Mea Tulpa

Aaaaaaand new topic title. Don't go there again, please.

I don't think IF is tapped out, but I think works like those are few and far between regardless of medium. I think the things you and I love about them are in abstract not specific to IF, though the way it unfolds in each individual case is medium-specific. It takes a certain kind of artist to create something like that. Andrew Plotkin certainly has created a number of games that have or approach having that kind of elegance. Cliff Johnson, 3 in Three, The Fool's Errand. I can throw out other names too. These games are bound by author and not by medium. The thing is that creative people, like anybody else, are more likely to work with media that are more popular.

I think this is actually quite a straightforward peace prize. If you consider some of the former recipients (hellooooo, Yassar Arafat) total nonviolence obviously isn't a requirement. (Not knocking Arafat btw, just making a comparison.) Shifting the PERCEIVED attitude of the most powerful country in the world more towards peace and further from unilateralism has clearly had world impact. I think there are some concrete actions too, if you really look for them -- clearly not nearly on the level that is typically seen, but the committee acknowledges that. For example, Obama's Cairo speech, or the decision not to intervene in Iran (unsatisfying though that may be). Also, as a lot of news articles point out, Obama's international reputation far exceeds his domestic one, just as George W. Bush was vilified far more consistently in Europe than he was here.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity But actually the all-text interactive fiction community has been thinning out for years now, too. Text hasn't gotten any flashier, so why are these guys dying out now, too? Because everything dies. Seriously. Tell me what game communities haven't thinned out over time? And if you're going to bring up something ancient like chess, let me point out that its market share (so to speak) has clearly declined.

It isn't intended to be a categorical dichotomy. It is intended to be a forced choice.

New pet peeve. Fantasy and science fiction worlds that think you can make a name sound exotic by writing it with an apostrophe instead of a weak vowel, even though that kind of transliteration makes no sense.

Spun-off from the other topic, because I'm curious what people think. There are good arguments to be made that both aggressive driving, and slow driving, can increase the odds of an accident occuring. Certainly, both can be annoying. Which one do you prefer to be around?

Originally Posted By: Master Ackrovan Battle creations were on par with Magic/Fire creations in G1-2. Its only in G3 that they began falling behind. It's true that Battle creations lost most of their zing after G2, when melee damage as a whole was scaled back from d8 to d4. However, they weren't actually on par with the other creations even in G1 and G2. For one thing, magic and fire attacks did more damage in G1 and G2 as well. IIRC, ice breath did 1-8 in G1 just like melee -- but while G1 had creation armor it didn't have much in the way of creation resistances. Plus, ranged attacks were even more advantageous under the old AP system. Oh, and ice breath had a 70% chance (IIRC) to stun! Cryoas and cryodrayks truly put battle creations to shame. Artila did as well, and Vlish even then made incredible support minions. (All damage was scaled back after G1 and again after G2 -- practically the only attack that didn't have its die shrunk was the Vlish's, which is the main reason they were so overpowered in G3.)

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity The basic pay-off for a computer game is not just game or just graphics, but a game whose look-and-feel suits it so well that the whole is more than a simple sum of the elements — like a movie, which needs to have plot and cinematography working together or there's no point in making it. And that means that Crysis-for-dummies kits with prefab graphics packs aren't really going to offer more than ho-hum clones of established games. Anyone with a really new, creative idea for a computer game is also going to need to custom-make a lot of technical stuff, and that lays the amateur designer in the grave for good. RIP. I dunno, SoT. I don't think the point of spin-your-own-scenario/make-your-own-mod games is to customize everything and create exquisite masterworks that new players will look on and go "ooooooh!" The point is to give people a chance to create. The joy is more in the creation than the auditing, honestly. This is particularly true for kids. Even though they are unlikely to complete anything even remotely polished, the very idea that they, yes, THEY can turn their own ideas into an explorable world is mind-blowing. (Why do you think the SW boards were initially so full of 10-15 year olds, a group that is more of a minority these days?) I would also assert that "ho-hum clones of established games" do very well in the RPG industry. To the degree in which CRPG players overlap with gamers-at-large, which is a lot greater now than it was 20 years ago, there is demand for state-of-the-art graphics. And typical game mechanics have certainly evolved over time. But most individual games break very, very, very few conventions. Most individual games have generic plots and similar expectations of what the player needs to do, and repeat the exact same mechanics that players are used to. And let's not even talk about the Japanese CRPG scene, where Dragon Quest clones have been the name of the game for 23 years, yet scenario-creation packages have been more popular (and FAR more commercially successful) than they were here.

I disagree with all of these statements. Vlish were HEAVILY nerfed in G4, but Wingbolts are a little overpowered in that game. In the Mac version though, Drayks were nearly as good a value. Wingbolts were not as overpowered as Vlish were in G3, but in neither game are Magic Creations as a whole overpowered or nerfed. Magic Creations were probably the best option in G2, but they only beat Fire Creations by a little bit. In G1 the Artila and Vlish were superb values, but Drayks and Cryodrayks had advantages as well and there was no comparable Magic Creation. Overall, Magic Shaping was strongest in G3, followed by G4, G2, G1, and G5, in that order. However, in NO game have they been the least advantageous of the three shaping trees -- that honor has belonged to Battle Shaping in the first four games and to Fire Shaping in the last.

Where does it say Ghaldring is "very elderly" or anything remotely similar?

Litalia followed a similar ideological path to the one Khyryk followed, except that her extrema were much more extreme.

Where are you getting a century from, even? G2 is 5-10 years after G1, probably closer to 10, and we know that G5 is no more than a few years after G4. Looking at what Alwan and Greta and Litalia say, there are clearly a few years between G3 and G4 -- but not too many. Maybe 5-10, again. So far we have a range of about 12-25 years, not counting the time between G2 and G3. That is potentially the longest gap, but I can't imagine it's more than 20 or 30 years, and it could certainly be less.

Changing your mind in response to new information or experiences is not the same thing as hypocrisy, not at all.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Neossokrass is not eligible for a unique element. He knows why.

12d7? I thought melee attacks were all 1-8 in G1. Am I remembering wrong?

That's a good suggestion. I would actually suggest emailing that to Jeff -- he might appreciate it.

No. Melee skill is only one of several factors in play. My guess is you were using different weapons, or had different Strength stats, or faced enemies with different armor values. Do a test with two PCs with identical Str and Melee stats and the same weapon, and fight enemies with no (or identical) armor. Damage should be the same.

Clearly, the game doesn't expect you to leave the Royal Spire without killing Hawthorne. I doubt there's anything you can do to fix this. Hopefully you have a backup save from beforehand. If you're already in the Spire, can you just use the editor to give yourself the fifth brooch?

Hmm. A little googling reveals that the issue is not as clear-cut as I thought. The general consesus appears to be that Maryland has clear Southern heritage, that a decent chunk of it "feels" more Southern in terms of geography, but that the majority of its population live in the areas with a more Northeastern culture. Interesting.

More generally, see if there are any other invisible files on the drive -- probably there are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_States I don't think I've ever heard Maryland described as southern. It borders the north side of DC, it was a border state in the civil war, and these days it has little in common with the south when it comes to politics, industry, or anything else, really. So I'm curious what you mean, Master1.

NetHack is one of the canonical roguelikes, so the extra like wouldn't be necessary in any case. The two branches of the roguelike tree that everyone agrees on including are Moria/Angband and Hack/NetHack. Usually, there is another branch for Omega, ADOM, and the like. Here's a pretty cool analysis.

Realmz got that from no less esteemed an influence than the Gold Box games, in which victims of the 1st-level magic-user spell Sleep were instantly killed if anybody even tried to attack them. Frankly, this is a pretty realistic implementation: if somebody's asleep or totally paralyzed, you can take the ten seconds to set up a neck-cleaving blow, or whatever, and they can't dodge.