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*i

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Everything posted by *i

  1. First, I want to formally apologize to Sylae and anyone who may have felt offended because of actions on this board. If there are people being seriously offensive to you, please do as Kel says,
  2. I seem to recall the only reference to raising the dead in cannon I can think of is in A1 when you slay Hawthorne. I believe something gets said about how his dust blows out the window so they can't resurrect him. Could be fuzzy memory on my part, though, as it's been over a decade now.
  3. Yeah, what a lot of people are saying about how aggressively we lock those things. During certain periods, the collection of people present at the time would all but guarantee controversy (early on TM being notable in this regard, also Alec to a lesser degree, and others too). Our current period has been relatively low key not needing too much moderation at all (knock on wood) and things usually don't get out of hand too much.
  4. Overwhelming, that's someone I haven't thought about in quite some time. I had forgotten about all that stuff. Rereading it, I now know why. Anyway, all these trips to the PPP and Wayback are bringing up some dusty old memories. Hard to believe all this was that long ago now.
  5. As far as Era 1, I tend to think of it in four epochs: 1) Early Days -- The first few months after Blades of Exile was released where most community interaction centered around websites. This predates the ITW Aceron board days. I would say anyone with a website or a scenario released during this time would belong to this epoch. Some people: Akhronath, Zaloopa, Brett Bixler, Aceron, Derin, Olly, Tony Wilsdon, JtP, Jesse Thrall, Stareye, Tarl, Scott Evans, BGracefield, Sean Rea, Ryan Saneka (also Lump), Kylaer, Chatty, Heng Yee Zhe. Some may be a little later, but not by much. 2) Old BoE Days -- Sometime around March or April 1998, the ITW took off and serious scenarios stated to come out. The arena also began sometime in the summer of 1998. A flurry of scenario design activity occurred from about the summer to the deadline of the first contest. Perhaps this could be called the "Silver Age of Blades" (see epoch 4). 3) The Interregnum -- Official support for BoE from Spiderweb began to wane and many of the stalwart designers left after the contest concluded. Scenario design continued at a slower pace. The arena chugged along and kept things going. There were long periods of several days where no posts were made on ITW. Over time, Aceron and other major personalities left or faded away. 4) The Lyceum -- The Lyceum was founded by Alcritas and the ITW collapsed, the community shifted there. Some old personalities remained, as well as new ones. Focus at the Lyceum was largely on BoE scenario design, and has been called the "Golden Age of Blades".
  6. Quote: But now I realize that this is awkward. Heat and heat transport is my particular research focus. You might think that this means I know all about it, but with my kind of fundamental theoretical physics, it doesn't work that way. I know almost nothing about heat. I'm not even sure what it is. That's why I'm working on it. I have a blog about it, actually, though I haven't posted anything for about two years. I should write a few more entries. I have some more stuff to say now. I know what you mean about things you thought you understood well as an undergraduate or grad student becoming more and more mysterious as you learn more about it. I really look forward to hearing what you have to say on this topic. Trying to understand what has been termed the mesoscale regime of physics really is a hot topic these days. We've understood how things behave at the macroscopic scale (things we can physically see) for quite some time. More recently, we've come understand the atomic and molecular levels, with interactions of a few particles fairly well. Connecting the two is very difficult, and while we may have a good idea of why macroscopic properties such as enthalpy, conductivity, elasticity, etc. come about, we don't really understand how. For example, take plasticity (the irreversible stretching of a material). We know it is meaningful to talk about it in the context of rods of steel. We also know that it is not meaningful to talk about the plasticity of one iron atom. But, how many bonded iron atoms do we need before a property such as this becomes meaningful to speak of? 1,000? 10,000? If not that, then 11,000? Is there some intermediate type of plasticity? If so, what characterizes it? All of these are related fascinating questions that hopefully we'll have answered someday within our lifetimes.
  7. Quote: To sum up the two procedures involved in diffusion are mathematically equivalent to conduction and convection , But physically they are totally different and hence it is only reasonable to call diffusion a seperate phenomena altogether. Not sure everyone would agree with this statement. What is often called, and you are calling, diffusion is more explicitly mass diffusion. There are analogous types of diffusion for momentum and energy. Much confusion arises because the macroscopic quantities were named and explained before we understood the underlying (atomic-level) reasons why they occur. Taking a step back, there are three conserved quantities that arise from classical kinetic theory: mass, momentum, and energy. Each of these quantities tends to spread out over time because of the same fundamental process, random atomic motion. At a macroscopic level, these processes are called (mass) diffusion for mass, viscosity (or friction) for momentum, and conduction for energy. To make things more confusing, convection has its own ambiguities with terminology. What is clear is a term called advection, which is the process of moving conserved quantities (mass, momentum, or energy) via bulk fluid flow. Convection can either be just advection or the sum of both advection and diffusion, depending on the definition. How does advection differ from mass, momentum, and energy diffusion? The latter results from random motions of particles and tends to lead to an increase in a quantity called entropy. Bulk (non-random) movement of material and transfer of conserved properties is conservative and reversible -- in other words, no entropy is generated in the process. Of course, this is only in theory. In practice, you cannot move a material without some diffusion occurring (think friction, for example), but this is a distinct, having different underlying atomic processes.
  8. Think of conduction as a spreading out of stuff. Consider putting a drop of ink in a cup of water. The ink molecules tend to spread out until you have a homogeneous mixture, and not the other way, as per the second law of thermodynamics. The next leap of thought to get conduction is rather than thinking of individual molecules themselves, think about the random kinetic energy of those molecules. If you have a concentration of molecules that are moving very fast next to those that are slower, eventually they will all be moving with (on average) the same speed. The difference from convection is that conduction is a process based solely from the average of random motion of molecules and the second law. Convection is based on non-random bulk motion of a fluid. If I push a hot fluid into a cold fluid (or vice versa), the energy transfers that way. Note that I can move cold to hot, and this does not violate the second law because I had to provide mechanical work to make that happen. Most of the time, you can safely ignore radiation, unless the object gets really hot, then it quickly swamps out all other modes of heat transfer as it gets hotter.
  9. Very neat. Jeff, I'm wondering if you both have the time and think there's enough interesting things to write on your blog about what inspired some of your games.
  10. *i

    Elections in 2012

    "Fair and Balanced...", Orwell would be proud. When I owned a TV still, I would periodically turn on Fox "News" for entertainment. One of the best segments was in Fall 2007, they had a special on "Hillary-Safe Stocks" for what to invest in if the presumptive Democratic nominee at the time became president and the accompanying economic disaster that was strongly implied would ensue as a direct result of her policies. Sad irony is that said disaster didn't even wait for the election. Even more sad is that large segments of the US populace buy this stuff unquestioningly. Not stating that the other news agencies are perfect by any long shot, but Fox takes it to a whole new level.
  11. Good to hear. Since I already finished 1.0 to my satisfaction, I hadn't bothered to upgrade.
  12. Quote: Additionally, this made the incorrect tool tip message (also not new: it has been around in some form since Geneforge 1 in 2001 -- ten years!!!) a much bigger problem. Why Jeff doesn't just take the extra minute to fix this is beyond me.
  13. Quote: If I decide to have it beta tested, I post the beta scenario here. While I've been out of the scenario design game for quite some time, I can assure you that beta testing is imperative. Everyone misses or does not realize things when they write a scenario and having other people play it and break things is the only way to find them. Trust me. Far better than to test and miss the contest deadline than submit a broken scenario.
  14. VCH, I'm looking at you here and I'm going to hold you partially responsible for encouraging any bad behavior. Instigation is not acceptable. Same goes for anyone else. Understand? I think this thread has run its course.
  15. The Witch is really Erika, or at least a construct made by her. If you do that quest, seeing her is easier. Once you see her for real, the quest becomes moot.
  16. 1) Aimee only wakes up once to give you part of the password. After that she stays in her trance. Are you sure you don't already have that part? 2) Not sure what bridge you are referring to. Be more specific. 3) Maybe. Although if you killed her before getting her part of the password, you can cheat by typing shift-D and type "ikilledathron" to get around it.
  17. Because of a suspicious death in the royal family that has not been confirmed nor denied, some titles have been rolled back. Oh, and if anyone asks, we have always been at war with Avernum.
  18. My biggest suggestion is more content. Namely I would like to be able to explore the Empire Lands a little more freely, but at my own risk. Really neat would be if following the meeting of the Council in Olgai, the next leg to took you to Ornatha Ziggurat for that part followed by you sneaking your way back to Avernum. Not gonna happen, but I can dream...
  19. I always pay the premium rate for his games, even though I know there are cheaper options elsewhere. Some might call me stupid, but I find it in my own self-interest to chip in what I consider a fair price asked for if it helps produce more games. I mean, most economical use of $20 on entertainment I spend.
  20. Anyone who can write games of this scope with himself and a couple of people helping out is hardly lazy. It's more as to what makes business sense in terms of minimizing costs (his time) versus maximizing profits. There's a sweet spot somewhere and Jeff probably is pretty close to it these days.
  21. Hmmm...custom title of "New Arrival". That would just be too mean.
  22. Quote: —Alorael, who is also pretty sure *i reaches directly into ethereal forms and squeezes souls like oranges to make his morning juice. Correct you are. Speaking of which, I just renormalized the rankings. Downward, of course. Bwahahahaha!
  23. Yes, it has multiple meanings, that's where the subtlety of context arises. I don't like it either, but many words in the English language have multiple meanings. While I hate using dictionaries and arguing definitions, because you can find a reference to justify just about any reasonable definition of the word if you search hard enough, we will. Even the definition you gave uses or, which means the speaker is free to use any one of them. So when I say "haphazard", I could mean any one of "lack of order", "lack of planning", "by irregularity", or "by randomness". Most native speakers can usually grasp the intent of the usage, but, if you are confused, please ask. Don't blame the speaker because the English language itself is imprecise and depends on context for specific meanings, and even then, leaves ambiguity at times. Quote: Anyway in one sentence it's about players that think and the other about other players that... what? They don't think? Lol that's ridiculous. And you insist on that is ridiculous, there's a clear elitist meaning in some of your posts. You should take care about that and what it means for other. Again, you're misrepresenting what I'm saying. Maybe it's lost in translation here, but calling my (and others) posts "ridiculous" and "elitist" is not very respectful at all, and while I'm trying to be accommodating since I understand the language issues, you're being offensive here, whether you realize it or not. Please stop now. Back to the subject at hand, I'll try to clarify further. Not all players play the game with optimal builds in mind. I venture that many do not. They play the game primarily for the story and don't want to put too much effort into optimizing their builds. It's not because they're ignorant or lazy, it's because the activity of picking the best stats and equipment is just not fun for them. A game developer has to cater to both people who enjoy playing the game, but for different reasons.
  24. Agree with Slarty here. There are many subtleties in the English language as there are in just about all other spoken languages. Sorry, we're not going to enforce strict language standards here. Best way is when in doubt, ask. When someone says haphazardly in the context of what Slarty was saying, I don't think random. I think a lack of thought. In this case, not weighing various options about which piece of equipment is better. That's the difference between a casual and a more dedicated gamer; not that there's anything necessarily wrong with either approach up to a point, but balance becomes very difficult because you, as a game developer, need to account for both optimal and highly suboptimal (up to a point) builds. When someone says random, I would think that they selected their equipment based on the roll of dice, flipping coins, random number generator, etc. In other words, players would assign some probability to using a crude dagger and go with that if the random numbers said so. It's a subtle distinction, but to complicate matters, sometimes people will use the words interchangeably. Often times they will say "random" when they really mean "haphazard" or (more commonly) "miscellaneous".
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