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Upon Mars.

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Posts posted by Upon Mars.

  1. Hi, I've been wondering,

     

    what sort of beasts can I get with each level of Arcane summon?

     

    Also is there a way to categorize (non unique) enemies in Blades of Avernum in terms of difficulty? For example I know from experience that your low level parties will able to handle rats, goblins and zombies and skeletons easily, but not lava bats, fire lizards and slimes etc.

    I was wondering if there was a chart for those sort of things.

  2. Doc of the dead, a zombie documentary about zombies by redletter media is great low budget zombie film.

    It doesn't have the ''this is my boom stick'' sequences from army of darkness but it has it's moments.

  3. Nethergate has a few line of dialogues which are really great, Avernum tends to have very funny snippets of dialog, and the overall geneforge/avernum series tends to be spot on the way people experience racism (in other terms how one is racist and how one suffers it).

    Then per say, I'm not sure if it's the dialog or the explored themes which make Jeff's game unique, or due to the fact he's so well read.

    No wonder he's the first successful generation of independent indies to have made it through.

  4. "Adulthood sucks unless you had an abusive childhood."

     

    Trust me, as someone with an abusive childhood, adulthood still sucks. :(

     

    Last night I was thinking and I had to stop myself because I'm in a depressive state right now: I'm 27. 27 x 3 = 81. I'm probably a third of my way through life right now. I'll be lucky if I live as long as I did only twice more. When I think about it I feel frightened, so I try not to.

     

    Hi. To all those people who feel like this, you might need to go through material on Arthur Deikman's site, and look up "personal freedom" and "Sufism and psychiatry". There is some material that will help you now, some not and some later. Then again seeking support will be more than enough.

  5. I think Geneforge 1 is my favorite game in the series for all the reasons you mentioned. Resources feel scarce so you're gonna have to dig deep to get even the most basic spells and nobody really likes you and only see you as a pawn for their own gain, if they don't want to outright murder you. Since there is no Shaper presence on the Island you really have no "allies". Just you vs the Island, Robinson Crusoe style. Combat is pretty fun in Geneforge 1 because it's rather fast paced. With each Geneforge game after Jeff kept padding the enemies, even the trash ones, with more and more HP which only served to bog down the combat.

     

    In G1 the rate of combat was the most intensive of the whole series, and there is an absence of dialogue other than description in the west and east earn parts of the isle, save for key areas, which helps make the isle feel empty save for monsters and ghosts.

  6. If you thought that carrying reagents wa a problem: how do creations learn and are able to make complex tasks when they are like blank pages?

    Essence isn't just any womb. Imagine having to summon a creature like a servile which has been birthed essence-wise. Most of them would suffer forms of lack of social stimuli etc. What about control? Who would be able to control a Drayk when it's nervous system isn't yet fully formed and it has to learn how to walk, talk in specific environments aka when there's nothing much to control? Even though creatures like crocodiles are known to have instinct some behaviors have to be learned in order to have a viable living organism. Battle alphas, ornks, serviles, thahds, servant minds and placental creatures pose a lot of problems to begin with.

  7. I assume you mean plasma in the biological sense?

     

    No as a highly ionized gas; as if the shades were like thinking candles.

     

     

    Nanotechnology is how I make sense of it in my head. As for the shades having information, sentience, etc without a brain I just assume that the shade makes a imperfect "copy" of the original mind and the nanotechnology itself (nanites or whatever) acts as the nerve system.

     

    Aye, but in geneforge shades are described as part alive and part magical. Perhaps as you've said essence tends to replicate both memories and genetic material from scratch. And as stated in the posts above I could make a Shade as essentially some form of golem, with components within the essence.

     

    However it still doesn't fit with the idea of ghosts within the world of Geneforge, though I've just made the assumption that Shades are like ghosts, save that shades are not made from dead material.

  8. Shades consist of essence. If you come up with a plausible explanation for essence, then shades will be easy to explain as well.

     

    Well having given already a definition of it, I find Shades being the most complicated of creations to explain; I've tried plasma as an explanation, but the science behind this would make really hard to maintain and would very improbable.

    If essence was filled with an advanced form of nanotechnology, shades might be plausible, but that wouldn't explain how ghosts fit or think in the world of geneforge. I have great doubts that a civilisation with the technology of that of the early Shapers would be able to create ethereal thinking beings out of a nanotech base without computers, machinery and technology centuries ahead of ours. Thinking without a stable nervous system causes me also another problem; how do you get information as complex as ideas, rational thought ( of sorts) and other forms of responses to internal and external stimuli without a stable network of connections such as nerves.

  9. Shades consist of essence. If you come up with a plausible explanation for essence, then shades will be easy to explain as well. Essence is however difficult to explain however, at least if you want to keep the laws of physics intact. E.g. Shapers store essence in their bodies, how do they do this without gaining size and mass yet they are able to create beings larger and heavier than themselves? So you might have to make some pseudoscientific stuff up.

     

    I never quite understood the mecanics of storing essence in the body. In the fanfic I just regard it being something you can "Stuff" into a jar, pod or a device called an essence thrower.

     

    In regard to actual Shaping and essence, would it be plausible if;

     

    -essence is a self replicating substance which can build complex chains of proteins and other lifestuffs

    -shaping occurs either randomly (throught the use of poisons, solvants, chemical reactions, heat or radiation), making the shaping the simpliest of creatures even in the best possible circumstances a randomly act (which makes power canisters all the more important).

    -shaping occurs when living tissues are in contact essence and a catalyst which triggers the production of living tissues by essence.

     

  10. Well, I was considering a plausible real world explanation for magic and Shades in the world of geneforge, even if it goes so far to change the concept of the shades as immaterial creatures. Does any one sort of chemical or physical processes are at work in gene sequencing? Is there a way to let's say make magic a little more realist in the world of geneforge without creating new rules of physic? (I'm willing to compromise)

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