Kelandon

It sounds as though you'll want to hold out for the remakes of Avernum 2 and Avernum 3, which are coming soon-ish. You should also try Avernum 4-6 in the meantime, though they'll have some minor spoilers for Avernum 2 and 3 in them; A4-6 are about on the level of technical sophistication of the later GF games, but they're in the Avernum world, so you might find them more appealing simply on grounds of plot. I didn't like A4 much, but I thought that A5 was pretty good. You might dislike the linearity of A5 (it's a river journey, so you pretty much go straight down the river, with a little doubling back). A5 takes a while to get going, but when it does, it's really good. Haven't gotten to A6 yet, so I can't say about that.

Somehow, seeing Alorael is like seeing the fnords.

As result of the same phenomenon, I will have to listen to Coldplay's Viva la Vida on repeat if I ever go back to replay GF4, and perhaps this may have been part of the reason I liked Avadon so much (Within Temptation's The Unforgiving).

So... many... ponies....

How did a thread about how Alo's names link oddly with the next name on the list of top posters become "post your random thoughts about some member"? Ask, and in your heart, you will know how this all went wrong.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon Would that make you the Dragon, Kel? Uh, no. No, it would not. Unless... Originally Posted By: Tyranicus Perhaps Kel has three girlfriends who are all cool with that. There's something sort of funny about that particular number in this context. Originally Posted By: Actaeon Mostly, I'm just curious as to what part of the Karaethon Cycle he was thinking of posting. Myself, I thought Moridin's comment from A Memory of Light somewhat apt: “The last days are upon us. In these hours, you will earn your final rewards. If you have grudges, put them behind you. If you have plots, bring them to completion, for this... this is the end.” Ooh, that's a good one. I was thinking of the beginning of TGS, ending with: Quote: They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one we beg: "Let it begin!"

Let it burn! Let it burn! We await the coming of the Spiderpocalypse!

The system has the effect of creating gridlock and requiring (super-)majorities across both geography and time in order to get stuff done. The president, the House, and the Senate are elected on different cycles, so that at any given moment at least some people who were elected at different times have to vote for something in order for it to pass. Also, the Senate is essentially countermajoritarian by design, and not just because of the filibuster. Each state has equal representation, despite wildly different populations. The fact that you need 60 to do anything these days is just a further extension of the countermajoritarianism that underlies the chamber. The two chambers sometimes do have slightly different responsibilities, too (e.g. Senate confirms judicial nominees). I read an article that pointed out that the purpose of the opposition party in American politics can't simply be to oppose, because the system isn't set up that way. It's not a parliamentary system in which opposition is largely symbolic. It's a partly majoritarian, partly countermajoritarian system predicated on the ability of individuals to create gridlock when they really want to, so the party in the minority has a responsibility to do more than say no to everything the party in the majority wants.

There is virtually no evidence that any voter fraud of the sort that the the voter ID laws would prevent actually exists. It's a myth. It's not real. It doesn't happen. It is true, though, and widely confirmed, that a lot of people don't drive and don't do all those other things that require a government-issued photo ID. It's also widely confirmed that getting a government-issued photo ID is not quite as easy or as cheap as voter ID advocates claim it is. You need underlying documentation (a birth certificate, etc.) that people without government-issued photo ID often don't have either. And getting new copies of the underlying documentation does cost money. Usually not very much ($20, maybe?), but enough to be a cost, and it also takes enough time to make it harder to vote. Voter ID laws disenfranchise legitimate voters, and there's no evidence that they prevent any actual fraud. As to the "how can it be considered to be biased" question, the obvious answer is that there is, yet again, overwhelming evidence that the people who are disenfranchised by voter ID laws are disproportionately Democrats. Given that voter ID laws are plainly not aimed at what they say they're aimed at (stopping fraud that doesn't exist), they have to be aimed at what they actually do (stopping Democrats from voting). And Mike Turzai actually admitted that that's what the PA voter ID law was intended to do.

It seems to be that having two designers means having twice as much chance that a designer will give up on a scenario before it's finished.

I suppose this is a particularly offensive version of the "welfare queen" myth that has been rattling around for decades. I think it was particularly offensive because of the number of inappropriate linkages and assumptions that you have to make in order to come out saying what he ended up saying. First, you have to sneer at government assistance in general (including to, say, veterans). Second, you have to sneer at people who support government assistance for anyone (most notably liberals). Third, you have to make some sort of screwy connection that this is self-interest and not concern for your fellow man, because you sneer at concern for your fellow man. Fourth, you have to ignore all facts that show that this connection is false or irrelevant; government benefits are most highly concentrated in conservative states, not liberal ones. (The voters themselves may be liberal, but that's not giving Obama any electoral votes.) And on it goes. At the end of it, in order to say what he said with a straight face, you have to sneer at the very notion of caring whether your neighbors live or die, after those same neighbors have provided service to you, either by building the society that you've inherited (seniors) or by trying to keep you safe and secure (veterans) or in any of a number of other ways. In short, he's a jerk.

Loyal followers of my older work will know the answer to Triumph's question immediately, of course. (What do you mean, there aren't any? Sure there are! There's... uh....)

Okay, now I really need to release my supposed 24-hour BoA scenario that ended up taking way more than 24 hours.

I never did a complete analysis of this, but my impression was that you can in fact become unkillable (or possibly only killable 1 time out of 100 that you should die) in the Exile series, but there was some upper limit in the Avernum series such that even a Luck of 20 wouldn't get you anywhere near 99% save from death. It would be a high save from death, just not 99%.

Getting paid in free games is a pretty good way to get paid, though.

Originally Posted By: Upon Mars. Yeah I get a lot of that. Most people never herd about a little someone called Karl Popper. This was a lot funnier when I read this as John Popper.

If you still have this issue by Friday, send me the scenario and I'll take a quick look at it over the weekend. I'm curious about the joined NPC problem, personally.

When Phaedra died as a joined NPC in Bahs, she definitely had a message that was supposed to display. The DEAD_STATE for a joined NPC normally works. I know that doesn't shed any light on the current situation, though.

Anyone who's ever studied Greek or learned substantial physics will recognize the the special character that is my PDN, and everyone else should do at least one (if not both) of those two things. Thus, for the time being, my PDN stays.

Originally Posted By: Future Wonderbolt This news was also shocking to Jeff. That image is incredibly perfect for memes. So incredibly perfect.

And even though "Avernum" isn't actually Latin (as far as I know), it still looks like Latin, because the -um ending is a standard neuter singular ending (whereas -us is a standard masculine singular).

Markets and Market Failure Quantitative Analysis and Empirical Methods The Responsibilities of Public Action The Strategic Management of Public Organizations And an elective I haven't chosen yet. Should be fun.

This goodbye topic makes me kind of want to make a goodbye topic. I think that's some kind of compliment to Slarty.

Unhandled Exceptions happen from the game looking for something out of range. (For example, a missing graphic, or a function that takes values from 0 to 7 and you feed it an 8.) Unfortunately, that can happen for a LOT of reasons (as I have learned the hard way). When you say you "changed the terrain," do you mean that you changed the terrain types (i.e. in the custom objects script)? If so, you probably messed something up that affected the outdoors. Look for a graphics number that is wrong, or a data definition that is out of bounds somehow.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Um, no, you're wrong? Among OECD counties, the US Gini coefficient ranks towards the bottom of the list, sure, but it's only 0.003 higher than France, and it's lower than both Israel and Germany, both of which are usually thought of as countries with pretty good income distributions. You said that the U.S. "is better of [sic] than just about any other government on the planet." You have now admitted that it "ranks towards the bottom of the list" among a group of countries. That was my point. Originally Posted By: Dantius A US citizen who does not enlist in the military has pretty much a zero chance of being killed in a war, and even members of the military have pretty low odds, too. There's no chance whatsoever that the US will be invaded, ad the odds of US citizens dying in military action will remain astonishingly small far into the future, which is more than can be said for lots of people. Okay, but that's kind of really different from saying that the U.S. government is "peaceful," which is what you said before. Originally Posted By: Dantius I'm not able to bribe judges or police officers to get off criminal charges. I don't pay protection money to the state or else risk being attacked. I don't have to bribe regulatory officers or governmental officials to run a business. It's not expected that I fear so much for my personal safety that I hire mercenaries as bodyguards for myself or my property. Maybe not, but you can make campaign donations to prevent something from becoming illegal in the first place, even if it ought to be. That seems like corruption to me. Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: ξ Less criminal? I think not, unless you have a weird definition of it. Quick Googling yields that our intentional homicide rate is lower than in a fair number of countries, but it's many times typical rates in Europe. I rather suspect that most other crimes follow the same pattern. Ahem. Your statement was that the U.S. "is better of [sic] than just about any other government on the planet" in terms of crime, and you just linked to a graph that shows that the crime rate in the U.S. (while going down) is higher than the crime rate elsewhere in the world. Again, that proves my point. Originally Posted By: Dantius Oooor instead of using that definition, we could use the actual one, which according to Wikipedia is "Liberal democracy is a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of liberalism. It is characterized by fair, free, and competitive elections between multiple distinct political parties, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, and the protection of human rights and civil liberties for all persons.", which I'd say is a pretty fair descriptor of the US. I like how you pretend that there's one agreed-upon definition of democracy. That's cute. That definition may describe the U.S. to some degree, but you would still have to prove that it matches the U.S. better than it does most other countries in order for your point to stand, and that is not very amenable to quantitative analysis. I'm willing to dismiss this point as unverifiable (like the fairness one) rather than statistically wrong, though. Originally Posted By: Dantius II think you may be misinterpreting my points, though. I am not claiming "Here is a list of categories, the US is the best in the world in all of them." Your exact words were that the U.S. "is better of than just about any other government on the planet" in those categories. You appear now to have amended that statement to something more accurate, so I have no further beef with that post. The U.S. is a great place to live. We have vast economic resources, incredible opportunities (though not distributed as evenly as they should be), and lots of other great things. Our ideals, while not always lived up to, are worth striving for. But it's important to bear in mind what does actually make us great and where we lag behind. If we don't know where we're failing, we stand no chance of improving. And there are a bunch of places where we're failing.