The Almighty Doer of Stuff

I think I murdered four or five people in Formello before the guards came after me. Maybe. It might have even been that Jeff forgot to set the crime threshold for Formello.

The best scenario is the Tutorial. It's all downhill from there.

There needs to be a three-episode arc about the Hydra Nest.

Well, I said EATEN by a bear, not just killed, as people have been saying. That adds another layer of complexity. http://www.almightywebsite.com/awos/hhh/ I don't know why it says "awos". That is the directory on the server in which I keep The Almighty Website of Stuff and it's not meant to be visible in the URL. When I uploaded HHH, it just kind of appended that to it. How can I fix that? All the links are broken as a result.

[spoileralt=whoops]I want a happy future for Exile, not what I hear happens in the Great Trials trilogy. A reboot would be cool.[/spoileralt]

SMoE has popped in briefly occasionally, but not for more than a post or two, IIRC. Welcome back, SMoE!

I think there's an undeniable similarity between the words "Port" and "Pete". It's the same consonants on either side of differen vowels. It might be something to keep an eye on anyway. I haven't played E/A3 too indepth.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this before, not even me. Is Jeff a fan of The Who? There is a city in Exile/Avernum 3 called Port Townsend. It's the name of anearby ttown, as noted, but the lead/rhythm guitarist, principle songwriter, and frequent lead singer of The Who is Pete Townshend, and there is another town in E3 called Moon, IIRC, and the lead drummer for The Who was named Keith Moon. It's been a very long time since I played Exile or Avernum 3, so I'm wondering if it's possible that there are other references to them in those towns or elsewhere. If any of you don't know, the other members of the band are Roger Daltrey, primary lead singer, and John Entwistle, lead bassist, occasional brass player, and occasional lead singer and songwriter. When Keith's drug addiction killed him, he was, after a time, replaced by John "Rabbit" Bundrick on keyboards, and Kenny Jones, formerly of Small Faces/Faces, on drums. That lineup lasted for two albums and the band broke up for the forty-seventh time. John Entwistle also had a drug problem and died from a cocaine-induced heart attack during preparations for their Endless Wire album, but that was long after Exile III. Pete's devotion to Meher Baba, a man who claimed he was an avatar of the divine alongside Buddha, Jesus, etc., requires sobriety. His devotion to Baba is one of Pete's favorite things to write about, alongside child abuse and psychology. I included the word "lead" that many times because the whole band could keep their own time perfectly and therefore didn't need a rhythm section. It makes for a very unusual sound. Townshend and Entwistle each came up with a bunch of interesting characters, because they like telling stories with their music. I'm about to vomit up every one of them I'm familiar with and will let you all sort it out. Notable characters with names: Boris the spider, Tommy Walker and his father, Captain Walker (he is introduced in the song "Rael" from The Who Sell Out, but not by name; it acts as the background of the rock opera Tommy - you can even hear a motif in "Rael" which also plays in "Sparks" and "Underture" from Tommy), Sally Simpson, Uncle Ernie the child molester (Moon played this role in the film version of Tommy), Cousin Kevin, Jimmy Cooper who struggles with dissociative identities, Ivor the engine driver, Happy Jack, transboy Bill and his sisters Jean-Marie, Felicity, and Sally-Joy, Lily the dead pinup model, the Ace Face (Moon performs lead vocals, playing the character in the rock opera Quadrophenia), the Acid Queen, Mary Ann with the shaky hand (haven't heard the song yet but she's named obviously). There's also Sister Disco, whom I believe is just disco music personified for poetic effect, but there it is. I'm not as obsessive about these guys as I am about The Beatles or They Might Be Giants, but if you see something suspicious that might be related, I might be able to confirm or deny it if Internet searching doesn't suffice. EDIT: Tommy's mother, known only as Mrs. Walker, is a major character in Tommy as well, and you might be able to count Whiskey Man, a hallucinatory drinking buddy. It's a psychology song but in this case Entwistle wrote it, not Townshend.

I'm sorry to hear you're unwell, Harehunter. I have a sinus infecton and have been advised to rest. I expect it will be a simple matter to put your site up in a couple minutes and what just fell off the bottom of my chair

You're actually supposed to be able to do things out of order in A1-3. It's part of the draw, having the option of going to get yourself slaughtered by wandering too far or alternatively using strategy to overcome difficult battles too early in the game. If Jeff Vogel still hasn't heard about this bug, kindly email him at support@spiderwebsoftware.com . Thanks!

CBoE is Ormus's older version. It runs more or less, but it's loaded with bugs. You may wish to use the "Experimental builds" linked in the forum header. I think the latest version is closest to the top of the list. We've been calling that "OBoE" or Open Blades of Exile and it has a lot of bug fixes, although it's still (supposedly) being tested. One of these days I'll feel like my old self again and I can do all the things that I need and want to do again. Right now I'm semi-conscious, pointlessly anxious, and scrambling fruitlessly to get my business going for the holiday shopping season. Some day I'll help out again. I always loved it and I know it's probably pointless because next to nobody plays BoE anyway these days but I still wish I could help again...

I'm afraid the free pudding would be poor compensation for all the rest of that. It may be the mania talking but what you said invoked a feeling in me like that type of horror movie where they take something innocent and sacred and totally corrupt it to invoke a feeling of revulsion. I think the Japanese like it a lot IIRC. Sorta like a really sexy actress who is playing a heavily-decomposing zombie eating her character's own child. Or something.

I'm having trouble following your post, Hyena of Ice. Missing words, unclear pronouns and addressing, and it was Harehunter who mentioned Parkinson's Disease, not RainbowDashRadical. As far as overcompensating, I once spent a while daydreaming about hanging out with Twilight Sparkle, like, all day, for a couple weeks. I couldn't figure out why but I just knew it was more pleasant than spending time with my then-girlfriend. Eventually I realized that if my now-ex was an otherkin, she would be Twilight Sparkle (circa season 2), and something was seriously broken in our relationship that was making the horse more appealing company than the human. We sorted it out, but of course it didn't last long anyway.

I wonder, how much of the non-optimization can be chalked up to efficiency vs. production time?

There is no such thing as a normal person, and it is not abnormal to need the help of a mental health professional. To my knowledge, about 1/4 of the population has a mental illness which impacts their lives.

Come to think of it, growing up, I had a number of imaginary friends myself, well into my late teens. I never had any real friends, nevermind girlfriends, so I made them up. My "friends" were assorted video game characters and my "girlfriends" were as well, as well as girls I actually knew from school. All heavily fictionalized, of course, because I never talked to them to find out anything about them other than that they were pretty. I didn't go so far as to try to get people to think I was dating them, mind you. I kept it secret. I never had a good therapist until 2011, largely due to stubbornness. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now if I had one back then. What resulted from this extended isolation was I ended up in a relationship with a lady named Ashley, the first one who came along, which lasted over seven years. That sounds good, but due to my lack of real-life socialization, she was looking for a boyfriend and ended up with a son instead, and now I have to live with the guilt that that's 7+ years spent with me that she'll never get back. I actually was forced into group therapy by my mother, where I was thrust into a group of over 100 people five days per week. It was hard for a while, but it became easier within a few months, and then it became like home. I was surprised to find that despite my long-held beliefs, I am actually rather extroverted, not really introverted. I just never knew because I never put myself around a lot of people and tried to talk to them. Now I'm out of the program and doing other social things. I'm single now, having been on exactly one date since early last year when Ashley ditched me. I don't even especially care anymore, because I have such a healthy social life. Group therapy may not be your thing, but most people who go through social isolation find that the only way to break the spell is by stepping outside one's comfort zone. After I left the program I forgot I still needed to socialize and made myself sick again, so in a few minutes I'll be heading over to a clubhouse for the mentally ill. I actually find the mentally ill make for the best company, at least as far as I'm concerned, but that's another story. EDIT: No I won't. If the clubhouse is open today like I think they said they'd be, they're not answering their phones. Nevertheless, I got dressed. That's always a good thing.

I want to set this straight: I didn't say anyone "needed" anything, I didn't call anyone crazy, and I didn't "leap" to anything. Please don't accuse me of things I did not do.

I don't know if you're joking. I second Randomizer: See a professional. Note that if you're actually seeing or hearing Katie, or anyone/anything else that other people don't seem to see/hear, that could be a sign of schizophrenia (although it's not necessarily). Schizophrenia, left untreated, plays hell with the social life. Schizophrenia is MY problem though and that's why I'm talking about it. It's what I know. Nobody here can give you really good advice tailored to YOUR situation, not even Dear Leader, and when he sees this he will probably tell you so. Please see a professional. Really.

I'm thankful for my friends, family, and psychiatric treatment team, as well this place. I joined here in 2001 when I was 13. It had its ups and downs and parts of Spidweb history screwed me up pretty badly for a long time, but all in all I feel smarter and more creative for the experience. I don't think I was ready to have normal interactions with my classmates at that time of my life and Spidweb gave me interaction with intelligent, more-or-less compassionate people and a community where people seemed interested in talking to me, so I'm glad for that.

Dying while doing something risky or exciting is a valid answer to the question. You just can't go into it hoping or expecting to die, the difference between jumping out of airplane and your parachute fails to open, and jumping out of an airplane with no parachute.

I predicted what that was before I googled it. *facepalm*

Exile III is not a DOS program and therefore would probably not work in DOS anyway. If you can get your hands on a copy of Windows 98 or XP and run it in Virtualbox, you may have better luck. Windows 98 could probably run in Dosbox as well, if you prefer Dosbox. Bear in mind that I'm not the most technologically inclined person around here, though.

The Franklin Park Zoo has no bears.

The messiness rule is Alorael's. You don't have to adhere to it if you don't want to. Bear in mind that rules regarding how explicitly messy it is, is still his jurisdiction as forum administrator. (Unrelated note: I just noticed the silliness of a forum that proudly tells people "Leave your sanity at the door" having a psychiatrist for an administrator. >_< )

My answer: Eaten by a bear. In downtown Boston. Here's my thinking on this. Certain circumstances would have to coincide to make this possible: First of all, bears live in the woods, and there are no woods in downtown Boston. Therefore, either someone would have to secretly smuggle the bear in and and release it, or it would have had to wander through town from the nearest forest, and arrive downtown, with nobody noticing it, like a sneaky stealth bear. Furthermore, I would have to be in the area at that time. The bear would have to ambush me because if I saw it I would run away. Also, anyone else in the area at the time would have to ignore or not notice the bear, not alert me that the bear is stalking me, and not intervene when the bear attacks. Any way it goes, I think it would make for an interesting story on the news the next morning.