Kelandon

Lincoln's election and the ensuing Civil War were both more or less about slavery. There's a lot bound up in that "more or less," but by and large, the statement stands. But I still have a problem with saying that the ideology of today's Republican Party is the same as 1861's Republican Party. There may be comparisons that can be made, but the party has radically changed over time, and so has the Democratic Party. The demographic changes are obvious (they've basically flip-flopped North and South, among other things), and the ideological changes only somewhat less so since the issues are different enough today. A statement like, "The Republicans who nominated Abe Lincoln were rugged individualists who thought everyone should have an unfettered right to benefit from their own labor," isn't really fair, though. Some sort of Marxist pro-labor sentiment didn't really underlie Republicanism, and while Lincoln himself was a country boy (a "rugged individualist"), the urban North went Republican more or less as soon as they could. The classical economic liberals of the late 19th century were Democrats ("Bourbon Democrats," for example), and these were the ones who promoted "individual liberty" in an economic sense (and of course, today the Republicans are the ones who do this). The usual periodization puts Lincoln's time as the Third Party System, which ended around the close of the 19th century.

Well, the Republican party is not completely uniform. On one extreme, there's Sarah Palin, who speaks entirely in cliches, catchphrases, and abstractions (what you might call value-based rhetoric) and lacks any factual basis for her statements or specific plans for accomplishing, well, anything. (I'm over-generalizing a little here, but frankly not much.) On the other extreme, there's Rand Paul, who very much believes what he says and has plans to accomplish things, most of which are bad but would in fact have the effect of reducing the deficit, etc. (You might call this fact-based rhetoric.) For example, Rand Paul is one of the only Republicans who's talked seriously about tackling the entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) and military spending that are the overwhelming majority of government spending and must be dealt with in order to bring long-term fiscal solvency to the federal government's budget. I'm not sure that Sarah Palin even knows what a deficit is and how it differs from a debt, or what percentage of the budget is spent on Social Security vs. Medicare vs. defense vs. discretionary stuff. I can understand the appeal of the Rand Paul side of the GOP, but I frankly have never understood the appeal of the Tea Party crowd. I mean, except that they promise the impossible: we'll not touch entitlements, not reduce military spending, and not raise taxes, but we'll also balance the budget! This is mathematically impossible. Well, that's not entirely true. You could just about do it if you otherwise eliminated the entire federal government. Not only would you not send any money to the states (in the form of grants) for education, roads, etc., but you also would not have any government organizations whatsoever. No federal judges. No CIA or FBI. No Congress. No president. No nothing. I don't think we would even have diplomats in other countries if we cut absolutely everything but entitlements and the military. But I don't think that any Tea Partier is seriously considering this. But the appeal of the impossible is pretty strong, especially if a bunch of authority figures (candidates for national office, a "news" anchor) say that it is possible over and over again. Have your cake and eat it too! Wouldn't it be nice? I guess that's how that crowd has come to prominence. I also think that the American public has a generally poor understanding of most of the issues. (Understandably, I might add; the issues are pretty complicated, and people are busy. They elect representatives so that they don't have to research every last bill themselves.) But honestly, I'm not entirely sure what's been driving the long, gradual transformation of the Republican party from a legitimate organization (from its founding to the 1970's) to the monstrosity that it is today. I mean, obviously Reagan was the original catalyst, but most of that was before I was born. How did he do it? And how did the party of Lincoln become the party of Reagan, the two Bushes, and now Palin and the like? I had an Astro professor who said that rather than saying, "I don't know," to anything, he'd just say, "That's an active area of research," because the two were essentially the same. I'm pretty sure explanation for the transformation of the Republican party since the 1980's is an active area of research.

I've been playing on "Hard," and in most hard combats, my meat shield is the only one left alive at the end. I'm starting to think that I need to make everyone else a meat shield, too, because having my glass cannon die before he can even use all his abilities for the first time is getting pretty annoying. Cleave is killing me.

I'm playing through (very slowly) with two fighters right now who are quite different from each other. I basically have a meat shield and a glass cannon. One only trains Endurance, and the other only trains Strength. The meat shield has trained all the damage reduction/parry skills to max, and the glass cannon has all the direct damage skills going to max. They play totally differently; I basically have to throw the meat shield forward and get everyone to target him, and then have the glass cannon come in and throw abilities to kill everything. So customization is pretty minimal at the beginning, but it gets more significant as you go along. I'm now starting to wonder if I should give a character significant bow/razordisk abilities, because I seem to die in range-based combats, and this is yet a third direction of customization.

Originally Posted By: Nikki. Originally Posted By: Darkus Man, you guys have no idea what I would've done to have a Spidweb experience on my iPhone. yeah, the newsletter says that Avernum 1 will be coming to the iphone. wont be getting it for mine You know, I might get it for mine. I liked Monkey Island on my phone. Good for long airplane rides.

Originally Posted By: Niemand Separate discussion of why I hate floating palettes: As the section title says I very much dislike this technique in UI design. Basically it strikes me as a lazy way out for the designer, who doesn't have to bother figuring out how to fit both the data/document and the tools/options on the screen at the same time, and instead pushes the problem off onto me, the user. You could have a default (fixed) spot for them that could be broken off at the user's discretion. I've seen a lot of programs that have resizable, movable, whatever whatever options for their windows and then just have a reset button to put everything back to a default position that is sensible for most purposes, and I kind of like this. I can customize what I want, but if I screw something up or it gets weird, I can put it back quickly and easily into a sensible position. I don't really care if the palettes float or not. I just don't want to have to cycle through things to get from terrains back to floors and then over to creatures and then back to floors and then to terrains and then back to floors. I'd rather just click on one thing, place that, click on another thing, place that, and so on, instead of having to cycle.

Basically, I have always (since BoA was released) had three major dreams for the BoA Editor: * Palettes for floors, terrains, creatures, and items, which are movable and resizable windows (with resizable icons) that can all be open at once (though only one is active at a time, like any other palette), instead of the fixed-to-the-right-side-of-the-editor system clunky system that we have now * Resizable windows for town/outdoor editing, several of which can be open at once and which contain standard cut/copy/past features, with at least one preset: realistic size (what you actually see in-game) * An in-editor script editor: you place a special rectangle and it pulls up the state in the town script that the special rectangle calls, so that you can code it directly without having to switch to a different application, and you can do everything that you can do in AScript (color-coding, run Alint) in it As far as I can tell, we're talking about the first one, and, as far as I know, the reason that none of them have ever been done is that each one would require a complete rebuild of the editor.

I'd very much like to make the editor bigger (like, a lot bigger) on the screen, because my screen is far, far bigger than the editor was designed for, and finding stuff is annoying. So I'm in favor of this.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Metatron I know that there are many people around here who dabble in computer science, including the Jeff. I have been imposed with a directive by my professor: talk about Alan Turing while he is gone. well that might take a while, since alan turing isn't coming back any time soon That was how I first read the sentence, too. I didn't actually know how Turing died until SoT mentioned it and I looked it up. Man, the bad old days were bad. And they weren't that long ago.

I'm all in favor of changing things as needed, but it's loss of functionality that I find particularly noticeable, such as the loss of multiple entry points for regions, or the loss of keyboard movement (I'm still living in the first Avernum Trilogy, I guess). In any case, positive comments. The overall look-and-feel is consistently nice, as people have been saying. The graphics are indeed consistent throughout, and I like the general appearance. The land is complex — very complex — and it's taking me a while to sort it all out. I guess that's because I'm still in the early stages (I think), and once I get through more of it, it will become clearer. Redbeard is an interesting character, though rather inscrutable. He seems central to all of this, so it would be nice to be able to interact with him more — but I guess keeping him at a distance preserves his, uh, gravitas or something. I did the same thing with Legare in Bahssikava and Exodus (Legare only appeared in cutscenes). And the "You're going to get a chance to betray/kill Redbeard later in the game" is pretty heavy-handed from the very beginning. I guess what points you lose for subtlety, you gain back for clarity on that one. The idea of the skill system is neat. I feel as though it isn't being utilized to its full potential here, but I guess that's for Avadon 2. At any rate, the idea of pumping some of these skills all the way up to 7+ is rather mind-boggling (but awesome). In the meantime, it simplifies the tactical decisions. Speaking of simplified tactical decisions, combats play really, really differently from combats in other Spidweb games. I haven't been up to speed on some of the most recent ones, but combat here is slowed down like A1-A2 combat (which I like a lot), while working sort of strangely (my spellcasters don't cast many spells and have just about as much hp as my fighter). This is taking some getting used to; still, I'm playing on hard, and only one combat has given me significant pause as yet (and I'm through the first significant quest, involving the dragon). In general, the beginning seems engaging, fun, and different. Not sure where I rank it in Spidweb games overall. My mind is not blown, the way that it was for the beginning of A2, which was one of the greatest sections I've ever seen in any game I've ever played, but I'm not actively irritated by most of it, which was how I felt about A4. Maybe right around how I felt about GF1: it's new and strange and takes some getting used to, but I'm interested enough to take the time to get used to it.

Originally Posted By: Spidweb Don't get me wrong. It is programmable. It's just trickier and weirder. Huh. I'm surprised that it's complicated enough to be, in practice, prohibitive, but I suppose that makes sense. Oh well. I'm making do with the mouse, and it's okay. The general concerns about size are certainly ones that I share. I'm working on a 28" monitor that is set to 1920 x 1200 (so the monitor itself is big, and everything is incredibly gigantic on it, because 1920 x 1200 is more normally on a 24" monitor or even smaller). I'm used to sitting a good 5-6 feet back from the screen. I can't do that with Avadon. If I actually wanted to see what items were based on what they look like on the floor — which I could do easily in Avernum and to some extent in Geneforge — I have to get even closer than I'm sitting now. And the weirdness of the area map is, well, weird. You can only enter an area from one spot, right? This seems like a step down from prior games' ability to enter from four different sides. I have a few positive thoughts that I'll share later on, but these are just in agreement with some of the above.

Originally Posted By: Jeff on his blog The biggest complaint is that the game has no keyboard movement. Our other big series, Avernum, takes place on a fairly simple grid, so keyboard movement is easy to implement. Avadon takes place in a larger world with no simple grid for the characters to stand on, and keyboard movement just doesn't work as well as the mouse, especially for distances that aren't very short. But some people really want keyboard movement, and I can hardly tell them they are wrong. I just have to take the criticism and hope that the game is good enough. I'm not sure that I totally get this. There's a grid in Avadon, right? I can see it in combat. Keyboard movement would work absolutely fine if there were an option to keep the screen centered on the lead character, to make the other characters automatically follow the lead character (in some way or other — the manner hardly matters), and to repeat a held key (so holding down "east" makes you continue to walk east until you release the key). Is there something I'm missing, here?

Count another one here who would really like to be able to use the keyboard to move around. Is there some way to keep the screen centered on the character or at least have it move automatically in some way? I'm finding it really annoying to move the screen myself. Liking virtually everything substantive about it so far, but I'm not very far.

Originally Posted By: Niemand Just to note: It looks like there's a parenthesis missing in Kel's replacement code: "if (char_ok(i)" should be "if (char_ok(i))". Thanks. Fixed above, so that if anyone else encounters this, it'll be correct in the original post. I would be grateful if anyone could actually verify that this fix works, by the way. I'm not sure that this is actually the problem; I just think that it is.

Totally didn't notice this. I did figure out what the problem was. Have to run off right now but will come back later today and update. And by later today, I mean in a few minutes. If I remember correctly, the problem was the following code in t44Tower.txt: Code: i = 10; while (i < 120) { erase_char(i); i = i + 1; } This comes right after the following code, which is more easily identifiable: Code: message_dialog("Seizing hold of you and Pithoss, the Goddess unleashes a bolt of magical energy shooting straight up into the sky. Then, in familiar fashion, you lift off the ground and begin to travel through the air, returning again to camp.","You travel the entire distance in silent contemplation, not even looking down well enough to see more than blank cave floor."); set_flag(44,7,1); i = 21; while (i < 31) { j = 17; while (j < 21) { set_floor(i,j,255); set_terrain(i,j,0); j = j + 1; } i = i + 1; } Anyway, if you change the problem area to the following, it should work: Code: i = 10; while (i < 120) { if (char_ok(i)) erase_char(i); i = i + 1; } I don't think I have a convenient save file with which to verify that this works, but I think that the problem was that erasing characters that didn't exist to begin with was crashing Windows sometimes (it's the irregularity of it that's annoying).

Old-school Nethergate (click on special words — which are in a different color, as I recall — to ask about them) seemed like a good change that probably wouldn't be too hard to implement. Wonder if it would affect The Election or other such dialogue-based scenarios, though.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES The real web issue is when you meet enemies who throw webs nearly every turn, but who can't damage you. The game can easily get stuck in an infinite loop, then. This could be solved by having some sort of "end turn" thing if you're unable to move (I'm thinking of what Civilization does). Don't change actual game mechanics unless absolutely necessary; change interface first.

Nobody's Heroes does a little bit of, uh, crossover.

As I said in the other thread, this is pretty clearly how the game is supposed to work, so it shouldn't be changed.

Unless something is obviously a bug, I don't see why you would want to change it. Infinite bless stacking is not obviously a bug. In fact, it's rather obviously how the game is supposed to work. So why would you want to change it in the first place?

You'll soon find out — so I imagine that there's no problem telling you this now — that the registration process in Avadon is streamlined a little as compared to previous games, which led to a discussion about exactly what the rules should say about registration stuff. Hence the clarification.

Galactic Core was RW's last game? Clearly the fluffy turtles ate him whole for that one.

Originally Posted By: Tirien This was before my time on the forums, but... ALL HAIL RICHARD WHITE! *cough* Machrone *cough*

Originally Posted By: Sir Motrax of Exile I wonder what all of you people are doing now... I was in high school when I started this business. Now I'm toiling away in grad school. To the newbies - welcome! Don't spend too little time here. Sunlight is overrated. I think of you as having been around forever, but now I notice that you joined only a year before I did. Nine years doesn't seem that much less than eight, nowadays.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith You can find the majority of this stuff in the Order Form docs Ah, there it is, in the Manual. Thanks.