demagogue

Yeah, I like the comment that said something like if you want to make a game about hurricanes ripping through crate factories on small islands, then have we got an engine for you!

I'm happy you noticed.

I thought it was funny, the problem was that nobody could read any posts, and you wrote a post about it. The very act of being able to read your post would make it irrelevant. But I knew immediately what the post would be, anyway, so I started that "irony" thread (thinking the site might be down a while). Thank goodness it cleared up quickly, though.

nobody here but us chickens. Edit: I suppose you can delete this now ... considering the point is now gone, now that the forum is working again.

This rant has fuck all to do with American football. Who the hell mentioned anything about academic history? Macsen is talking about the fact that no US football team has ever gotten into the post-season with a 1-13 record with 2 games left. He's not talking about disentangling subtle social dynamics and divining the meaning of capricious leaders' actions. The meaning of 13 straight losses is pretty clear however you slice it.* If the Dolphins did make it past the regular season to the post-season, it would be nothing short of astounding. If you're going to gay up a thread with these irrelevant tangents, at least keep it to the threads that are already a little gay to begin with. * To be fair, looking back at the record I didn't realize how many games were less than 3 points difference; damn that must be so frustrating.

And the Cowboys lost! What a weird turn of events. They were never close to this bad all year. Not a single touchdown? Thank goodness it's practically the end of the season. Bring on the play-offs.

Apparently the gene is even more selfish than that; it just selectively cares about even the body that produces it. It keeps a person beautiful and healthy throughout the prime sexual and maternal/paternal period of a life, but it happily not only doesn't care that a body begins to degenerate after the children begin to be self-sufficient, but it arguably even speeds the degeneration of the body to actually kill it off faster so that it won't compete with the children who are now in a better position to continue the genetic line. Life/biology has preordained us to want to selfishly promote ourselves, procreate, raise kids, then die off as quickly as possible after that. It's society and culture that have preordained us to be the worthless cogs of the social machine (if only in helping others we helps ourselves). Conscious reflection is the thing that motivates us to rise above and be individuals of some value above the indistinguishable collective. Then I suppose the whole trick of life is that all three of these things are on a collision course, and which do you value over the others?

One of Oddity's talents is introducing bitter argument to the most unsuspecting topics. Somehow, whatever it is, it all leads back to the eternal struggle of the individualist, heroic Ubermensch against the pathetic Last Men trying to pull him down by tempting him with the road of lazy conformism. If he watched me brush my teeth, I could imagine he'd find some way I was doing it that would mark me as a sad, comfort-seeking conformist because I didn't make my own toothpaste out of gravel and lava or something. Other people have taken on the role of not letting him get away with his diatribes too easily. (That said, personally speaking I often take a similar attitude myself, tbh. I tend to hold it against games and movies to pander to our lazy, comfort-seeking nature as if we couldn't expect better, if it's egregious. I'm not sure advertising the ailment of an influential author really falls into the same category of something to worry about in the same respect, though... I consider it notable that a great series will be cut short before its time. That and I tend to think of TP as "one of us" because he's played something like 300 FMs, the same ones I've played, and liked them for the same reasons I did... he gets recognition from me that other authors wouldn't.)

It's just easy for you to say considering that English is a Germanic language. My thinking is that localization will be largely handled the same way it is for Dromed FMs ... non-English FMs will continue to be made in their native languages by non-anglophone authors. And then the author will work with someone to translate all the readables, etc, into English for everyone else (English-speaking or otherwise) that doesn't speak that language. And then once in a blue moon a fan might translate a classic English FM (TDM's equivalent of Calendra's Legacy) into their non-English native language on their own initiative. Documentation and tuts, etc, in the case of dromed these things got translated into non-English languages by some builders that wanted them for their own tutorial sites, and took the initiative to do it. The main difference between TDM and TMA is things like guard barks and interface, that got translated in the original game. Not sure what you want to do about those.

Of course this is a slightly different case in that Pratchett is a well known fan of Thief fan missions and regularly posts (or posted) on the Thief newsgroup on FMs that he was playing, from at least 2001-2004 looking at the dates (not sure if he's posted on TTLG, if he did, it'd be under an altnick) ... you could count the number of FMs he was obviously playing and posting about and it was a lot. And more than a few TTLG, etc, people got to "know" him as well as anyone else you could know on a forum. So I think he deserves a little more regard around here, as a Thief FM fan, than other authors. Even independently of that the news is a downer if it means his output will be cut short. cf: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13377 http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?...599#post1149599

I think he was making two points there, 1 - if his hands get injured, it'll be a huge liability to his fighting; 2 - the longer you box the more potential for some brain damage to leave him with Parkinson's or the like later on.

How boring it is depends on what you're looking at. A lot of times the best boxing actually doesn't have much "action" because both boxers are good at reading each other, so their legit hits are harder won, and there's more subtle stuff going on like both wearing down the others' endurance in a race to break the other first, and finding and exploiting their weak points. I actually like watching a match best after I've already seen it once and read the commentary about what made the difference, so I'll know what to look for and can appreciate it. But anyway, just a matter of taste; I like a good slug-fest when it comes to that, like anybody else, too. I'd like to watch it, but not pay-for-view. I have to say they've hyped this fight enough, though ... Seriously, every other time I turn on HBO there they are again, and I wonder what on earth could they have to add this time! I wonder if it hasn't gotten over-hyped.

Hey happy birthday Crispy.

More than just not wasting time, an internal engine means there will already be people who have worked on it for a while, with internal tutorials written, people know what it can do beyond the formal specs. And the problem with Flesh wasn't so much that it wasted time, as that all these unforeseen limitations started coming out of the woodwork over time, whereas with an established engine there won't be any nasty surprises. Another nice thing about the Crystal Dyn Engine is we can expect huge levels. I hope one of the important lessons they take from DX is extensive world building, with a believable world that felt much bigger than just the player's next objective, one of my favorite aspects of the game. I wonder if the fact that it was tailored for a 3rd person pov game, and now is being moved to a FPS makes much difference.

It works in situations when one of your goals is to make a replayable map, and player foreknowledge would gut most the mission on replay, like the combination of a safe or precise location of the objective item when most of the mission is working to figure out the combination or location. This same idea applies to "gamey" levels, like that idea to remake Clue, or Komag's MindMaster, one of the more "artistic" randomization mechanics in recent memory. (You might actually be disappointed to know that a lot of what you did in that blueroom could now be handled by NV's randomization script and a few other custom scripts.) As for just generic loot ... really depends on what your goal with the map is. If you want to design it around a lot of replayability, like a timed maze like Run Thief Run where you have to get X loot in time, or a more puzzle oriented maze, those are situations when it makes sense.

Leave it to the guy with the 'math humor' member-pic to catch something like that. By the way, this thread has completely shattered my faith in the accuracy of the movie War Games.

Don LaFontaine -

But a simple text message isn't an "event". Not many are going to click a link to get to a site just to see a text message. You read the message wherever you saw it first, and that's it. But people click a link to see a video. From one perspective, it doesn't matter much what the video said. It got people to come to it; they are already a tiny bit more invested in following the game now. There's a psychology to it, I think.

I stumbled into a solution when I rotated the model 180deg for completely independent reasons. Apparently it (Lightwave) doesn't care as a default which way the face is actually pointing, only which direction is the positive one on the Cartesian graph. I suspect it doesn't matter anyway, since the Doom3 Engine will render it its own way, so I don't even need to worry. I think I've done all the modeling I want to do ... I tried to put all the strings on one rectangle alpha mapped with transparent negative space (to save triangles), but that just made the default color of the surface show through, then I tried to make the surface itself transparent, and that just made the strings go transparent with it ... I can't win! Looking at that door-hinge screenshot, I got the idea that in D3 you can really get the negative space fully transparent and the texture fully opaque. But I thought screw it anyway, I'll just use 4 triangles per string and it's not that bad, and now they can cast a shadow ... so the final triangle count is 487. I think that's decent.

Still playing around... This looks like a better color combination. This is the first version I'm actually starting to get a feeling I want to pick it up and start playing. Maybe a little too modern? ... with the pick shield, which anyway needs some more tweaking to smooth it out. I could probably make the string-bridge more interesting; I saw one fastened on by an ornate wrought iron fastener. Also debating about having the fret board come down further, actually onto the body, which I've seen a few times. And still thinking of ideas for the border. Etc, etc... Edit: I just noticed the textures are getting mirrored! You can tell by the pick shield going the wrong direction. That's strange.

Probably the textures. I just got them together for the very first time in those screenshots, and took them just to see what to do next; not really to show off but then I felt like what the hell. This is like a diary for my first object. I still have a lot of work to do with them re: color coordination and contrast and border work, etc. Looking at all the source photos, though, it's generally a pretty pale, spare little instrument, and this look fits right in (do a google image search on lute and you'll see what I mean), so I started with what's most typical, but looking at it, you're right it doesn't make a very good aesthetic impression, so now I'm thinking about getting a lot more yellows, browns, and oranges in, like this or this, so it has a lot more medieval classic look, like you'd see it on a table with some candles and a skull.

I've been puttering around with the textures for my lute model. http://i4.tinypic.com/8e5ues5.jpg http://i12.tinypic.com/8730xp4.jpg It's still wip, I've got even more design work planned for the fretboard and border, but I thought I'd show what I've got so far just for kicks. I really love this rosette design I found. (I had to manually photoshop out the strings in the source photograph by hand! I should show it without the model's strings getting in the way. Still needs some more tweaking, too...) This isn't the most current model because I'm making the strings into an alpha texture to save polys (latest model is 451 tri's), so I just used this little older one for now. Edit: Here's a better view of the rosette. http://i12.tinypic.com/8g8rh9e.jpg

Happy bo day Greebirthday.

I'd think it's what inspires people to work for free. Most people are thinking about the Doom game, and not the engine ... and that skews what you might otherwise predict the D3Engine should be attracting. I've been thinking about the guy that did the Knytt games. He used a very simple Game Maker program, with its own engine that for most games looks cookie-cutter, but for his they look very elegant. It's just that he really invested a LOT of time in the art and ambient music, and honing the gameplay to be fluid and natural. I just mean, all the inspiration came mostly on the artistic side, and even with a simple engine he put out a very elegant, beautiful game (IMO). Any good engine can be like that, if you're putting your energy in the right direction, you can get something very elegant out of it. It's just finding that initial spark of inspiration. So I think the community around Doom and the D3Engine through that isn't one to be the most elegant-minded and aesthetically inspired, but not because the engine wouldn't be great for it. It's the people coming from other places with that spark of inspiration and a clear aesthetic vision that will bring the best out of this engine, I predict.

It's after I did some shorinji kempo (which is like karate + judo) that I could watch boxing (and listen to friends that had boxed before) and realize they had a lot of similar techniques, like every time you hit with one hand, your other hand has to go to a defensive position coordinated with the hit position, and you have to alternate hit and defense positions with both hands, coordinated, in tandem and very quickly, manipulating the "beat" to some complex rhythm. It actually reminds me of playing the piano in that way, doing some tricky Latin rhythm. And it's finding and exploiting the tiny gaps in the other guy's rhythm that gets you hits, just like he's doing to you. If it's the sight of big-guy slugfest that's turning you off, you should watch some featherweight boxing to appreciate the hand-work. The wrestling (judo) part of shorinji kempo that I learned ... it's about finding center of gravity turn points; it's not actually all about necessarily overpowering the other guy, but finding and exploiting that turn point that uses his own center of gravity against him, before he gets to yours. What judo and shorinji kempo add that I don't think Western wrestling has are turn points on weak joints, like in the wrist or elbow, that can bring a guy down really fast.