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Sotha

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Everything posted by Sotha

  1. Hm... I am starting to pick up interesting value differences. Would never kill even one person for 1M money, because I would have to live with my conscience afterwards. I strive for truth and integrity and for what I perceive to be right. I think most people I know seem to be like that, and it seems to be a norm. Usually if I identify people with psychopathic tendencies, I withdraw from them, because they are selfish and dangerous if their agenda conflicts with mine. (I've encountered a few cases.) I do not crave for more money, because I think I have enough of it for basic needs and happiness. I suppose the situation would be different if I was starving to death, then it might be a different matter to kill. So I guess you are right that desperation causes people to be more easily influenced. But scientists are usually well off, so they are not that easy to influence. In my current state, if my employer would require of me something conflicting with my values, I would not do it. Same applies for my colleagues, typically. There might be a few spineless exceptions, but those are easy to spot eventually. If their science is dubious, they get a brand pretty quickly. Mistakes are ok and part of the business, but cheating is not. If you lose you credibility once, it is impossible to get it back. This socio-economic war and extermination of gene lines sounds a bit exaggeration, too. At least it didn't feel like fighting a war sitting in the lectures, bored witless. If it really was a struggle against my fellow students, why did we then help each other out? Because we were there together and collaborating was beneficial for us all. The sum was greater than the parts. That's how science works best: you have a bunch different field specialist who play together for a common goal, rather than struggling against each other. Also, I do not identify with the term naive, because I consider myself one of the cynical people I know. But there are levels in cynicism as well. I have clearly met my match. The society is not a struggle or war. It is a common well-being project. Of course not all are as well off as everyone else, but there has always been mechanisms to help those who are at the bottom of the society. The systems could be better, sure, but the fact they exist is a sound argument against this society is war -idea. If society was a war, those who end up at the bottom would be just allowed to die off. But that is not human. It is human to try to help them.
  2. Wait a minute! Let's follow this through. "Elite", in general level, is a tribalistic term used of "othering." It means that: *we are we, together. *elites are them. *they are the enemy, the conspirators, the source of our problems. *We are pure and innocent. They are the ones to blame. We don't blame ourselves, we blame them. It is super-easy and acceptable among us. None of them is with us, so when we blame them, they are not around to defend themselves. We do not need to understand them. *they should be defined loosely, so we can blame them more efficiently. We can easily choose from news when They yet again perpetrate crimes against us. When something bad happens, it wasn't us. It is them. *if you're with them, you cannot be with us. This othering has been used for ages. It prepares people to use violence against Them, because they are the enemy, not even human. If They have a name, a personality, a consciousness, same as us, we are reluctant to hurt them. But if they are just them, it is not a problem. Othering is used a lot these days. It could be elites, immigrants, Finns, Swedes, Americans, Russians, blacks, whites, jews, nazis, Europian Union, gays, heteros, grandmothers, etc. Your group/echo chamber get to choose who it wants to be Them. Does this make any sense? Howsabout thinking that we, the whole humanity (nobody excluded), are quite similar in our basic needs, and are quite similar in our virtues and vices? And we all are in the same boat (On the same planet) with the climate change. Against that backdrop, othering does not appear to be useful, if one wants to do good moral decisions.
  3. @Outlooker, But who is the elite who conspires against the people? You say :(rulers, scientists, top management, actively governing elements of the upper class etc.)" I belong to the science class/caste and know a lot of people in my class, internationally. Not me nor my colleagues are aware of any conspiracy. We didn't receive any letter from fellow conspirators inviting us aboard their little global scheme. I see you really distrust elites, but please define the elite you distrust more accurately. I am a scientist, but I do not consider myself as elite. I do not know elites personally. The elites are always in the higher echelons of society. I wonder if even elites consider themselves as elites, but rather just ordinary people, working with their higher-than-usual salaries. At least the science caste seems to be, from my point of view -as an insider-, out from the conspiracy. This is comforting, because the science class is responsible for the analysis of the global warming phenomenon. If the elites are conspiring with climate change, they are conspiring without the science castes support. I do not think the end result would be convincing.. "I do not think it can be trusted, because scientific studies were messed with in the past, for example in medicine to sell drugs, or in nutrition, to sell sugar or cigarettes, and all this on such a grand scale that those lies became "scientific consensus"." Please reconsider this sentiment. If we distrust science in general, we can just close the shop, abandon all hope in understanding the world, and go back to any religious dogma of our choosing. Game over, man. Game over. Science is the only worthwhile tool for the humanity to know what is "probably" true and real. "Probably", because it is a self healing process. Sometimes data gets wrong, sometimes interpretation of the data gets wrong, sometimes data is manipulated. But as an ongoing process, in time, science provides more accurate and more reliable information about the world. Theory could be totally wrong, but still predict the phenomenon pretty well. Later, the theory gets fixed when we know more. It would be foolish to disregard science completely, because past mistakes or wrongdoings. A validation for this is that we enjoy large technological advances all the time: this means that the exploited phenomena are understood. This means that the underlying science is probably correct. This means the science caste is doing an awesome job. Science is not perfect, but it is the best thing we have to understand stuff. The only thing we have. Thus, I would never allow a random internet discussion to influence my perceptions, unless there was some sound scientific evidence (from a reliable source and publication) to back the claims up. This is the main problem of our era: people think saying so or believing so is as good as scientific data indicating so. They are not. Only scientifically proven evidence should be considered. Anyone can say anything and the truth value of the thing could be anything. With scientific data you can measure the truth-value of a statement. Conspiracy theories are a waste of time like any speculation without the means to prove it experimentally. You could be wrong. You could be right. You cannot verify it. Speculate all you want but the truth value of your conclusions are as good as any random statement. It could be lot of fun to speculate, but do not expect to know more about the world afterwards. Has anyone seen any phd thesis (with peer-reviewed published articles) on conspiracies or the psychology of it? That would be an interesting read.
  4. Springheel loaded spike trap! I like it! Howsabout trigger_shooter? Shooters hurt everybody, right? Just fire an invisible bullet that does the damage you want? Or make it to be springloaded spike SHOOTER trap, where you shoot a spike at the victim.
  5. Wow! Nice! Like I expected, the folks in this forum never fail in generating interesting points of views. Outlooker really put an interesting piece here. Thank you for that! Some of the topics, I am familiar with, and the arguments sound convicing or at least match with my perceptions. But! I may be cutting some corners here but the main argument seems a little far fetched: "Climate change is a conspiracy by the elites. Its purpose is to prevent the worker class from getting too rich and start slacking off, which would result in the economy to grind to a halt." (Sorry if I misunderstood, this is what I truly got when I connected the dots.) I always get very sceptical when consipiracy theories come up. They often assume god-like skill from the ones running them: no info get spilled out to the public, the conspiracy runs like a train without issues, everything unfolds as intended, etc, etc. In the real world, nothing ever works like that. Doing even a basic thing gets sidetracked by unexpected hurdles. Trying to keep a secret with 3 people, never stays a secret unless 2 of the people are dead. It seems a lot to swallow that an international conspiracy is running without it getting exposed somehow. Remember, the climate change was first put forth by the researchers, and the elites did not listen to the message. Or course conspiracy theory allows the explanation that it was intentional. Also, I don't think the economy works the way you present: if we would make everyone a millionaire by printing more money, the value of money would be obliterated by inflation and a single piece of pizza would cost millions of euros. I like your optimism and you have an interesting theory there, but it isn't well supported by peer reviewed scientific literature. (Not that I claim to be 100% informed by all the publications, I've just read stuff here and there.) On the comment of nuclear power: yes, it is nice as long as it works. Then if the power plant is damaged (Chernobyl, Fukushima), you get areas where people cannot (or do not want to) go anymore. The radiation in the Chernobyl area is real and it is changing the organisms that live there. And the effects last for a very long time. So it is not exactly the safest way to power things either. It is great as long as no accidents happen. And I guess we all know how well we humans can avoid accidents. They happen eventually.
  6. Yes, it is true that the media presents news items with some extra "impact" because it must do so in order to sell (Nowadays synonymous with evoking deep feelings and negative feelings are more easily evoked than positive ones.) I am aware of these and often try to lean to summaries of scientific literature when dealing with news (I do not have access to the actual papers anymore. Earth-Venus greenhouse effect is one possibility, but as you said, nobody knows the probability of this outcome. A more probable result, I believe (no probabilities here), is loss of farmland globally, famine, fending off waves and waves of refugees, civil unrest, some kind of collapse with lots of loss of life and ultimately adaptation. Knowing humanity, the same thing continues and occurs again later, but that is way outside my life span. Have people on the forums taken actual actions in order to improve their and their loved ones' chances of NOT ending among those who die?
  7. There are some well-informed people on the forums, so I was thinking of presenting some thoughts for your critical analysis. This is a bit uncommon internet post for our era because I hope your input can change my line of reasoning instead of echo-chambering the same message back, tenfold. To save your time, I present the thing briefly: 1) Humans are exceeding the global resource limits. 2) The economic system incentives or requires infinite growth and increased consumption, while issue 1) is still in play. 3) The society and welfare is built based on the premise of infinite growth and increasing productivity, both of which increases 1) and 2). 4) One might argue that new technology might change things, but thus far it looks like technology only increases 1), 2) and 3). Even if you invent the miracle of zero-cost-energy-from-nowhere, you still need to consume material resources. Better technology in general means more and faster consumption, not less. Sometimes tech improves efficiency and decreases waste, but the desired net effect is increased production and consumption, always. 5) Global warming (among other things) is caused by all 1, 2, 3 and 4. All the stuff mentioned above seems to be an eternal no-way-out feedback loop that accelerates the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. After some level, the feedback loop doesn't even need human activity to accelerate. 6) Global warming is expected to cause political, economical, etc crises, wars and famine. ---above this line is mostly facts, below this line things get sketchy--- 7) Things mentioned in 6) causes societal collapse. Loss of food stocks and mass migrations should be very destabilizing to modern societies. Revolution/unrest is only N missed meals away. Whatever N is, is irrelevant. N will be reached, and the question is only when? 8) Large enough simultaneous societal collapse in several countries means the end of civilization as we know it. 9) After the collapse, there will be millions dead, and the remaining people are probably living in the woods or polluted ruins with simple technology. Continuing our current lifestyle would only bring about another collapse later. I've got to live a nice life being part of this consumption era, so in the end, I'm probably getting what I deserve, but I'm wondering about the future of my kids. As a parent, my main reason of existence now is to maximize the chances of my offspring. Record temperatures and wildfires every year. Extreme weather and crop failure years are the norm now rather than exception. To me, it looks like it is starting to escalate now. The fan is already on and the shit is being loaded onto the release mechanism above it. Since it is large scale human influence on the environment, all the individual can do to watch and wait it to happen. So the end questions are: Q1: am I crazy when I think about these things? Every time I do, I follow the same line of thoughts to the same inevitable conclusion. Q2: should we be teaching survival skills to our children, instead of AI programming? Should one invest in guns and ammo instead of stocks and funds? Should we be stocking some MRE to a hidden bunker somewhere? Q3: what does your get-out-of-dodge -bag contain? Where do you go when shit hits the fan? Does it even help? It could be after our natural life spans (do we even care, then?), or it could be within the next 20 years. Not once do I find a comforting result in this line of thinking without deliberately overlooking something. It is worrisome. Thank you for pointing me my error.
  8. Hi! I was privately asked to share the crossbow trap I worked on ages ago, so I might as well give it to everyone to use. Advertisement: Here is how it works: Please do note the custom model files in the models folder! It is sorta Sotha-glitchy implementation as usual, but it works. I'll write here how it works so you can change it to fit your requirements 0) trigger_once that encapsulates the trap wire: *hides the active trip wire *shows inactive trip wire *triggers wood impact sound *triggers trigger_once "trap_mechanism" 1) trap_mechanism: *shows inactive crossbow *hides active crossbow *triggers shooter that fires the arrow *triggers a speaker for the shooting sound. 2) trip wire model has S&R that disables the trap if frobbed. 3) crossbow arrow has S&R that disables the trap if the arrow is frobbed. Both disablings are done by removing the "trap_mechanism." 4) I've set an opening door to trigger the tripwire to show how the system can interact with world objects like doors. *frobbing the door triggers a trigger_once that waits 1.75s (the time that the door takes to open fully) and then it triggers the trap_trigger (the one that encapsulates the trip wire.) And here are the files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B-mwnTjZQTLDoYcbMCxDpXgxuq5Ul2hA/view?usp=sharing I hope you have a lot of fun with it. I would appreciate if you give me credit in the readme if you use it. Stay in the shadows folks!
  9. As the nest grows, so grows their activity. I cannot allow to let them sting my little ones, who like to play in the general area. The plan is ready: I am gonna nuke them from the orbit (it is the only way to be sure) tonight when they go to sleep. I got my chemical weapons ready. Heavy winter clothing with full face protection should be sufficient.
  10. I just played a little sneaking game with nature. I had to repaint one of the columns in a car shelter. There happened to be a nest of wasps on top of the column, somewhere hidden under the roof of the shelter. If I was away from the top of the column, the was wasps did not care about me at all. When I was working too close to the top of the column the nest would launch out a squadron of 5-10 wasps ("Raise the alarm! We are being invaded!") Soon, I was being surrounded by the wasp squadron and I had to spot working, climb down and take a few steps away from the nest. It is a really windy day today, so the wasps were struggling to stay in one place so I had plenty of time to move away. After I was gone, the wasp squadron buzzed around the spot where I had been working ("where are you hiding, villain?") After a while it returned back to the nest ("Stand down! Must have been rats.") And then I would get back to work and it seemed to occur the same way over and over again. I think even the tolerance time (how long and how close I was allowed to work) and the alert end time (how long the wasps patrolled the offended area) were roughly the same over and over again. In the end, I worked in small increments and got the column painted. I did not get stung at all. Amazing creatures, these wasps. Grayman might want to check their AI code, I think it might have been ripped out from TDM...
  11. I am very happy for your newly found love. ;-D Neat effect and refreshing change in this era of near photorealism.
  12. I guess the issue is actually mappers fault. Loot should be rare. If the mission had rare and low total loot amount, such as: 4 rings, 100-200 gold coins, necklace or two, and the main prize/target (a painting, a vase, The Golden Skull, the Recipe, or whatever), the loot system would have no immersion issues whatsoever. The player collects a few small trinkets along with the main target. We mappers happily sprinkle too much loot in our missions. I think this is the main finding of this discussion. And a *valuable* finding indeed (insert loot collection sound effect).
  13. I think the best game of all times was Ufo: Enemy Unknown (1994, Microprose). It had everything right and it was amazingly advanced and ahead of its time. A true miracle in game design.
  14. Hmm. I have a solution, which should address all issues; 1) zombie opens door and goes through, leaves door open. 2) out of a puff of flame the Lich Queen appears in flaming revenant form, closes the door and disappears again in a puff of smoke. (Will attack player if sees them and flames illuminate several meters radius) 3) Always happens for all doors which zombies open.
  15. Probably one of my missions. It is a tough situation for the mapper: 1) zombies must be able to open doors or the player can get rid of them just by luring them to another room and closing the door. 2) the mapper must use doors for proper compartmentalization of the map. 3) the doors should be closed because it limits the view areas and improves performance. On #2 and #3, the mapper can easily make the zombies leave doors open in their mission (no code change needed), or remove the doors altogether... but this would have a price in mission performance. Immersion breaks are of course an annoyance, but I do not see much that one can do. I would still risk immersion breaks rather than risk poor mission performance. Perhaps, when they magically rouse the dead in TDM, the magic makes the zombies smart enough to manipulate the doors the same fashion as ordinary human would. Yep, magic is just more potent in the darkmod universe.
  16. Just for general information... If any mapper would like to use any of my mapping stuff (modules, geometry, etc) please feel free to use them! Just be sure to mention in your mission credits you use stuff made by me. Thanks and be my guest!

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. grayman

      grayman

      Most excellent! Thx!

    3. demagogue
    4. Petike the Taffer

      Petike the Taffer

      Kiitos indeed. :-) And credit where credit is due, literally !

  17. Long Dark is really nice. I played a lot the sandbox survival. It is really nice, atmospheric and difficult to start. It is survival game like rust, but without the other players and with a really harsh environment. It has a lot of crafting but no house building. And it has roguelike permadeath. The story mode was a disappointment. I expected something new and genius like the sandbox survival was, but instead the story mode is a linear do-petty-chores-for-NPCs festival. I mean: blind person says "gimme wood" and then you go get wood. Then they say "gimme food" and they you get them food. Then when you have brought them all the stuff they want a door opens to the next NPC with boring chores. Sigh. More interesting choices would have been fun.
  18. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
  19. +1 for fixing of course. I remember the time when we had a phantom killer murdering AI randomly in maps. Funny stuff, but good that they were fixed.
  20. Thank you as well. It is great to occasionally wake up and see a glimpse of the little blessings we have in life, no matter how large or small. They are scattered all over the place, but most of the time we fail to pay attention to their existence; we just sleepwalk past, over and under them. I recommend immediate action of collective blessing counting.
  21. Sir Taff passed away? Damn. I Didn't know.. Sad times. My condolences. What a Beautiful Idea to make a mission tribute for him, grayman! Farewell, Sir Taffsalot. Thanks for being here with us.
  22. Just completed Subnautica. Highly recommended I liked nearly everything about it. Well, the end-game resource gathering was perhaps a bit of a chore, but always diving deeper the first time, not knowing what awaits down there, was a big scare. Lovely piece of art.

    1. demagogue

      demagogue

      The sense of mystery, and each stage outdoing itself, was great. I also spent a great amount of time making the perfect base ... so much so I should get back to the actual game at some point.

  23. Yeah, I guess grayman did present a convincing view. I'm with him on this one.
  24. I am not talking for the team, just for myself. Time is flying forward and we nowadays live in the era of youtube artists and sharing economy and that kind of stuff. If everything is made with CC license and is free to everyone to see and use without restrictions, why should it be forbidden for the person making the work to have a donate button somewhere. Everyone gets the content, free, and if someone really wants to donate, why not let them? Everyone benefits, nobody suffers. Perhaps someone else will present a convincing view why it would be overwhelmingly detrimental. I do not see it at this time. Putting stuff behind a paywall is a different matter, and that is a big oh-god-no-please for me.
  25. Sounds amazing, but what about heads? Heads are separate entities in TDM so one would beed to (manually) separate the heads from the makehuman bodies. right? I guess a decapitation script would be in order?
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