Sotha

@Destined, I think Stumpy is referring to Indium, which is needed in transparent, but conductive ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) films. Indium is expensive, relatively rare and China is the biggest producer (deposits exist elsewhere in the world, too though). Since it is applied on substrate as a really thin film, it is difficult to recycle from the devices. Last time I looked, there is a furious ongoing effort to replace ITO with variety of methods. It would be so cool if they succeeded... I'm a chemist too, by the way...

After this discussion (thanks everyone!) I think I am revising my position towards "less worried" in terms of climate change. Some thoughts, briefly: 1) Climate change has been identified as a real problem by science, but now there is fortunately at least some building momentum to tackle it. 2) what will happen during our lifetime is probably something between two extremeties: a) Venus-like greenhouse-effect-outta-control (very unlikely), or b ) no significant change (very unlikely). Highest probability event is loss of inhabitable land in some areas (floods, drought, extreme weather). Food supply get hit, economy may go into recession. 3) The effects will hit poor regions of the world hardest. Western societies are so ultra wealthy, we will probably just take economic impact and then adapt. We will probably need to have harsh immigration control because people will flee areas affected areas (famine, wars, etc). The hardest impact in western countries will hit the poor population (food, fuel, etc prices go up.) Those who are well-off take the smallest impact. 4) As long as one is among the well-off westerners, you are relatively safe. But that should not mean one should ignore the environmental effects entirely. We all should learn to conserve resources, consume less and teach our children to value the Better Things in life (I.e. things you can not buy). This is useful even now, because when you consume less and waste less, you save money, which is always a good idea. 5) I think my personal strategy would be: work hard to remain among privileged westerners, but also -in everyday life- reduce ecological footprint and research ways to save energy, conserve resources and recycle/reuse as much stuff as possible instead of throw-away culture. Buy robust and repairable items instead of cheap disposable ones. The most important prepper -thing I might do is to buy are big Jerry can of fuel to the garage for emergencies. A water purifier might be a good idea too, because extreme weather may increase probabilities of the drinking water to go temporarily non-potable (via sewage floods, etc). Good quality hiking equipment and wilderness survival skills are also good to be available (if you like hiking and being in nature like I do, I need them anyway.) 6) For solving the climate change, there is not much more an individual can do. In western democracies, scary amount of responsibility is put into the hands to the voters. Instead for voting populists or people who only drive the interests of your power group, we should vote for well-informed people who make decisions backed up by science, not just random thoughts of the day. 7) What will be to our detriment is Being Confused. This means following our random thoughts and believing our thoughts to be always true. Conspiracy theories ("the climate change is a hoax by the XYZ") or religious nonsense ("God is our armor: pollute as much as you like, he will save us") are things that get us easily confused. Stopping trusting science (our only tool for gaining clarity) gets us confused. Believing populists who offer ultra-simple solutions to ultra-complex problems ("everything is the EUs/immigrants'/jews/nazis/used car salesmens fault") gets us confused. Staying in the social media echo-chamber get us confused ("everyone agrees with me so it must be true!") Using "othering" gets us confused ("everything is the elites/researchers fault." or "the elites/scientist conspire against the common people.") Fact is that humans are mostly the same: they have the same needs, the same fears, the same biases. When you see an elite or other "othering" group and want to hate them, it might be a good idea to remember that they are human just like you. Closed mind gets us confused ("I'm not gonna listen to this data because the source is an expert, and I do not like experts nor the message. I prefer to listen what matches with my pre-existing beliefs.") Being distrustful towards leaders and specialists gets us confused. (If you distrust sources with detailed information (specialist) or sources with broad big-picture or information (leader), you only have your own cognition to rely on and will probably get incorrect results. For most reliable results, always use multiple sources and know that all sources are not as equally reliable.) The only way to get clarity is to rely on science. The thoughts in your mind may be true, or they might be totally (utterly and horribly) wrong, and you cannot know which is the case. The only way to know which thought is true is to test them using the methods given by science. Not everyone is a specialist in complicated fields of science, and like Spring said if the message of the specialist does not make sense to you, it probably means you do not understand the topic, rather than the specialist does not understand their own field of expertise. The problem of our era is that nobody listens anymore. It's about echo chamber frenzy, cherry picking the story that catches your fancy and not about what is really true. This is a big threat to the western democracies and also to our ability cope with climate change. But I am fairly hopeful that things are going to go fine. The humanity has made it thus far, so we are probably doing something right, so perhaps we will endure these obstacles like we have endured all the previous ones.

A good horror story never reveals the horror It always lurks in the shadows. The heroes might stumble through the terror it generates, but in the best stories they do not have definite answers. They can suspect variety of causes, but there are no answers. Only more questions. I recommend some Lovecraft novels, I think most of the books are freely available at project Gutenberg. And I like the journal-like scientific approach in many of them. Also, read the stories at SCP foundation. Those free and delightfully creepy and modern, sometimes outright funny. Also, a treat for anyone enjoying scientific reports and experiments (often gruesomely gone wrong). How to turn these into gameplay? Ultra-difficult. It is like the Zone in the Roadside Picnic (another wonderful example) if you understand the recipe for horror and start exploiting it, the requirements transform and your output is no longer scary anymore. It is the unknown that scares.

"Doesn't this mean that you perceive reality through a filter, so you see a prettified illusion instead of reality?" Yes. And it also means that you have your own filter, too. I choose brighter filter than what you have chosen. Everyone experiences the reality through their own filter, and -make no mistake- nobody runs without filters. So in a sense, you can pretty much choose how life tastes by choosing your filters. Why choose a dark one when you could choose a bright one? I know one can be forced.to use dark ones if something horrible happens, but one can learn bright filters in time, if motivation exists. I guess the world, in reality, is neither good or bad. Stuff happens and you attach the story, whether good or bad. The good story is not always the truth, but it could be. Similarly, thinking everything to be sourced from negativity and cruelty, could just as well be an error. Another those things of which truth-valuenwe cannot define. But it makes a nice discussion and perhaps we find out new avenues of thinking. Or maybe not.

"I think you are living in a fairy-land." "I think you seem to have lived a very happy, sheltered life, isolated from harsh reality." This is probably correct. I am aware that in many places life is much more difficult than in civilized western countries, and in those place people probably have to do horrible stuff to survive. And nature is harsh indeed, where the weak are given no chance. Together, we have built these societies, safe havens of comfort. I am glad I've given the opportunity to live in this relative comfort, where life-and-death struggles are not there. The original purpose of the OP was to wonder how we can sustain this wonderland, even if climate change causes a crisis. I also think that I would be prone for severe depression if I would perceive the world without values, selflessness, friendship, justice, morals, and all the other good stuff that makes life worth living. So, looks like we live in different worlds and that's fine. I'll prefer my side of thinking as it seems to me more... beautiful. I am not sure what the benefit would be in obtaining even more cynical and cruel perception of the same world. I guess we get to choose our own interpretation of thw world we inhabit. But thanks again for the discussion, it is interesting to see different point of views.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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.

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...

I am very happy for your newly found love. ;-D Neat effect and refreshing change in this era of near photorealism.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

+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.

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.