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Posts posted by Punctuation rains from the heavens
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On 11/27/2009 at 2:16 PM, Ingenuine Autochthony said:
—Alorael, who finds these scrambles insufficiently challenging. The next time you should pick a bunch of members, scramble them all together, and see who can come up with the complete list of mashed-up members with no letters left over.
But scrambling member names seemed both limiting in audience, and probably too easy. Instead, I've chosen to celebrate the remake of Geneforge 1 by scrambling the names of 18 major characters from the Geneforge series.
...and one Spiderweb member, just to keep things interesting.
Have at it! Can you untangle all 18 Geneforge characters?
DOLANNERAYAVTRGYNZDO
GTYAMAMERNAIWKARAHIL
ILNHAIAAOLERTLCEZTAR
AHHNRLTAARHHSBANTWPD
ERKAORLIOAAZGITYHERI
SADNRNTHEKKRCMNJTIAR
TSGAGLAE
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Yup, you're welcome to ask here.
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Because it's a game from 2001 interacting with an OS from nearly two decades later. It had no way of anticipating what that OS would do in response to things that were normal in 2001.
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It's probably permission to write to where save game files are stored.
Geneforge doesn't actually ask you that itself, by the way -- the box you see is either from Windows Defender or your antivirus software, which jumps in to double check when an app requires write permission to a sensitive area. Geneforge 1 is old enough that it may still have been dropping saved games in the system folder somewhere, rather than in a user folder, which could be why you don't see this with the others. (Nethergate is older still, and still used individual save files rather than save slots.)
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Hmm. Do you have the same issue in other browsers? If so, do you want to post a quick screenshot?
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Try clearing your cache. I believe some of the icon loading logic shifted slightly in an IPB update, fixing a few uncommon problems that had existed with them before.
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aetuzcu, I notice you said you killed "the" Altered Giant. Normally, the following sequence of events takes place:
1) Kill first Altered Giant
2) Enter grassy area, which is empty
3) Spring trap - gate closes (with you INSIDE), six Altered Giants appear
4) Turn wheel (in hidden passage on north wall) to reopen gate
5) Push button just north of gate to open the next passage
Is there ANY possibility that you entered the grassy area in combat mode? Perhaps even while fighting the first Altered Giant.
I ask because in your screenshot, there is a giant visible in the grassy area -- but there will not be a giant there until the trap has been sprung.
If you wandered into the grassy area in combat mode, then left before ending combat, that could have caused this. It's possible that the trap will only trigger at the end of a round of combat, or maybe even when combat is over (probably to avoid having party members end up on different sides of the gate).
Alternately, if you triggered the trap, thought you were stuck, and used a cheat like "exitzone" or "backtostart" to get out, that could also create this predicament.
Or, if you visited the Final Gauntlet earlier in the game, but then used "backtostart" instead of reloading from your save at Sulfras's cave, that could also explain things.
https://homepages.uni-regensburg.de/~mim09509/Avernum/AvernumEscPit/Towns/FinalGauntlet.html
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Pity about Evasion. Anatomy was a lot more interesting -- with the GF1 Guardian being able to do tons of damage, but also being more vulnerable due to having to be in melee range (and enemies also having stronger melee attacks).
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On that note, this topic is locked. @qwerttz, welcome to the forums! I know it is not screamingly obvious when a thread is super ancient, but the date is always listed -- please try not to comment on really old posts unless you have relevant information to add. Thanks! Ok, mod hat off.
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"The first version of Rosetta, introduced in 2006 as a component of Mac OS X Tiger, allows PowerPC applications to run on Intel-based Macs. The second version, introduced in 2020 as a component of macOS Big Sur, is part of the Mac transition from Intel processors to Apple silicon."
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16 hours ago, Alfaerin said:
Now that is a huge fallacy right there, not to mention you're comparing apples and oranges. While you, a lowly Hand, can't question orders, you report directly to a Heart of Avadon whose job description is to speak frankly to Redbeard. The game may not give you the option, but hypothetically you could raise any concerns you have with Miranda/Protus or Callan. Jenell also indicates that she argues with her superiors all the time, and has never gotten into trouble for it. And there are times when Redbeard asks the PC for their input on something. Realistically, if your PC wanted to reform Avadon, you could work your way up to become a Heart of Avadon and use that position to effect change. Miranda in A1 talks about how Redbeard makes the big decisions, but she makes lots of little decisions and that gives her quite a lot of power. Acting as if assassinating Redbeard is the only reasonable option if you oppose his policies is simply not true.
We could argue how much room there truly is for a "lowly Hand" to question Redbeard's choices, but I'll grant that the player, at least, can do that to his face a few times without anything bad happening to you.
But that "lowly Hand" is expected to be treated with absolute obedience by those outside Avadon. Those outside Avadon clearly fear retribution being visited upon them if they too openly express disapproval of Avadon's actions.
No matter how "lowly" you may feel within Avadon as a Hand, the PC is not Everyman within the Pact. This is emphasized so heavily in the games. The PC's power situation, including their ability to speak and express opinions freely, has no bearing on the power situation of the vast majority of Pact citizens -- certainly including the malcontents. And, um...
16 hours ago, Alfaerin said:Realistically, if your PC wanted to reform Avadon, you could work your way up to become a Heart of Avadon
I mean, I'm not sure that option is "realistic" for every Hand -- there are after all only three Hearts, and many Hands. But it's certainly zero percent realistic for Pact citizens who are not an appendage of Avadon.
You're going to hate me for saying that this immediately invoked, for me, "the solution to poverty is to work your way up from nothing" -- but the system dynamics are exactly the same. If the grossly unfair situation that puts you at a great disadvantage isn't being addressed, you should simply work your way up to the top of the system from that point of great disadvantage.
"Realistically."
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15 hours ago, googoogjoob said:
Personally, I don't think I'd argue that Redbeard is primarily to blame for the Farlands' issues regarding the Pact. I think most of the issues are intrinsic to the hegemonic, exclusive nature of the Pact. I do also think, though, that Redbeard is sort of a keystone in the Pact's structure, and that he is personally/morally complicit in its injustices. He's the sternest public face of the Pact, even if its workings are mostly impersonal and systematic.
This.
But even moreso:
15 hours ago, googoogjoob said:It's not possible to deal in good faith when one party holds hegemonic power over the other.
This.
I think the "options" being imputed to the Farlands (as well as discontents with the Pact) in this thread are incredibly unrealistic in light of the power dynamics at play.
As for this:
16 hours ago, Alfaerin said:It's absolutely not fair to try to superimpose real life politics on a fictional medieval fantasy setting. The situations are completely different, and nothing I've said here has any bearing on my political beliefs.
The worlds are different, the circumstances are different, even some of the laws of nature are different. No question. There's no 1:1 relationship of anything here, and you're quite right that you can't just blindly superimpose one on the other. But system dynamics are system dynamics; power and ethics are about applications of principles, and those principles are abstract -- they apply across different instances, real or imagined, and can certainly apply across different worlds.
I drew analogies above because I was struck by some similarities in the power dynamics, in particular. There may well be circumstantial differences extreme enough to lead you, or anyone, to draw different ethical conclusions about those situations -- I even noted some while making the comparisons. If you want to say "Despite the similarity in power dynamic, I evaluate these completely differently because X" I'd be genuinely interested. Or "I think you're off your rocker about the power dynamics being similar, because Y." Those would be great conversations. But "fantasy can't ever be applicable to politics" is just baloney.
(It's also, FWIW, just historically untrue of modern fictional medieval fantasy settings. Tolkien famously objected to allegorical reads of his works, while stating that they are applicable to the politics of his time; he invoked structural sociopolitical problems that culminate when "some Orc gets hold of a ring of power". Other authors have been more explicit.)
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I'm probably not being fair, but in the context of current U.S. politics, this is pretty much how I read some of these points:
8 hours ago, Alfaerin said:Your PC helping Farlanders makes very little sense
Do the Farlands have legitimate grievances with the Pact? Absolutely. They pay heavy tribute and don't even have the right to self-defense against Pact citizens. Are their actions in the game justified? Nope. Dheless in A2 claims that all he wanted was to remove the Pact's boot from their throats, but this is BS. If all he wanted to accomplish was deterring Pact/Avadon aggression, the Farlands could have made their own pact for that. But what did they do? They engaged in repeated, deliberate acts of war against the Midlands Pact. Sending armed spies and saboteurs into Pact lands was an act of war. Assassinating Monitor Shigaz was an act of war. Attacking Avadon was an act of war. They don't want freedom; they want to crush the Midlands under their heels like in olden days. Your PC has been fighting for the Pact all this time, so why would they decide to suddenly switch sides? From a moral standpoint, a role-play standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense to ally with the people invading your homelands."Do the protesters have legitimate grievances with the government? Absolutely. Are their actions justified? Nope."
I realize that the Farlanders do things far more serious than just protesting, but the above paragraph contains lots of elaboration on what the Farlanders do, and zero elaboration on what the grievances are that lead to them taking these actions. You're trying to say their actions aren't justified, that they're disproportionate, but without any consideration of what the proper proportion actually would be.
If complaining about their grievances doesn't lead to change, their options are either to say "oh well" or to escalate things. Since you agree the grievances are legitimate, what do you think they should do, given that their complaints are shut down in a second when they are even heard at all?
8 hours ago, Alfaerin said:There's no real alternative
We're justified in assassinating Redbeard for failing to check his crystal ball, but it's totes okay that Hanvar's Council is so plagued by infighting and indecisiveness that they completely ignore multiple clear and blatant acts of war from Tawon for years, up to and including the attack on Fort Foresight. Everything will definitely be totally fine if we trust these guys to run the show instead.
"All we've done for the last 20 years is elect men, mostly old men, who reject policy changes that a majority of the population supports. There's no alternative!"
This is a ridiculous fallacy. The game only depicts one political situation and one government structure, therefore it's the only thing that could exist? There's no possible way to set up a council that works better than Hanvar's? There's no possible way for a Keeper (Redbeard included, but presumably someone replacing him, since he is unwilling) to address any of the grievances at all without the Pact falling apart, just because Redbeard thinks there isn't and therefore hasn't tried?
You might think the alternatives won't work, but that's basically pure speculation, and the alternatives certainly exist. And they certainly aren't any worse for the people who die, or whose loved ones die, under Redbeard's regime.
8 hours ago, Alfaerin said:If you are loyal to the Pact, the timing (in A1 and A2 at least) makes it a bad idea
Even if you have quibbles with how Redbeard runs things, why the heckin' heck would you decide to kill Redbeard when Avadon is being overrun by foreign invaders?
"We were just attacked, if you are loyal to the U.S. you can't question anything the President is doing"
Again, I realize that "question" and "kill" are very different, but Redbeard basically makes "questioning" unavailable as an option, by being so unresponsive, and suppressing dissent to the degree that he does.
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17 minutes ago, theloathable said:
- What amount of time passed between A:EFTP and A2:CS?
Approximately six years, based on the handful of chronological references in the games.
It was very disappointing to see Kyass gone. His entire settlement was not in Exile:EFTP or Avernum 1, it was new content in A:EFTP. A2:CS doesn't really have that kind of new content, unfortunately.
I can't quite tell if you're asking for build advice or not. If you are, I wrote a fairly compact primer here, and you can find more info in A2:CS Strategy Central.
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Oooh. That is significant.
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Edgwyn continues to say a lot of things that were, indeed, conventional wisdom on politics in the U.S. at one point -- but no longer apply, and haven't for a great many years.
2 hours ago, Edgwyn said:I do not think that Senator Sanders could have won, or even been close, in 2016 or 2020. I believe that if Secretary Clinton had run a similar campaign to the one that Governor Clinton ran she would have been the second President Clinton.
The 1992 U.S. and the 2016 U.S. were extremely different countries, and HRC is a very different politician from WJC. I think what you're suggesting here is broadly impossible .
As far as the Bernie-Trump matchup, lots of people love to speculate on that point, and there's no shortage of opinions. People have done polls on such a theoretical matchup, and while that's obviously nowhere close to the same thing as a whole long campaign season, I still find those more substantive than random opinions.
2 hours ago, Edgwyn said:Dem Nominee -- Competent, failed to learn lessons from her husband's victories (running from the center), shot herself in the foot at the end by calling half the county deplorables and then not even trying to walk it back
There were a profusion of factors that led to this loss. 100% agreed on the second point being one of them, but 0% agreed on the first. The difference between her performance and Biden's isn't that she failed to turn out independents, it's that she failed to turn out the base. You don't turn out the base by moving towards the center.
2 hours ago, Edgwyn said:Dem Runner up -- Guy... who still would have had an embarrassing loss against an opponent who was helping drive high democrat participation
Still waiting for the evidence or argumentation behind this continued assertion.
2 hours ago, Edgwyn said:Significant voting blocks (like the Unions who are traditionally pro democratic) have better health care then medicare for all. Public Option polls better with most voters then Medicare For All, and the Biden campaign spent some effort to reassure the unions that Medicare for All was not Biden's goal.
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7 hours ago, Edgwyn said:
Some of the cultural differences are the value that American culture has traditionally placed on economic freedom.
Just to be clear, this is not a universal American value -- it's a hotly contested one, as it has been throughout the country's history. (It was, for example, one of the arguments made in defense of slavery.) Definitely true that it has a stronger following here than in most places.
7 hours ago, Edgwyn said:...socialist paradises. Prettying the wording up by calling it democratic socialism does not give them a warm fuzzy since most of the places that they choose to leave, usually with great discomfort and sometimes with great risk, called themselves socialist democracies or socialist republics.
If you're actually prettying up the wording, then absolutely. But "social democrat" is widely used across Europe (and beyond) for political parties that have little to nothing in common with the repressive authoritarian states you're referring to. "Democratic socialism" in that context isn't a misuse of the words, and it's not prettying up anything, it's another use entirely -- and frankly a more accurate use, and a more globally consistent one.
Let's be very direct here: while you're talking about a real effect, and there are some immigrants with that association to "socialism", the far more widespread bad association in the U.S. is one largely restricted to older Americans, and it's the direct result of McCarthyism and the era of repressive government actions associated with it.
I'd also note that exactly the same argument can be made about "democratic" given the un-democratic countries that insert that into their name.
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it doesn't make sense to a lot of people here either.
but the short answer is that it has more to do with culture and with power dynamics than it does with policy. (us/them power dynamics on the right, and organizational power dynamics on the 'left', both reinforced by the 2 party system and single pass voting (which also reinforce each other))
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Hi ka1yhi,
Can you please copy and paste the exact email address you sent your requests to?
It sounds like your emails may not be making it to Spiderweb. This will help us find that out.
Thanks.
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Okay, I guess this can have one last update.
Lucca
Elizabeth Warren
Simone de Beauvoir
Robo
Princess Leia
Buffy SummersZhuge Liang
Henry Agard Wallace
Bernie SandersMicah
Uncle Iroh
Jean-Luc PicardZeniba
Lady Gaga
Erika Redmark
Zuko
Mary Poppins
Socrates
Sylak
Eowyn
Captain America
Aragorn
Katara
FrogFDR
Plato
Graham Nelson
Empress Prazac
Abigail Adams
Honor Harrington
Lisa SimpsonKierkegaard
Thanos (comics)
R2-D2Ereshkigal
Aristotle
MagusJiji
Diogenes the CynicThe Kangxi Emperor
LBJ
AangKiki
Lord Havelock VetinariYubaba
King Arthur
Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
Peter Gabriel
Orson Welles
Mary ShelleyEisenhower
EpicurusJFK
Kathryn JanewayKamala Harris
Puddleglum
Professor Oak
Sherlock Holmes
Ayla
Cleopatra JonesHarry S. Truman
Redbeard
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Julius Caesar
Blaise Pascal
Olga of Kiev
Boudica
Cicero
The Doctor
Toph
Julius Martov
Lord British
Queen Elizabeth IInanna
MelanchionMao Zedong
Faramir
Dumbledore
Starrus
Gladwell
Manfred Redmark
Bob the Builder
Billie Holiday
Ken Burns
Eeyore
MarleLe Petit Prince
Multivac
Sokka
Pat PaulsenJoe Biden
Seth MacFarlane
Khan Noonien Singh
Werdna
Mal Reynolds
Queen Elizabeth II
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Aslan
Sir Topham Hatt
James T. KirkPete Buttigieg
Denethor
Amy Klobuchar
Tucker Carlson
Henri III
Ayn Rand
Cleopatra (real)
Daddy Warbucks
Pat Sajak
Cardinal RichelieuOzzy Osbourne
Sulla
Lavos
Pilgor the Goat
Curious George
Kikuchiyo
Miss Piggy
Lyndon LaRoucheCaptain Ahab
Tiamat
Lady Macbeth
Benjamin Sisko
Darth Vader
Evil Abed
Crassus
Pompey
SpiderDonald Duck
Rand al'Thor
Caligula
Yosemite Sam
George Jetson
One of the 7 dwarves (Disney)
Guybrush Threepwood
Boris Johnson
Julie d'Aubigny
Zapp BranniganDonald Trump
Pol Pot
Grima, Wormtongue
Yogi Bear
Shaper Rawal
Kylo Ren
Harcourt Fenton Mudd
George WickhamMike Pence
Ivan the Terrible
Genghis Khan
Morgoth
The White Witch
Hawthorne
Hitler
Emperor Palpatine
Dorikas
Elizabeth Báthory
Kefka
Smaug
The Allied Mastercomputer -
3 minutes ago, TriRodent said:
Much like sausage, you generally don't want to see what goes into making it, but the end result is usually ok.
If you're comparing U.S. politics to a hot dog, the analogy makes a lot of sense. And no, the end result composition of a hot dog is not ok.
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The reality is that much of fantasy combat is unrealistic. Maybe it's unrealistic to dodge a fireball or an explosive ordinance -- but not any more unrealistic than it is to take five direct slashes from a bladed weapon, each causing physical injury, and at the end be (1) alive, (2) with no systemic impact on your fighting ability or any other ability, (3) with no chance of lost or incapacitated limbs or other injuries.
It may be legit unrealistic according to the combat paradigm you have gotten used to. I say this with all empathy; I experience it too sometimes. But that is still a paradigm far removed from reality. So "unrealistic," like "flaw," is a bit of a grand proclamation, IMHO.
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Exile is really where CS shines the most. But it has uses in this series too. I don't think we've seen a good list for A3RW, but this list for A2CS might give you a place to start:
http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/21086-capture-soul-mechanics/?tab=comments#comment-277890

Geneforge 5 Joining the Bandits?
in Geneforge Series
Posted
There are 5 joinable factions in G5. Bandits are not one of them.