Gildoran

Jehova-haunt?

The point is, you have no idea what sort of mission somebody is going to make. You should allow them the most options possible. For all you know, it might be that while exploring some crypt, the player accidently picked up and wore a cursed ring, and the rest of the missions deal with trying to figure out how to remove it. It wouldn't make sense if the player could just remove the ring in the loading screen.

I was contacted by a local noble, Farnegin. He wants to hire me to protect and transport a valuable relic he recently purchased while travelling abroad. A jeweled tablet of some sort, inscribed with numerous runes. Seems the Builders are aware of its existance and want to destroy it, so he can't just hire a bunch of guards to move it, as they'd never get past the city's numerous gatehouses and checkpoints. But I guess that won't be a problem for me... There is one final wrinkle though. I'm told there are others - most likely the Mage Guild - who would rather not see Farnegin get his hands on the tablet. They want it for themselves - and they hired the aromatically challenged Upwinders to take it from me. I guess I'd better watch my back and the tablet. Objectives: * Carry the tablet from the docks to Farnegin's mansion. * Don't let any of the Upwinders get close enough to steal the tablet from you. If they do, make sure to steal it back before they get to their hideout!

Or they could use a script to just put it directly into the player's inventory at the mission start. But then that has the problem that the player doesn't know about those items when choosing what to buy.

All I'm saying is that there's more than one type of mission. Some are very similar to standard Thief missions, others focus on item puzzles (I'm a huge fan of Ominous Bequest - it's my idea of an almost-perfect FM). Just because because a good Thief-style maps should allow you to beat them without items doesn't mean other styles need be that way. I'd be fine with dropping things in the preload screen, so long as the map can set a minimum quantity.

Before the mission: Hmm... I don't need weapons such as a sword... I'll just drop all my weapons. In the mission: Oh wait, I needed a sword to pry open the door. Or to cut the drapes revealing a hidden safe. Or to reach a peice of loot (or key item or something) that was on the top shelf. Etc etc. IMHO, the mapper puts in the preset items to ensure that they can assume the player has those items. If the player REALLY wants to iron-man a mission without items, they should just drop the items at the start of the mission. And if they find out they need those items later, they can go back and pick them up. (or if they can't go back to the start, the mission might be badly designed)

IMHO, there shouldn't be a drop option for initial items. If it's part of the starting equipment, it was put there because the mapper thought it was absolutely needed. If you don't need it, you can just drop it in-game. Allowing items to be dropped before-hand could make it impossible to beat a well-designed mission before you ever started. Also, this makes the interface simpler. Personally, I think if the interface is going to look like a book, I'd love to see it look a bit like the sort of spreadsheet an old shopkeeper might use; Have your initial starting money at the top, then the amount of money each set of items removes, then have the remaining money at the bottom. EG: Money: 3000 Broadhead Arrows (x25) -250 Holy Water (x3) -450 Fire Arrows (x2) -600 Tip -350 -------------------------------- 1350 I know this is a lot like what you did, but I like to both know how much money I started with, and how much remains.

It is possible to make guis where you drag things, and I imagine such an interface for carrying objects would be possible in D3. Honestly, I rather like the hold-to-snuff idea where the flame draws down over the period of about a second as you hold frob. I'm not sure it would make sense for torches, but my personal opinion is that it sounds like an elegant and intuitive solution for candles.

T1/T2 rope lengths weren't fixed. They had a maximum length, but they shrunk if the ground was closer than that maximum.

*gasps* You don't all shag sheep?! Nice site.

US schools weren't ever designed to produce engineers. They were designed to produce manual labor.

Frob means to use a highlighted object.

With the exception of save/load, those are examples of things you might really do in that situation; If you're on a narrow ledge, it's easy to fall off accidently. If you're sword-fighting, it's easy to make the wrong move. (and the save/load example is why many games use F5/F9 instead lf F5/F6) However, I can't imagine going to grab a candle and accidently dousing it with a vial of water instead. That sort of mistake is very un-immersive and just causes people to get annoyed at the interface, whereas your two examples help to immerse the player in the world. However, what I would be fine with, is making it so that if you frob a torch while wielding water arrows, it'll douse it.

Not to mention that there will likely be some torches that can be picked up by frobbing their handle. What if you go to pick up a torch and the mouse slips, so you frob the flame instead of the handle, accidently wasting a water arrow? Wouldn't you be frustrated?

The selection highlight does look just like T1/2.

I would say the reason I wouldn't define genetic instinct as tradition, is because I consider a tradition to be something that people wouldn't think to do if they hadn't ever heard about it - e.g. if you were to adopt an ancient Aztec baby, the thought of sacrificing humans would never occur to them... on the other hand, if you were raise a baby bird, it might well try to build a specific kind of nest without ever having seen one before. I'm not saying there are no animals with traditions - perhaps some apes, elephants or dolphins might have them - just that habitual behavior is not the same thing.

I like to play devil's advocate so... if people act like sheep, so easily swayed by words like "terrorism" and notions of "us vs. them", can you really blame those in power for treating them as such? On the other hand, ever wonder if "everybody else is apathetic or stupid" is propaganda put forth to convince a majority of unhappy people willing to act that they're a minority and shouldn't even try? I sort of doubt it is, but it's interesting to ponder nonetheless. The big question for me, is if it's possible to determine the will of the majority without utilizing a centralized and therefore corruptable mechanism.

You know, it just occured to me that maybe we could look at what Metal Gear Solid II did... I seem to remember them having ragdolls, and guards being able to wake up their unconscious buddies. Then again, maybe they weren't really ragdolls... if I remember correctly, they either had to be on their stomache or back.

Are you sure they're loading fine in D3Radiant? (have you checked the console?) Whenever I load up D3ed, the console always spits out a bunch of error messages about the def/resource files.

@oDDity: Since TDM is open source, there's no reason you or others couldn't make maps with helmeted guards being unKOable.

I've taken some Japanese language classes, and its numbers work exactly the same way you've described Welsh. Also, although Japanese has LOTS of counters (suffixes added to numbers) for a wide range of things (to the extent that there are dictionaries listing counters), there's also a general purpose counter that could be used if you have no idea what something looks like. I'd guess Mandarin might have the same.

er... I mean as in where you do something like: HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 HELLO! this channel sux!!!!!!!111111111111 ... (continues another 150 times in under 10 seconds) If each message has unique content, it's probably not flooding.

My understanding of 'flooder' is somebody who writes a LOT of stuff, often with the intent of bogging down servers or disconnecting people.

Ok, pay somebody to thwack you upside the back of your head then. If the throbing pain doesn't convince you it exists, I don't know what will.

Hint: Try using a couple of mirrors.