Dantius

Originally Posted By: The Memes of Yesteryear but it's now also important to have people who show that you can be gay and have it not be a big deal at all. So like J. Edgar Hoover, then?

Originally Posted By: S&M Adventurer Originally Posted By: Excalibur So the Westboro Baptist Church announced that it's going to protest Jobs' funeral--an announcement they made on Twitter via iPhone. Epic hypocrisy. Wait, so was Jobs a homosexual/Jewish/Catholic/soldier/Chinese/tornado victim/9-11 victim/Democrat? Clearly, he's a Muslim, since his father was from Syria. What? It's a stronger connection than the ones for "Obama are muslim!", and plenty of people still seem to think that.

While we're discussing this, why am I the only one who thinks the numpad should be to the left of the keyboard, not the right? The vast majority of people are right handed, so putting the numpad on the right makes it awkward to use. There's very little call outside gaming to use the keyboard and mouse simultaneously, but I use the numpad and the mouse all the time. It just seems like the designer chose... poorly.

Originally Posted By: like the aphex twins in here I hoped and prayed that I would have chance to do this again. Spoiled so as not to inflict this upon people too young to have watched Labyrinth. Well, I'm glad to know I am apparently the solution to all your David Bowie-related prayers.

Originally Posted By: S M Adventurer Some BoA scenario designers actually ban Cloud of Blades in their scenarios because it is ridiculously broken, since the damage scales with level or something like that. Only TM did that, and that was because he didn't want the player to be able to beat the scenario without using his ridiculous custom spells. It wound up being a needlessly restrictive choice that reflected poorly on an otherwise excellent scenario.

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus Originally Posted By: Sarachim Anything that can be done with shift can also be done with caps lock, and vice-versa. There's no way to prove either one works. !@#$%%^&*()_+ That only proves that your Character Map is in working order and that you remember the order the symbols form along the top row.

tHE cAPS lOCK KEY IS THE WORST LOCATED KEY ON HE ENTIRE qwerty KEYBOARD. wHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO PUT IT RIGHT NEXT TO THE "sHIFT" KEY SO IT GETS ACCIDENTALLY PRESSED WHEN TRYING TO CAPITALIZE THE FIRST LETTER OF A SENTENCE?

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Originally Posted By: Eerie Postscience On the other hand, that's the Apple story in a nutshell. Don't do it first, just put the pieces together first, do it better, and make it sell. This. Apple is the David Bowie of the computer world. (And seriously, if those late 80's albums aren't a good analogy for the Newton, I don't know what is.) Jobs' skinny jeans weren't nearly tight enough for the comparison to be apt.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Thus ending speculation on when he will return to Apple. Well, he's already had a Second Coming in 1997, so I guess even speculation on that is right out.

Originally Posted By: Harehunter Actually, speaking strictly as a veteran, I do agree that once our military personnel have been deployed, they should be supplied with whatever resources they need to survive. I don't agree with the notion that all our current deployments were justified or necessary. I do believe that it is past time to end such deployments, which would in fact reduce the need for military funding. Oh absolutely. The problem is, a very good deal of "military" spending isn't actually being spent on insuring this. For instance, apparently it's more important to update our fleet of strategic bombers in order to fight the Cold War 20 years after it ended than to actually equip soldiers with effective body armor or armor for Humvees. Or that, combat aside, that it's somehow acceptable to take hundreds of billions of dollars of federal tax dollars ever year, but still pay some military servicemen wages low enough that they would qualify for food stamps if they had families. The amount of sheer waste and ineffective use of resources in the DoD is simply mind-boggling- I'm sure that literally tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds, could be cut with absolutely no noticeable impact on US military performance or troop welfare, and if resources could be actually reallocated to places where they were needed instead of being wasted on the pet concerns of Pentagon officials, you would probably see huge improvements in troop effectiveness.

Originally Posted By: In memory of the forgetful To about-face, though, what might work well is treating fists like a third option with poles and swords. (Okay, they're already not equal, but bear with me.) Let's suppose the former is supposed to do more damage and the latter is supposed to give you more defense with shields. Give fists another bonus! Access to more or different battle disciplines or similar bonuses? Increased effects against enemies resistant to weapons? One could make it reasonable. Oblivion tried to do this, where using Hand to Hand at a Master level drained enemy Fatigue. Of course, it's next to useless, because you wound up doing a fraction of the damage, and since the worst that could happen when your opponent ran out of fatigue was that they did less damage, it was still inferior to using literally any other weapon, which at Master level caused paralysis. Since there has never been a game where Paralysis hasn't been infinitely better than reduced damage over any time period (coupled with the huge damage bonuses from wielding weapons), HtH was pretty much the most useless skill in the game other than Speechcraft and maybe Mysticism.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Dantius Though, in fairness, if you were older, it would probably still suspicious, because who keeps financial documents on their computer anymore? where else would you keep them, a Filofax? You keep your important financial documents on the Internet, which ironically is also the same place you keep your important financial documents.

Originally Posted By: Pseudorandomizer Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Pseudorandomizer It was a sad sad day when I filled up the three GB drive on my first computer...I had to delete the folder "Important Financial Documents" in order to install Starcraft there are better ways to hide your porn you know It was that obvious? Drats! Really, it was obvious only because you're probably too young to have to deal with "important financial documents". Though, in fairness, if you were older, it would probably still suspicious, because who keeps financial documents on their computer anymore?

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Avernum is worse since you don't have wound anymore to fight them. Or Antimagic Field, for that matter.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S You know, the rest of us have political opinions too, but we don't feel the need to intertwine them with our statements of fact. I didn't see any problem with his statements. I mean, disagree with it or not, it's a fairly realistic assessment to say that the current political tack is decidedly against expansion of executive power, or even against governmental expansion in general, and it's certainly true that one of the chief targets of the Tea Party movement is the concept of "wasteful" (whatever that means) government spending of the kind earmarks usually involve.

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega He'd be hard pressed to come up with a better sale's title than "Glorious October Carnage" if he did, though. "October Price Revolution"?

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Dantius Wait, really? I was under the impression that the increase in essence and energy was applied every 2 levels after 10 for points invested in INT, and likewise for damage dies in Magical attacks. Are you sure that's the case that it only applies to defensive skills? I was pretty certain it applied to all bonuses from skills, offensive or defensive. sorry bro, your impression came from nowhere . Looks like I'll have to do another playthrough now that I know it's not wasting points to go from 10 to 14 in a skill.

Originally Posted By: Rent-an-Ihrno Hundreds of thousands of dollars? You sure? It's a Fermi estimate. We only have data for G4. His price point then was $28, and when he posted, he had sold around 4000 copies, plus some hint books, so at that time he had pulled in around $120,000, which was incidentally the price to make the game. With some extra customers factored in from the releases of G5, A5, and A6, we'll say that he's increased his customer base, or converted pirates, or whatever, so he now sells 5000 units. At $25, the initial price for Avadon (IIRC? Was it 20?), he sells, say, 5k copies for a total profit of $125,000. Then factor in Apple store purchase, presume he gets 70% of $10, so that's $7. I figured that the purchases are largely independent, so that, with a few exceptions, people aren't going to buy it from Jeff and steam, so if another 5-6K people buy it on the MAS, that's around $40,000. Now there's Steam. The price on Steam was $10, so if they take a 50% cut, which is very high, and sell around 10,000 copies, which I think is quite feasible, then that's another $50,000 for Jeff. Sum those up and you get somewhere in excess of $200,000, minus the, oh, $150,000 it took to make it, and that means that less than a year after release, Jeff's already in the black, whereas for G4, which he stated was an "average" seller, he was still in the hole (just barely) a year after release, and so the amount of money made by Avadon was quite a shocking jump from prior games, maybe even to he tune of six figures.

Originally Posted By: Pseudorandomizer Related: How do people here feel about wolf hunting? IMHO, as long as they aren't interfering with us they're okay, but as soon as they interfere with people's livelihoods... That's tricky. You've got to be careful that you don't kill so many wolves that you upset the ecological balance and cause a population explosion in something that the wolves prey on, like deer- who might then consume all the food for the ranchers and cause more damage than the wolves, etc.. However, that shouldn't even be a problem, because it's probably way easier in the long run to simply keep the wolves away with fences and technology rather than take the time to hunt them down and kill them. And, of course, there's no skill in mowing down animals with machine guns, and I detest people who do so and call it sport. Rifles, on the other hand...

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Those are all skills that have never had a 10-cap. The 10-cap mostly applies to defensive skills and in some but not all Geneforge games, to shaping skills. The 10-cap is never applied to bonus dice from skills. Wait, really? I was under the impression that the increase in essence and energy was applied every 2 levels after 10 for points invested in INT, and likewise for damage dies in Magical attacks. Are you sure that's the case that it only applies to defensive skills? I was pretty certain it applied to all bonuses from skills, offensive or defensive.

Originally Posted By: tmsidrschnapper Well, it's like studying magic ;-) So it would add some realism, like the food aspect in avernum. The problem is that Jeff has made the business decision that "realism", if it make the games needlessly complicated and difficult for new players to adapt to, has to go. So while it may be nice for experienced players, Jeff can make a lot (and I mean a lot, Avadon probably has brought in a couple hundred k by now by my Fermi estimate) more money for himself. So if you, when designing a game, were given the choice between "satisfying the tiny audience of hardcore RPG fans with complex and arcane mechanics and characters" and "making an easily accessible and fun game for the masses", where picking the latter choice netted you tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars more in profit, it's pretty clear that you would pick the latter one, and that's exactly what Jeff did.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Also: Corleone? Really? Well, I figured I might as well get a jump-start on the Godfather references, since they're going to be inevitable. Ya got a problem with that, buddy?

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S It's traditionally been referred to as the 10-cap. Typically it applies to some but not all skills. I think cap is a fair descriptor, though, because it is usually not worth investing beyond 10 (or whatever will get you to 10, with items) in skills with the 10-cap. Parry is the only major exception I can think of, where investing beyond 10 can be useful despite the existence of a 10-cap. Intelligence, Mental Magic, Spellcraft, and Mechanics are all worth pumping past 10 in at least one game, if not more.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan What are your favourite albums? Albums that have personal meaning to you, albums where you love each and every track on them, albums that you never tire listening to. By "albums" you mean "records", right? Okay, good. 1. Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, Chicago Symphony Chorus 1984 2. Giuseppe Verdi, Messa Da Requiem, St. Hedwig's Cathedral Choir, 1960. 3. Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, 1976 4. Richard Wagner, Antal Dorati Conducts Orchestral Highlights from Wagner's Ring, National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC, 1975 5. Andrew Lloyd Weber, Jesus Christ Superstar, 1970 6. Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade, New York Philharmonic, 1973 7. Holst, The Planets, Scottish National Orchestra, 1980. 8. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, The Sting, 1973 9. Georges Bizet, Carmen (Or CAR MEN as it's rendered on the album cover), Orchestre National De France, 1984 10. Franz Liszt, Dante Symphony, USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra (this one is an mp3, so naturally it's inferior to all the others)

Originally Posted By: Stugri-La Originally Posted By: Necris Omega I've only had exposure to the Macintosh platform through college, and even then only in my art courses. I was a biology major in college, and found that pretty much every professor in the genetics/evolution dept. favored macs. Apparently, a good deal of phylogenetic tree software is mac-only. Phew, good thing I dodged that bullet then. On the other hand, it's pretty much the exact opposite in civil engineering departments. Autodesk products are industry standard for everything from designing skyscrapers to sewers, and they only started offering Mac compatibility again very, very recently, which is almost certainly the biggest reason that I'm not a Mac person.