fractalnavel

Originally Posted By: Untamed Banana Slug Do you think a party of 4 swordsmen would have fared any better? Yessir; and now that you mention it, I guess I'd actually have to try - all blades, no bows. Four sliths with poles, perhaps ? But the blades offer more options and better stat buffs, usually. No bows at all could be a real problem, whereas at least bows can be used in close quarters. Hmm... I think too one has to consider the effect of a magic prohibition from the start, not just from Ahonaria on. It sure is difficult to isolate variables in this game. But yes, melee + quick action + blademaster + anatomy + lethal blow, along with better weapon numbers, sure seems to beat bow + sharpshooter (battle disciplines, quick strike, and strength/dexterity being "equal"). Battle disciplines: not so equal, perhaps, as a blade/pole user gets benefit from those primary weapon stats in addition to the +1 to BD, whereas a bow user merely gets +1 BD from them, and +.5 BD for its primary weapon. Strength v. dexterity: I've been having a tough time with encumbrances. I'd have more motivation to pump strength if it affected offensive skills as well. The armor bearing increase associated with more strength has to be compared with the defensive increase of pure dexterity. Nahhh - bows don't even compare. A quickly dead enemy is the best defense ;-)

Bows: Just for kicks, my last run-through I decided to use four (custom) nephils, and, as far as possible, identically train & equip them. You know, a litter. And I figured, being a kinda sorta role playing run, I'd give them all fast on feet plus deadeye - I mean, they're cats, right ? And a couple more restrictions: (1) no melee or pole weapon use - nary a blade has been lifted; (2) no magic spells (wands etc. ok). They were to be be Anama pin-cushion kitties, all claws & spirit. Now, suspecting this was a difficult combination, I played on Easy. It wasn't until after Harkin's Landing that one of the cats began priest training (up to then healing with potions & food), and this character has been consuming nearly all the knowledge brews / wisdom crystals in order to try to keep up with its litter mates as well (but still falling behind a bit). Gotta say, it's been tough. Blessed longbows are ok, but those bad guys have to be looking like porcupines long before they fall. It's been living on the edge the whole time, even with liberal use of "iampoor". And yes, I've been pumping bows, sharpshooter and dexterity, and also the other battle skills in order to maximize battle disciplines per skill point spent. Tactics are everything, and keep needing to be "kicked up a notch". Divine restoration is a (ha!) godsend. Divine retribution, on the other hand, is just about useless, unles the priest is unreachable. Nothing like agro-ing everything in sight. Equipment distribution has been challenging. I probably should have "stolen" the Fang Clan trials equipment, and it certainly would have been in character to do so, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it (this was before I gave up on the living with the money shortage). Just wanted to add a bow v. melee counterpoint here. Blades / poles and the many more enhancing skills associated with them are far more effective than bows.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Your line is over estimating efficiency at the high end. Jeff usually has a point of diminishing returns so it plateaus about 70% spell energy. With everything pushed to ridiculously high levels artificially, I have been able to cast spells using -0- spell points / energy, except for non-divine-retribution AoE spells, which seem completely unaffected. That line looks right to me.

For some ideas: Beta Testers: Getting Them. Keeping Them. -- Jeff Vogel, The Bottom Feeder

No - having a - william - shatner - moment ... Rrentaaaaaaar!

All that food lying around in a famine stricken area, eh ? Hmmm... Thought: food theft should be a crime in this game, and there should be a lower threshold of tolerance for this than for other crimes. Thought (2): over (or under) consumption should affect carried weight & encumbrance. Could also affect the attitude of those you meet: when a fat man appears, do the starving masses (a) despise him, ( toady up to him, or © eat him ? Are there recipes for Nephil adventurer/soldier stew being passed about ? (or are they better when roasted?) Which brings to mind that hunting should be an option, instead of only scavenging / buying. "Ooh, look - rubies !" "Forget about the gems, Cordelia, look what I found - steak !"

From a Vahnatai's perspective, there needn't even be Avernites, Sliths or Nephils The story might originate from within their own culture; whether & how they bump into other species is optional, part of the story. And no, simply doing image swap tricks isn't the idea. They'd need to be a distinct fully defined races. On the other hand - almost all fantasy & scifi that has any concept of an "elder race" tends to lose some of its magic when the fog is lifted. Imagination outstrips description, if properly guided, as good artists in any media will tell you. Hmm - I'll try and remember this the next time someone asks me to document some code :-D

Were any BoE/BoA scenarios written for Vahnatai PCs ? Could that have even been possible, with "hacks", perhaps ?

Well, take a look at The Joy Of Rereleasing Old Games. Never say "never".

Originally Posted By: Randomizer ... You're in the army now so you can't go wherever you like as an adventurer. ... Shoot - I was hoping for less linearization, not more. Well, at least it's not to the point where an auto-plod script can complete the game. Um - do some of those details count somewhat as spoilers for us non-beta folks ?

I guess I never really thought SpidWeb games were anything special in this regard, but now that you mention it... I guess that I associate these games more with the (non-graphic) mud & interactive fiction genre than I do (graphical) RPG's, having come more from that direction. I would say that's good company, since that's all those games have to rely on. There's more to text content than mere description, and there's more to description than mere sensory input. That's why even the latest greatest graphics games often seem somehow barren, to me. I have little to no console game background, and my PC gaming has tended more to sims. But here's an odd one that I picked up off the shelf in a software store aeons ago, freshly shrink-wrapped: StarFlight. This was a PC (later console) game that could have a reasonable amount of text, in addition to its graphics. Or maybe it's just that my memory has become as rambling as myself.

Originally Posted By: Replete with the Elite ... What kind of meat pie has corners? ... "pie are squared", of course.

Originally Posted By: The Pukka Panjandrum Because you, collectively, didn't, obviously. —Alorael, who needed one more comma in that sentence and just couldn't work it in. Oh, I dunno - I think this works just fine: "Because, you, collectively, didn't, obviously." Although the new punctuation might be better indicating a bit more pause ( : or ; or - ), a "," works pretty well. The same might be said for a couple of other positions. It's kinda like trying to read a poem, or a beginning actor trying to learn lines, inserting random alternative pauses & emphases (emphasis?) with each successive attempt.

"What did he die from ?" "Verisimilitude."

In terms of what I have to live with ? Oh, shoot - I "grew up" on text adventures & muds. 'Nuff said. Or maybe not I'm of the philosophy that whatever I can get away with is part of the game, and the same goes for limitations. So, whether it's hacking the code or dealing with less than optimal interfaces, it's all part of the package. Funny, though - I don't exactly behave like that in RL ... or do I ?

Well, ok, now that "the gloves are off", so to speak - - Why "slots" at all ? Why not drag/drop anywhere in the "pack" ? With optional "auto-arrange" button, fer sure. - Also applies to "loot". And label that "ground", "barrel", "table", "body" or whatever the currently viewed container is. And have graphics for the container. - If I have items equipped, I want to see them equipped ! As in, the character displayed should be wearing / wielding the items, and not generic ones, either. - Equipment stat displays: oh, there's a lot of different ways to view that. Probably want to allow the user to have flexibility in terms of what to show, in what order (columns, rows), etc. - Speaking of drag/drop, each "area" (pack/inventory, "loot"/container, equipped items, stats) should allow user (or auto) placement as well. Everyone gets their own favorite layout. - Items: the real pain is having things scattered among the PCs. An aggregate inventory view would be very useful, with all the stat display widgetry as well. In fact, how about a view with all inventory and all characters (one per corner, or down the side, or user arrangeable, ...), so as to readily swap equipment around ? Not available during battle, of course. This is the "campfire" or "halloween" mode, as in, everyone has dumped their goodies into a pile. - Speaking of piles, in the drag/drop pack/container displays, allow multi-select, by individual item (shift)clicked, and/or "lassooed" (oh, geez - spell that), and "select all". - Outfits: I could have piles in my (aggregate) pack that contain complete (or partial) outfits of equipment so I could select the entire pile and drag it onto a character, whose old equipment would all go into one pile as well. Or - how about explicit outfit definition ? In which case, certain items could be referenced by more than one outfit, if needed. Outfits with an item in use somewhere already could be greyed out (or other handling could be managed, with alternatives being a setting or selection). - Pre-defined outfits: bonus stats for having all items. Bonus character graphics as well (a glow, an aura, whatever). Sorry - I do go on, don't I ? ;-)

Ah, yes - relativistic anvils. Accelerated too much, however, and they have a habit of sucking in their surroundings. It was once thought that magically connecting a pair of these super-sucking speed-demons (heh) could provide an alternative portal technology, but after playing an extended round of "no, you go first!", the idea was dropped.

Originally Posted By: Dark.Fenix that would remove the efectiveness of the falling anvil in the targets head, ney? ney. Initial velocity, direction, targeting & number are also important. Consider a swarm of fast, magic tracking, cruise anvils. Or simply anvil rain. This is a fantasy game, right ?

Originally Posted By: Dark.Fenix maybe X has a room full of anvils and just opens a small portal over the target('s head) then ports it back to that room to "reload the magasine" ... Interesting concept. Since stocking this room would remove a lot of metal from the economy, a side quest for a blacksmith could be finding the anvil room. Originally Posted By: Dark.Fenix ...conjure anvils would mean free steel and would crush the economie of the mining corporations... Since in this case, the metal is inherently magic, I propose the following: no matter what the blacksmiths try in attempting to create other items from the magic-anvil metal, they just keep turning back into anvils. Little bitty ones. And, hmm - who says the anvils have to be big ?

Does the concept of "projectile" require some lateral motion ? Just curious. Anvils, X, and A6: when arcane dud becomes arcane thud.

I realize this comes from completely out in left field, but - is there some way to work in a spectator-friendly aspect of this game ? Even from this distant vantage it's fascinating. Allowing some insight into the in-play actions would expand that greatly. I'm not sure myself how this might be accomplished without interfering with the game itself. Ah, well - it's just a wish; this isn't one of the game's original goals, I know. I have been following the games' developments since the beginning - at least, that which is visible on these forums. Re another issue recently brought up, considering the automation of (parts of) this game is an interesting prospect. However, it seems that the best solution for time invested would be to implement one or another mud engine, with the particulars adjusted to match the game's details. I'm not sure a 100% replication would be possible, but it seems a good fit. This would best be addressed in a different thread. The earlier discussion seems to have been dropped.

What's funny (odd) to me is that in the last few days, I've run into related sets of organizational behavior concepts in three very different places under different circumstances: here, an OLPC related post(http://gregdek.livejournal.com/53038.html), and in the book "Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight" [2005] (http://u.nu/75vn, pdf, 8 parts). I seem to be caught in some sort of external digital feedback loop. Deja deja vu, as it were. (All right, I know better, but subjective selective attention bias is so much less fun.)

This Brian Wynne ? http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/faculty/profiles/Brian-Wynne/Sociology/ Interesting body of work, from a (necessarily) cursory glance. It wasn't immediately apparent where he addressed the issue under discussion directly, although it was pretty clear it would be covered somewhere. Do you have a particular reference handy ? The "program as contract" concept always seemed to me far better than lifeless legalese: want to know the resolution of a conflict ? Just "execute" the law. Then again, I developed this perspective after a number of years of effectively translating regulatory and contractual obligations into software as part of my job then. Wow, talk about over-simplification ;-) Note that this was merely an extension of historical practice into software. The priority of operational definitions of "agreement" over documented but perhaps differently acted upon ones has a long legal tradition. Squatters "rights" would probably be the most straightforward example. Topic relevance: I think this is a third-order tangent. I lost count. But surely we're still far behind the record. Is this remark a yet higher order tangent ? Invoking a hall-of-mirrors effect seems unfair.

Speaking from a software development perspective, there's that (in)famous phrase: "it's not a bug, it's a feature!". The difference is often merely one of whether documentation is present. Ultimately, "bugs" _are_ contextual, regardless of the source of the phenomenon. If the context includes an independently well-established practice or fact, e.g., a mathematical formula, then the corresponding increase in rigor will have the effect of making the "bug" judgement seem objective (leading to another conclusion: that "objectivity" can be contextual as well, if only because the term is often abused). In this case, however, the source of "authority" is far more limited and subjective: the author of the game, its players, the general gaming world, and the computing world, in order of more or less increasing distance from the project. There are other contextual references present, of course. Y2k: perhaps it's the _calendar_ that was the bug - seriously. But the context - calendars and their users have far more widespread distribution and history than software - drives the "solution" in the other direction. Or the "bug" could be the perceived requirement for consistency. Again, that's a well-established practice, so of course, it takes precedence. And so on. I can give you a counter-example where the software takes precedence: when the actual practice of an insitution or fulflllment of contractual obligation is embodied in software, it is often deemed to be the de facto "correct" method, overriding written documents. When there's a discrepancy, the "bug" label depends on one's motivations. So, given the limited context of this current debate, things are kind of circular: the outcome of the debate relies upon - the outcome of the debate. Informed by other more distant contextual cues, of course. In a less abstract sense, note that a "design error/flaw" is _still_ a "bug", albeit of a different sort. Even _intentional_ behavior can be a bug. So what you folks are really seem enmeshed in is an exercise in semantics, which is fine, assuming some actual distinction independent of the language is present. As in: does a "bug" label imply a "fix" is needed / desired ? Is a fix needed (or not) _independent_ of the label ? Perhaps the bottom line in this context has to do with the ultimate outcome of this debate in terms of action: _will_ anything be changed, and can this result be impacted by this discussion ? In other words, will the creator of the game be motivated by the merits of this argument one way or the other to change something ? I think the general consensus is "no". The game phenomenon under discussion is seen as acceptable, if perhaps odd & idiosyncratic. So, not "bug", in this sense. Was the effect unintentional ? Seems to have been originally ("bug" in that sense), but certainly noticed later and allowed to remain (not "bug" in _that_ sense). Finally, keep in mind that the term "bug" has emotional, often perjorative, content as well. Does this discussion still exist if emotionally loaded terms are removed ? Probably not; no one seems to have disagreed on the specific application of the terms "error" or "flaw". At this level, the discussion seems to be one of defending the game somewhat against a sensed slight on the one hand, and a discussion of a less charged label application in the other. Or perhaps _I_ am the bug in this discussion. Certainly a noisy fly-on-the-wall. Thanks for the opportunity to play _my_ game ;-)

Not skill points directly, but through experience points: award_party_xp( number_of_points, ?? ) I think the first argument is max 999. I'm not certain what the seconds argument is; relates to max level for which you get the points. Typically in user mods a higher number is used (30 or 99). So to gain levels, repeatedly award XP using the call above.