demagogue

Who are you on TTLG? The story of my nick is actually there somewhere if you want to look it up (when it's back up). But long story short, it's from a spoof website I put up when I first learned HTML (still in the wee early days of the net) for recruiting minions to do my evil bidding, me being the benevolent demagogue of course. I made a lot of those spoof kinds of pages in those days, most sort of on the dark side, just to practice making sites and as a creative outlet (since I made them to look good) ... a LBJ/Nixon fanpage, one celebrating medieval Arab invaders and torture methods, some sites for philosophers I liked, etc.

I just noticed in the last map I made that AI in the original Thief can randomize the next patrol way-point they'll go to, which in effect randomizes them backtracking sometimes and not others. I think simple things like this (easy for the builder to design and control) are really the way to go, and not something too complicated to predict and control, since it will largely be up to a builder how random behavior will effect gameplay in the context of his map. Another thing, it seems a lot of the stuff you mention re: in game "learning" could be taken care of with scripting.

For the record, this debate reminds me of the debate in behavioral economics that "intellegent" actors, at least when they're doing strategic behavior, are self-consciously a little random (predictably random!) just so their competitor can't predict exactly what they'll do, while they can still be optimal at the same time. This is one reason why Pavlov was wrong (all actions aren't s/r reflexes, arguably none) and why building some of this into video game AI makes for good gaming. A slightly different debate here is on rule following and generativity (being "original"), which works for some types of rules like chess and language. Too much to explain here, though.

It'd be nice as an option for the toughest difficulty, better for replayability ... but I doubt devs are going to line up to implement something like this, with the heavy load of work, if it's not going to be used much. By the way, my undergrad cogsci/AI professor (Risto Miikkulainen) at U Texas has been involved in this sort of project for years now, engineering this sort of stuff, or one version of it, for video games and the military, the NEAT project (Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies). E.g., they have a demo game out called NERO (Neuro Evolving Robotic Operatives), which plays with putting NEAT into real time... you have to defeat little invading robot armies, RTS style, that get progressively smarter and learn from your defenses with each advance, and also a project for FPSs, right now apparently focusing on goal-directed navigation and, very cool I think, a platform for a uniform interface to a library of computer game environments.

Well, to be fair, most genres have a problem with mindless shooting fests and could use a little more imagination. Also, it's not always clear what "strategic" means in the FPS context (so when you see the word, it's maybe forgiveable to misunderstand what's going on). Deus Ex claimed to allow players "strategic" choices in going through a scene, but I got the feeling by this they meant there was some flexibility between which weapon you'd rely on, big and loud or small and silent, or sometimes you could find a back way in or sneak through, or some areas had some "puzzle" to them to cross, etc, but IMO these really aren't so much "strategic" decisions as the word is used in most other game contexts like RTS, planning ahead and countering AI/other player strategies, and really making hard, on-the-fly cost/benefit sorts of decisions. This is another way that the potential in FPSs has barely been scratched, I think (mostly because of lackluster AI and again a failure of imagination).

Nope. And for the record, of course, I hope TDM becomes just as popular as dromeding, or -- what the hell -- even more so ... although I'll be a fan whatever the case. I just couldn't resist Dram's nice set-up.

Sounds like a good idea, Spar. It has to be said that the potential for FPSs has hardly been scratched, I think. More than any other genre I think it could really use some imagination and people taking it in new directions, especially in weening it off of mindless shooting as the main M.O.

Surprise!

Uh, real life?

More like nobody is interested in this mod. Check your facts, mister.

I think if there should be a remake, you should go for a *really* oldschool game, like Bard's Tale or Zork or something (or my idea, Guild of Thieves), where you could keep the story but really, totally recreate the world in a vastly different modality. Now that would be a rush. There just isn't enough added value IMHO with remaking the OMs (even putting aside copyright issues); it's like a song cover ... it just sounds dumb unless it's really offering something new.

For the record, I read the script again in my free time just a few days ago, totally independently, and I didn't remember this line, (I mean, a lot of lines were slightly different) and anyway I didn't have the images connected to the lines, which is why I double-checked (since it's obviously BW as the main character). Edit: It's there in my script, though. Funny part of the movie, anyway. Of course I remember the scene and line now.

I don't recognize it right off. Fifth Element?

It seems the awesome express is back in town.

Just to fill out the implications of that, that suggests the collision model, if it isn't varying by head height, and you want head bob, will have to be set at the highest head height setting. For as troublesome as jiggering into tight spaces was in the original series, at the same time it did open up more player freedom by covering slightly tighter spaces than could be done without this effect, when the current height of your head is the ultimate judge of how low you can go, and not a set boundary always below which your head bobs (possibly unintuitively). Don't get me wrong, the trade-off may be worth it in player convienence, my intuition is that it probably is, but I think it should be seen as something of a trade-off.

I think Komag meant warm for a refridgerator. 55-65 deg F is still pretty cool (13-18 degrees celsius); it's below room temperature. It sounds like an ok idea, even a fridge turned off would be better than just a cabinet, since a fridge is temperature sealed. On that note, maybe you could just put a seal on a cabinet so the sunlit warmer air doesn't affect it too much. (?)

You know, this game made the Arts page in the New York Times yesterday, and all I could think is, why the hell are they wasting space with Rockstar and spending zero time on the games and studios that are actually worth their time? It's just because Rockstar has a public image for being so "scandalously ghetto" or whatever. And the big punchline was how surprisingly the PC wasn't the bully, but fighting them. *yawn* ... is that the kind of mainstream news its come to in the videogaming world? Anyway, this game looks ok. The open endedness is of course always welcome, but even with that it looks like it will get old fast, faster than GTA for sure, where you at least could cruise around in a fast car and take tight turns if nothing else.

I got hooked on As Time Goes By when they started playing it on public television here in the US. (And I'm in my 20s ... Haha.)

The second news item here (http://www.stygianabyss.com/) has like 30 screenshots of Dark Messiah from around E3. Not the demo exactly, but gives you a good idea.

It's funny that so much drama recently has to be centered on the Editor's Guild. Man, drama and TEG go together like lapdances at Star Trek conventions. At least there needs to be a better outlet for airing these sorts of issues than there of all places. (edit: started my post before spar posted, so didn't see it. Yeah, I guess you sort of laid your cards on the table, didn't you? Oh well...)

Yeah, the way Digi worded it, it was like there's a string of stuff in the queue and he's rationing them out. Also, the name "mystery developer" makes you think this is the same person who kicked out the T3 music tracks. I wonder what made him/her so generous all of a sudden? It may have been like Emil's journal and it just occured to him/her one day.

I can see how once he started these things he couldn't stop making them. Trippy.

Do you know that the voice of Dante is our own Saturnine? From the readme: We don't see him much nowadays, but he does a great job as a voice actor I agree.

Yeah, it's a great one, although a little unconventional. It pushed Thief a little in the direction of an adventure game (inventory puzzles), which I liked although not everyone's cup of tea. I also really dug Dante's voice and attitude; he's the most (really only) credible successor to Garrett I've ever come across, IMO. Mission X, its sequel, is near completion and promises to be the next classic on the horizon.

Yeah, friendly almost to a fault. Re: Komag, I tend to think that it was actually fairness that was motivating them, since it's probably not cool for an admin to be accused of favoritism where they allow old members to bend rules and not newbies ... since if Komag got away with it, nothing could stop any guy and a bot from advertising this and that, since they'd all point to his thread in their defense. And it is their responsibility to be fair if nothing else. And the difference between what Komag did and a lot of the worse-seeming trolling going on isn't so much how *bad* what he did was, but how *clearly* it broke the rules, which pushed the admins in a corner where their decision was sort of made for them as a matter of policy, nothing deeper than that. So no one can blame them for the slap on the wrist. It's really the "permanent" part that seems excessive, since there's no reason to expect Komag to keep getting himself into trouble; although he was a little defiant like he expected special treatment, but that's just what slaps on the wrist are for. But there are so many cases where they've let people quietly slip back into the fold without a lot of fanfare when they seem to have demonstrated that they're off their old problem track and genuinely want to get back into the community and contribute, which Komag seems the poster-child for, and I think they even prefer that kind of outcome as the admins have suggested before. The catch here is that it's actually generating some fanfare, so I can see how the admins could be a little split between formally defending their decision for the same reasons mentioned above while informally acknowledging that things will be cool with a little time after K's learned his lesson. That's why I think the best thing is probably for everyone to be cool about it and let things work behind the scenes than to make a lot of noise about it. Still, one can't help but see it in symbolic terms, I guess, and try to find some bigger picture of what it implies. It's just the way the situation played out.