. For example, being known as a ruthless tyrant (low morality) will certainly make you some enemies, but it may also intimidate people into giving you assistance. Likewise, a potential rival might not want to ally with someone he judged to be too competent (too much of a threat), but he probably won't want a completely incompetent ally either. A reputation for honesty is generally a good thing, but telling the truth can make enemies too, and keeping a promise may prove to be more difficult than it appeared at the time you made it.

Are there any major categories of reputation that this threefold classification is missing? This is of more than academic significance for me, since I'm planning to make a scenario at some point (possibly for BoA, more probably for Pyg) in which the PC is a feudal lord.

[ Friday, June 02, 2006 00:32: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Reputation system in BoA? in Blades of Avernum
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Friday, June 2 2006 00:29 Profile Homepage #5
quote:
Originally written by Keto-san:

Plus, I might actually add modifiers. For instance, a "violence" reputation that might make you unpopular with religious types. Or a "cruelty" modifier that will make you MORE popular with the particularly evil. But that depends on what you're aiming for.
In a scenario with a very heavy emphasis on politics and interpersonal interaction, I can think of at least three independent kinds of reputation that matter. One is your reputation for honesty (whether you can be trusted to keep your word and not manipulate others), one is your reputation for morality (what means you'll countenance to achieve your aims), and one is your reputation for competence (whether you've actually shown yourself to be capable of achieving anything).

Obviously, all of these will affect different people's opinion of you in different ways, and a high reputation isn't always better. For example, being known as a ruthless tyrant (low morality) will certainly make you some enemies, but it may also intimidate people into giving you assistance. Likewise, a potential rival might not want to ally with someone he judged to be too competent (too much of a threat), but he probably won't want a completely incompetent ally either. A reputation for honesty is generally a good thing, but telling the truth can make enemies too, and keeping a promise may prove to be more difficult than it appeared at the time you made it.

Are there any major categories of reputation that this threefold classification is missing? This is of more than academic significance for me, since I'm planning to make a scenario at some point (possibly for BoA, more probably for Pyg) in which the PC is a feudal lord.

[ Friday, June 02, 2006 00:32: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Thursday, June 1 2006 23:49 Profile Homepage #154
None of which contradicts my basic point, which is that living organisms develop in much the same way that hurricanes do: through local interactions between nearby units. The units are bigger and have more moving parts (cells rather than individual air molecules), but the principles are the same. The kind of life we talk to and shelter under and feed on and try to get rid of with antibiotics is really just a scaled-up, colourised version of the John Conway kind. As such, the metaphor of life as an externally-assembled machine is an entirely inappropriate one; it's self-assembling, just like a cloud or a crystal.

[ Thursday, June 01, 2006 23:53: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Thursday, June 1 2006 23:30 Profile Homepage #152
quote:
Originally written by The Creator:

“‘Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content
I'm a developmental biologist, and if this is an attempt to claim that life is an organised system of the type described above, it's basically a load of crypto-mystical claptrap.

There is no grand external plan directing the development of even very complex organisms such as mammals. The overwhelming majority of effects driving embryonic development are local: cells develop into appropriate fates by interacting with their immediate neighbours and the external environment, but not by reading some kind of blueprint for the entire body that's encoded into their DNA. In many ways, the left hand quite literally does not know what the right hand is doing.

The tissues and organs of the human body are in fact generated by simple algorithms (or at least, algorithms no more complex than those which drive weather patterns). There is no objective sense in which a human body is more organised than a hurricane; we just see more organisation in humans because it's easier and more interesting to study them, so we've spent more time doing so.

[ Thursday, June 01, 2006 23:34: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 22:36 Profile Homepage #73
He sure doesn't look like he's been living on a diet of worms.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Game Cost? in The Exile Trilogy
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 22:26 Profile Homepage #1
They're still for sale. Lowering the price of the Exile series would be counterproductive, because the Avernum trilogy is basically the same three games as the Exile trilogy dressed up with different engines, and for obvious reasons Jeff doesn't want his older games to compete on price with his newer games.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 21:52 Profile Homepage #71
Microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing: one is just more of the same thing than the other. Only evolution deniers draw a distinction between them.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Tweaking G3 in Geneforge Series
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 02:57 Profile Homepage #8
quote:
Originally written by MagmaDragoon:

2- Why another AP? And only for rogues or for the player's creations too?
Since it's an edit to the actual creature data in the scripts, it'll affect both player-made creations and non-player creations. And to roam means to move around, so it makes sense for roamers to move fast.

quote:
4- The Symbiotic Cloack has a bug? If no, why you reduced its bonuses?
The Symbiotic Cloak inherits several bonuses from another cloak. It almost certainly isn't supposed to do so.

quote:
PS: Can't you make a script that allow to use another weapon insted of shield?
No. That would require editing the engine itself, which can only be done with access to the source code, which only Spiderweb Software has.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Vahnatai Lexicon in The Exile Trilogy
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 02:04 Profile Homepage #9
quote:
Originally written by Henry Anthony Wilcox:

I think the only addition is some conjecture on sentence building, as well as a sample sentence. The other stuff is all Drakey's (though I think he worked with another Blades designer whose name I forgot; this may date back to the 90's).
Akhronath. I'm pretty sure Akh was responsible for a substantial part if not a majority of the lexicon.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Playing on Torment in Geneforge Series
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 01:58 Profile Homepage #8
quote:
Originally written by Delicious Vlish:

I woke up and saw my shaper standing all alone on the screen and couldn't figure out what the blazes had happened and why I was all alone. Cryoas? Gone. Alphas? Gone. Vlish? Gone. And there was a blood stain right next to me
Yeah, sometimes I've blacked out and woken up much later in an unfamiliar place with blood stains all around me too.

Oh, wait, you mean in the game. Never mind.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Some interesting questions in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 01:08 Profile Homepage #21
1) Mostly English words in an aural modality. I don't naturally think in pictures and it's fairly difficult for me to do so deliberately with any accuracy; my spatial reasoning skills are passable at best. It's very loud and very dark inside my head most of the time.

2) I'm not a synaesthete.

3) Apparently, popular vote has decided on Macaulay Culkin. But I'd prefer Hugh Grant.

[ Wednesday, May 31, 2006 01:10: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 00:52 Profile Homepage #57
quote:
Originally written by Waylander:

quote:

No, there's more than that it's how they fit togather. For example have you ever seen a six legged cow live on it's own?
This gal seems to be doing ok:
http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/03_Genetic/031013.6-leg.cow.html
Interesting picture, although it looks to me like the extra legs might be from a partially formed conjoined twin rather than a genetic mutation.

Not that that's particularly relevant to the discussion, but you know how I enjoy showing off.

[ Wednesday, May 31, 2006 00:53: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Belisarius Is The World's Biggest Noob in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 00:30 Profile Homepage #1
As I recall, you insulted somebody and he changed his name in response.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
A Thousand Words in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Tuesday, May 30 2006 02:39 Profile Homepage #8
quote:
Originally written by Henry Anthony Wilcox:

quote:
Originally written by The Worst Man Ever:

Kingy, please take those down or mirror them. SA images incur horrible penalties on remote-linkers.
Those penalties take some time before taking effect? I haven't seen any yet, unless I misunderstood you. Does "horrible penalties" not refer to redirecting remote-linked images to goatse?
Worse.

As soon as SA finds out you've remote-linked to their images, they redirect them to all sorts of awful things that make goatse look attractive by comparison.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Walkthroughs in The Exile Trilogy
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Monday, May 29 2006 23:39 Profile Homepage #9
quote:
Originally written by Tallie:

Ok, so is it the end of the game when you are teleported back to exile or can you keep playing. If so how? That is what I am tryign to find out. I killed the king and have been teleported back. I want to keep playing.
You can keep playing, but if you've already killed Grah-Hoth, killed Hawthorne, and found the escape route to the surface, there's not actually anything more to do (besides finishing any side quests you missed).

If you've done everything and want an ending that actually ends your game, you can always go back through the Final Gauntlet and exit to the surface.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Spell scam? in Avernum 4
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Monday, May 29 2006 23:32 Profile Homepage #4
By the way, it's almost never worth spending money to get extra training in a spell you can already cast, since the effects of one or two extra points of bonus are so tiny.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Monday, May 29 2006 23:11 Profile Homepage #3
The problem with your definition, Ash, is that it makes the word "religion" less useful. If absolutely everybody who has thought enough about "the spiritual realm" (whatever the heck that term means) to come to have some opinion about it counts as having a religion, then calling somebody religious no longer says anything meaningful.

Broadening the term "religion" to include any belief about "the spiritual realm", regardless of whether that belief is associated with any particular behaviour or social group, is like broadening the term "hat" to include "any object on top of someone's head"; sometimes we would like to be able to use language to distinguish whether the object sitting atop a statue is a hat or a pigeon.

Personally, from a strictly descriptivist perspective, I would argue that any social group and/or belief system which claims to be a religion is a religion, and any social group and/or belief system which claims not to be a religion is not a religion, and that no other definition of religion will adequately encompass the various things most people consider to be religions. Of course, that definition works better if you're interested in discussing religion as a social phenomenon rather than a philosophical one.

[ Monday, May 29, 2006 23:21: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Where to go? in Avernum 4
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Monday, May 29 2006 04:38 Profile Homepage #1
Have you been to the castle yet? Go see Houghton and do his quests. You won't be able to do anything with Spire Fort until much later.

[ Monday, May 29, 2006 04:39: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Demonslayer reward in Avernum 4
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Monday, May 29 2006 00:24 Profile Homepage #1
Demonslayer is your reward. :P

Seriously, though, although Solberg doesn't give you anything, the priest in Almaria gives you a very nice reward indeed for finding Demonslayer. So go there if you haven't already.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Problems with Blades of Exile in Tech Support
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 23:31 Profile Homepage #7
quote:
Originally written by Tyranicelt:

With the Intel macs, you can dual-boot between MacOS X and Windows XP. (and presumably Vista when it comes out) This should allow you to keep playing BoE for years to come. :)
The trouble is that even if you boot into Mac OS X, Classic mode doesn't work at all on Intel Macs. BoE is a Classic application. Ergo, it will not run on Intel Macs.

[ Sunday, May 28, 2006 23:35: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
New Biuld(No Flaming -_-) in Geneforge Series
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 05:09 Profile Homepage #4
Geneforge 4 doesn't yet exist. :P

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
New Biuld(No Flaming -_-) in Geneforge Series
Thuryl
...b10010b...
Member # 869
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 05:02 Profile Homepage #2
quote:
Originally written by Ghezuarah Mehnzuh:

Well when i was playing G4
Greetings, traveller. Tell me, what's the future like? I'm particularly interested in next week's lottery numbers.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00

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