Niemand

What does 'uninvented' mean in this context? Not yet invented (as in you need to make up something which doesn't currently exist), or so basic or longstanding that no particular person can claim to have invented it? If the former, it sounds like this could be a good opportunity to have fun. If what you're to be graded on is your speaking rather than the topic about which you speak, speak passionately about something ridiculous. Extoll the virtues of golf courses for pet cats, hiring someone to follow you around and make excuses when ever you need them, dishes made of lithium with a thin wax coating (all the heft of metal dishes, but drop them into hot water and they literally vanish!), or proxy astronauts, who will go in your place if you're ever drafted to be sent into space.

If you're seeing what I think you're seeing, I think you'll note that these people all registered a few years ago or more. This has to do with the fact that the old UBB stored only the date of registration without a time, while the new software also keeps a time. When the user data was imported into the new software it needed some value to put in for the unrecorded times, so it just used noon. If you are two timezones away from the server (U.S. west coast?) you'll see those times displayed shifted by two hours.

Quote: Ive noticed that Jeff has made 2 games set aside from his series-Nethergate Resurrection, and Blades of Avernum. Nethergate: Resurrection is just a remade version of Nethergate, but yes, it isn't a part of a larger series. Blades of Avernum more or less fits into the the Avernum series in the same way that it's predecessor, Blades of Exile, went with the Exile series. Quote: 1-However, will games like blades of avernum ever be updated graphic wise like the avernum series? No, it's fairly certain that BoA won't be, for a couple of reasons. The primary reason is that Jeff has sworn never to touch another open-ended scenario creation game because they take a long time to develop and don't make much money. The secondary reason is that altering the engine, unless very carefully handled, would break all existing scenarios for the game. Quote: 2-Right now i am trying to stay away from avernum series as it is getting remade. I might try nethergate though, when i get done with geneforge 2. You guys have so many games, I dont think I will be able to keep up with jeff in how long it takes to beat them all, he might win the race. Just my opinion, but the original 3 Avernum games are well worth playing. (Particularly before Jeff gets around to ruining them with the Avernum 4+ look and feel. Mind you, you'll hear the same kinds of arguments from the people who started out by playing the Exile games for why E1-3 are preferable to A1-3.) Quote: 3-My final question is that how does jeff usually set out on making games. It seems as though the geneforge series and avernum series were made similarly together in between years. If that is the case will it ever be possible that jeff might be making say avadon 2, avernum rewrite 2, 3, new game, avadon 3, etc. I hope that jeff wont just be sold for all avadon games for a long time. I highly doubt it though. If I understand correctly, you're asking whether Jeff will interleave other game releases with games in the Avadon series. This is likely, as it's something he's done for sometime, as you note with the Geneforge and Avernum games. Given what he's said about his roadmap of upcoming games, though, the Avadon games will likely be the only totally new ones, and he'll intersperse them with re-skinned Avernum games.

Hark! I bring data about titles from days past: The following lists are from some very old collections of member data I collected shortly after joining. Listed are all recorded titles (I make no guarantee that each collection was complete at its time), and for each title which applied at the time to less than ten accounts the displayed names and number of the accounts are listed, otherwise the number of accounts is given. Septamber 29, 2005: Click to reveal.. Look! I'm Banned! : Vince(1318) Banned, yet again : Ultima(539) sudo reban/stanrar -y : Stanrar(308) For Carnage, Apply Within : Scorched Earth Sarachim(95) Veteran* : Mysterious Man(5) Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! : Lady Davida(919) Babelicious : Old-School Djur(39), O Nascimento Conduz A Morte(3092), Djur Revolutions(3149) La Canaliste : saunders(5563) Master Jeweller : Radiant(409) Member Number: : Seletine(54), La Renaissance(165), Byte?(335), go baby go(2286) Village Idiot : lewi(4219) Erudite* : xxo(3042) Banning Leaves no Marks : Lance The Ultimate Wizard Warrior(1321) I am the banned mod : Edward Johnathan Jackson Lemur(11) Bob's Big Date : George A. Custer & The SE Party(3151) Mongolian Barbeque : Icshi(1528) Journeyman <189 accounts> A Very Important Date : Arancaytar. You Owe it to the Door.(2984) Do the banned dance! : London123(1328) Cartographer : -silver-(995), Ulrika Jounintytar(1851), Rache(2264) SCORPIUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!! : Vladimir Scorpius(314) Post Navel Trauma : Khoth(67) Dance the Banned Dance : Crap Blood Swirl(3052) Guru : Morgan(22), The Almighty Doer of Stuff(73), X(496), Omlette(517), You should vote Wise Man(1046), Mystery Man(2350) Loyal Underling : the Great Potato(13) FAQSELF : Schrodinger(3) Triad Mage : Krizsan(2), Drakefyre(7) Rebanned, courtesy of Drakefyre : Shotts999(1492) Shake Before Using : Imban(75) White Rabbit : Manhood Typing Kelandon(4045) sudo: reban/stanrarbannedx1 -y : StanrarBannedX1(1459) I SI BANNED : Shotts1200 II(1053), Britain is da bomb(1168) Senile Reptile : Sir Motrax of Exile(547) One Thousand Slimy Things : Arctic dreams of...(66) Nuke and Pave : Zeviz(24) Apprentice <5454 accounts> Adept <72 accounts> Erudite <43 accounts> Canned <12 accounts> This Side Towards Enemy : Rantallion(147), Unpleasantness for its Own Sake(3098) Veteran <18 accounts> Spammer : exile2fan12345(1511) Banned : A1-tank-kills-you(1409) ...b10010b... : Thuryl(869) BoE Posse : Silent Motion(15), Alcritas(51), Drizzt(84), The Creator(112), Drizzt(2475), Ash Lael(5491) Citizen of Exile <161 accounts> The Establishment : *i(6) BANNED <36 accounts> Board Administrator : Spidweb(1) March 31, 2006: Click to reveal.. Look! I'm Banned! : Vince(1318) Banned, yet again : Ultima(539) sudo reban/stanrar -y : Stanrar(308) For Carnage, Apply Within : Spartacus was Nathan Ashby(95) Veteran* : Mysterious Man(5) Electric Sheep One : Student of Trinity(3431) Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! : Sir David(919) Babelicious : Andrea(39), O Nascimento Conduz A Morte(3092), Djur Revolutions(3149) La Canaliste : saunders(5563) By Committee : Drew(4233) Master Jeweller : Radiant(409) Member Number: : Seletine(54), La Renaissance(165), Dame Annals(261), So priketh hem nature(335), go baby go(2286) Village Idiot : lewi(4219) Erudite* : xxo(3042) Man of the People : The holy blisful martir for to seke(2984) Banning Leaves no Marks : Lance The Ultimate Wizard Warrior(1321) I am the banned mod : Edward Johnathan Jackson Lemur(11) Bob's Big Date : Custer(3151), The Worst Man Ever(6388) Mongolian Barbeque : Icshi(1528) His Mighty Tentacle : Delicious Vlish(627) Journeyman <205 accounts> Trademark : Rubicante(4), Old Man Reggae(6397) Lack of Vision : Zorro(2717) Do the banned dance! : London123(1328) Cartographer : -silver-(995), Unaccomplished Lip Balm(1851), Rache(2264) SCORPIUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!! : Vladimir Scorpius(314) Post Navel Trauma : Khoth(67) ? Man, ? Amazing : Jumpin' Salmon(5755) Off With Their Heads : Kelandon(4045) Dance the Banned Dance : Crap Blood Swirl(3052) Skip to My Lou : Archmage Alex(40) Guru : Morgan(22), The Almighty Do-er of Stuff(73), X(496), Omlette(517), Wise Man(1046), Mystery Man(2350), the benalizer(4614), Spring(5450) Loyal Underling : the Great Potato(13) FAQSELF : Schrodinger(3) Triad Mage : Krizsan(2), Drakefyre(7) LIAR : fyorna(6181) Rebanned, courtesy of Drakefyre : Shotts999(1492) Shake Before Using : Imban(75) Too Sexy for my Title : Dominican Desire(5654) sudo: reban/stanrarbannedx1 -y : StanrarBannedX1(1459) I SI BANNED : Shotts1200 II(1053), Britain is da bomb(1168) Senile Reptile : Sir Motrax of Exile(547) One Thousand Slimy Things : Arctic dreams of...(66) Nuke and Pave : Zeviz(24) Apprentice <6287 accounts> Adept <87 accounts> Erudite <44 accounts> Canned <10 accounts> This Side Towards Enemy : Rantallion(147), Unpleasantness for its Own Sake(3098) Veteran <23 accounts> E Equals MC What!!!! : Ash Lael(5491) Spammer : exile2fan12345(1511) Banned : A1-tank-kills-you(1409) ...b10010b... : Thuryl(869) BANNED <58 accounts> BoE Posse : Silent Motion(15), Alcritas(51), Drizzt(84), The Creator(112), Drizzt(2475) Citizen of Exile <171 accounts> The Establishment : *i(6) Board Administrator : Spidweb(1) October 5, 2007 Click to reveal.. Champion : Zapp Brannigan(2080), demonslay3r(2238), Zephyr Tempest(2339), ef(2476), Stugri-La(3521) Look! I'm Banned! : Vince(1318) Banned, yet again : Ultima(539) sudo reban/stanrar -y : Stanrar(308) For Carnage, Apply Within : Sarachim(95) Veteran* : Mysterious Man(5) Electric Sheep One : Student of Trinity(3431) Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! : Sir David(919) Babelicious : Andrea(39), O Nascimento Conduz A Morte(3092), Djur Revolutions(3149) La Canaliste : saunders(5563) By Committee : Drew(4233) Master Jeweller : Radiant(409) Member Number: : La Renaissance(165), Yama Toman?(261), Acrobatic Cormorants(335), go baby go(2286), Ephesos(4153), Synergy(6292) Mercenary <354 accounts> Village Idiot : lewi(4219) Erudite* : xxo(3042) Man of the People : root(2984) Banning Leaves no Marks : Lance The Ultimate Wizard Warrior(1321) Sage : Wise Man(1046), Sturg(4614) I am the banned mod : Edward Johnathan Jackson Lemur(11) Swashbuckler <38 accounts> Bob's Big Date : Custer(3151) Mongolian Barbeque : Icshi(1528) His Mighty Tentacle : Delicious Vlish(627) Lack of Vision : Zorro(2717) Do the banned dance! : London123(1328) Cartographer : -silver-(995), Reluctant Big Sister(1851), Rache(2264) SCORPIUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!! : Vladimir Scorpius(314) Post Navel Trauma : Khoth(67) New Arrival <5672 accounts> ? Man, ? Amazing : Jumpin' Salmon(5755) Off With Their Heads : Kelandon(4045) Dance the Banned Dance : Crap Blood Swirl(3052) Dollop of Whipped Cream : Tyranicus.(391) Skip to My Lou : Archmage Alex(40) Guild Master <11 accounts> Adventurer <37 accounts> Loyal Underling : the Great Potato(13) FAQSELF : Schrodinger(3) Triad Mage : Krizsan(2), Drakefyre(7) LIAR : fyorna(6181) Rebanned, courtesy of Drakefyre : Shotts999(1492) Shake Before Using : Imban(75) Too Sexy for my Title : M.(5654) Apprentice : Elhioc(1496) sudo: reban/stanrarbannedx1 -y : StanrarBannedX1(1459) I SI BANNED : Shotts1200 II(1053), Britain is da bomb(1168) Senile Reptile : Sir Motrax of Exile(547) One Thousand Slimy Things : Arctic dreams of...(66) Nuke and Pave : Zeviz(24) Canned : Tails(1248), F-5(3020), The flying axe(4042), genoforge(5435), taker_guardian(5490) This Side Towards Enemy : Rantallion(147), Talent in a Previous Life(3098) Explorer <89 accounts> E Equals MC What!!!! : Ash Lael(5491) Spammer : exile2fan12345(1511) Banned : A1-tank-kills-you(1409) ...b10010b... : Thuryl(869) BoE Posse : Silent Motion(15), Alcritas(51), Drizzt(84), The Creator(112), Drizzt(2475) The Establishment : *i(6) BANNED <49 accounts> Board Administrator : Spidweb(1) There are a lot of redundant data there, sorry, but I'm a bit too worn out at the moment to finish sifting through it for the interesting stuff. EDIT: I have other datasets, ~10 in total, but the above three cover about the beginning, middle, and end of my records. EDIT2: I just noticed that there is some minor corruption of the data, namely accounts with no recorded title, which appear above with the incorrect title 'Member Number:'. I'm too lazy to restructure my script to skip these, however.

Concerning satellite boards Originally Posted By: lillith Desp, Polaris, CRF, TCoA, that one BoA thing that Overwhelming did and everyone yelled at him for... Overwheming's board wasn't what got him yelled at; it was just supposed to be a board to help people run scenario beta-tests that never saw much use. The fight was about his mirroring Kelandon's scenarios without Kelandon's permission. Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Did Thralni ever come back? While Thralni made a brief reappearance at Shadowvale (as I imagine you remember), I don't think that he came back to the boards here.

That may mean that your screen can't support any higher resolution (like because it physically doesn't have any more pixels). The system requirements for Avernum 6 explicitly say that it requires "1024x768 screen resolution with 32 bit color", so you may just not be able to play it without getting a newer monitor. The good news is that the newer monitor you need can still be a pretty old one; there are a lot of CRTs at least that good that people don't want and frequently give away.

That's not the approach you want to take. (I'm not sure how high a spell level and mage skill it would take to get that door open, but it's not meant to be done.) Instead, you want to find a key to unlock the door the proper way. Vahkohs has one, and you need to take it from him, I believe.

Yes, everything is as it should be. You have to fight him to force him into talking to you. (He'd prefer, apparently, to just kill you and not have to waste time negotiating.)

Quote: I guess the easiest way would be to make a branch on the svn... except it's not at all based on the existing code, so it'd have to be an empty branch, which means it's not really a branch... but anyway, if anyone knows how to do such a thing, do let me know. You can put anything you want into a branch; it doesn't have to be intended to merge into trunk. Or you could just `svn mkdir` a totally new directory.

Quote: Black Holes. What about them? We have pretty good evidence of their existence.

Oops, I looked at it and wrote up some comments, but forgot to post them. Sorry, here they are now: I like it a lot! It looks like you improved the color scheme in the main site prototype based on earlier comments (which I hadn't noticed before) and used it here as well. I think that it looks good; it retains the main elements of the original but simplified it so that it isn't distracting. The thick, dark green border around many of the buttons looks a bit odd to me. I think that it might look better if it were one or two pixels wide, but I wasn't able to test it; the markup seemed rather odd, particularly with the use of absolute positioning, and I couldn't modify it to get it to do what I wanted. I'm no expert at that stuff, though. You might consider making the screenshot image for the BoA section in the 'realistic' view style, without the gridlines.

There's not really a meaningful way for someone else to answer that for you. Depending on your preferences you might have a huge amount of fun or you might find it totally redundant. Some concerns to take into account: Have you already played the original Avernum trilogy? If so, you might not perceive much gain from playing the Exile games. Do you have a strong opinion about the graphics, or details of the gameplay like the spell system? Most people either love or hate the Exile graphics, for example, (I'll admit to belonging to the latter camp), so this could influence your decision a lot, given the large amount of overlap between E1-3 and A1-3. Ultimately you should probably just try it out and decide whether you like it. It shouldn't take too long to form an opinion.

These were something I added a couple of versions back. I noticed that if I drew a special rectangle (or, equivalently, a town entrance or area description) and later decided that I wanted it somewhere else, I had to erase it and then place a new one. This is partially alleviated by allowing such rectangles to be moved just like placed creatures and items, but there still wasn't a way to change their shape. So, I added modes in which the user can choose two new points to redefine a rectangle's extents in the same way as the original placement.

Quote: Also, who here reads Fred Clark's LB commentaries on Slacktivist/Patheos? This is the source of all my knowledge of the dreck that is LB. It's been a while though, so some of my recollections of details are a bit fuzzy.

Quote: Besides, don't the PMD's think that there's going to be some big nuclear exchange between Israel and Russia a few years before the Rapture happens? You'd think that's not the kind of thing that we would miss... Different sect of PMDs, clearly. With a different completely literal reading of the bible. Let's not forget that Russia is supposed to be supported by its powerful ally, Ethiopia.

Right, you would need Sheep Shaver, not just Rosetta. (Rosetta only helps for running OS X applications which are PowerPC binaries on Intel hardware.)

I hear that the rapture is supposed to arrive at 6 p.m. local time, but I'm unsure how this interacts with daylight savings time. This means that I don't know exactly when to check around for people vanishing, which is annoying since I'd rather not miss the event while eating dinner.

I would like to participate, but I'm leaning towards helping by judging rather than designing. (I don't have an idea for an entry, and I feel that I'm at the point where if I'm going to make a scenario it's more like a disservice to the community if I don't put my skills to work and make it substantial.) If, however, there is a surplus of useless types like myself who will only stand around and criticize others' work without designing anything, I could probably be talked into making an entry. (Timing might be a little tricky for me, since I'll be super busy in late June because I've gotten roped into helping run training at work at that time, but I should be able to manage.)

Quote: It's a relatively old computer, so I was expecting it to die eventually anyway, but I'm concerned about quite a bit of stuff I have stored on it. If you have any ideas on how to retrieve files off of something like this, I'd appreciate the advice. If the problems relate to the video card and other processing hardware your hard drive is probably unaffected. All that you would need to do is remove it and put it in or attach it to a different, working computer to access your data again.

Originally Posted By: tridash the second one's just because of the gworld not being quite large enough, I can fix that, as for the first one (although not elegant) it seems (unless I'm missing something) that just shoving: Code: DisposeGWorld(ter_draw_gworld);NewGWorld(&ter_draw_gworld, 0,&resized_rect, NIL, NIL, kNativeEndianPixMap); into the window resizing bit does the job. Right, I knew this, but I'd been thinking of this as a really costly operation to be avoided. Upon reflection I think I was getting more concerned than there was any need to.

(Apologies for the double post, but making this distinct from my last one seems best.) I've checked in my big round of changes. Among a bunch of smaller things I've redone the tool palette window as I planned (it looks almost exactly like the mockup except for its dimensions) and taught the tools and tiles windows to jam themselves to the right edge of the screen filling the available height. As part of doing this I made the tiles window (vertically) resizable. One minor change that I think is pretty important going forward is that I added tooltips for the the tool categories in the new palette. I still need to expand this to show hints for the tools themselves, but I think that it helps a lot for telling what's what. We should keep an eye out in future for places where more tooltips would be appropriate. There are a lot of things broken or inaccessible in this version, so it still needs a good deal of patching up before we can merge it back into trunk (although with all two project developers working on this branch, doing so will be pretty darn simple) and think about a release. Reproduced from the log message the currently broken things are: No buttons for switching view modes 2D view mode is broken No way to toggle autohills Currently no way to access the eyedropper Details are not drawn for uncategorized tools Issues with drawing terrain view larger than 1024 by 1024 When the tiles window is very tall so that it has extra space at the bottom in some modes there are drawing artifacts when switching from a mode which uses more space to one which uses less (terrains -> creatures) The second to last of these may be a nasty one to deal with, since it has to do with our allocating a single, permanent GWorld for drawing the terrain view offscreen. This was fine when the view never changed size, but now that its size can vary drastically this wastes a lot of memory when the current size is small but we have a buffer large enough for a very large size and imposes an artificial limit on how large the main window can get. The thing to do may be just to reallocate the backing GWorld on every resize, but I've shied away from trying it just yet, since for large window sizes it will end up allocating and deallocating large, but always slightly different, chucks of memory, which doesn't seem very pretty. It may be best just to bite the bullet and do it, though. A couple of other to-do items that I'll record here before I forget are to make sign markers be drawn and probably to make signs and waypoints selectable.

They are the three rectangle redrawing modes, pasting a copied object, setting town boundaries (which is really another, older rectangle redrawing tool), and placing starting points. (I thought that there were more, but that's all I see on a scan through the list.) (EDIT: The other part of what I meant to say about these is that some of them don't really want to have their own buttons, like the rectangle redrawing tools, since they only make sense in the context of already having an object of the relevant type selected. What they do need, however, is to be able to display details like other tools while they are in use, in spite of the fact that as far as the drawing code is concerned they don't fit in very normally. I think I have this worked out, but I haven't actually gotten around to coding it yet.) There are also tools which I've currently broken by removing their buttons and not providing an alternative means to access (in my working copy, which I'll get checked in very soon), including the eyedropper, delete waypoint, and edit sign. Each of these has or seemed to have some special complication related to it, which is why it's currently out, but needs to one way or another get back in before I'm done. (That is, the eyedropper doesn't seem quite right shoved in with the other tools, although I may just relent and put it there, and the other two seem like they could be more elegantly handled through making the objects in question selectable.)

Most of us who hang around the forums here are pretty content with prices of order $25, I think. To be honest I've only purchased 3 of Spiderweb's games (A2, A3, BoA), but I felt that they were easily worth such prices, and when I decide I have the time to really spend on additional games I fully intended to buy them without concern about the price. Spiderweb is a small company, and they don't necessarily have vast amounts of sales. They need to earn enough from selling to the audience that they do have to stay in business. Besides, $25 isn't really a whole lot of money. For someone who has a job, thats not more than about four hours of work, even at minimum wage. Given that I estimate I've derived a few hundred hours of enjoyment from the three games I've bought, it seems like a pretty good rate.

Quote: i noticed a couple of stupid bugs with text not being cleared from the toolbar, I might as well fix them later This isn't a big deal; I have in mind some changes that will more or less make this irrelevant. Quote: one of the problems with scrolling is probably because I quadrupled the area drawn to for the 3d terrain, maybe it should be dependent on screen size (it's doing it to a 1024x1024 thing, before it was 512x512). also the code i did is basically all of the over the place so far, when i clean it up that might help a bit. The issue is just that the drawing code isn't very efficient and for a bigger view area we end up running it more. I don't think it's a problem yet, at least not for computers less than a few years old. Quote: shifting to openGL's probably a good idea anyway, though, especially if we eventually want to move to a "document-based" approach where you can have multiple towns open at a time. I think that these concerns are orthogonal (and I'm not sure it would be a sane thing to try to stretch the current code to a document based form) but it's definitely something to think about for the future. Luckily, someone here happens to have already started looking into the possibility. I'm going to take a stab at rearranging the tools window like I described a few posts ago. A few notes about what I'll try to do: The 'left text lines' are 10 lines, each 240 px long and 12 px high with 5 px of vertical spacing. Stacking them in a single column they would fit into a space 240 px wide and 170 px tall. This is almost exactly the space as in my mockup. The main use for these lines is to show information about the selcted object, which we can just display in the tool palette when using the selection tool. The 'right text lines' display several different kinds of information: This includes the view center coordinates, the current tool (and type to be drawn for drawing tools), and step-by-step instructions for tools. The first of these makes more sense as part of the main window, for example drawn in the lower margin. The other two kinds of information could be displayed in the tool palette space, which would show whatever is relevant for the current state of the current tool, with the information about the selectyed object being visible only when using the selection tool. Edit: Ugh. I had forgotten about the horror that lurks in the editor's system of tool modes. Each tool has a mode number, except that there are some tools (as seen by the user) which share the same mode (and are instead distinguished by their 'mode count'), and there are also modes which are effectively tools except that they aren't reached by clicking one of the usual tool buttons. It won't be pretty but I think I can still make this work.

Quote: When Arizona passed it's identification requirements to vote, senior citizens in nursing homes were outraged that it disenfranchised them from voting since almost every acceptable form was no longer available to them. Surely Arizona, like other states, has a non-driver's identification card. I know that both Missouri and Wisconsin have such things, and while most people don't know about them, but if you hear that you won't be allowed to vote without a government issued photo ID you will surely care enough to look, or if one person hears of it the information would surely spread by word-of-mouth. Right? I had to drive to get to college when I lived in St. Louis because the city's buses and light rail are virtually useless to anyone living in the suburbs (the vast majority of the population). The light rail system in particular is fairly useful to students at that same college if they live in the dormitories or nearby area since it then connects to useful places like the airport and various malls, but since I needed to travel from a point that wasn't on the system (by a good couple of miles) I have never ridden it. In Madison (WI) I live in university owned housing, so there's a free bus line which runs practically past my front door, going to the campus. From there it's only an additional mile to the office, so I usually walk, but I could ride another bus. I do still drive to get groceries, but a new bus route has been added which I could use if I switched grocery stores (or I could take a long route involving multiple buses while carrying the groceries). So, cities in the midwestern U.S. alone definitely vary a lot. Driving really can be just about required, depending on the location and the task.