A less presumptuous name.

Originally Posted By: echo Originally Posted By: Tyranicus Let's face it. The man was badass enough to make monocles look badass. Monocles not pictured, right? Also, he kinda looks like a grandpa. Anyway, since I didn't read the thread properly, I'll return later to add a picture. Roosevelt didn't wear a monocle, at least not in most pictures. Those are pince-nez glasses. I had a fantasy about getting a pair for a while. I don't have the mustache for them, though.

I was about to yell at you for necromancy. Then I got distracted by playing with Google. Well played.

The issue was with Steam, not Spiderweb or Avadon. A number of people here and in this thread that managed to get the game to work. You can PM them or go to Steam tech support for more assistance.

How many background apps are you running? Avadon, like any other big game, takes quite a bit of power. If you have many background apps running, there may be enough RAM taken up that it's causing the game to slow down, particularly in combat when there are many more calculations to run. Try quitting all background apps and test combat speed.

I think that I will probably give it a try after I finish exams next month. It really is cool how the creators throw these easter eggs out to the older audience.

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit Upon quizzing my daughter, an actual brony, I have to ask: Why no choice of Dr. Whooves? A friend of mine got me to watch Doctor Who. When he started talking about MLP, it was odd, but Dr. Whooves nearly convinced me to start watching.

I do agree that the game is very linear. It's a trend that I've noticed in games lately; the Diablo III beta was very linear in character building compared to D II. As far as the amount of content is concerned, there are a few points. First, Avadon was the first game in the series and thus more time was spent building the engine. Future games will almost certainly be larger and more fleshed out. It certainly would have been nice to explore more, although it wasn't necessary with the way the plot was built. I also liked the larger zones, although a way to enter on any side and maybe fast-travel through cleared areas would be really nice. I spent way too much time walking through zones just to talk to people/dragons.

I never played that many games, SW is one of my only real sources. Other than Smash Bros, I don't really play console games. As far as computer games, there are a few that I've played over the years that I really enjoy. Sim City 3000. SC4 sucked. AoE III - I still get sucked into this for a week or two every so often. Diablo II - my first real gaming experience, and still my only real multiplayer one. Diablo III can sort of be on the list. I put probably 6-8 hours into the recent weekend public beta, and I can't wait for the full thing to be released. Spiderweb Party, anyone?

I believe that the iOS and MAS versions of the game have checksums that break the game if you edit the scripts. I'm not positive, so it may be worth your while to try editing them, just make sure that you back them up first. Jeff doesn't really take requests. Once a game is done, it's done. Also, there is the issue of intellectual copyright. He prefers to avoid that and stick with his own ideas.

No Geneforge game has a wait command, only the option to skip a turn.

Going back to download sizes for a minutes, I can say that the Diablo III weekend beta is just over 5GB. Combine that with over-taxed servers, and it takes forever to download.

I'm only 18, but I recognize rotary telephones. I had one of the plastic toy ones growing up! As far as dial televisions, that's a stretch. I'm familiar with them and I think I've even used one before, but it's not a thing to stick in my memory.

I'm nearly positive that unstable creations are hard coded, and I'm sure it's been discussed before. There is also probably a text file in the scripts with all the tooltips, provided that they too are not hard coded.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba 1. Tyranicus, for hopefully obvious reasons. Sorry dude. I don't know what your thinking of, but I'm so used to seeing Tyran as The Doctor that I'm not sure he would die. Maybe the regeneration energy would be a good weapon?

Originally Posted By: DINTIRADAN Hmm, quick question, I don't remember ever learning this in French. Say you have a sentence talking about a student of unknown gender in French (or a hypothetical student). I'm assuming the subject of the sentence would be "L'étudiant", not "L'étudiante". Now consider the following sentence, which uses a pronoun to refer to the unknown/hypothetical student. Which pronoun is used: "il", or "on"? "Il" and "on" could both work, although I would be more inclined to use "il" for a specific mystery person and "on" for an unspecified person. "On" gender neutral, but takes on masculine modifiers, simply because masculine and neutral are the same. It can refer, however, to any gender. "On" is used more often to express a general case than it is to remain gender-neutral.

Making "iwanttobestronger" easier to type wouldn't help. With the diminishing returns, it will still stop giving you any exp after a certain level.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Originally Posted By: DANTIUS Originally Posted By: Master1 The trick with French is that masculine can be used inoffensively. ...That's true in English, too. "The student dropped his books" is perfectly correct if the gender of the student is unknown. This used to be the case, but many people consider it incorrect usage now. Language is a moving target. Also, aren't these situations where on would be used in French? Yeah, French people love to use on, which is literally "one" in English. In fact, I use it to avoid the confusing "you" in English fairly often. There are still cases, however, when masculine pronouns are used in neutral cases. All impersonal expressions (such as: "it's nice out") use either the masculine/neutral pronoun or the demonstrative pronouns ça/cela/ceci/ce/ces. Another quirk that we get from genders is how English seems to pick them randomly when adopting words. For example, "masculine" is actually the feminine spelling of "masculin/e" from French. Whenever I have to use the masculine form of feminine (feminin), I get confused. «C'est feminin» just feels weird to type.

Because the only possible explanation for high upload/download volume is piracy. Of course! Transferred files aren't getting bigger, we're just stealing more and more small things.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity The human genome is only about 800 megs. Diablo 2 takes more space than me. Now I feel cheap. It really helps to put this into perspective. Considering a string of just 4 characters that takes 800 megs is ridiculous. All of the other components required to make DNA do its stuff add a bit of heft to things. Still, everything that is you can fit into a single cell. Diablo II requires something macroscopic!

The trick with French is that masculine can be used inoffensively. If the gender is unknown, one simply uses masculine if there isn't a gender-neutral option. In fact, many words, like "il/ils" are listed as both masculine and neutral. Also, you would start your own phrase off with Ce qui, not Qui. I can't think of anything better than "personnes," though.

"Torrents are illegal! Blizzard should be sued!" I was actually aware of the fact that Blizzard Updater uses a torrent format for its downloads. The volume of content being moved, especially with digital downloads of the entire games, is too large for ordinary downloading. Torrenting allows Blizzard to move the same amount of data with far less infrastructure.

There is definitely a lot of good material in this thread. My first comment goes out to SoT: You recommend writing a lot of précis but don't advise actually copying works. Wouldn't you perhaps run into the same dangers, though? When writing a précis, there may be a particularly well-phrased idea that you don't alter when summarizing, and that could slip into future writing as well. Really, though, I suppose that if the phrasing sticks out that much, you'd likely remember it regardless of whether you retype it. I'd also like to share something that really improved my writing process. This fall, as I was writing, editing, and rewriting college application essays, my writing came a long ways. Reading college message boards, I see that a number of students (clearly bright based on where they've been accepted) who opted not to have other proofread their essays. To the contrary, I brought down numerous drafts to my parents and brother, all of whom are excellent writers. Bouncing ideas around and hearing their suggestions really helped me to improve my writing. Two things about that experience were particularly helpful. First, my editors were all good, experienced writers. My brother had just graduated from college and had developed great writing skills. My parents have both taught in the college setting for years and were able to help my writing mature drastically. Second, I had multiple editors. If they agreed on something, chances were that it was a more general comment. If they disagreed, it was probably something related to personal style. Because of this, I didn't end up mimicking anyone's style, but rather took elements that I liked and added them to my own voice as I was refining it. Also, the sheer amount of writing I did was really helpful. Most pieces were under a page, but they were very open personal essays. Writing so much gave me room to explore my voice and learn how best to communicate abstract ideas from the depths of my mind. This skill is useful in all writing, not just personal essays. While the topic and tone may differ, knowing how to take something from your mind and put it on a piece of paper is really valuable.

300 MB is nothing for a major game like that. I remember my install of Diablo 2 taking between 2 and 4 GB. Then again, that was with massive amounts of 3D graphics, so it's natural that it's so much bigger. 300 seems like a reasonable amount to expect a few years down the line.

Goldenking, I really agree. I'm in my 5th year of studying French, and it's certainly helped me, not only in English but in critical thinking and general awareness. Even if you're not great at learning other languages, a few years of study will do you great good!

That's okay. This year, I'm taking AP English Literature. We are strictly told that we will *not* be learning how to write in this course. That was expected to be covered last year, in AP English Language. Of course, the only writing that we learned that year was 3 form essays to be written in 40 minutes or less. So no, I've never actually learned how to write a real paper, and I'll be in college within 6 months.