Maximius

I may be confusing a discussion of rope arrows I read on TTLG with this list, sorry if thats the case. But it has been brought up once or twice here in the last few months I believe, in fact I think it was obscurus that brought up the point but maybe thats incorrect. And while the crystal arrows are unrealistic, the explanation that they are magical in origin goes a lot farther in explaining them than the rope arrows. To my thinking, the rope arrows, again I loved em too, demand too much magic to account for them. I can believe in a magic crystal that does certain things, hell most of the imbeciles that really believe in magic wear the damn things in their ears and around their necks, but the rope arrows never had anything to explain them. The crystals were elemental crystals, brimming with magical power, but where the hell did the rope arrows come from? They were just there. At least the vine arrows made sense, a magical plant based thingy that struck and wrapped tough vines around whatever surface available. They looked like they would work if they could really exist. All the other magical items in the games and FMs had some precedent in fantasy literature, magical potions, magical weapons, magical crystals, magical gems. But rope arrows? And to add to it, they didnt LOOK very sturdy when they stuck into wood, sometimes I would climb up a zillion feet to find my arrow had barely stuck into the surface of the wood. It detracted from the immersion. The rope bolt however has more going for it, crossbow bolts leave the bow with much more acceleration, therefore striking with greater force, and the clockwork screw head explains exactly why they would stay put in wood. Not that the player needs to see all that, but if he/she KNOWS it before hand it supports the immersive effect.

Absolutely correct, I just wanted to provide a solid description for the player to keep in the back of his/her mind. Perhaps the info could appear in a tome the Thief bumps into one night in Baron XYZs' library. The Thief would chuckle and say "Ahh, thats how these dang things work!" Maybe the bolts head would look a little funny or something, the shaft would be all metal, and there might be a kinda clockwork noise as the screw part drills in. This could be another penalty, a small odd noise, similar to the original noisemaker arrows, that would attract the alert guard down the hallway. Of course I leave any such details up to you and your magnificent Muse.....

One, because a rope-bolt that drills itself into 8 to 10 inches of wood is not going to be reusable by a thief who cant spare the fifteen minutes to work it back out of the wood. Two, because the spring mechanism that would drive such a bolt with enough force to penetrate wood would require some sort of leveraging device to twist it back into its armed position, I doubt the thief would carry around a work bench and the special tools necessary to crank it back into place, a task that only the craftsmen who made them would know how to do correctly anyway. Three because making them a one shot deal forces the player to use them sparingly, as does their cost. Also, they would naturally be bulkier than a standard bolt, taking up more room in the Thiefs kit and weighing him down a bit more. Also, the rope-bolts range would be reduced,as they have more mass, unless Oddity would like to construct a compound crossbow that could have different levels of tension for different tasks. You apparently missed the point that rope arrows are controversial. The problem with rope arrows, as much as I loved them, was that they were wildly unrealistic, even taking the presence of magic into account. My detailed description of a rope-bolt was meant to address that issue by presenting a much more feasible mechanism for letting the Thief put a rope where he needs one. Its still fantastic, but much less so than a simple arrow that barely sticks into wood and which spurts a fifty foot rope out of its ass when it hits. And which then supports a 100 plus pound person climbing up it. Good gameplay goes hand in hand with good immersion, with some exceptions of course, stupidly UNcomplicated critiques of the ideas of others, well, they really dont rate at all.

Ive decided to take my old 400 meg pentium and install linux on that, with no windows whatsover. If that works, then maybe Ill see about putting it on the new 2.3 gig pentium we just got a few months ago. Good news for me, the computer guy at my workplace does side work for cash and he is a big fan of Linux. Phew!

Wow, that is incredible work! Crossbows are generally more powerful than a comparably sized bow though, one of the reasons for their development was to punch through the heavy armor plating of mounted knights. A crossbow could have the power to fire a small grappling hook and rope up over a railing or rafter, a much more reasonable and believable climbing kit than a rope arrow. Or how about this, a special "clockwork" corkscrew bolt with two stages: First you fire it into a rafter or beam or whatever, it hits and sinks in pretty deep, this gives it leverage for the second stage which is triggered on impact. The second stage consists of a small but powerful spring loaded mechanism that drills a razor sharp cork screw shaped head deeper into the wood. Attached to this whole setup is of course a length of light but sturdy rope and voila up goes the thief! To balance such a powerful tool, the rope-bolts would have to be VERY expensive, and non-reusable, the careful work of master craftsmen. The rope could be left attached or removed and attached to the next bolt, of which the Thief could only afford maybe three at any given time. Combined with climbing gloves,( I know, I know), they would be a pretty good all around way for the Thief to get up to high places.

obscurus: Maybe they discuss philosophy, who knows... Dont start with me! And we wont be colonizing the galaxy anytime soon, lets try to get out into our solar system first, its a bit closer. Oddity, Ill leave the lesson in biology/evolution to obscurus, let me tell you a little about astronomical impacts. There are two groups of objects we have to worry about, asteroids and comets. Asteroids are especially tough to see because the vast majority of them are pretty dark, meaning their albedo or degree of light reflection is low. Its hard as hell to spot em, unless you are a dedicated asteroid hunter who spends a lot of time watching for them. Assuming you do see them, and one appears to be headed our way, you have no way of knowing if its going to be a near miss or a dead hit until its almost upon us. And if you do see it, what are you going to do about it? Try hitting a rock hurtling towards you at thousands of feet a second with ....what? A missile? Cant hit our own missiles with our missles, I was an air defense soldier years ago and I assure you our missile tracking abilities are less than optimal.(THis is why the US military has had to repeatedly lie about the efficacy of its missile defense shield program, an enormous boondoggle.) The second group are even scarier, comets. Asteroids are generally grouped into belts, the big one between mars and jupiter, two recently discovered smaller ones between earth and the sun, see how hard they are to find!, and finally the Oort cloud at the edge of the solar system. Rouge asteroids undoubtably exist but its seems most are clustered in these regions. Comets are another matter. They are the nomads of the solar system, wandering here and there. Some have pretty fixed paths, i.e. Halleys, some were fixed but then cross paths with other bodies, witness the Shoemaker-Levy impact on Jupiter about 10 years ago, and others are purely random. Now out in the Oort cloud, its thought that comets originate here, when gravitational pulls from the sun tip a chunk of primeaval ice and rock our way, it is estimated there are THOUSANDS of these bastards floating around. Some comets are around *2* miles in diameter, no weapon we possess could scratch it. If a lunker like that hit the Earth, there would be no hiding in caves, no underground bunkers, it would quite possibly mean extinction for us and definitely extinction for something like 90 percent of all lifeforms more complex than an amoeba. We are talking mile high tsunamis, vulcanism like the good old days of Earths youth, boiling steam clouds racing at hundreds of miles an hour across the land. Real Bible thumping End o' Times stuff. This is one of the reasons I am all for colonization of Mars, and expansion into outer space, though not on the fantasy timeline of two years that CoCo the Ape-President blurted out a few months back. We have GOT to get off this rock if we wish to survive as a species, there is no question that eventually there will be an impact that could threaten our existence, hell will ENd our existence. No doubt at all, statistically its a sure thing. Oh, one interesting side note, a few years back, when India and Pakistan were about to nuke each other, what is believed to be a small asteroid impacted the atmosphere right above the two nations and flashed across radar screens in the region as a nuke air burst. If it had not been for astronomical organizations tracking the beast, and alerting the Paki and Indian governments, it may have been the start of the first nuclear exchange in history. Sleep tight!

Id like to see the Thief high up as well. I have an idea for an FM, the Tower of Time, where the majority of gameplay would take place in a vertical environment. Lots of climbing and leaping but hopefully it wont turn into a climbing/jumping puzzle which are usually both annoying and contrived.

Right, the Pleistocene was a lot warmer, for a lot of pretty well known reasons, including the fact that our Sun was in its T Tauri phase, MUCH more engergetic than today, the chemistry of the atmosphere was Green House Plus Plus, and there was about a zillion times the volcanic activity that you see today. Plus all those big ass dinosaurs farting around........ The warming is happening, there is no doubt. Thus my point about the petroleum and coal industries who have even admitted this to some degree. Jeepers, even that pile of shit newspaper USA TOday, or USELESS TODAY, has admitted it, though their editorial board attempted to retract the story. The warming is attributable to our actions, this too is clear as there are no other symptoms like the ones mentioned above to assign the blame too. We know that our civilization produces wastes that increase the thermal retention of the atmosphere, and we know there are no other reasonble culprits to point the finger at. We know the Earths average temperature is rising. We know that sea levels are rising, that glaciers are receding. We know this is happening at an ever increasing rate of speed, from one year to the next. The Sun has not suddenly become wildly more energetic, despite the 11 year flare cycle, vulcanism is not widespread and continuous as it once was, and the chemicals we find in the air are clearly OUR chemicals, put there by combustion engines and mass industry/energy production. That being said, any of that "knowledge" could be questioned and should. But the truth is the warming is happening and we are the most likely suspects. The *vast* majority of researchers believe this to be true, from all around the world. So whatever the "actual" truth is, our leaders should be taking action to curb our impact, bottom line. This is slowly starting to happen but we cannot tell what the final impact on our environment will be. And we have to fight the parasites who control the oil, coal, and chemical industries as well, those who believe smokestack scrubbers are too much of an impediment to efficient production, those who replace one form of filth with another to make a quick buck while looking like heroes.

There is strong evidence to indicate that past global warmings were the result of natural processes like vulcanism, the sun being in a much more energetic state (known as the T Tauri phase), different atmospheric chemistry. There is a preponderance of evidence that the current warming is caused by us. No other factors can account for the rate and severity. Perhaps the greatest evidence of all is the fact that oil companies and coal companies are finally beginning to admit somethings up. Of course, W the Clown and his energy cronies are still in denial, but receding glaciers and rising ocean levels dont lie.

But Oddity life only cares about one thing, that survival. The fact we can do all the admittedly unique things we can do doesnt mean they are going to necessarily lend themselves to long term survival for the species. I agree our intelligence does give us a **degree** of freedom in the world and over our immediate surroundings but its far from absolute. And that freedom may be our downfall as has been pointed out. Nothing is assured. According to one biologist, it is jellyfish which have the honor of being the most successful lifeforms on Earth, as they are found everywhere and in the highest numbers. I guess insects would win on land. Oh and by the way when the next impact event takes place, like a comet or asteroid, which we are overdue for by about 15 million years, it wont be us left standing.

There was a science fiction story I read years ago that talked about a human civilization who would create worlds in super computers as a hobby. Turns out our world was a simulcrum too. Kinda like the Matrix, but written better. And no "Dead Fish School of Acting" performances by Keanu Reeves. BTW its dangerous to use the word "evolve" when one is implying a sense of progression towards a better, or higher, or whatever, purpose or end. Evolution has no goal, no purpose, rather it is the process of a species/being accomodating itself to its environment through natural selection pressures. (obscurus i await your judgement!) Moderns like to see our intelligence as a positive, progressive development, and we often cast this in terms of being "evolved" versus less complex creatures. This is inaccurate at best, human intelligence is only one kind of adaptation that a particular family of proto-apes developed. In fact, this adaptation may be a dead end, if it proves that our intelligence and its artifacts (science, technology, styrofoam burger containers) prove to be our undoing. At the same time, our intelligence is the only thing that can save us from any dangers our intelligence presents to us. Go figure.

The article said that the PPU may be an add on card or even an external device that could be added to an existing system, provided the proper level of computing power is available, but that production of the devices will probably wait until the software exists to utilize them. Which indicates to me that such plug in support for the D3 engine may not be an option. But I know next to nothing of these matters.

Found this article about new video game physics processing units, its looks hot! http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21648

I agree that it used to be less so, but today a MASSIVE amount of corporate research funding can trace its way back to the public till. I think it was the beginning of the Cold War that saw the greatest surge of government support for scientific research. Companies received free land grants from the government and public monies for engaging in research that would support the struggle with the Soviet Union. This is the infamous military/industrial/academic complex. This continues today, but you may have to dig a little to see the linkages. Consider this: You have Company X, it does biomedical research, its only has a staff of 100. Are they funding their own stuff? Well, they pay the bills so it must be so. But take a closer look. Look at that sweet contract they hold with Uncle Sam, the one that promise to pay them back for funding lost due to research failures. Oh, and they get a pretty choice tax rebate too for their work. The company has a liason program with the local university, hiring researchers and providing internships for students. But in return, they get not only first pick of the best personnel but they also enjoy direct access to the fruits of the university's research. And where do universities get their money, a least a huge chunk of it? The public dole, baby, the taxpayers sweat and blood. Ist, Im not saying every place is like this, but I believe the majority are. I know of some links to interesting online articles which I will attempt to find: heres one http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive...05_02_17_16.mp3 and another http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive...04_12_23_16.mp3 These articles arent the final word but they have lots of good info about the topic.

Just look at the number of recalls of drugs in the last two years. Sure, some new drugs will be recalled but there have been like six or seven alone in the last year. Clinical testing is slovenly, the FDA is a rubberstamping stooge of the pharmecuticals, and the public is ensorcelled by the notion of a cure all pill that will make their bored and over-sugared offspring sit quietly in the corner for a few hours. Oh, lets not forget Prozac, the anti-depression drug that sends some teenage patients into a suicidel depression when they come off of it.

So what your saying is that philosophers drew up these great concrete laws of logic, with lots of important applications such as math and science and ethics, but then what philosophy actually does with logic is a waste of time. Lets collapes this little delirium into one logical statement. What philosophers did was useful, but it was a waste of time. Hmmmmmm. Oh and the philosophers didnt DRAW up anything, they isolated logical truths, the handful that exist, and then began to draw logical inferences from them. Right on the money. In the U.S.A. science is in deep trouble. Leave aside the stick worshipers for a minute and their campaign to bring back the Dark Ages. Science is used as a means to generate wealth, and other considerations fall by the wayside. Private corporations used public funds to bribe universities to do the research they want them to, for the next big $$$ pharmecuticals that may or may not work or for some new carcinogenic additive to make you cars engine run smoother. The government, a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporation Inc., gives away billions in tax breaks, research grants, you name it, to these parasites. We pay out the nose for bad science done with greed as its ultimate goal, not meeting human needs. At some universities, the corporations hold entire departments hostage, if you want funding you had better be working on something the suits can sell or forget it. One school was shocked to discover that when its researchers produced test results that demonstrated the ill effects of a new drug, the corporation threatened to pull the $$$ if the report was not suppressed. School administrators are as likely to be hired for their connections to the pharmecutical or chemical industries as for their academic experiences. Your point about what is "wasted time" is important. The cult of the practical is an artifact of our profit driven, materialistic age. If it aint turning a buck, what the hell you doing it for! is the slogan of a slave culture, one that sees no value in its own leisure time but only in working to (hopefully) make ends meet or crawl up to the next rung on the ladder. According to such standards, reworking a video game like D3 into a much better game, with all the loving tweaks and input from the community, hell playing video games in general is a cardinal sin. As for me, I like sinning.

And dont forget, when you all are done with this one there is the Western Mod you promised us, the Pirate Mod, the Firefighting Mod, the Deli Sandwich Construction Mod, the Crocheting Mod, the Toe Nail Clipping Mod, the Swedish Bikini Team Sun Tan Lotion Applying Mod....

Ditto.

I would love to reply to both of your posts, obscurus and oddity, but please lets do it by email, I really dont want to gobble up more of the lists space. Cobra, dont be a sexist twit.

But I dont think they are separate at all. The process of reasoning IS philosophy, in its natural, undistilled state if you will. Logical truths exist a priori but we have to arrange them into arguments to make points about the world, this is the process of reasoning. And to be accurate, humans use at least three kinds of truth when they argue: analytic truths, narrative truths, and rhetorical truths. I had a really interesting pdf on this somewhere but I lost the damn thing. Now I was being a bit silly with my point about hot air but I wanted to illustrate something. many philosophical arguements that seem to float amongst the clouds are supposed to do exactly that. It is the job of the philospher to look at the extremes of truth, even the ridiculous ones. There may be an arbitrary point after which the argument seems to detach itself from reality but thats ok. Philosophers must push the outermost limits of what we hold to be true, and more importantly HOW we arrive at that truth. And besides, such criticisms of philosophy are really straw men, because the majority of truths that philosophy deals with are of everyday import. Consider the fields of ethics, political philosophy, and the various philosophies of science, history, math, etc. The debate on global warming tells me that we need MORE philosophy, and fast, in the minds of the public. We need sharper critical thinking to evaluate the claims of powerful organizations who keep telling us nothing is wrong even as sea levels rise, deserts grow larger, and extinctions abound. The hot air being blown about the warming debate did not come from philosophers, it came from the liars and whores who sell their childrens futures for a lucrative career with BP or Sunoco and the politicians who owe their careers to wealthy interests. But critical thinking is a rare and precious gem, especially in this part of the world where we have self professed Christians who champion imperial wars and a grotesque materialistic way of life, a public that declares itself Born Free! at every turn but willingingly admits their political process is a shell game and that big $$$ rules their world, a nation that prides itself on its exaltation of the individual even as it demands unquestioning allegiance to nationalistic/patriotic group-think. But let me stop this fantastic discussion for a second to: 1. Thank our hosts for putting up with this nonesense. 2. Invite any interested parties to continue this debate via personal email, as I dont wish to take up more of the lists time and space with my ramblings. 3. Give my email address:alex4545354@yahoo.com, for the abovementioned parties.

oddity: Reason and logic are not part of philosophy. This is patent nonesense. Refer to obscurus' defintion. oddity: Philosophers use and abuse reason and logic to prattle on about a lot of nonsense that's no good to anyone, but cannot claim reason and logic for themselves. No ones claiming logic and reason for philosophers alone, what is certain is that the study of logic and reasoning (versus their applications to other subjects) is the province of philosophy. In fact, when you are reasoning, using your critical thinking skills to ascertain "truth", you are engaging in philosophy. You may deny it but approximately 10 gazillion sources would argue against you. I suspect that wouldnt slow you down though. oddity:You cannot say that any argument which uses a reasonable, logical structure is a philosophical debate. True, the argument could be about any topic, but my point was that you were using logic and reason to make some of your points, shaky as they were. Again, see obscurus' definition. oddity:Certain truths - like if you have n number of objects and you add one, you then have more then n objects - do not require philosical debate, even though they are reaonable and locigal. AHHH! Certain truths, you say? This implies a range of truths, as you say certain truths are self evident and require no debate. A priori, in other words, true before consideration. A posteriori truths, those found true AFTER consideration, of course make up the bulk of truths. Another fine philosophical concept you have employed sir! Excelsior! oddity:Reason and logic exist separate from philosophy. 'reason; a fact that logically justifies some premise or conclusion (Princeton online dictionary, via Google)' Logical truths are self evident, a priori of all consideration, but REASON, constructing arguments for truth based upon critical thinking, experimentation, whatever, IS philosophy in its most common form. You dont have to be a professional philosopher, as i hope to someday, to engage in philosophy. Such an argument is comparable to saying if one is not a chef, then going into the kitchen and heating up eggs until they are firm, toasting bread, and squeezing some fresh O.J. is not cookery. obscurus: I think you are arguing over semantics to a degree there oDDity, although you are correct, logic and reason can be considered without reference to philosphy per se. I have to disagree somewhat, when one considers whether a point is logical or not, or uses reasoning to arrive at a conclusion, this is native philosophy, in its original form. obscurus: I am a professional scientist (a biologist specialising on mammalian zoology), so I am used to making assumptions in order to test ideas, and working in terms of probabilities instead of certainties. But in a practical sense you have to be able to say, "I make the assumption that it is so staggeringly unlikely that gravity will change suddenly, that I will proceed as though it is absolutely certain that the laws of gravity as I currently understand them are correct", otherwise you will get nowhere fast. Of course this is correct, but it is the job of the philosopher, specifically a philosopher of science in your instance, to push those assumptions to their logical extremes. You the scientist work within those assumptions and its generally pretty safe, we seek the outmost outlines of those assumptions and see where they contradict, break down, or succeed. You may continue to trust in gravity, I do too, but the ONLY basis for that trust is past experience, which NOTHING can ultimately guarantee will continue into the future. It may seem silly to apply it so something as fundamental as gravity, but it serves to illustrate a point. In science, there are countless more minor instances where such certainty such future truths can be called into question. And agaiin, philosophy is not merely questioning the continuing existence of gravity, its more importantly questioning the questioning you have used to arrive at a theory of gravity, how you know what you claim to know about it. Thats ALWAYS open to questioning. obscurus:Certainty, or rather a close approximation of certainty based on reason, logic and probability allows you to proceed with some endevour without getting too flustered about what-ifs and endless philosophical wanderings. Right-o, see above. But being certain of something when reason, logic and probability should give you plenty of cause to doubt is very foolish and dangerous, and is the sort of attitude that creates scuicide bombers and holy wars, and endless suffering. And people often get too caught up in deep philosophical arguments to notice that the world is turning to shit around them. Action based on reason, logic and common sense is better than blowing hot philosophical air and doing nothing. Hmmm, reason and logic are often at odds with common sense, no? And as far as I can tell, action based on reason and logic often require blowing a lot of hot air in order to find out what exactly it is you think you believe to be true. I mean, you wouldnt recommend a course of action, especially in politics, without discussing the pertinent ideas to the furthest degree possible, would you? Or is there some arbitrary limit after which reason becomes hot air?

No can do on the Mac, we just got a new puter and I hate Apple almost as much as Microshaft. I prefer the flexibility of PCs for upgrading and the fact that Apple video games are generally quite retarded in my experience. Its bad enough that most video games suck, let alone ones that look terrible and suck. Sparhawk, are you saying that with Gentoo I would have to somehow construct a browser? if so, does tht also apply to word processing, media players, and everything else i need? I wouldnt mind learning some new computer skills but I looking at grad school in the fall, a new job, and all the usual curveballs life dishes out. Could you give me a rough estimate, assuming I work at it, to having Gentoo up and running. BTW, the wife found all these missing copies of her writing that had been saved in a folder she had never used. Some were missing 2/3s of the pages, some were formatted so that the text only ran down the left hand column, needless to say she had done none of those things herself. mOdEtWo, i just cheke dthat out, i will download it overnight, thanks! I still want to look into Gentoo but this is promising.

Thanks for the info,vadrosaul, Im looking at Gentoo right now.

Thanks, ill look into that. It never ceases to amaze me what a poor product windows is.

I have fucking had it with Windows. This morning my wife went to save a story she has been writing and Windows lost it. When she tried to open the file, it said "Unexpected error" When she opened an older version and tried to cut and paste the formatting went fucking haywire, between wordpad (a microsoft product) and Word ( a microsoft product) the computer could not convert the file without mangling it. I am fucking done with Windows. Can someone tell me anything about using Linux? Or where Bill Gates lives? Ive never used Linux before so Im totally lost.