Messages

5656

Other Games / Re: Game Center

« on: April 20, 2011, 01:49:30 PM »

What Game Center games can you recommend?

I've actually been looking for some with multiplayer, but the selection in the App Store is too dizzying without some additional guidance

5657

Background / Re: What do you think is wrong?

« on: April 20, 2011, 03:58:49 AM »

I believe the saying goes something like "He who cannot control himself is unfit to control others"?

I think it's actually "master" rather than "control" (one wouldn't usually talk about controlling others, unless one is a multi ).

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Other Games / Re: Dwarf Fortress Succession Fort—Angnomal, "Redstaff"

« on: April 19, 2011, 10:26:42 PM »

1 Moonstone, 1051

Winter is upon us.

The caravan came this month, and I was able to buy some useful stuff from them.  A whole bunch of leather and cloth, which should mean we can make plenty of bags and some leather armour.  Also picked up some raw crystal glass; we don't have the wherewithal to make it here, and I doubt we ever will, since the equipment required is pretty specialized.  I got quite a bit of food from them, too, so we'll be in better shape for the winter (not that I'm worried; between our farming and hunting, we shouldn't have any trouble feeding this fortress for the foreseeable future).

We have the ramp up to the new entrance nearly finished, and the main pathway through the spur is dug.  That level is being hollowed out to provide storage space (so as to avoid having to lug our trade goods long distances), and I'm partway through designing the bridge across to the mountain itself personally.  As soon as the caravan leaves, I will order the construction of a new trade depot up in the spur, as I indicated on my drafts, and have the old one taken apart.

On her latest hunting foray, Telrunya brought down, of all things, a two-humped camel.  I was quite surprised to see her drag the carcass back to the butchery; they are not the type of creature I expected to see in this place...

Well, either way, we've plenty of meat for winter now, and she tells me she plans to go out and see if she can bring in another one or two of the beasts, as there was a whole pack of them (what do you call a group of camels? a humping or some such thing?).

Zasit Urolkivish, the liaison from the Mountainhome, has been following me around, but I really want to get this bridge finished before I meet with him.

5659

Other Games / Re: Dwarf Fortress Succession Fort—Angnomal, "Redstaff"

« on: April 19, 2011, 09:28:09 PM »

4 Timber, 1051
Telrunya saw more pandamen early this month.  In fact, she accidentally shot one in the paw!  Its cry of pain (she said it was a "her," so I guess it was "Her cry of pain") startled Telrunya so badly she ran off back toward the fort, where she failed to bring down another moose.  She was shaken badly enough by it that when she ran out of bolts to miss the moose with, she came back to the fort and started cooking.  She told me later that she wouldn't have been in such a bad state, but its cry didn't sound like that of an animal at all...she felt almost like she'd shot another dwarf.

The shad roast she made was so tasty, I didn't mind one bit.

This past month I have been giving some thought to the future.  My term as overseer ends in just a short time, and I want to make sure that we are all as well-provided-for and -protected as I can manage.  The provided-for part, I guess I'll just have to hope for, but the protected part, I think I can actually do something about now. 

I've been contemplating the small spur of rock that just out of the plain just to the east of our current fortress entrance.  I think it could be made into an excellent front entrance to our fortress, with a grand ramp leading up into it, and carefully crafted defenses separating it from the rest of the mountain.  Here is a sketch of my current thoughts on the subject.

Entrance level:

Ground level:


Some more planning will have to be done on this, but I think it will be important to get this in motion quickly.

Just as the ponds near the entrance began to freeze, more migrants came.  This bunch looks a lot more promising than the last.  One is a miner, a couple have experience making armour, and one even has some skill at architecture.  Oh, and there were seven of them this time!  A much healthier number.  I've put some of those with less immediately useful skills to work at masonry, and started them on the first steps of building the grand entrance I have in mind.

I also instructed one of them to start training up as a weaponsmith, as I'm sure we're going to need several of those before long.  He's already produced a couple of nasty-looking iron discs for use in traps—and possibly for trading, as I'd put their value well up into the thousands.

5660

Other Games / Re: Dwarf Fortress Succession Fort—Angnomal, "Redstaff"

« on: April 19, 2011, 08:19:18 PM »

1 Sandstone, 1051
You know, sometimes Miners' Guild regulations can be a bit aggravating.  Now, don't get me wrong, I know why they're there, and I would never try to get around them.  They've kept more dwarves safe, whether it be from an ignominious death by drowning when a careless miner lets the sea in, or a horrible fiery doom when the entire fortress is flooded with burning magma.  But sometimes, just sometimes, they seem really bloody stupid.

Like when there's only a dozen of us out here in the middle of nowhere, and Indirik and I keep having to stop work to check with each other as to whether we should really mine out this section of damp stone?  When we know, perfectly well, that it's damp because there's a bloody pond up above, and we are fully capable of shoring up the ceiling to make sure not a single drop will leak down through the ceiling...

Of course, it's a good thing there are two of us miners.  When there's only one miner present, the regulations get much more convoluted.  I think there are about four whole pages dedicated solely to determining who a poor hapless miner should check with to confirm that he really should dig here, where it's warm because of the magma channels below, but shouldn't dig there, because that bit of damp stone is really an aquifer, and he'll flood the whole fortress if he breaches it...

We mostly finished digging out the workshop level, despite the delays caused by our adherence to protocol.  (I haven't included sketches because it's not particularly different from the storage level.)  I've ordered our first magma forge to be built, but no one has had time to start work on it yet. 

I have also given orders for more of the edible plants near the entrance to be gathered up for brewing, eating, and whatever else we can figure out to do with them.  Telrunya was hunting a moose, but she ran out of ammunition, and it got away.  Pity.

Our smelting operation has been producing good results.  Thanks to Medtob's good work, we have a dozen bars of iron, as well as seven of copper, and even a couple silver.  We'll need to set up a wood-burning furnace to make charcoal, as I don't think there's much coal around (at least, we haven't seen any, and there doesn't appear to be the sedimentary layer we'd expect to find it in).  Once we've got that, though, we should be set to start making steel.  More than enough trees to feed our furnaces.

5661

Feature Requests / Re: Improving Combat Round...Something

« on: April 19, 2011, 01:21:52 PM »

I think the top combat-fix would be simple archer/MI logic that says that as long as they have a target (enemy without friendlies on the same row) in range, they stay where they are and fire.

Oh, certainly.  That's already On My List™.

That's not a fundamental change, just an AI tweak

5662

BM General Discussion / Re: Titan System Revalation

« on: April 18, 2011, 05:27:14 PM »

These are where we have the greatest chances to make something better. Right now, there is a ruling and then - the discussions continue unchanged. Usually, those who got smacked will come up with a bull!@#$ explanation, from "the Titans are out to get us" to "make it less obvious next time". Anything but a simple "ok, we did wrong".

This has convinced me that it's worth it to at least give your idea a try, Tom, because you're absolutely right.

How about we simply test it? It would require only two relatively simple changes:

• post Titans complaints to the accused as an informative message, anonymous of course
• add a "take this complaing public" button available to the complainer and the accused, so either can decide if he wants to try his case in a public forum

In case of 2, a message would be posted into the forum, anonymously, containing the complaint. A note would be added for the Titans so they can easily check the discussion. The judgement would still be made in the current Titan system, but the public discussion may show us whose fears and hopes are right or wrong.

This shouldn't be that difficult to code up.  I'll add it to my Titan Overhaul list.

I do think we should do something about the problems of recognizing people by writing styles, however.

5663

Feature Requests / Re: Improving Combat Round...Something

« on: April 18, 2011, 05:03:23 PM »

Well I think the combat system is somewhat outdated. The dev team did some changes but it is just not enough. I am guessing they just do not have resources to change the entire combat system?

It would be a truly massive undertaking.

Plus, what other changes are really practical?

We considered a fully 2-D system, where each unit has a position in a grid on the battlefield, and can only fight units in adjacent grids.  But this suffers from various problems, and the biggest is how to display it without it looking bloody awful.

We considered adding flanks, and we may yet do so, but it suffers from a similar problem of display, as well as problems of emergent exploits (which the 2D would have probably suffered from, too).

Given the essential nature of combat in BattleMaster, there aren't all that many different ways we could do it.

5664

Other Games / Re: Dwarf Fortress Succession Fort—Angnomal, "Redstaff"

« on: April 18, 2011, 04:25:14 PM »

So we're gonna get another wave of migrants, right?

Yep.  Should be another smallish wave in the fall, then a large wave next spring for Indirik to put to work.

I hope to be able to get the next month or three done in the next couple of days.

5665

Dwilight / Re: The Zuma

« on: April 18, 2011, 04:20:18 PM »

Since the beginning of Dwilight, there have been 2 Zuma GMs, active concurrently.  Once has since gone inactive.  That means that people may, at some point in the past, have interacted with one who is no longer active; however, both were active from the start, so there has been consistency.

5666

Development / Re: Special Forces, underpowered?

« on: April 17, 2011, 02:06:12 PM »

I think it would be extremely informative if someone made a study of these special abilities, even the ones that are already known, such as those that Loren mentioned.

Put up on the Wiki a listing of what special abilities have been identified, which centers have which ones, how often they "activate", and what the evidence is that they have activated.

That should provide a really good baseline.

5667

BM General Discussion / Re: Medals what whatnot

« on: April 16, 2011, 04:44:13 PM »

In my opinion everyone should be able to give out medals, maybe once a month or something and at most one per other player (ever), with a minimum time in game before they can give out any. Some limits are good, but I don't care for the fact that you have to essentially be nominated by other players before being able to give out medals yourself. It makes it a closed system.

Yes, it is a closed system.  That is absolutely deliberate and intended.

It prevents members of OOC cliques from loading each other up with medals so as to look more trustworthy, and ensures that medals flow, by and large, from one place: Tom. 

Some of you may remember the old "trust level" system, where global trust flowed outward from Tom, and everyone could state that they trusted other players, thus generating personal and global trust levels for everyone.  The medal system is partially an attempt to replace that with something a bit less...stigmatic, but it does have some of the same goals.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Titan System Revalation

« on: April 16, 2011, 04:29:24 PM »

Tom, unless my memory is quite faulty, you already approved suggestions to allow appeals to Titan decisions, by a different set of Titans. (I can dig up the dev list emails if you want.)

And while I can understand your antipathy toward courts and your desire not to make the Titans look more like them...what most of the replies have basically been saying is (as far as I read them), "We don't think that the Titan system needs to be replaced with an open discussion on complaints.  We just think it needs to be improved."

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BM General Discussion / Re: Titan System Revalation

« on: April 15, 2011, 11:40:25 PM »

Unlike Anaris, I don't have so much faith in random players keeping the confidentiality of the information gained, or the ability of other Titans to notice that it is potentially being abused.

I wasn't especially saying that I thought random players would be able to keep confidentiality: only that any deliberate abuse should be pretty easy to recognize and come down on like a ton of bricks.

I, too, think that the better idea is just to expand the Titans.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Titan System Revalation

« on: April 15, 2011, 09:01:39 PM »

Tim, I liked your idea for the most part. But rating Titans is just silly. Consider, for example, a recent example. Let's imagine for a moment that Averoth has some kind of complaint against it, and the Titans rule against Averoth (this is a HYPOTHETICAL). Who is most likely to "respond" to any rating system? Why, obviously, the defendants. It's a voluntary response bias, and it is NOT a good way to take a sample.

That's definitely the weakest part of the system.  In my defense, I didn't come up with it, I've just been asked to implement it

It's possible that it would be better to, say, have the rest of the "Titan pool" rate the decisions instead, I'm not sure.  However we do it, I, at least, plan to set it up so we can watch the ratings for a while before we actually start using them for anything.

Moreover, judging Titans will encourage Titans to kiss butt. Same thing with US Supreme Court justices: being life-long positions, they don't need to appease anyone. They can be neutral. If Titans have to balance the claims of justice and popularity of the decision, justice will tend to lose out. Moreover, rating Titans implies some reduced anonymity for Titans: another thing I absolutely oppose.

First: I don't agree that rating will encourage sucking up.  Especially if the burden of rating is shifted from the reporter/reportee to the other Titans and potential Titans, it will, above all, be a measure of how fair any particular decision was.  Furthermore, in no version of the Titan system, past, present, or future, can any single Titan do anything final.

Which leads to...Second: there is no reduced anonymity: the rating is done on the issue itself, and all the Titans who concurred with the final verdict get it applied to them.  There is no need even for the other potential Titans to know who actually acted on it unless the people who did it say so themselves.

Timothy Collett