Danny the Fool

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent But seriously...would be nice if the Androids COULD somehow use .exe files. That would be nice Not really nice, since it would require them to have x86 CPUs which means no battery life whatsoever at that size ;-) But, has anyone tried DOSbox? At least Exile should run on Win 3.11.

Originally Posted By: Pretty in Pink In any case, who are we to judge what people do with their budget? Setting up a budget means assigning funds to projects according to priorities. If the budget fails to account for a priority goal like being able to run reasonably current software, that is a measurable defect of the budget, and I don't see why a person can't be judged based on that. (If it's not a priority goal, then that person wouldn't complain on a forum of course, so we aren't talking about people who just think other things more important than video games.)

Originally Posted By: Randomizer I think Apple is making it harder to program for older systems. They're making it harder in the sense that current dev tools don't support ppc anymore, and they generally deprecate old platform sdk versions quickly with similar results, but you're free to use old tools (and very old Macs for testing). Can't really blame them. Why invest in a market that is demonstrably unwilling to spend money?

Originally Posted By: Darkus Mainly because i'm not on my PC as much anymore. Same here... I hardly play anything on my Mac anymore so I'm hesitant to buy new games for it. I'd buy just about any Spiderweb game for my iPad though

Originally Posted By: Serene Tempest I would question how universally the shapers truly believe that their creations are no more than tools. A lot of american slave owners historically held to the position that african americans were less than human, but how many of them truly believed that ... I don't know how many of the slave owners truly believed what they said. I do think it is easier for the shapers to think of creations as members inferior species or animals, since they know exaclty how they created them in the first place. The slave owners must have at least suspected that their slaves were as human as they. Originally Posted By: Serene Tempest Also, I don't think murder has to be malicious to be considered such. What if you were to kill someone not out of any hard feelings, but simply because they were in your way? Or, in a more extreme case, because you're a religious fundamentalist and think you're on a holy mission that unfortunately requires killing people? Murder commonly requires the intent to kill, and law commonly refers to that as "malice". Hence, killing a terminally ill human person out of mercy, even if that person requested to be killed, can be considered murder. This varies by jurisdiction. But killing someone because he's in your way is pretty much malicious everywhere. Murder also commonly requires killing a human. This is where Taygen's plan doesn't fit. He is not planning to kill humans. He is planning to kill animals, and animals that were created, as in bio-engineered, by humans at that.

Originally Posted By: Triptych of Ominous Hazarding Most of us think of factory farming as distasteful, and what Taygen wants to do is worse: killing animals simply to remove them. That's not really different from outright killing 50% of your newborn chicken because you don't need the male ones, and you have a similar situation with cattle as well. Taygen really has the same goal as the Trakovites. He wants to abolish shaping. His means are a tiny bit more drastic than those of the Trakovites, although I'm not quite sure about the exact difference in evilness between his "killing all creations and be done with it" and Litalia's "kill random innocents until they stop shaping". (Since Litalia only arrived recently, let's not hold her against the Trakovites, though.) Originally Posted By: Triptych of Ominous Hazarding From his perspective he's doing the right thing, obviously; creations have no rights and it's the only way to save the humans who matter. From our perspective, though, he's evil. So, how come Taygen is evil, but factory farming is only distasteful, even though at least Taygen doesn't even want to breed creations with the intention of killing them later? Originally Posted By: Triptych of Ominous Hazarding All that leaves out the fact that some creations are clearly intelligent. If you were a cannibal and factory farmed human, or even intelligent cows, you would be evil. No one would argue otherwise. How do you define "intelligent"? Adult pigs are about as intelligent as 3-year old humans. There is research that shows that they can play video games (although not as complex ones as Geneforge, google for it if you want the details). Most creations in Geneforge are less intelligent than that. I've seen a reference to talking somewhere in this thread. I think the ability to talk is a lousy criterion for determining intelligence. On the other hand, one wouldn't be alone with that idea, the rebels do it too: They are basically like the shapers, but talking creations have more rights. Originally Posted By: Triptych of Ominous Hazarding Also, it's worth pointing out that mines, batons, and living tools are treated much more like tools than like animals, but they are also clearly like lower animals. The shrimp analogy is a good one. Just like you will find yourself in a situation every once in a while where you stick a living tool in a piece of malfunctioning machinery, knowing full well that it will burn to a crisp and die in the process, shrimp, other seafood and fish are often cooked alive.

Originally Posted By: Locmaar @Danny: Unless somebody is going to prepare one last Blue Whale Stew for the whole of Japan, Greenland, Iceland or Norway, I don't quite see the reasoning behind that assessment (except both are in one way or another responsible for the death of one or more member of, up to an entire species). That's not the point I wanted to make. We're discussing Taygen, not humanity. But since everybody seems to be focusing on the humanity part, let me explain the analogy a bit more: If you eat something that contains eggs, those eggs likely come from factory farms, especially if they're just another ingredient in industrially manufactured food and not eggs that you bought at a market and processed into an omelette yourself. Factory farms that produce eggs only need the female chicken. Since the birth ratio is still roughly 1:1, most of the male chicks are ground into meat-and-bone meal and used in animal food (without killing them in a humane fashion first, to boot). After a few years, the hens start laying less eggs. So they are killed and processed into food. This is neither considered murder in our society, nor mass murder, even though millions of chickens die in this way every year. Murder, in our society, is killing a human with malice aforethought. The human/chicken distinction aside, there is no malice: We just want to eat, the society generally tolerates this sort of behaviour, and so on. Back to Terrestia. If you're a shaper, you see your creations as tools. If they don't perform, you absorb them. If they deviate from their design, you absorb them. If they get old and you grow tired of them, you absorb them. You do, from what I've seen in the GF games, treat them somewhat well. But still, you can legally kill them at will, and if you're a loyal shaper, you think that's the way things should be. This is not considered murder in the shaper society, and if you do it a lot, it's not considered mass murder. There happen to be not very many shapers that kill creations on a large scale, but even if Taygen is the only one who does, that doesn't make it murder. His victims are to the shapers as chickens are to us, and there certainly is no malice anywhere; he's just scared. In conclusion, I maintain that Taygen can't objectively be considered a mass murderer. He can only be considered a mass murderer if you use a definition of murder that is not canonical in the dominating society in Terrestia, quite similar in how Vegans can't claim everybody else is a murderer because then, they are using a non-canonical definition of the term murder.

GF3 was the reason why I never even tried GF4. I did try (and buy) GF5 mostly due to the much improved UI. Recently, I went and downloaded the GF4 demo, but I haven't gone very far yet. It seems much better than GF3 so far, but the UI feels clumsy now that I've seen GF5, and doesn't work very well with a widescreen display anyway. So my favourite is easily GF5. That said, I'd probably buy a GF1-4 compilation with the UI of GF5. (Like that will happen...)

You don't really have to switch the routes, it just becomes easier if you do. I usually just follow a patrol until I can hide somewhere a bit away from their route, then follow the next, disabling the pylons on the way.

I'd like the rebels by design, but Ghaldring somewhat spoils it for me. A Takers faction would be great, but as it is the rebels are just tools for the drakons. And those are just like the shapers except they can also breathe fire. Their main goal is power, and they want to achieve it with whatever means necessary. Maybe even more so than the shapers. The rebels think they have an ally in the drakons, but I say they don't know what they've gotten themselves into. The drakons are not an ally, they're a time bomb. Astoria seems to be mostly concerned with keeping her position of power throughout a war that her side could easily lose. If she seems ethical, then only because both the shapers as well as the rebels have fairly extreme ideas and the middle ground is accidentally more ethical than either of those. On the other hand, she seems genuinely shaken by the revelation that the rebels created the shredbugs. But then, perhaps that is just because it makes a rebel victory more likely and thus means she might have to consider adjusting her views accordingly. Alwan appears to have very strong beliefs that he follows strictly (and somewhat blindly). The laws that he follows are not exactly in favour of creations. Yes, he is straight-forward and honest, but his laws still include things such as immediately destroying rogue creatures, where rogue can mean anything from eating too much or too little to growing some brains and starting a revolution. But if there is nothing else to be said for him, at least he's not a spineless opportunist. He is predictable and dependable. Even if you're a creation. Taygen is a madman. There is nothing ethical or unethical about his views. He acts like someone with a severe phobia. His methods are blunt, but he is not a mass murderer. He is about the only one who is mostly concerned with creations and not at all with other shapers or with rebels. In the shaper belief system, creations are as animals are to us. If Taygen is a mass murderer, everybody in this forum who is not a vegan is one too. The Trakovites are slightly similar. They have the same fears that Taygen has. Their means, however, are much less drastic. They still kill people, but they do it in a coordinated way in order to achieve one specific goal. They're certainly mass murderers, but they're not much different from a country in our world going to war with another over some imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Unlike with many wars in our world, their enemy is real and verifiable by everybody, and power is not among their goals. So while they're still not exactly the most ethical faction, they are still more ethical than the countries that most of the people on this board live in. Actually, I probably have to make that "all of the people on this board". The decision which one of this bunch of hypocrites is the most ethical hypocrite is not easy. Or actually, if hypocrisy is all you care about, it's easy, because Alwan appears to be the one person who is not a hypocrite. But if you think that creations should have rights, you're screwed because everybody else who does is a jerk. If I have to choose, I would choose Alwan as the most ethical, but the Trakovites as the least evil. The least ethical is definitely Ghaldring. All of this IMHO, of course.

Charm and Mass Madness can work as well. Although you have to exercise some caution since charmed researchers attacking enemies that can't directly see you will also cause your being discovered. So if you have Strong Daze, that's probably the better option.

You only have to back to Rawal after finally defeating the presence, driving it away from one part of the foundry core isn't enough. Although going back to him *might* help with noticing those other red areas that you would want to clean out anyway, regardless of any suspicions as to the presence of a presence ;-)

He didn't come back when I killed him in his final location. He only sort of went missing once, and I couldn't find him until I re-entered the zone. But I don't know what happened to him exactly, he *could* have died from poison, or he *could* have been stuck somewhere in the landscape where I didn't notice him.

Even then, the Synthesis Mind's creations may need some careful attention. Being with Litalia's group as well, I found it fairly hard to solve this while strictly following that group's beliefs. Then, when I gave in and talked to the Synthesis Mind so I would at least have its creations supporting me, I still managed to get all of its first wave killed by the first mind. Not sure what happened there, the second attempt that I found myself forced to start soon after that went through without any major pain. (Since I play without canisters this time around, I can't actually make any creations myself that are powerful enough for this part of the game. If you can, I imagine that's enough to turn those fights around completely.)

Originally Posted By: Yerviz As far as soloing one without creations I'm now so sure, my service character hasn't seen much play thus far. I'm not quite sure if kiling an Unbound *with* creations can even be considered "soloing" it. On normal difficulty, it is certainly possible to kill an Unbound without creations. You might have to wait a little longer than you'd have to wait with support from creations, since you have to be able to survive one combat round in which it is concentrating on damaging you without the meatshields. I currently play a Trakovite infiltrator without creations and canisters, and I seem to have an easier time killing them than I had the first time around, when I was playing as a Sorceress in Astoria's faction. That's probably due to knowing the game better by now, though. But generally, since they don't stun you, I consider them easier opponents than some others. Typically, I dump as much poison, acid and lightning on them as I can, then keep healing myself. The regenerative aura is also helpful, and of course I use all the blessing that I have. Occassionally, I will get an extra hit in, or if there are other creations around, a charm. Something else that works sometimes is acid and lightning while the Unbound is busy whacking some unfortunate other creature that I charmed before, then hiding around some corners and waiting until it tracks me down or dies from the DoT spells. (When I was playing the sorceress with creations before, I basically followed the same strategy, except that I'd take less damage since I had a bunch of battle creations between me and the Unbound. But I wasn't really playing that one very well, so it was still hard, and my creations kept dying.) By now, of course, I'm fairly late in the game, level 45 or 46 I think, so the Unbound aren't a problem anymore, but there are still some opponents that are really really tough without creations, e.g. Talis-Eye. Although you can at least get that one to follow you around the corner in the stunlock-free part of his home. But generally, I'd say the Unbound aren't going to be the hardest part of the game if you play without creations, not even by far. Another thing is that they don't seem to have the same strength, so if you didn't kill any until Dera and then failed to kill one there, that doesn't mean you can't kill those back at the beginning in the Mera Fens. Those in Gorash-Kel also seemed a tiny bit harder than those in the fens.

On my first playthrough I managed to slip past Bennhold by keeping him busy with creations, but not really fighting him otherwise. I wiped out everything in his keep, and got all the loot and so on. When I left the zone and later came back, unsurprisingly Bennhold was still in the location I left him in, but somewhat more surprisingly, some of his turrets had regrown. Is this supposed to happen this way? In my currently ongoing game I play a Trakovite without creations and canisters. I didn't seem to be able to slip by without him noticing. I kept attacking Bennhold and fought the turrets and his creations along the way. Those soldiers are a godsend if all you have for meatshields is what charm can provide you with. At some point, he ran away, never to be seen again. Possibly, he died to acid or poison before the healing trigger went off? I cleared out the remainder of his keep, and then, remembering my previous game, left the zone and came back. I found Bennhold back in his original location. Again, some of the turrets had regrown. I fought him again, killing the turrets, and fighting a single wave of four soldiers that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. Except the turrets and those four soldiers, everything else apparently staid dead. Finally, we made our way to his last retreat with the mines and the Rothdizons. Of course, I had cleared that part out before and disabled the mines as well, so that fight wasn't really hard. At one point, Bennhold referred to "testing his creations", but none appeared. Is this the way this was planned, e.g. to give sneaky players a chance to make the last fight easier or completely skip it and still get the canisters? Or do I keep hitting a bug? I play on normal difficulty, maybe some of this isn't possible on the harder levels (like accidentally killing the guy prematurely).

Quote: Originally written by Californian: Just outta curiosity (I guess I'll try it in a replay), why would anyone want to accept the geas in the first place? From a role playing point of view: You're hungry for power. Or you think you're inadequate for the challenge you're facing. After all, the general and everybody else has been telling you so. If you're a potential darksider, you don't care about annoying anyone in Avernum anyway, so it's free power and free stuff. Why not take it? Technically: You get fairly decent rewards, and ticking off a couple of places you're not going to return to isn't a big problem. You can take two rewards and then kill Gladwell when you get to the back entrance. The magus vest (second offensive magic reward) has been pointed out as particularly nice before. Of course you can get it without the geas too, but with the geas, two of your magic users can have it instead of only one ;-) Quote: However, if you don't take it, is there any way to get back to Gladwell and loot his stuff? You can loot his stuff, but not the geas rewards.

If it's just about keeping the game running when an e-mail arrives, Command-Tab will still work.

Just like in real life, you must believe in luck for it to work, and it can't be counted :-)