Niemand

The hydrogen. Basically you store energy (from electricity) by separating the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then, you recombine the hydrogen and oxygen to form water and get back the energy in the form of kinetic energy of the resulting molecules, which you direct out the back of your spacecraft. Conversing momentum requires that your spacecraft acquire some of the energy as kinetic energy as well (this is picked up by the act of directing the exhaust), and off you go. You could, as Alorael pointed out, just throw the water out the back for the same net effect, but doing so would require very different mechanisms, like a catapult, and a separate means of storing the energy to do the throwing. Combustion engines for rockets are sort of elegant in that they handle storage and release of energy right along with the reaction mass.

To elaborate on Duck's point: you could do some simple checks to see if the player is not using the prefab party, and if so suggest that they switch, but allow them to continue if they so choose. As long as you don't go making severe assumptions like that the party will have no priest spells or will all be archers, this should work fairly well.

You don't necessarily need specific equipment, you just need to Lorentz boost yourself, relative to your computer screen. You could try running past it really fast.

The standard approach here is not to try to restrict the player overly much. Just specify a level range, balance the scenario for parties of that strength and leave it at that. If somebody wants to enter with an over-level party, he or she knows that doing so will spoil the challenge of the game. I don't see any reason that you or any player would have to be unhappy about this. Keep in mind that most scenarios are well enough balanced that you don't have to worry about a level 10 party wandering around with spells and artifacts that will level whole cities. (Note also that the scenarios which are poorly balanced tend to draw criticism from designers, since they make all of our lives more annoying.) There have been well known (and, in my opinion, bafflingly well received) scenarios which basically overwrite the player's party. As long as you take care to warn the player about what you're going to do and give them the option to abort the process, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. I have to say that, personally, as a player, I hate this technique, but many others don't seem to care.

Ah, okay. In that case, Azuma, why didn't you just either give your character the necessary point (or however much) of Mage Spells or modify the Flight spell to require no Mage Spells?

I'm baffled by your supposed problems. Maybe the current version of the scenario differs slightly from the beta copy that I still have, but there's no 'Flight' spell I'm aware of, the scenario gives you the Orb of Flight when appropriate, and the Orb of Flight requires only that you must not be flying in order to activate.

@Lord Safey: So they haven't taught you about the rocket equation and gravitational binding energy? Just getting off the earth is a doable but annoying job. Once you've done that you have to deal with pesky orbital mechanics. Then, after you've dealt with all of that you get to, as Nioca rightly points out, wait a really long time. Space travel is certainly possible; it just isn't anything like economical for most purposes.

Quote: . . . without having to plagiarize BoR. I have to say that I would be totally happy to see the techniques used in BoR embedded in another scenario if they suited its purposes. (I can't claim to have invented some of the key ones anyway.) There's certainly a lot more that could be done in that direction, such as different versions of the random level generator tuned to use different terrain and creature sets. On the other hand, there were a lot of restrictions that the dynamic generation placed on what the levels could actually contain, so by manually creating all of the levels you gain a lot of freedom to make them more interesting and detailed. You'll be able to have exciting things like height differences, which were an example of something I thought about putting into BoR, but simply couldn't guarantee working correctly and so had to omit. (The secret doors were bad enough; they were ridiculously hard to get right.)

Originally Posted By: Spddin In my opinions, Genetics can take us farther that engineering as a whole. It's good for different things. Growing food, fighting disease and so on can be accomplished well through biology and genetics, since they have to do with things that are already alive. I wouldn't want a biologically based computer; temperatures that my existing computer survives easily (although it may not operate while doing so) would kill it unless a lot of extra work was done. Failing to power/feed it could result in it dying rather than merely sitting, turned off. I'd have to worry about my computer being attacked by living organisms, that is, getting physically infected or decomposing! It's handy to have tools built out of materials that few or no organisms on our planet can metabolize. That's not to say that I don't think there will be technological innovations derived from biology that will be useful for inclusion in tools and processes created by the branches of engineering of non-living materials. It's a matter of determining what techniques can best solve a problem. Biological processes are often slow and probabilistic, which means that they offer the features of low power use, adaptability, and self assembly, whereas inorganic technologies offer high speed, high precision, and rapid modular assembly. A roomba might benefit from being a pseudo living construction so that it could do things like run for long periods of time, change to suit its non-hostile but potentially varied environment, and heal minor damage. A battle tank, on the other hand, is willing to sacrifice power consumption and ease of construction for being able to drive at highways speeds, hurl shells thousands of meters, and survive direct impacts at huge energies. The tank needs heavy metal and ceramic armor that would be difficult to create biologically, while the vacuum cleaner could prefer a somewhat flexible exterior created from proteins or other carbon compounds. Note that there are organically produced materials with characteristics like very high strength or hardness, like spider silk and nacre. many scientists are working to understand what gives these materials their useful properties, and you can be sure that when they figure it out they'll start applying those ideas to other materials either by replacing them with manufactured equivalents of the natural materials, or applying the discovered principles to create new materials which surpass both previous human made and biologically created materials. Basically, all areas of science and engineering tend to build on one another. Modern genetics wouldn't be possible without many tools created using ideas from electrical engineering, computer engineering, and so on. Hopefully we'll see increasing instances of genetic and biological engineering creating new tools and ideas which can open up new possibilities in other fields.

A shadow might help to show that the creature is up off of the ground, but I would recommend against motion lines. There's nothing wrong with adding them, but doing so wouldn't really fit the usual style, and they might end up looking funny when they got highlighted along with the rest of the graphic when the monster is attacking. Of course, it's Grimm who wants the graphic, so it's his opinion along with yours as the artist which matter.

In Exodus, that particular feature works out to be more of a feature than a bug, to my mind. But, yes, in general it's a pain, since if characters keep gaining levels of the spell they will continue to get seemingly random creatures. I'm not sure what happens when the spell level reaches 83 (not that it ever should under sensible circumstances), but I bet the game crashes. EDIT: Amazingly enough, the game does not crash; rather than running off of the end of the creature list, it wraps around and starts over at the beginning. It's a totally safe and neatly bounded buffer overflow!

That looks to me like a pretty excellent manticore graphic.

It was for the photo-electric effect, which from a vantage point 90 years later seems interesting but nowhere near as spectacular as much of his other work.

@Diki: He's moved on to fancier techniques, remember? He's making me write the posts wrong in the first place. @Master1: Accidental inclusion of extra definite articles would be a curious colloquialism[^1], but no, it merely stems from my inability to type. I grew up in Missouri (and I came from one of the civilized portions, where people do know to use an 'e' sound at the end of the state's name, even though they insist on absolutely butchering german and french place/street names); I've only been in Wisconsin for fifteen and a half months. [^1]: It would be like anti-russian style english.[^2] [^2]: I really like writing footnotes. I've discovered that I can't restrain myself here, so even though these posts aren't Markdown, I'm starting to write PHP Markdown Extra style footnotes. I think I like footnotes even better than parenthetical statements; they allow me to ramble on for much longer.

No, it's a piece of network hardware .There's almost certainly one between your computer and the internet in general, although it might not be your property. Corrected sentence, version 3: As I understand it, the process involves asking your router to specifically forward a certain category of packets (those destined for the appropriate port) to your computer specifically, so that it's easy for other peers to send data directly to you.

Corrected version of my last sentence (not sure how it got chopped off): As I understand it, the process involves asking the your router you specifically forward a certain category of packets (those destined for the appropriate port) to your computer specifically, so that it's easy for other peers to send data directly to you.

Proving Grounds is entirely static; all terrains and monsters are pre-placed. The choices in doing so are just so bizarre that it doesn't particularly look planned.

Originally Posted By: Arancaytar Almost everyone I know in real life actively uses a social network. You mean "uses social network software", right? Because I don't know very many hermits either. (Quick someone find a way to poke fun at the only remaining sentence of Aran's post!)

Quote: Will switching to that forward port speed up all of my internet functions? No, it will affect only communications via that particular port, which will be a different one than those used for other purposes. Quote: Also does anyone know how to switch ports on a mac? I can't find it. I've looked in system preferences, and I'm looking in Network Utility right now. Should I search my router for open ports? To the last bit: no. To the first bit: as I understand it this is usually handled by the client program; at least it was by the only one I've used, and I really don't know much about the details. As I understand it, the process involves asking the your router you specifically forward a certain category of packets (those destined for he appropriate port.

From what Aran says, it appears that you just need to check your computer's assigned IP address. Look in the Network Preferences pane or the Network section of the System Profiler. EDIT: And then check, as Aran described, how your computer's address appears from outside.

Quote: What is the actual cost of a domain name? How or where should I acquire one? Prices tend to be about $10 per year. Most service providers will offer to handle the registration details for you along with providing your storage space and bandwidth. I handle it this way through my service provider (Dreamhost[^1]). Webs is offering this service as well (for example) as a part of their 'Enhanced' and 'Pro' packages. One important rule for locating and choosing domain names: don't use websites' 'test to see if a domain is available' boxes while thinking about possibilities. A few such tools are operated by shady people who will keep track of names you check and nab them so that if you decide you want them, you have to go through them. The best way to do simple testing is the obvious one of typing a URL into your web-browser and seeing if it resolves to anything. The chances that you get a false negative are pretty low and nobody can practically keep tabs on what you look for[^2]. [^1]: I would recommend that from what you describe yourself as wanting, you want something more like Webs than Dreamhost. I use Dreamhost because I prefer to compose my pages by just typing out the HTML and I want to be able mess around with custom software, but I don't think you want that sort of capability. [^2]: I imagine that whoever operates your DNS server could do so in theory, but it likely is not very practical, and whoever's handling your DNS must be fairly trustworthy or you would have much bigger problems.

Originally Posted By: TM For every closed-and-unlocked door, have a "replacement" terrain that permits movement but cannot be seen through. Switch the closed-and-unlocked doors with their walkthrough replacements before pathfinding is computed. You might be able to improve upon this: do the switching during path-finding, so that you only switch doors which the creature is considering trying to walk through. Actually switching the terrain temporarily is a good idea, I think, as it will mean that the blockage array will then unambiguously describe whether there's anything else in the way on that space. Originally Posted By: TM Swap them back after the "am I doing anything?" call (town). I don't know the best place for swapping back after combat mode actions, and it may be inelegant/slow." If this optimization were used, I think that the problem of when to replace the original terrain would disappear: just switch the terrain back to closed-unlocked door directly after testing whether the space can otherwise be walked through. Then, later on, if the somehow chosen path calls for passing through a closed, unlocked door, it would be straight-forward to handle the necessary AP reduction and permanent terrain swapping. Originally Posted By: TM "Whenever the monster is one space away from a door, have the monster open it. (Deduct 1AP in combat.) You can enter in some checks to prevent monsters from opening three doors at once (for instance, before opening a door, check for an open door one space away, and then check if there's a perpendicular wall beyond the two doors)." I'm not sure what this part is getting at; I don't see any special reason that the AI should open doors merely because they are nearby.

I assume that this advice comes from TM? Similar to other approaches, this rapidly becomes prohibitive if one attempts to apply it generally. It might, however, be a good way to go if one wanted to use a clever AI in a controlled situation. Regrettably, the main application for this that I was considering, an entirely scripted pathfinding mechanism, looks like it may be prohibitive as well, due to the stringent constraints on number of operations performed, amount of memory used, and the impracticality of creating data structures more complex than an array or stack. I'm still working on thinking about the problem, though.

I also think it was Ephesos. I'm pretty sure I remember him writing it. And then uploading it to my website and not his own. I'm still not sure how he did that.

Have you noticed what she does to your statuses? It doesn't work on beneficial ones alone. . . EDIT: Curses. Took one minute to fact-check and I'm too late.