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Almny

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Everything posted by Almny

  1. There's just one feature I want in a new game engine: modern OS X full screen support. I want to be able to play the game in full screen but still have access to notifications, the menu bar, the dock, and other spaces.
  2. Concerning the accuracy cap, suppose a round of combat consists of four attacks. The probability of a round containing at least one miss is 0.3439 with a 90% accuracy cap. At 95% this chance is 0.1855. The chance in accuracy cap makes at least one miss in a single round of combat about twice as likely. (If the accuracy cap is p, the probability is 1-p^4.) More annoying to me are multiple misses in the same round. The chance this occurs at 90% accuracy is 0.0523 (about one in twenty rounds of combat). At 95% the chance is 0.01402. The chance is 3.7 times greater at 90% accuracy that a round combat will contain at least two misses. (The probability is 1-p^4-4(1-p)p^3.) I don't have a problem with an accuracy cap, but I think 95% is better. I would even prefer some sort of asymptotic cap more -- just make approaching 100% accuracy require much more skill. In practice, this still works out to a cap since skills and abilities are effectively capped, but it feels more "in game" to me.
  3. Since this thread seems to be about weird stuff, here's a map marker in Gnass: As far as I can tell, there are, indeed, crops and Slith.
  4. Avernites love bureaucracy. Commander Lynn in Mertis even makes mention of this.
  5. When you say "does not fill the screen" do you mean that the game appears in a window or that it starts in a full screen display mode, but is surrounded by a black border on two or all sides? I don't think SW games do any graphics scaling, so it may just be a case where the maximum displayed pixel dimensions for the game are 1600 x 900 regardless of display mode. If that's true, though, I would consider it a bug to allow that screen dimension as an option.
  6. I take it, then, that you are on Windows? I wish I could help, but I'm not familiar with the platform.
  7. Are you using a HiDPI display mode, like one might on a Retina MacBook or 4k iMac? If so, then it's not a black screen. It's just that all you see is the lower-left quadrant because the game is drawing four screen pixels for every display context pixel. My experience on Mac is that SW games do not run in HiDPI mode, so all rendering gets scaled up.
  8. Of course, short of maintaining sanity, nothing stops you from downloading MP3s of "Stones" and "Rule Britannia" and running them on continuous loop while playing.
  9. You're painting with an awfully broad brush. Maybe because I was playing them when they were *new*, I don't recall "hours and hours" of frustration. Maybe expectations were different, then. (Maybe I just enjoy tedium?) Using a pencil and paper? How barbaric! Of course modern features like automapping have stuck around because they improve the gaming experience. But don't rule out games merely because they precede the introduction of these features. I still play the Might and Magic series (starting at 3 -- 1991). And they have automap.
  10. You might also consider such fine phrases as "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" or "mistakes were made". :-)
  11. As has been mentioned earlier, you can find all of the Ultima I through Ultima 7 at GoG. Many of these games are unqualified classics, and if you can get past the dated graphics and mechanics, you're in for a treat. Ultima 4 is personally my favorite game, although I suspect there might be a large component of nostalgia to my impression. Ultima 1 and Ultima 3 through 5 have a world map with separate town and dungeon maps like Exile. (But the dungeons are explored in 1st person perspective.) Ultima 6 and 7 have unified maps more like Avernum 4 through 6. These are old games: they can be unforgiving. You won't get a map without expending a peering gem (which can be expensive), and you will find yourself drawing your own maps on graph paper. However, the challenge is accompanied with a sense of accomplishment when you reach the end of the games, and you may find yourself thinking about the philosophy in the stories as much as the plot.
  12. I suspect you may also know the value of the contour integral around Western Europe.
  13. I have a couple of questions about the last question on the quiz: 1. What is the distinction between the first and second answers? On a historical time scale "a very long time" could be ten thousand years. On a geological time scale, which the question sets as the reference, that's not long at all. A very long geological time would be an age or era. Maybe coelacanths have survived for hundreds of millions of years relatively unchanged, but most species, even successful ones, don't last more than tens of millions of years. So, what is the meaning of "a very long time" in the second response? 2. Is "mankind" the species homo sapiens, is it hominids generally, or our civilization? It's hard to imagine homo sapiens continuing as the same species, essentially unchanged, for a geologically measurable time, but successor species that me might term mankind could evolve.
  14. Hi. Could you explain what the poll means by globalization? Wikipedia defines it as
  15. In the cases in question, that is certainly the perception among many people. That is my opinion, too. What I'm saying is that even when the prosecution would be willing to bring charges, it is still dependent upon police statements and investigators. It is not just that police are rarely indicted or convicted, it is that crimes may not even be investigated. We really don't know the scale or spread of the problem.
  16. Even if prosecutors were impartial, they still must rely on evidence gathered by the police. If the police want to protect their own, they can do so by withholding evidence and generally mucking with the investigation.
  17. Cheaper, quicker, and they will probably sell, at least in SW's experience. To which I again reference Blades of Avernum. The issue is not just new franchises but new titles in those franchises. There is more risk, although probably less than with a whole new franchise. Yes. I also believe there is risk in just releasing remakes: SW really can't do that indefinitely, either. Releasing new titles and remakes hedges their investment in time and marketing dollars. I'm sorry that I don't choose to argue in the way you see fit. If you find my musings irrelevant, then kindly ignore them. It's a free Internet (for now).
  18. They are evidence simply that there are risks to bringing a new title to market. The remakes are less risky because the stories and general style of play have proven successful. Issuing a remake a couple of years after the original release isn't going to attract new customers (they would have already bought the game), but after a decade, there's a good chance that new customers of the proven formula can be found if the game engine is updated and works on modern machines. SW mixes these remakes with new titles. It keeps revenue flowing; it allows for successes like Avadon while hedging risk. It brings in new customers who would not otherwise experience the Avernum series.
  19. Actually, this is the very first time you actually made a request for proof of such an assertion. As evidence, I present Blades of Exile/Avernum. Not every new title is a blazing success like Avadon. When I say "may" bring in more new customers, it is relative to the risk associated with bringing a new title to market.
  20. Very well, then. What is *your* assertion? I believe that Jeff Vogel is a reasonably rational business owner. He wouldn't be developing and marketing remakes if they didn't sell. I suppose it's possible that only current owners of the original versions are buying the remakes, but I find that very unlikely. That's why I want some actual evidence.
  21. Really? Do you have any proof for that assertion? I found out that the "guy who wrote Exile" still exists and is writing games because I read about the upcoming release of "Avernum: Escape from the Pit" on a gaming site. So, at least *one* new customer was brought in by a remake. I really doubt that the market for Avernum and Geneforge were saturated by their original releases. The remakes allow SW to target a larger potential audience with a story that was a proven success.
  22. A remake requires fewer developer and designer resources, so it is possible to introduce these at a faster rate than a brand new game. A remake of a well-liked story and setting may bring in more new customers than a brand new game.
  23. Back in the 90s computer RPGs tried to make their inventories marginally more "realistic" by giving items volume in addition to weight. In the case of Ultima 7 this meant that you couldn't jam three suits of full plate armor into your backpack even if you could carry it. (So just wear a full size treasure chest on your back.) In Might and Magic 6 this meant that each object occupied a certain 2d array of squares. Inventory management reduced to solving a 2d packing problem. Inventory in all these cases, including Spiderweb games that predate the junk bag, can be reduced to the knapsack problem -- each item has a value, and when your inventory is full, you need to decide what to keep and what to pitch to optimized your stored value. NP-hard problems can be made into fun games, but with inventory management, it just feels like work to me.
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