Search the Community

The last two look great.

In a single mission, you need a loot objective, otherwise there is no point picking it up other than to hear the *dring!* sound. The objective is there to simulate a requirement that would otherwise be there in a campaign. But at the same time, I really really really hate when I'm like, 5% below the requirement, and have spent longer searching for that last 5% than playing the rest of the actual mission!! Our difficulty setting may let you aleviate this, but you wouldn't know its ridiculously hard till you were near the end anyway. The only thing we can really do is hope FM authors can create a good balance of loot requirement and giving clues about where to find it, if you read enough things. The most annoying thing is having to play virtual scavenger trying to cover every polygon of the level for any randomly placed loot. It's one thing to scour someone's house or bedroom for the stash that you know for certain is there. It's something totally different when just randomly having to search - to be wandering the streets randomly searching for some coin someone dropped in a random drain or gutter somewhere, and you have no idea where to start.

If we're goingt o put in a complex blocking system, then I prefer a visual system of a block for every type of attack a guard may make, and that matematical system domarius cooked up can be used to reward the player of a successon of good blocks.. I 'd like to see four attack types by gurds, with four choices of block to counter them. You have to use the correct block to counter the incoming attack or you still suffer say, 70% damage from the attack. THe player's whole gameplan should be about blocking and not attacking, so he should be punished for making attacking strokes by being hit by counterattacks from guards - and of course, the guards do a lot more damage then the player, so he won't last long by being agressive. The player should be on the definsive the whole time, or die. This is a good gameplay representation of how the player is supposed to be an inferior swordsman to the guards.

I like the last one best personally, or maybe the first one

I used fraps to capture the movie last time, didn't have any issues with jerkiness. Oh, I didn't know the sword was ingame already. It's in CVS? I haven't seen any files pertaining to it in there.

Last time I'll ask nicely folks. COOL IT!

Obscurus, is it correct that number of folds in a brain is a clue to the level of intelligence? Crenellation (sp) I think? Allows for greater area with less demands on total volume. This speciation of humans is interesting talk. As an aside, are you familiar with the Basque peoples of Spain? I recently read that its thought they may be a strain of humanity with the last known expressions of Neaderthal genes. They share a number of characteristics, heavy earlobes, large brows, and an unusually high occurence of top 20% I.Q.s. I cannot remember where I saw this, it was a reputable source. I hope its not some horrid slander. Homo sapiens, possibly the dumb fucks of the human family? And you know what I mean.. Another possible branching off of the human species could be our machine progeny. They would be far more likely candidates for interstellar travel than our current forms. Although for short term we need to get off this rock and get started on the Moon or Mars. I believe they discovered a lake of frozen water underneath the N pole of the Moon, cometary water or something like that. Its an enormous advantage for us as fuel and for life support, especially since its already there. I reread some of the past posts and want to add a point to the points about the Point of It All. Truly there is no point to life, I believe this sincerely, in its most basic conception its merely a set of chemical reactions that cannot stop unless an asteroid or something similar nips it. But who cares? To hell with points. Its the ultimate freedom in fact, if we can seize it as a species/being, we can make our own point(s).

Actually this isn't true. I ran into the same misconception when I played around with readable books last year. Here are some of the things I learned about D3 resolution: The short of it is--there's no reason why the GUI should look blurry at all.

Quite frankly, I think your pencil sketches are better, artistically speaking. This last batch is excellent. The shading you achieve with the pencil is much more realistic than the harsher pen--which would be better suited to technical drawings or floorplans. On the topic of character sketches. There are still plenty that can be done. Here's a few that we'll need sooner or later: (you may have to search for discussions of the more unique ones) a prostitute a beggar an urban pagan * a necromancer * a thieves' guild member male/female a female guard pagan shaman (male/female) * For starters. The ones with stars are ones I had some ideas for, but hadn't knocked anything up yet. Feel free to try your own design for any of them.

One last quick point, the cross bow is a far different weapon than the light bow, or even the longbow, or even those REALLY long bows Amazonian Indians use sometimes, the ones they lay down on their backs, brace against the bottom of their feet, and pull with both arms. Crossbows were made for penetrating armor. Bolts are generally thicker, more massive, than arrows. They dont have the range of a comparably sized bow, but they impart a LOT more momentum to the missle they fire at least in the first few seconds of flight. WHich is why they are both a weapon and a likely candidate for use as a climbing tool. Edit: crossbows dont necessarily have more punch power, its dependent on the size/flexibility of the bow, but it IS easier to put a really powerful bow on a wooden stock that you can brace and crank to arm, while with a similarly powerful regular bow, you would have to be a Hercules to draw it back. According to some archery hunting website anyhowz.

LOL! Where did you get that notion from? This is exactly what others have been talking about in regards to other species living in the sea. If the sea is a good environment to perform in then it makes sense to move there and adapt. If it is more advantagous to be a predator for your particular course it also makes sense to adapt to such an environment. Consequently if there are advantages to farm then this is the way to go. There is no such thing as a consciousness decision to become farmer. Some people realized that plants could be harbored and cultivated and this was a benefit for them so it increased. It was not as if some day they suddenly said "Let's try ourself at farming and see how we fare with it.". Actually that depends on the law. In most european countries I guess this term would be used for adults dabbling with kids at an age defined by law. This has nothing to do with prebuscence or not. IMO in US it could still be seen for kids as old as 16 at which age girls are definitely capable of carrying babies and boys are definitely able to produce them. The youngest mother is IMO 9 year old. I think I read that somewhere in Guiness Book or such. Having sex with a 9 year old because you want to have babies with her is definitely considered as paedohilia in most countries IMO. I'm not talking about wether it makes sense to have kids at this age, only about the biological possibility and that law doesn't have much to do with bio. Law is just a (more or less) consensus. Well, that would depend on the actual circumstances. If this murderer is a member of a group holding one of the last pools of water, he definitely would have an advantage, because he can live out his urge on people trying to get at their resources and he would be the hero there. On the other hand, if this same guy was living with a bunch of womans who depise such a thing, they might consider to net have babies with him, and thus putting him on a dead end evolutionary speaking. Whereas a less murderous man might tread exactly the thin line where these woman would find it still acceptable. It could also be the other way around For each example that you give, you can find a positive or negative example where it would or would not make sense to have such a trait. And this is what evolution is about. If you are living in an envrionment where your particular traits are helpfull then you have an advantage. There is no such thing as good or bad genes, because the value of your traits depend on the environment you have to compete in.

I didn't say I wouldn't be working on the mod. I said I wouldn't be as active as normal. I'll still be doing character concepts as needed, updating the website and doing all the organizational drudge work that needs to be done for the models. But I've passed up paying work for the last year in order to work on the mod and I've decided I'm not going to do that anymore.

THat's small scale with a lot of provisos though. *Some* animals *may* survive for *some* length of time, *if* they're lucky, or the disability isn't too bad. I'd like to see how long a blind or deaf or lame gazzelle would last. Humans can lives full lives and contribute with quite severe disabilites. It's a common thing these days. Another advantage of our complex social structure and technology, and the stable environment we're created for ourselves with a surplus of supplies.

Great work on the current texture updates (compression and elimination of redundancy!). At start of sync last night, my TDM folder was 666 Mb. Erm... After falling asleep with WinCVS running, a few hours later, ~280 Mb. :thumb: Looking forward to new additions!

I may be confusing a discussion of rope arrows I read on TTLG with this list, sorry if thats the case. But it has been brought up once or twice here in the last few months I believe, in fact I think it was obscurus that brought up the point but maybe thats incorrect. And while the crystal arrows are unrealistic, the explanation that they are magical in origin goes a lot farther in explaining them than the rope arrows. To my thinking, the rope arrows, again I loved em too, demand too much magic to account for them. I can believe in a magic crystal that does certain things, hell most of the imbeciles that really believe in magic wear the damn things in their ears and around their necks, but the rope arrows never had anything to explain them. The crystals were elemental crystals, brimming with magical power, but where the hell did the rope arrows come from? They were just there. At least the vine arrows made sense, a magical plant based thingy that struck and wrapped tough vines around whatever surface available. They looked like they would work if they could really exist. All the other magical items in the games and FMs had some precedent in fantasy literature, magical potions, magical weapons, magical crystals, magical gems. But rope arrows? And to add to it, they didnt LOOK very sturdy when they stuck into wood, sometimes I would climb up a zillion feet to find my arrow had barely stuck into the surface of the wood. It detracted from the immersion. The rope bolt however has more going for it, crossbow bolts leave the bow with much more acceleration, therefore striking with greater force, and the clockwork screw head explains exactly why they would stay put in wood. Not that the player needs to see all that, but if he/she KNOWS it before hand it supports the immersive effect.

THe last three lines were obviosuly flippant, but you meant the first paragraph, and don't try to squirm out of it now that you've been made to look foolish in front of everyone. Just make a public apology for your level of idiocy,and you'll be forgiven.

I had considered that a larger spider like that might equate to a heavy enough arm that would cause it act like a limp human arm... but personally I just didn't see that happening. Partly because I didn't think spiders had the same joint configurations, muscles, tendons and internal workings as a human arm; and partly because I diddn't think the mass of their leg would be near the mass of a human arm. If I turn anything up in research, I'll let you know. Side note: A tarantula is considerably larger than a tiny spider, yet its weight is still barely noticeable. I just don't think a spider of T2's size would weigh as much as a large dog... do you? EDIT: I can just see that spider lifting it's head one last time going "Why??!" and then its arm dramatically falls to the ground, as the audience applauses at such a beautiful performance. j/k

Yup, but since he hasn't replied to many other emails, don't expect anything soon. Also I only got back last night so he hasn't had much time to respond.

great anims Odd i fear i will have a hard time playing with your spiders around:) btw an idea for the campaign to implement some fearful moments with spiders:) or as part of FM since i dont how how it would fit to our campaign..i dont want to spoil it for myself so i didnt read the plans:) you are in a manor thats near the forest,close to the walls of the city lets say you got to get some things from the cellar..you pick the lock,go down,notice some webs and a dark passage that leads down to the wine cellar..wind screams from the passage and the door shuts locked behind you...the cellar was abandoned and locked because when they dug the winecellar(its like a cave..since it wasnt finished) they misfortunately connected it with the tunels of the giant spiders that lies under the near forest.. (however the thief knows nohting about that) so you succesfully get the things you need from upper cellar..(can be anything) when something happens..spiders crawling out slowly from the dark lower winecellar..there are much,they kill you if you go melee,you can shoot some down with arrow..or let them eat you:) or go out back the door..at least you can try it..there is no lock from inside,so noone can enter the manor if ever the spiders get viped out or somthing so you shoot some down..a guard hears the noise from the cellar and goes to check..a new guard at the house..eager that finally something happens.. gets out his keyring and starts running..without thinking he starts searching for the right key..the spiders flee back to the darkness(actually they disappear in the dark so its easier to script),you stand in the darkness hear the jingling of keys and see the flames of the guards torch dancing on the floor as it comes throught at the bottom of door(thats scared the spiders)..you cant let him find you,the only way to hide is where the spiders hide.. now here some well places spider patrols,lighting,and hiding positons..you try not to get in the ways of spiders..you can find one point where tunnel leads to a very big hall,lighting of the moon comes in at several places..its full of spiders and webs, you die from the fall if you slip out accidentaly from the tunnel) meanwhile you can hear the guard is coming into the passage as well, slowly..then after a certain time of his search he notices the giant spiders and starts running..he runs to alert the others,but again without thinking in the haste.he leaves the door open..now you may leave the cellar..once you step out the door it triggers the guards coming back to investigate..if you keep your ears open you can hear an older guard telling the story of the cellar while cursing the owners name why didnt he walled it all the day after they first noticed the spiders.. and the thief is back on his 'duty' you could ask why wasnt the tunnel collapsed instead of protected by a simple metaldoor.. the winecellar was built illegally,noone knew about it,only some trusted..and hm well bribed guards.. the collapse of the tunnel could have been dangerous to the citywalls that was above it..also..it happened in the last weeks,there wasnt time to wall it:)

My previous: Thousand Yard Stare: And My last: Portrait of a Fallshirmjäger Tell me what you guys think Cobra 6

Maximius, I think oDDity was in agreement with you saying that reason and logic were separate from philosophy... And I wasn't saying that you shouldn't have a reasoned line of thought or discussion before doing something, I was talking more about people who have endless philosophical discusions about things that exist only as pure speculation (like God for example), from which no action will arise. Sure, politicians should debate issues and blow some hot air before they pass new legislation (too often they don't, they just pass laws without thinking about the consequences), and sure I always go through a lot of reasoned thought before I conduct a scientific experiement, but that is so I can arrive at a framework for action. Philosophical debates about the nature of the universe at 15.3 femtoseconds after the big bang or the origins of the universe or god have no conceivable application to science or daily life, other than to make the lives of emotionally and mentally immature people more interesting or "fulfiling", or as a crutch for the feeble-minded. So yes there is an arbitrary limit after which discussion becomes pointless, and that limit will vary depending on the subject matter at hand... Take the debate about global warming for example. It is faily evident to the vast majority of scientists that the climate is changing, and that the likely cause, or at the very least a major contributing factor, is human carbon dioxide emmisions. People should have stopped blowing hot air about this decades ago (no pun intended ), and proceeded to phase out hydrocarbon fuels and phase in a range of cleaner technologies gradually. Now, because we have wasted so much time, the only viable option to preventing the damage to the climate systems from progressing further is to rapidly switch to nuclear power generation, and since this option is very controversial, we will see another 20 years of endless debate, by which time we are well and truly screwed, and are probably set on a path to early extinction. Reason and logic have long ago demonstrated the need for action, ie to stop using primitive hydrocarbon combustion and replace it with a range of advanced energy generation technologies, but people have instead ignored reason and followed emotions like greed (milking every last drop out of the oil wells) and have doomed us all (perhaps I am using hyperbole too much, but you get the idea).

I've been researching this myself lately - not because I've had any problems with Windows, my installation at home runs flawlessly - but because I have Linux at work, and I have been having a lot of problems with it, and I want to learn more about it so I know what I am talking about when I go to complain to my system administrators. I have so far got it down to a few distros - Ubuntu or Kubunto seem to be the most popular at the moment (and fairly easy for noobs), and are very well put together by all accounts, but there is a question mark over their business model and hence their longevity. Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) is a very good distro for the newbie, as is Lycoris, and they have good hardware support, and aren't expensive, but Mandriva has taken over Lycoris so expect the two distros to be rolled into one soon. There are a few distros that run as Live CDs, ie, you don't need to install anything to your hard drive, so you can try them out to see how they work before you go and partition your HD and install it properly. There are a staggering number of distributions out there, and it is quite bewildering for someone like myself who is quite new to the whole Linux thing. My advice is to invest in some hard drive partitioning utilities and read some reviews of various distros, and do some extensive googling before commiting to anything, abd back up your hard drive! I have kind of settled on Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome - KDE is more like windows in appearance, so less of a shock to the system IMO), Ubuntu send you a CD in the mail for free, takes 4 - 6 weeks though, if you have fast internet, download the iso, and you can just install KDE to make Kubuntu. I think I will build a dedicated machine for my install though, rather than partition my HD, as I want to see how well I can network it with my Windows machine. I just wish Linux was a bit simpler, without the bewildering array of options... I kind of feel swamped with decisions when looking at Linux.... That is something I like about Windows - it is fairly simple, and I know what software will work on it, wheras with Linux it feels like a mystery tour that could end in tears if I make one wrong turn. Personally, I had OpenOffice.org installed for ages, but it just wouldn't open Excel and word files properly, and didn't have the features that Word and Excel had, so in the end I forked out for a copy of M$ Office 2003. Maybe OpenOffice has matured a bit since I last used it, but I've got M$ Office now, so I might as well make the expense worth it... But if OpenOffice works for you and does everything you need, go for it, you'll save yourself a fortune that you can spend on better hardware...

They are. Renz and I worked it out last night. I pinned an announcement to the top of the textures thread. It won't be as small as using jpg but it will streamline it much better than the current setup. A compromise between size and quality.

Before I respond individually, let me say that it was the speed of light in a vaccuum that I was referring to, the "absolute" speed of light has been slowing down. This is in contradiction to what was once assumed to be a universal law, that the speed of light had always been what it is today. I was not clear in my first post. Demigod, I have to disagree with the first part, who is it thats engaging in the study of all those fields outside of philosophy? Humans! That means those fields ARE a part of the human condition, therefore they are open to philosophical inquiry. Its not arguing for arguments sake, at least in analytic philosophy its arguing for the sake of developing better arguments. Because vis a vis Russells Riddle of Induction, all we have to "prove" the vast majority of what we hold to be truths *are* our arguments, not self evident truths like A=A. True, Fingernail, it certainly tells us that we dont know it all and CANT know it all but its just as important to understand HOW we know what we know. And to realize that absolute knowledge is limited to the handful of a priori truths in the world. And to realize that all other forms of truth have to come with a qualification of their accuracy. Absolutely correct AFAIK, but I was referring to the absolute speed of light in a vaccuum. It was once thought to be constant, given the weight of scientific law, but this had to be changed in light of new evidence. And the last part about change has its own branch, dialectics rather than analytics, although both fields of philosophy naturally arrive at that point. Of course, you could ask the question are we really seeing one thing change into another, or simply different aspects of the same thing? Whats even crazier, asking either question can lead to the point where BOTH are true, as far as can be told.

This is an interesting debate in the philosophy of science. On the one hand you have what certainly seem to be "laws" in science, as far as humans can remember and as far as we can see out into the universe, there seem to be certain constants that can be called laws. However, we know now that some laws are incorrect, such as the speed of light is constant at 300Millon Meters per second. It is actually slowing down slightly, or conversely at the birth of the universe (or its rebirth) it moved significantly faster. (Interestingly, this means that the phenomenon we call "linear time", which is only a misperception of 4D space seen by 3D organisms, "moved" faster in the early universe.) Science still chugs along using the models that refer to laws because these things change at a pace that dwarfs the entire history of our planet, let alone a few naked apes drooling and looking up at the stars. But the notion of laws of science has had to defend itself more and more in the last several decades. The entire notion of a universal law owes much of its provenance to Catholic religious doctrine which posited a clockwork universe headed by the Big Guy. The Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution eventually got the Big Guy out of the scientific picture (work in progress here in U.S.A.) but they retained the notion of concrete laws, in part at least because as Einstein said in reaction to quantum theory "God doesnt place dice with the universe." Plus, it probably just made people feel better to think that even if there wasnt a Bearded patriarch in the blue yonder, at least the universe worked with a clockwork precision Obscurus, the points you made illustrate what Bertrand Russell called the "new riddle of induction." Essentially, and forgive me if memory doestn serve 100%, in analytic philosophy, which seeks to establish concrete truths, you cannot establish more than a handful of concrete truths which consist of the a priori set, e.g. if A = B and B = C, then A *Must* = C. Or A = A is another one. A priori, or knowledge whose truth needs no verification because it is self evident, can be deduced, or arrived at using deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning takes place when one begins with general principles or truths, and then argue for the truth of specific details based on those principles. However, the vast majority of knowledge is not a priori, but rather a posteriori, knowledge whose truth must be verified because it is not self evident. You must build a case of evidence for such truths, and you must use inductive reasoning to do so. Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive, with induction you begin with specific details and attempt to shape general principles from them. Simply put, deductive reasoning is used to deduce self contained truths like the ones listed above, inductive reasoning is used to induce truths from information that can only be verified through experience and experiment, the rest of the world after you leave A=A behind. The problem with this is, all we have to go on is our experience to support the inductive truths. To take the case of gravity, how do we know that gravity will work tomorrow? We only have the experience of gravity working yesterday and today. Nothing about gravity makes it an a priori truth, self evident. We have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not it will suddenly stop tomorrow, or reverse its effects, or become someting else entirely. So Russell dubbed it the new riddle of induction", the fact that the vast majority of "true knowledge" about the universe is in fact not concretely true, only experientially true, and that we have no way of determining that it will continue on as it has in the past.