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I prefer a mix of mystery and rational processes, but I much prefer my mysteries to be explicit and not a function of the writer's inability to reason about it. For example, it's acceptable to use magic where either no one (particularly the characters) knows how it works, or occasionally to replace a technology that could not possibly exist otherwise (at that point in time).

There's no reason this couldn't be applied to moon-beams... just keep in mind that in order to get rays, you need to block the moon with something thick that has occasional holes (hence why the clouds look different in the rays AVI - the original clouds tend to produce a warm glow rather than sun-rays), so fog might not work so well. I guess if you're not worried about whether the rays are tied to the shape of the fog, you could use an arbitrary texture to produce moon-rays. I don't have SVN access at the moment, and I think I'd upload the sky as a PK4, so FTP might be more appropriate. In any case, I'd like to try improving the sky a little (moving the sun towards the horizon and increasing the contrast of the clouds a bit more, so that sunbeams tend to be more apparent with more realistic clouds) before uploading it.

Maybe we're not talking about the same thing here, but functional 'groups' for the handling of prefabs (or other complex multi-object things a mapper may wish to define as such) is not really a luxury, so much as a necessity. Once all objects of a prefab are treated as a functional group, duplication, placement, rotation (around a shared origin) are all the same as with, for example, a func_static. On the other hand, not having this functionality means that every time you want to duplicate or move a prefab, you must select every object within it, no matter how big or complex it might be (the very nature of a prefab suggests they will be big and complex, else why prefab it?), rotating it would be troublesome as there is no shared origin, and more problems I'm sure. Anyway, just making the point of the importance of functional grouping before it's squashed, and that it's definitely not hand holding or a luxury. It's vital to this type of editing, and since we've already determined that items like TDM torches, candles, and surely a lot more to come must be prefabs and not some single complex entity, we're pretty much roped into needing this anyway. They exist in DoomEd for some reason - I'd wager this is a big part of it. Edit: Just confirmed, it appears func_groups work in both DoomEd and DR (not fully tested, but it's there). Now, if the functionality could be extended to a new type (so not to remove func_groups), a func_whatever, and to include any type of object instead of just brushes, we'd be set. Func_groups already are selected as a whole, have a unified origin that can be moved, rotated around, etc. In other words, we're almost there. One thought: there'd have to be new functionality (like revert to world) to separate objects from a func_whatever, without destroying them or turning them to worldspawn, but instead, just freeing them and keeping their entity type intact (obviously - just thinking aloud).

Oddity you seem to have taken especial offense at my not liking your favourite books, enough to rudely insult me left and right. I know full well about the awful atrocities that have occured regularly throughout all human history, and I'm grateful we live in a day and age where much of the world has moved past the horrible barbarisms of the past. I do believe it's important to learn and know of the evil in men's hearts, that we may better guard against it in our society, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy reading about such things for FUN. Real drama doesn't have to include graphic depictions of grotesque acts, and an enlightened people shouldn't seek after such things. I agree with you about liking the story and dialog though, it's masterful, and it's the reason I read so far along as I did. I especially like Tyrion's chapters, he's my favourite character of the books. Sam too.

Ok, that doesn't help too much, but thanks anyway. I see that there is an "setShader" command in the log, did you hit Enter once you selected a shader from the tree? On a positive note, I could fix the other crash with the user.xml you sent me. There was a "0" stored as game type value for some reason and I also fixed some other issues with the paths. It's loading now without crash, it just asks for the engine path as the found setting is invalid. edit: still can't reproduce it, I tried every combination of hiding, focusing the orthoview, selecting a shader and showing again.

You should give it a go, it's a great series. If you liked formulaic, averagely written, meandering, arbitrary crap like WoT, you surely haven't got a very high literary standard anyway. I only like stuff that's good, so if I say it's good, you can believe it. Of course, if you're a big sissy like komag, it might not be suitable for that reason alone, there's a lot of disturbing nastiness in it, it's not your typical fantasy swords and sorcery crap, it's a stark medieval world depicted without romanticising it in any way...that's where komag failed, he's used to the sentimental portrayal of the past in entertainment, and thinks it was quaint, he doesn't think that they did actually drag 9 year old girls out of bed and burn them alive for being a witch, or hang kids of the same age for theft, or that the king or his lords were above the law and could rape whoever they wished with impunity.

That's basically what I did. However, I much prefer the idea that ordinary radiation is the cause of the reanimation of dead tissue, in whole or in part, in an alternate universe. We can always suppose that the reason why this happens at all is due to some unexplained force, i.e., magic, but I would much prefer that necromancy can be reasoned about using radiation (and nuclear fission) as a toy model. We can always just explain that radiation serves as little more than a source of (necromantic) energy, that is converted by some fifth force, after all. Pardon my CompSci/Physical bias, but I would much prefer that we relegate the overtly biological stuff to cyborgs and the like and keep the automatons strictly abiological. Having steambots be partially biological smacks too much of the Victorian idea that biology/biochemistry is somehow "irreducible," and that's too arbitrarily restrictive for a magic system--too Jack Vance and D&D. Personally, it's much more interesting to take a very dim view of humanity and teleology in a world where gods do exist (if not all gods); why not throw away the concept of a human soul in the one place where it would make sense? I know it sounds rather backwards, but I personally think it's actually more compelling in a way. (How do you find purpose in life when even the gods themselves must face a meaningless existence?) Interesting idea there. You put a lot of work into that, haven't you? It's pretty damn impressive. One point though, I think I prefer the steambots running strictly off of steam power. That isn't to say there aren't other ways to power a robot, but it might make more sense if things like fusion, fuel cells, any sort of arcane engine and modern batteries--i.e., anything more powerful than a Leyden jar--are all lost technologies, rather than something that can be built by the average inventor. That way, a mapper can still add some really crazy designs, but still have that classic steampunk. Yes, it would. You need to make a way for our lovable thief to find a way to piece it together without it being obvious enough that the family would necessarily figure it out. Then again, you could play up the tragedy by having the father, or indeed, the whole family, know this going into the procedure--that they did to try and bring their daughter back.

I agree with you, but I can think of a reason: tickets provide funds, and the police would already be patrolling the area anyway, so looking for people not wearing seat-belts probably doesn't cost anything extra. The town where I live is notorious for using traffic tickets as a source of funding; I've had friends get ticketed for driving 40mph (65kph) by a school - past midnight.

I probably tried something or other with normals but the 'set to face' turned off the smoothing permanently for the mesh for one attempt I made a while back. I'll keep that in mind & thanks for the feedback That texture will probably be in progress for a while, but our second female is ingame She's on svn now. There's some rigging issues & the skin applied to the main body doesn't apply to the head: //++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++ // Pagan Female skins //++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ skin characters/pagan_female/cloth_natural { model models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_mesh.md5mesh model models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_head.md5mesh models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_bare } skin characters/pagan_female/nocloth_natural { model models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_mesh.md5mesh model models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_head.md5mesh models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_bare models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_cloth textures/common/nodraw } skin characters/pagan_female/nocloth_tatoo { model models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_mesh.md5mesh models/md5/chars/pagans/pagan_female/pagan_female_cloth textures/common/nodraw } So she always has a tattooed head (oops, I misspelled tattoo in the skin decl ). Is there a way to include the skin for a def_head? EDIT: For some reason her breasts became lopsided when I was rigging her EDIT2: Her head's too big . . .

Spider infestation in a sewer? Highly possible: http://www.amonline.net.au/spiders/dangero.../travellers.htm Dunking a semi-vertebrate into a bucket of water to turn water to gel? Exists: http://oceanlink.island.net/oinfo/hagfish/hagfish.html Using that secreted mixture of sugars and proteins as a main ingredient with pulverized grains baked with water (bread) because for the last 400 years it is uneconomical to breed birds for their eggs. Some combination of a plague and widespread industrialization caused the birds to become extinct and mutate. This left primarily Corvus and Passeridae species, albeit heavily mutated and rare. For this reason in FMs birds are (will be) so rarely seen. In far-away cities, especially in the south, one can see a sight of birds filling the main square front of the Builder cathedral.

I used to like caffeine as I noticed upon consuming it I would a) become happier and use time more productively for academics. A little over a year ago I stopped consuming it because it irritated my gastrointestinal system. A few months ago I noticed further reason to not consume it. I bought a small cup of coffee, drank it, and noticed that although I have become artificially awake, my frontal lobe activity increased as did my basic productivity for studying or doing work, but my higher cognitive abilities have completely shut down. I have only become aware of them a few months ago, so during previous consumption I was not aware of them shutting down. They manifest as the ability to think in parallel about future, past, contradicting concepts at once, philosophy, and advanced conceptualization with the details now being taken care of automatically. Also, a single cup of normally brewed tea is enough to diminish those abilities by 20%.

Let's not argue here. Let's discuss our favourite drinks instead if we want to discuss something. I never drink beer. Although from a historical perspective, beer is better than gin. But I don't drink anything gin-like things either. Iced tea 98% of the time. There's a good reason why alcohol cannot be excluded from brandys and herbal liquors - it's a solvent used to extract substances from the herbs and it's essential for the appreciation of the drink through the trigeminal pathways. Another solvent could be used, but it likely would be more toxic and expensive, as it also needs to be a carrier.

I don't drink O'Douls for the same reason most people don't drink decaffeinated coffee or Diet Coke--hell, even caffiene-free coke! They simply don't taste as good. Besides, most beers that are any good to begin with don't come in a non-alcoholic version, negating your point entirely. You're not even trying anymore, are you? Everything I've said, and most of what Maximus has said, is in explicit contradiction to your crazy talk, and in some cases, preemptively so. What scares me is that you don't seem to be able to recognize that fact. Simply put, your hatred of all things chemical stems from your personal (almost religious) belief. Prove me wrong, and accept that what we've been telling might have some merit, even if you choose never to enact on it.

I could just edit the already sticky thread for sound folder structure myself. The reason why I dind't do it yet is because I want some feedback from the other sound guys first, in case I missed something or one of them has a better idea for a particular sub-folder.

For some reason, after reading a few of your posts, I figured you to be the kind of person who might regularly visit www.deusex3.com just to "check on things" (maybe it was the avatar). Well, I guess it's paid off. It does look like something's up, but don't get your hopes too high. As for my opinion on DX3, as long as they've learned their lesson, I would welcome another addition to the series.

Nope. He had no reason, except not nothing about it maybe. One shouldn't think tht game developers always consider every aspect under every situation, because they are just humans like the rest of us.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with a meal, I'm talking about people who drink enough to become intoxicated. In fact, I'm talking about people who's main reason for drinking is to become intoxicated. A very large number of people, all annoying fools. Anything that can't be done sober, isn't worth doing. You get plenty of vivid 'trips' when you sleep at night. 20 a week at least, that's enough for anyone, I don't want to spend my waking state in gagaland as well. Perhaps you'll give me some specific examples of what benefits you've had from no longer being in full control of your own thoughts. I realise you're desperate to justify it, as is any drug user, and will say anything, so I'll have to demand solid evidence.

Speaking as a drinker, I don't see quite the same problem with it as you do. However, the only point I differ with you on is what point it is considered a chemical dependency. First off, anyone who displays any of the classic symptoms of addiction is obviously over this line, but what about other people? For example, what about so-called "social drinkers," people who only drink around other people and then only in moderation (some would argue too much so)? They display absolutely no signs of dependency, and the only reason why they might possibly feel pressured to drink is simply to keep up appearances, as it were. As written, your objection to drinking and such forth sounds as though the mere presence of alcohol in one's system marks a chemical dependency, which is simply untrue (key phrase: as written). I would like to first point out that a more moderate version of this view is quite acceptable, and one I hold myself. However, as is, the statement is highly fallacious. "Any chemical dependency" is a ludicrous standard to hold one's self to. Would you consider requiring medicine to cope with schizophrenia a "chemical dependency?" Or would you consider your own dependency on vitamins and proteins such an indulgent dependency? Hopefully not. (Although if you do, I'll see if I can't get you a Darwin award for your troubles.) The key is moderation. The stumbling drunk trying to pick a fight with you is something to be irritated at--nay, to be pitied--but the guy who drinks one or two beers at a party is nothing to be annoyed about. The guy who enjoys the occasional blunt is nothing to be worried about, but the guy who constantly comes into work stoned is.

Well, as I studied cognitive science and philosophy of mind at university, how could I *not* jump in here. It's long, though, I'm sorry. Read at your own discretion. Ok, it looks like there are two issues here, (1) is consciousness amenable to scientific inquiry (and what kind of "science" would it be); OR, if it isn't, what kind of inquiry is it amenable to? And (2) what is the nature/reality of "free will", in (a) the actual operation of human decisionmaking and (B ) our experience of that operation (which may be two different things). If I could recommend one very accessible book that deals with both of these questions, it would be Glimcher's Neuroeconomics, which argues strongly that the growing trend of modern neuroscience, which now encompasses the majority of working neuroscientists, is both that that (1) cns is amenable to scientific inquiry, (2) and that humans are "free" in the sense the brain has real agency, that is, that the Sherrington/Pavlov/Skinner dictum that "neurology is nothing more than the study of conduction (from source to response)", that is, *everything* is a "trained reflex" to stimulus in the end, is wrong. The brain is NOT a conduction machine in that the same stimulus will always lead to the same response. It is more like an "optimizing" computer that optimizes the agents position through behavior in whatever "game" it finds itself playing and based on whatever "considerations" are important to it. This includes the simulation of random behavior when it is optimal to do so (e.g., to reach the Nash equilibrium), something that is quite possible in conventional physical systems (e.g., computers do it all the time with sensitivity to the internalclock or something; no need for weirdo quantum effects). Ok, I'm sort of going to combind these two questions at first, since they are related: Here's some of the background. Before the 1980s, William James (184?-1910) was the last major naturalist thinker that took the subject of consciousness as a serious topic of scientific inquiry, and even he was pretty alone for his time. After 1910, you got the rise of positivism in science, which for psycholgy lasted for 80 years, where the only thing that was "real" was what you could mathmatically or logically "model" ... analytic philosophy (Frege, Carnap, et al) pushing the way in theory, and the weirdness of quantum physics (you have the math, but what's the reality??) pushing the way in the practice. In psycology, you had Pavlov and then Skinner, who thought that cns could and should be written out of the scientific study of the mind. We only need to look at stimulus and behavior, and only need to crack open the head at most to find the pathway connections between afferent (stimulus carrying) neuron paths from the sense organs to efferent (behavior carrying) neuron paths to the muscles. They just assumed there was basically a one-to-one connection (sort of like the Laffer curve for tax) that they must just meet somewhere in the middle and trade information. So they felt they could just focus on behavior -- and after the 1960s (when technology got better) they felt they could focus on just the pathway connections between afferent and efferent paths -- because all this time their theory of the mind was Sherrington's theory of conduction (an 1850s psychologist who first mapped reflexes by tracing the paths of neurons). That theory just says, for every type of stimulus there is a unique, final path to a behavioral reaction, and the job is just to find how those paths are categorized by stimulus type. The only thing that neurons do is carry the message from the stimulus to the behavior pattern, along paths that were either hardwired (reflexes) or learned (Pavlov and his bells and dogs). Neurons are good for nothing but "conduction", and all of the "experience" part just obfuscates that (you can probably see the political implications as well). So this theory finally started getting blasted in the late 1970s, early 80s, largely spearheaded by one real visionary named David Marr (who had a very unfortunate early death in 1980, although his work was carried on by his lab). He introduced the competing idea that pathways are not *merely* conducting signals, but the signals are actually getting functionally processed towards a teleological end for the individual. So in his landmark study of the eye; he didn't just look at the parts and ask, how does this mechanically carry a signal to reach a final efferent path (like every neuroscientist for the last 200 years had)? He asked, what does this part functionally do for the organism; what's its purpose? It really smacked against the face of psychological positivism, who probably thought purposes were too religious sounding. But today it is by far the dominant position in neuroscience. The reason Marr could get away with talking about "purpose", and why it could transform the whole field so quickly was not only because of the computer revolution helped them model mental processes (computer science is inherently functional), but more importantly because it wasn't until then that they really started connecting neuroscience to its biological roots, and taking evolution and natural selection seriously. Before, the brain was just *there* to study, and they got uncomfortable thinking about origins. But today, neuroscientists will want to know how such a process might have evolved through natural selection, which is a question of functionality. Ok, what does this have to do with "freedom". Economists and ecological biologists had long noticed that animals and humans normally act with agency to optimize their strategic position in whatever situation they are in. (They were uncomfortable with saying it was the "brain" that was manifesting that agency, they just looked at the behavior, but they couldn't deny it.) One great study that exemplifies this work is animal and human behavior in the hawk/dove game. The game is that there is one piece of food, two birds want it; each one has a choice, do they play "hawk" and fight for it (risking serious injury if the other picks hawk, free food if the other picks dove) or "dove" and flee if the other fights (risking hunger) (if both are "dove" then the first one on arrival gets it, which translates as a 50% chance). So they added up all the pay-offs for each (food minus injury, times the likelihood) of the four options and computed the Nash equilibrium (the %-likelihood a bird *should* choose hawk versus dove strategy every time it sees food if it wanted to maximize its health over many games. The equilibrium %s are the optimal strategy to get the most food with the lowest chance of injury over time. The punchline is that they observed birds hitting the Nash equilibrium perfectly time after time; and the same is true across many species in many different types of games (sometimes they are off a little, which leads them to think they are missing a variable, and then later they will discover the new variable). One important thing about these games is that the equilibrium doesn't work unless the behavior is totally unpredictable to the opponant, so the mechanism which computes the Nash equilibrium for the animal is geared to be almost perfectly random for each individual choice, but hitting the equilibrium % on the whole. And the observations match this. So now they had a model which confirmed our intuitions that even the *exact same stimulus* can lead not only to very different responses, but even *random* responses by the agent (e.g., to trick its strategic opponant, or according to some internal consideration important to that agent at that time, but not at other times). The point is, all of these studies suggest that agency, innate randomness (on the level of individual acts, but not patterns of action), and optimization are key features to animal and human decisionmaking. The theory of conduction is now seen as an incorrect model that is misleading and gets in the way of all these features. The clencher for the theory came with Glimcher's lab which "solved" (depending on if you agree with their conclusion) an old problem for the conductionists. They had managed to track the afferent signals from the retna (vision signals) and the efferent pathway to the eye-muscles to the exact place that the two signals met, an place called the LIP area (lateral intra-parietal). The question they couldn't figure out was whether LIP was afferent (signal carrying) or efferent (muscle-command carrying), because it was acting like both and neither at the same time! Glimcher came up with the perfect resolution, building off of Marr's work, that actually LIP was neither afferent or efferent. He changed his experiments not to look for the "signals" or "behavior" which matched its activity, but (on a hunch) based on economic variables such as what is the payoff for the monkey if he pushes the button when he sees the signal. The data brilliantly (IMO) tracked the payoff amounts almost exactly, so that the behavior-potential activity was greater the more the payoff went up. The point is, the data was literally computing the relative expected utility for each kind of behavior based on the layout of the stimulus, and was sensitive to various "reasons" to do X as opposed to Y ... with the behavior with the optimal solution "winning" the REU contest and capturing the right to command behavior. I know I just wrote a lot; I'm sorry about that. But *that* right there was IMO our first glimpse of what "freedom" really is at the lowest level of brain function. Freedom is the agency of the system to choose among a set of options the one option that is best for it (without other, external forces outside of it making that decision for it). (NB, this is different from what people might "say" their freedom is; that has to do with later brain processes of reflecting on one's experience of decisionmaking and crafting a narrative, which may actually differ from how the brain is actually taking on the decision in another brain area. Right now I am focusing only on the decisionmaking itself) This kind of freedom allows the agent to add as many relevant "considerations" to the decision as it "wants" which can make the decisionmaking very nuanced and sensitive to just what is important to the agent (and not things outside the agent). Humans are "more free" than animals IMO only in the sense that humans are able to add higher levels of considerations to their decisionmaking through semantic understanding; they are sensitive to narratives that feedback into decisionmaking in a way animals aren't, although the basic decisionmaking mechanism (the "gut feeling" that this is the "right" thing to do) is about the same IMO ... only the variables to which it is sensitive to vary. An important footnote is that agency does not necessarily mean total autonomy; agency and autonomy are different concepts. (Agency is the "self power" to make a decision; "autonomy" is the means to make a decision without sensitivity to outside interests.) Agency certainly doesn't mean autonomy in the "external" or practical sense, because a person can easily be coerced through physical means (a gun to the head, locked up in prison), so that they aren't practically free to do what they want, although they can make the internal decision, they don't have the practical means to accomplish it. There is a question about whether agency is limited in its "internal autonomy". Sartre famously didn't think so. I think they might be. While an individual may make a decision under their own "power" in just the way I described, they may filter that decision through the filter of narratives (e.g., culture) that shape the way a decisional issue is posed, e.g., in understanding what game the agent even finds itself playing. That is, decisions often use language to frame themselves, but language (and the culture that often goes along with it) is something given from the outside and can embed interests that aren't necessarily in the best interest of the agent, or even the society; powerful interests may just be keeping themselves in power through culture, etc. But as for how central this kind of possibility is to a person's "inner freedom" is a big debate, so I won't try to answer it here. I know this was long. Was it helpful to the discussion, though? (I realize I didn't answer the "is cns amenable to science" question. That will have to await another post.)

Part of the reason for the way the eyes look right now is that there's no normal-map. The eyes seem to be flat and so when they catch light, the specular is bright all across the eye and tends to wash everything out. When I added a normal-map to my belcher skin that made it appear more round and the reflected light of the specular became much smaller--I tried adding the eyelids as well, but I gave up trying to position it perfectly to do that. It probably would be easy to do using the uv-map.

I like the model, but not the eye texture. It doesn't click for me, for some reason. Maybe it's because of the shape, or because the pupil is only faintly distinguished from the white. Could we try indicating some lids or skin with texture, to give the eye itself a bit rounder shape? I like the shape of the sockets, but just imagine the size of the complete eyeball - taking the curve and visible area as a clue, they'd be enormous, unless they are egg-shaped. Here's a (quickly googled, sorry about the watermark) pic of a crocodile's eye. Notice how the socket is roughly the same shape as that of our belcher:

Floating ice that melts doesn't change the water level at all. It's exactly the same, because the whole reason ice floats a certain amount (say 9/10 below the water) is because it's exactly 9/10 as dense, so when it melts, the parts above and below the water exactly equal the amount that was previously under water as ice. But ice that is on land and melts and runs down into the water would raise the water level.

OrbWeaver, have you ever had a look at the HomePathObserver / EnginePathObserer / VFSModuleObserver stuff? Do you know what they are for? (For what it seems, each observer seems to be attached to the other observer and all those form some sort of chain that gets fired when the engine path gets changed.) It looks pretty ugly to me, but perhaps there is a deeper reason behind it, apart from the obivous of having more code just for the fun of it.

Shadows aren't the only cause of performance problems -- rendering of regular polygons doesn't come for free either. For this reason you should be aiming to minimise the complexity of your geometry wherever possible, such as by making judicious use of normal maps to give the impression of detail.

Rather than remodelling any of the potions, I think we should just change the colour of the metal. The speed potions are likely to be the rarest, so there's no reason we can't make a brass texture for them. As for the holy water cross, I think it also looks like a stylized hammer. It also is very easy for players to identify it as holy water without needing to know our mythos. The builders themselves have simple hammers on their chests, not the (excellent) hammer/cog symbol. I would argue it's not worth changing. Just like Christianity has other symbols than the just the cross (the stylized fish, etc), the builders might have more than one symbol as well. It's hard to judge size in a shot like that, but the mines should be approximately the size of dinner plates, and it looks like they are. The flashbombs may be a tad on the large side, but it's an easy fix to resize something. I'll check them out when they're on SVN to make sure. I think we can definitely move on to other things now though. Thanks again Pink for the excellent work.