Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat

In America it doesn't stop with guns. You give lawmakers the finger, and they take the hand. Think digital rights, etc.

I'm really bad with pistols and revolvers, but long-range with rifles I'm pretty good and enjoy more, but yeah, visibility is also a problem for me.

Right, 2 polys, one pixel in view port. Some kind of decision algorithm as to which one to draw, such as equal distribution of drawn polygons, not necessarily by size. "proximity to player" - i'm just not expressing myself well - it determines the relationship between view port and polygons.

That's why I go to the movies, when I feel overwhelmed instead of stopping at my usual bus stop, I go a few stops down, and switch off my brain for two hours on a random movie with popcorn. Usually I just like sitting in a dark room with enveloping sound, sound bright colours in front of me, eating popcorn and resting my eyes. Children of Men was one such random movie. Apocalypse. Right before that, Apocalypto was the random movie, Also apocalypse. also well made and recommended, moreso than Children of Men. After that The Reaping was the next random movie, and such absolute crap, with jolting sounds which didn't let me rest, (it's supposed to be a thriller or something), various demons, and a scientist who loses her rationality and starts believeing in magic and demons. Another apocalypse. Hot Fuzz was the next random movie. Not so random, because I opened the very convenient http://www.google.com/movies, entered my canadian postal code where it says US zip, and picked among the top ranked movies. The style and comedy was new and unexpected to me, based on that I recommend Hot Fuzz. If it's familiar to you then I guess there won't be much new. 3 random apocalypses and one total English mayhem in a row - looks like end of the world and destruction is what movies are about now.

incorrectly interpreted. from distance A ball of N polygons represented by circle of M pixels of various shades depending on lighting. Say mapping every other polygon to the pixel. from distance B which is closer, same ball has N pixels, for each polygon. distance C, closer, N+J pixels, a few per polygon. standing close to high poly object means other objects not seen, poly count limited. essentially there's always a limit of polygons rendered, average, say, 0.7(x*y screen pixels) what does it draw instead? the next, or the next after that, etc, depending on distance.

Well that's good, one less to make then. I'm really no expert on ghouls, I have a fuzzy idea of what they are and should have looked in a dictionary before posting.

Same. I think asking the player for acrobatics, you never know if you really have to do them or is it just a special move which is optional and will get you into special places. I never exert myself when playing, and don't complete some missions as a result. I think it's nice to abandon grammar and thoroughness in favour of brevity in your posts, the above was long - some things can be understood. Some people read every post, and in fact I think it can expected of those who participate in the forum - thereby placing a limit on amount of participants, or amount of written material.

I've been planning to use silent-era movie-like black ornate screen with text, while the game is auto-paused.

People can do whatever they want, and nothing is branded "official" or not. The protagonist, etc, all different, but the world preferrably the same. Protagonist name: loyalty optional. TDM maybe gives one, but encourages people to use their own. Path dependence (demagogue), I don't think it's nice - it's better if we set the path mostly. Domarius, Nyarlathotep, true, consistency is good, I'm ok with the four elements system but I think we can do better. And I hate Aristotle. If I lived then, I would have been plotting to kill him like socrates. "Eurymedon the hierophant denounced Aristotle, claiming he did not hold the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy."[2]" WP. Because of him the medieval science was so screwed up, and also the church's interpretations of his philosophies. There were actual smart philosophers, atomists, not elementalists, and others, can't remember their names, the earth was rotating around the sun, etc, etc, before this idiot aristotle came long. Some use of some elements is OK I think. Plato's absolute knowledge is good too. what do you mean: I think there should be guns - the samurai had guns after portugeese brought them. They should be awfully crappy though. Any guns need an oxidising and combusting material. If they don't have saltpeter in their hills, then they can only get guns and ammunition from far away, and unless traders are up to setting up colonies, slaves for digging, and importing, guns are almost useless.

I think it is our duty to provide guidelines for followers to follow (if they wish) so they're not required to make up and we don't have multiplicity. More importantly, I just derive such pleasure from this. So we have: zombies as a result of necromancy which acts like ionizing nuclear decay radiation. Where necromancy is performed, nearby items become "ionized" and harmful. It hurts living material by making the cells decay. It animates dead material when properly performed. The necromancers are exposed (work-hazard) continuously, their skin and cells are most dead, but they don't feel it because of the rejuvenating power of the necromancy - eventually they become completely dead, but still walking and acting, at which point they become classified as lichs. As you said, some are careful and don't get much deader, some have accidents and turn into a lich in one minute. Lichs are sensitive to sunlight, as it neutralizes that necromancy by which they survive. As such they hide. Animated skeletons, same as animated zombies, require more necromantic power and the skill to handle it. zombies as a result of plague (dibilitating disease with added superstitions and ostracisions). As I described, numerous diseases inside and outside combine to shut-down higher brain functions, make appearance scary, mobility weak, and inside slowly decomposing until ultimatley death. They are highly infectious, and HEAVILY shunned, equal to other undead, even though they were alive recently. People treat them in an exaggerated manner of medieval leprocy. They tend to group together and care for each other until death. If "protagonist" is walking is a place where they occupie, mites and ticks from surfaces can jump on him, bite, and infect with bacteria and viri, at which point he'll start losing health until some magic is used or antidote is drunk. Mites can be seen without a magnifying glass as black dots scurrying on zombie skin, and walls/floors of their habitations. can be killed as normal humans, but easier. Habitations identified by bits of skin, blood, brown spots, hair tufts, flakes, entire organs, etc, so protagonist knows when it's dangerous. zombies who are alive people, (real life voodoo zombies), targets of foul play, will recover in a couple of weeks or can be healed with magic. Must be cared for if the zombified person's death is unwanted. The voodoo and necro zombies are as aggresive as they're programmed to be, and virus zombies depending on the situation, person, environment, etc. but usually pissed off for being hunted and hated, semi-concious, conniving, and want other people to suffer without exposing themselves to certain death or more pain. Turrets, machines, robots, behave primitively, but with deadly accuracy and face recognition. Instead of face recognition they use some "aura imprint" which is individual for each person. Their workings are unknown, involve lots of magic, and heavily guarded secret by the makers. Vampires: can be of all walks of life. Does not follow "convention". Do not suck blood (or any other bodily liquids, unless it's a personal preference). blend almost imperceptibly into society, not more powerful physically than typical human, (unless works out). Not extremely proficient in magic - ever. Being a vampire makes their conciousness cloudy, diminishes frontal lobe activity - incapable of complex finances, magic, technology, mathematics, etc. Vampirism consists of touching victim and drawing off "ethereal energy". While in contact, victim is asleep and can't wake up. After touching, energy is stratified, and victim can only wake up after it normalizes, always giving the vampire time to (admire the victim and) leave. Killed almost as normal people, but require much more bodily damage. The life energy they have collected can act to quickly heal (small) damage. They live long and tend to be well entrenched in society, lots of money, estates, stocks, bonds, anything they had time to acquire without having to plan for retirement. And I don't know what everyone is saying about sexiness - I certainly don't remember Dracula being associated with sex. Most victims remain normal. There's a very small chance a victim will get infected and must then feed off other's energy or die - usually they're unaware and die "from unknown causes". To become a vampire they have to investigate and find their dark yearnings. Ghouls: some unknown semitransparent shrieking fast flying cloudy scary thing that is seen very rarely in peculiar places. Best used for effect, does damage depending on volumetric time integral of contact with person's body, so if it slowly passes with its centre through your centre, you die. fast - ok. It's best to slide/walk out of the way so it only grazes you on the side.

I don't think we have to adapt to popular conceptions - we can mix and innovate for our purposes, as long as it's consistent.

People are trash. My team-members, after a whole semester of wholesome teamwork, decided to make me a scapegoat and demand my attribution of the final report for che322 course be decreased and theirs increased proportionally. I demanded of the instructor to find out on what basis. The basis is an "offensive" email I sent to the team. The instructor didn't read it, but showed it to me. I pointed out that it's not for this assignment, it's not for this course, it was 3 months ago, and the offensive part is a copy-pasted joke from the internet which I forgot to put in quotations. On that occasion I was the team-leader and was sending out auxiliary information so my team-members are more prepared. And we already sorted out our relationship 2 days after that email in person. And I found out about this while going to a restaurant with a friend after an exam, and the instructor was sitting there eating steak - the teammies didn't send me anything. As a chemical engineer I am now switching directions, from my previous commitment to produce more food on earth so people don't starve, to a new direction to work for the military developing weapons like mustard gas so people get punished.

Amen

But there is no supervisors in FMs. When I played Thief the first time I was amazed of the degree to which freedom of reality is replicated. I had played games in this order: Digger, Tetris, Barbarian on 8088, then Mario, Doom, Wolfenstein, Lighthouse which blew me away with the ambiance, graphics, story, and gameplay, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior which was the best interactive 3d world I've ever seen then, and then of course Thief. The sounds of course helped to make it realistic, but the people were very real too. Their dark silhouettes in a doorway, the movement, the subtle shifting of weight from foot to foot, the coughing, all made them so real that I didn't want to kill them because of that little training in my brain which says I'm not supposed to kill humans, not because I wanted to ghost.

That's if you consider optimisation, etc. When you think of creating hallways, lights, rooms, applying textures, it becomes an art. Just like in painting, mixing the pigments with tempera, and a bunch of other things is a craft, but brush-stroke by brush-stroke painting one's emotions is an art.

With the ideas I'm proposing the magic is not removed from the explanation, it just is relocated to a smaller scale. Imagine magic and religious magic both act by statistics in that the more improbable a thing is to happen the more rarely it happens. The normality of statistics is altered by using magic, and moreso the more powerful the user. For example a small atom has a much higher probability of materializing out of the blue than a larger atom, and more still than a whole body. So instead of forces on the order of tens of newtons materializing to control whatever magical thing they control, and instead of electrical currents materializing at high voltage in a specific formation with high negentropy, they would manifest on a small scale and be amplified into action by conventional energy. It's just like with TDM magic it's much easier to take control of something controlled by a microchip than the equivalent thing controlled by relays.

...pus blood or saliva. Or if the main hero goes to a brothel and it's only 27 days later ...

Right, that's why when I can I explore UofT buildings where students shouldn't be. Mapping, however, is an art, and I appreciate that art by walking around the map. (where I also enjoy the art of lighting, ambiance, scripting, AI placement)

yep, midichlorians were a blow. Nya, I'm not familiar with 28 days later, could you explain how it would be in game? Also, I have a fondness for fictional vampires, I even had a dream two years ago of being in a dystopic future city where my friend Dracula drives by in a limo, and gives me a lift. He is fat, sweaty, with gelled hair, wairs a thick gold chain, and a hawaiian shirt. This month I'm playing the Dracula T2 FM campaign, and I can't finish the first level still.

True, the aspect of sneaking, hiding, etc, amplifies the enjoyment of archicture.

Evil is a relative concept, not relative on a one-dimensisonal sliding scale, but relative in a multi-dimensional fabric of morals. Physics doesn't work in metaphors. So, can we all agree now that zombies are not as much magic, as ostracized plagued people with terminal illnesses who look and smell bad, lost most functions, and have an onset of mental retardation? They are concentrated in sewers and crypts and cemetaries exactly for the same reason homeless people and various elements of the underworld are concentrated in sewers, crypts and cemetaries (at least in europe prior to WWII), mainly they need a space to inhabit withtout coming into contact with the real society. We all love the Paris sewers on this forum, right? I've been hoping to successfully recreate that in my FM for the past 4 years. Apparently Moscow also has a nice combination of centuries-old crypts, sewers, bunkers, unused metro-lines, cathedral tunnels, and kremlin caves. If you don't mind wasting the time, check this out or anything on moscow spelunking: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970658/posts

I have been thinking for a while, and now this thought precipitated enough to be typed, that eventually a limit will be reached and maintained where the density of polygons on screen equals approximately the number of pixels on screen, with the decision made whether to render or not render them made on the proximity to the player and therefore their visibility. Then one might have from almost none to huge amounts of polygons in the form of many high-detailed objects in the room and the performance will almost be the same. The reason for "almost" is because the increased amount of polygons increases the load in pre-processing the decision to render them or not based on the player distance and visual area.

The reason I, and I suspect many other people, play Thief to this day is to look at new products of imagination, architecture, etc. I don't care too much for gameplay, and sometimes wish the author didn't force me to work so hard to get to a new location. I love exploring buildings, especially gothic revival, but only occasionally get a chance to go to unauthorized locations. Thief allows this.

With the name Schwaa you're a legend, and I and my family have known you for years as a star. I'm not in favour of name changes.

Strangely, I really don't have any impuse to "get to work". I would rather like to convince all the people around me to start taking work more like play, less seriously. Sartre, other authors. Judging by all these books' names people throw around on these forums I'd say I don't read at all. And it would be true. No derailment. The whole point of the off-topic topics is to vent our mind off work by immersing in creative discussion.