Forget it

Well, I suppose I generalised in a rather broad way with that remark. Economically I'd say I'm a touch right of centre but socially, I seem to mostly be a big ol' lefty with that being the most prominent of exceptions. I'll elaborate a little: I am an LGBT ally, do work with disability rights and gender equality movements, I am extremely pro-marijuana legalisation, I consider diversity a good thing, I am agnostic and while I am not adverse to religion, I am very adverse to politicised religion... and my own career is in community nutrition, having done volunteer work even with WIC and Meals on Wheels... I'm a proponent of services such as midwifery, fair trade, local foods, pesticide-free lawns... So most people would think it unusual that you could also correctly call me a card-carrying NRA member - I feel gun-free zones are counterproductive, and I believe the citizenry should not only be armed and trained (stress on the trained... not enough of that going around), but better so than our government. I support open carry (not brandishing mind you, but appropriately holstered and secured) and I actually feel safer if there are more guns around, not fewer.

I looked at some of the questions and decided not to take the test. I would probably call myself, economically somewhat to the right, socially way to the left with the exception of second amendment type things. I realize it's just an internet quiz but I feel like my answers are going to be "well it depends..." - some of these questions even seem a bit loaded toward one side or the other. I guess you'll have that since a quiz form can't really grade open-ended responses.

Zombies have been too popular for too long. Bring on the Owlpocalypse.

I feel like the switch locations were for the most part very predictable in Avernum 2, moreso than in any other Avernum or Avadon game I've played. A lot of them stand out, and the ones that don't, you can almost guess there's going to be a switch and then sure enough, there it is. That said, if you are having trouble seeing them for one reason or another, I can imagine that hitting "U" every few steps would get tedious. I think it was Jerakeen who worked out how to make the switches more readily seen in Avadon 1. It also worked in Avadon 2 because I remember trying it in that game and sure enough. So there's a chance it could work in Avernum 2 as well. Here's that post, maybe it will work for you: http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/14836-a-cheat-to-make-secret-switches-more-visible/page__hl__switches

Now we have to quest to substantiate proof of her having ever existed. This is either a Spiderweb Game or a Liam Neeson movie.

I did my best to avoid armors that decreased hit, and to maximize attack power. Damage dealing all the way, I could always use summons where I needed meat shields.

I found out that using blade sweep while holding demonslayer... doesn't count as hitting them with demonslayer. D'oh.

Just finished killing on Garzahd. Ouch, what a battle. I had to try a few times, because of him flinging me across the room. Some parting thoughts. I knew more or less what to expect because I did a casual-mode overpowered cheat-ful run last month just to experience the story and such. -There were only two people I really wished I could have killed. One was Faye the shopkeeper, she was so rude I wanted to download the mac version just so I could blast her; the other was Rentar-Ihrno. Garzahd may have been somewhat right in his premonitions, it's just too be he turned evil and started butchering people and such to make his point. Though being part-demon, he was probably glad to have the excuse to do it. Interesting that Erika had a couple similar premonitions about the vahnatai. -The most annoying thing to me was enemies coming around a corner (especially after you were sure you'd just cleared that corridor but that's another story). Not so much as I didn't want to have to fight, but I mean, walking toward a chest, enemy appears... kill them down, end battle, one more step, another enemy. Urf. -Secret switch locations became a bit too predictable. -I dislike the Castle's layout but I really hate the Tower of Magi's layout. Getting from room to room is just a pain in there. I played through the game twice and I still have trouble getting around in there. -The one time I turned to the forum for help. The Vahnatai papers. Like many who have posted here, I read both tomes again and again. Turns out that I had simply already found them and turned them in earlier because I went exploring/killing before doing that quest. Perhaps one of the two tomes should have an indication of a job already done in this regard. -I wish there were a way to mark on the map where you encounter the red wax seals, especially before you realize that you will eventually be able to break them. This was the biggest problem on my first playthrough: I backtracked for eons looking for a couple stray spells. I suppose you can record the event but those don't tell you the "where" anyway. Subsequent playthroughs nullify this problem though, I figure. -I really didn't want to destroy the Cotra forge but I wound up having to to clear the quest. I wish there were an alternate, in the event you liberate the town, you can tell the girl "it looks like Avernum can reclaim them after all" or some such. I realize I didn't have to perform the deed, but, points. -Mixed feelings on the food for Harston. The ramifications of doing or not doing that one, would be something neat to see in the "ending." Am I helping the Empire there? Or, does that mean once Garzahd falls, those folks will rally to Avernum since we helped them... or, what? -omg boat pathfinding. Is bad. -I would have loved if you could talk to Boutell after you have that sword he loves so much, and show it off to him. -I realize, tradeoffs and all, but it was a pain how many of the best chest armors and shields had significant hit chance penalties. There were times I was using inferior gear to avoid that because I was already hitting maybe, two times out of three. -I played with one soldier, one priest, and two sorcerors. So, a melee and three casters. And I actually started hating when it was the melee's turn in battle. I don't know how feasible it would be to run torment with four casters and always have enough spell energy though. Still, even a good bow strike from my priest seemed almost as good as a sword bash half the time. -Where I died the most: Garzahd, Portal Tower, Vahnatai Castle, Traps (I'm an explorer so of course I'm going to see all the death scenes like "the garrison butchered you" or "the imps dropped you in the lava"... I even surrendered once to see what would happen). And the arena at the beginning of when you face The Ten. To me that was harder than the Garzahd fight probably. But, I did reload a lot when I got an unlucky string of events in a given battle. A lot of my deaths seemed to be my soldier striking something before I realized it had spine shield.. oops. -Even though roughly two days of it was idle time (when I first bought the game I didn't have time to play, but I left it run to hopefully help with exposure), Avernum 2 has taken the crown as my most-played Steam Game: http://s27.postimg.o.../mostplayed.jpg Of course, I have played all of Spiderweb Games before, but only Avadon 2 and Avernum 2 were played via Steam Client. I don't expect Avadon 3 to be as massive but perhaps A3RW will give it a run for its money in a couple years (EUIV may also do the job this summer... time will tell). My favorite sidequest had to be the gremlin wives. I cheated once (backtostart, resetboats) to save myself from a quickfire bug in the bonegnawer cave, and this seems to have denied me the achievement for completing the game on torment. I guess I can live without it, because I'm not doing that again. I initially used the cheat a second time because I got quickfire bug in Egli, but when I got back there everyone was dead including Rentar, so I had to reload a save that was a few hours' progress back from that time. All in all, a good time over the past few weeks, and I really look forward to what Jeff comes out with next.

Anyone know whether Jeff is a fan of the Raiders or Steelers? Probably a coincidence but an unusual enough name that maybe not - right now I'm in the Portal Fortress and I'm fighting Commander Fuqua. (John) "Frenchy" Fuqua was one of the prime suspects in what is maybe the most famous play in NFL (pro american football) history: the Immaculate Reception. Steelers vs Raiders, Terry Bradshaw (Steelers) threw a pass intended for Frenchy Fuqua (Steelers), Jack Tatum (Raiders) smashed Fuqua and sent the ball flying... which "miraculously" Franco Harris (Steelers) snatched out of the air (some argue, off the ground) and ran for a touchdown to win. Fuqua was also a very flashy dresser who dubbed himsel "The French Count", and his fanclub was known as "The Foreign Legion", which, may be able to have some tangential relation to The Empire. Or maybe not.

Lizard eggssss are delicioussssssssssss.

I think last night I was beginning to dream something about Formello, but it never really materialized (either that or I can't remember it). FWIW in-game I'm in the middle of assaulting Pyrog's Lair. I finally got the minegano joke when I typed out those things separately... mine, ore. OH, now it comes together. I'm not sure why Alorael's joke make me think about something else I pondered the other day - if reptiles do so well (well by cave standards) in the caves, why has nobody brought down chickens? Although I guess when your chicken-feed is leftover fungus, it's not like the chicken will taste great either. *edit - oh right, because bats are "chicken of the cave."

Perhaps he knows that your sword was clearly made by vahnatai.. and is not only rolling his eyes that you present vahnatai equipment as your own, but unimpressed by the non-vahnatai portion of your stuff too. So he not only is sneering, but double-sneering at you. Maybe even triple-sneering, if you are an unworthy being for possessing such a waveblade. Silly waveblademaker.

I saw the geneforge 3 dream thread but I wasn't sure that hijacking that thread was the right thing to do. So I thought I would open this question up: ever had any weird spiderweb-related dreams? I'll start with the one I had last night, but introduce it with a short context first: long-time spiderweb fan, played Exile games in the 90s, etc. - and well, I was planning on playing Avernum 2: Crystal Souls over Christmas vacation, but with the game getting a little extra polish before release, I didn't have time to play it until recently (though, I did buy it on release day and idled it in Steam for a couple days, hopefully helping with publicity). Last month I did an overpowered cheat-run through the game to feel everything out. Uncouth, but I enjoy getting in touch with the game world in such manner. And now recently, I have been grinding my way through a torment run of the game, so a significant proportion of my freetime the past couple weeks has been spent on Avernum 2. As such. Last night I had a dream that The Empire was invading my kitchen because I used an illegal variety of oregano on my chicken wings. At first it was really scary but then the empire troops turned into the little army men toys (grey ones at that), and my dog was helping me fight them off by chewing on a few of them. I finished "beating them" by sweeping them into a dustpan and then Prossis-Bok showed up angry that I ruined her plot to have a Vahnatai base in Ypsilanti, and cast quickfire. I was going to stop the quickfire by just closing the kitchen door, but then I woke up.

I went in to say hi. Wasn't going to steal a penny, I swear. Then they attacked first, ergo, the treasure was all mine.

Well, suspension of disbelief and all that. Luckily since "you" is technically acceptable as either plural or singular, it works: believe it or not there are some folks insane enough to want to play a singleton run of this game, so the wording as is, is actually pretty good for keeping the immersion going for that kind of playthrough.

I'm doing a playthrough on torment right now. I was in Egli and suddenly a random quickfire ripped through the town. I was in a room trapped and it killed Aldous and Cordelia. I had to bail myself out with the ctrl+d returntostart code which dumped me in Formello, so I had to travel all the way back (not a huge deal since I'd cleared the whole way there). Went back to Egli and everyone in town was dead, including Rentar. Had to reload a save from a few hours prior. This happened to me in Bonegnawer Cave too the other day but, it's not like it killed anything important in there so it wasn't a big deal that time.

What I like to do is just admit I want to crush everything, and do my first playthrough with cheated characters, smash my way through the game and just enjoy the story. And then I'll have a much easier time (and actually enjoy) playing a second time without all the "extra advantages" - etc. The trouble with a story-driven game is that you want to keep experiencing it, not taking 10 minutes at a time to have tactical battles with whatever happens around the corner. But once I've experienced the story once I can have a lot more fun strategy-ing my way through again, even if I choose a different set of character/story choices.

I started to read this but I had to stop when I saw what wall o'text it was. What's your gist?

The best pony is clearly Fluttershy.

Windows used to have a subtle way of bloating just about everything... it used to be an honest concern back in the days of oh, Win95, 16 and less MB RAM, 100mHz processors and the like. By Windows 2000 I'd have to guess the only way to still have problems would be if you'd gone and used your desktop as an install directory or you had a bunch of videos rather than shortcuts to videos hanging out there, or some such. These days there is no plausible reason for desktop icon clutter or moving the mouse to cause system hangs; it would have to be a symptom of some other kind of problem. That said it doesn't hurt to have things be a bit tidy. I'm partial to a program called Fences by Stardock - you can leave a ton of links on your desktop and still have them pretty well organized. But... the icons I keep on my desktop are more force of habit from being old, than actually needing them there. Unless you have something critical to keep your attention focused on, or for some reason you're afraid you're going to forget you have something installed, it's not really important to have things on the desktop. Even Windows makes it easy to pull up what you want, in a manner most dynamical.

Asia, a 10 year old Maltese I acquired as a shelter rescue last year.

I wonder which faction are the Vahnatai in A6 then. It seems as though if you're good to them, Avernum suffers. Then again if you're pro-avernum I don't know if any ending of A6 is completely satisfying. Unless you're evil enough to enjoy helping the one guy.

Geneforge is perfect. Improve GUI and tileset. Nothing else.

Maybe I was not meant to post in this topic - I started typing a response and lost it to a very unusual accident - a small explosion that I surely hadn't anticipated, and in its wake, I managed to lose my browser tab among other things. Sluggish/Low Energy: Some of the time. I think now and then it will happen to anyone even who is not struggling with depression. Blamed Yourself: None. I'm privileged to be in a position as such that I am the primary influence on my own quality of life. THere are some things that are not completely as I'd wish but, I don't wallow on it. In the end, many things in life are a compromise. My younger self would have a quite different answer to this one, more on that later. Trouble Falling Asleep: Sometimes. I'm not sure my circadian rhythm has ever quite recovered from my adolescence. I often don't fall asleep when I should, or do fall asleep when I oughtn't, and so forth. That said, if I'm being honest I could probably correct most of it with discipline of routine. Felt Hopeless: None of the time. I can usually find something to look forward to. Little Interest/Pleasure: Now that I'm going through answering these I can't even remember whether I answered "None" or "sometimes" - I'd say somewhere in between those two. Sometimes I get into a dull routine or, for sure, am not in the mood to do the particular thing that I need to. But it's all a means toward something better. Worthless: None of the time. This is something I spent a lot of time ruminating about in a younger day. Several years ago I managed some kind of philosophy shift and even when I am not pleased about a particular thing, I manage to be generally content. Difficulty Concentrating/Decisions: Some of the time. I am easily distracted or disrupted, especially by noise - I can't read if there is noise, and if I get interrupted I'll often have to start the entire paragraph over. I'm pretty good about being decisive about things which matter... but small details? Classic indecision. I've made waitstaff angry at restaurants spending so long on the menu. I've spent an entire summer trying to decide what colour to paint something and as a result, it didn't get painted at all. Silly, no? Mental Disorder: Yes. I have Asperger's. Suicide: I went back and forth on this one, and went ahead and answered no. From 14 to 19-ish I certainly thought about it, some times more woefully than others. I was a bit dramatic in my day. But I don't think I probably worked myself into a state where I would have actually gone ahead and done it. Past two weeks down/depressed: None/Little of the time. There was a point on Monday where I was upset about a particular thing for a short time. In general I am somewhere between stoic and chipper and, as some close to me would argue, I probably worry far too little about things. ______________________ To tie it all together, I'm 31 years old today. In my teenage years I was quite emotional, depressed, even unbearable at times. During my 20s things leveled off quite a bit. I know it's not quite this simple, especially for someone suffering a real bout of depression but, several years ago I just decided to be content. At first I adopted stoicism; perhaps waffling between stoicism and mild cynicism... then I decided something a little different: life is a comedy. It sounds absurd but it's helped me stay in pretty good spirits even during negative events. It also makes watching certain world events more bearable, but I digress. Something else besides age and forcing an attitude shift though - I significantly altered my diet. I won't proselytize but to sum it up I was struggling with weight, health, mood, and other issues, and I switched full-stop to the Paleo Diet about four years ago, which essentially is eliminating grains, legumes, processed stuff, sugars, junk... it's somewhat low carb, not on purpose (I still eat tons of fruit for instance), just as a result of cutting out junk. Today, despite my astounding resistance to working out, I'm in the best shape I've been in - feel great, plus have a very stable, even mood and temper, which is a real step forward for me. I don't get depressed anymore and I can keep a very stable train of thought - so maybe that won't work for everyone but in my case altered diet had a very positive biological response. As far as the Asperger's - well, I still have a lot of social issues. It may even be debilitating where certain social contexts are expected me. Fortunately I can perform at work, in class, and other places where I feel like my interaction is "already expected" - but going out and meeting people, networking in-person? Going "out" to try to meet people? Taking the initiative to socialize with people I know from work... outside of work? No, it's not going to happen. I also tend to want to go on and on talking about things or ideas that I realize others will have absolutely no care about... textural aversions to cardboard, the need to count patterns on the ceiling in a particular order before I can close my eyes in bed... an information processing latency that most people can't identify with (as in, hey, I'm not stupid - in fact I'll probably be better at this than you are. I just need to churn it in my head for a moment before I "get it"!) which, incidentally, makes me really bad at playing an instrument unless I memorize the entire song... haha. That used to contribute a whole lot to my insecurities and depression when I was younger, especially before I was diagnosed or knew that I had the Asperger's. I've since simply written it in as part of who I am and that's that. Time has a funny way of mediating perspective.