Messages

5731

Feature Requests / Re: Adventurers Have No User Details

« on: April 03, 2011, 02:00:03 PM »

The user info page is the user info page.

Look, there's a reason it says, "User details," and not, "Family details."  If people can't comprehend separation of IC and OOC info, that's their problem.

5732

Feature Requests / Re: Adventurers Have No User Details

« on: April 03, 2011, 05:45:21 AM »

Except that people don't treat user details as OOC. We cite banishments all the time.

Sorry, I should clarify:

Family history is IC for all nobles.

The user details link is of an essentially OOC nature.  There are many reasons why it is a Bad Idea™ to entirely remove the ability to determine who the player of a particular character is from their messages, even if that character is an adventurer.

5733

Feature Requests / Re: Adventurers Have No User Details

« on: April 03, 2011, 12:09:37 AM »

This has already been considered and rejected.

User details are OOC.

5734

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

« on: April 01, 2011, 04:18:44 AM »

Sorry, no more updates till tomorrow at the earliest; Scottish Country Dancing followed quickly by a choir rehearsal has left me pleasantly, but entirely, exhausted.  The rest of the day was also quite busy.

Stay tuned, though; I'll have more for you soon enough.

5735

Helpline / Re: Unopened Borders

« on: March 31, 2011, 10:31:33 PM »

Hmm, I see. I was under the impression that being allied meant certain minimum treaties would be in place? Like open borders?

a) The situation under the present, diplomacy-based system, is totally, utterly, and completely independent of the situation under the new treaty system.  You can be at war with someone under the current system, and have an Alliance treaty signed with them. Treaties currently have no game effect.
b) Once the new diplomacy system is active, it will be perfectly possible to have an Alliance treaty signed with a realm and also have a Closed Borders declaration signed against them.
c) It is intended that certain combinations be mutually exclusive; however, they are not yet.

5736

Helpline / Re: Unopened Borders

« on: March 31, 2011, 10:20:31 PM »

After seeing the above, I did another check (just to make sure that I didn't miss the starting of any wars ) and I came up with this:

I am in allied lands.

My character is a peon of Principality of Zonasa, and I am in Greater Aenilia lands. These two realms are allied.

...Under the present, diplomacy-based system.  Not under the new treaty system.

5737

Helpline / Re: Unopened Borders

« on: March 31, 2011, 08:44:24 PM »

There is an elevated chance of being captured, and the border guards would try to capture you.  Success is not automatic, but it there is a relatively high chance of it happening.

If you get this message, that means that if the Treaty System were yet live, you would have been captured.  It should give you an idea of the frequency.

However, adventurers are not supposed to be captured just from unopened borders. It's supposed to require closed borders.  So this is a bug, and one I thought I'd fixed, too.

5738

Background / Re: Human Nature

« on: March 31, 2011, 06:56:23 PM »

I think I once played in a FEI realm that was all female and the where the men were castrated.  If it was not in my dreams, the realm was the Highland Empire.

They did some really odd things in there back in the day...

I wonder if Daniel (player of Sadi) would be interested in coming back...

5739

Background / Re: Human Nature

« on: March 31, 2011, 05:31:05 PM »

This is interesting.

What makes a female character authentically female and not just a male with a female name and refered to as "she"?

Probably the same thing that makes a male character authentically male and not just a female with a male name and referred to as "he".

In general, I have always tried to play my female characters as authentically female.  Not being female myself, I don't consider myself fully qualified to judge the results; however, I have been told by people who are that they are some of the more believable females played by males that they've seen IG.  I couldn't tell you what I actually do; I just try to play them as I think they should actually be if they were real.

It seems to me, though, that a great deal of what we think of as "authentically female" is informed by our culture, which is not necessarily in existence to shape the women of BattleMaster's worlds.  In a society where women truly are considered equal to men, would they be worrying about balls and makeup, and other stereotypically feminine things?  Specifically, would the type of women who make up the quasi-military noble elite—that is, our characters—be worrying about such things?

I think that worrying too much about conforming to modern social norms for the genders, or even perceived or historic medieval social norms for the genders, is not only likely to be an exercise in frustration, it isn't even particularly relevant.

5740

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

« on: March 31, 2011, 05:05:19 PM »

So... we will only use one of the magma channels?   I don't quite understand how they work or how many we need.

I've never used so many channels so close together, myself. I usually dig out my workshops, figure out what I'm going to put in each row of shops, then dig the laval tubes underneath as needed. To me, the layout Anaris has seems awfully small. I build all my workshops in 5x5 rooms with a door, so I can lock in any insane crafters. I'd make the lava tubes at least twice as long and space them farther apart, even if they aren't used. It's easier to dug out more than you need to start with, than to add more later.

I don't think we'll need lots of spots on all the tubes; I just figured I'd set them up so they're easier to use when and if we need them. 

And I only set up the channels and stairs for the first one because I don't know how many others we'll want yet.  It's easy enough to dig channels and build stairs later.

5741

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

« on: March 31, 2011, 02:16:19 PM »

Yay! Awesome work!  I wanted to ask how you took the screenshots... but it's probably some mac functionality that windows doesn't have.

In fact, it is Macs have a built-in ability to take a screenshot of the whole screen, a selected rectangle, or a specific window, and dump it directly to a .png.

...though, in all fairness, I have been given to understand that more recent versions of Windows have less crippled screenshot functionality than XP and previous.

In any case, DF has its own image-dumping functionality, accessed from the [esc] menu (same place as where you save & quit).  This simply dumps images of entire z-levels to .bmp files.  On no account should one try to upload these .bmp files anywhere, however; they're absurdly large.  DF comes bundled with a copy of optipng, which is a command-line tool that allows you to take the .bmp files and convert them into .png files of various sizes.

If you want to do any editing to the image dumps, though (cropping, annotating, etc), you should do it before converting, because MS Paint uses .bmp as a native format anyway, and it's non-lossy.

5742

Dwilight / Re: Dwilight IC and OOC updates and news!

« on: March 31, 2011, 02:49:50 AM »

...and get a new name as some thought that the very name of Pian en Luries was a problem.

Meh. Even I never liked the name.

5743

Dwilight / Re: Dwilight IC and OOC updates and news!

« on: March 31, 2011, 02:46:21 AM »

The OOC issues were people who decided that there was no possible way the plot was IC.  I can assure you that they are wrong.

I do feel the need to clarify something here.

Though I wrote my parting OOC message in haste and anger, I never intended to state that I believed the motives for the rebellion/secession/whatever you want to call it were OOC—merely that not a peep of them had reached Alanna's ears IC.  The way I phrased it was definitely not carefully considered to ensure the clarity of that distinction, but truly, I did not mean to accuse anyone of doing things for OOC reasons.

5744

Helpline / Re: Wounds

« on: March 31, 2011, 02:38:34 AM »

I actually saw the infil's message on that one.  There was extra text after the "put him down for good" part, something like "you see him start walking as you escape" indicating he insta-healed from serious to healing.

Not insta-healed; just wasn't as badly injured as he thought.

5745

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

« on: March 31, 2011, 01:32:03 AM »

2 Slate, 1051

I can hardly believe it has been an entire month.  More than a month, actually; I intended to write this entry yesterday, but I was just too tired.

Thus far, we have dug out a bedroom, a farm, and two small workrooms. We have made progress on the dining room, too, but it's not ready yet.  I have included a sketch of the current state of the ground-level rooms.



Before my fellow miner and I made it more than a few steps into the mountainside, the woodcutters had brought down some trees and built a carpenter's workshop just outside the entrance we were digging. I have also had erected a relatively simple butchery and tannery.  This was a good, thing, too, because Ducim "Telrunya", our hunter, brought down a fox, and was able to keep the pelt almost completely intact.  It is now cured and tanned and ready to be made into something useful, and the rest of the fox has been added to our food stocks and our supply of bones for making more bolts out of.

Ducim had to come back for more ammunition already, and says that soon he should be bringing in a prize catch: a giant moose cow! He's already got it badly wounded, and just needs enough bolts to finish it off before he can bring it in for Bembul "Alpha" to butcher into useful parts.

Here is a sketch of the entrance, with its few hastily-erected workshops and refuse pile.



As you can see from this sketch, the snow has melted—mostly.  It still remains in pockets on and around the mountains, and where it had fallen more deeply in the southeastern part of our claim.  In fact, the wagon we came with is sitting right on the edge of the melted area.



The pools in the area haven't melted yet, but I'm sure they will soon.  It's getting pleasantly warm.  I think that this is going to be an excellent climate for a fortress.

And if we get too cold, we can always go stand near the lava tube...

Speaking of which, I've mapped out some plans for making use of that.  It'll be a while yet before we can put these fully into effect, but I've made some diagrams of how I intend to tap the edge of the lava tube for magma we can use to power forges and furnaces.

With some simple shafts dug right up to the edge of the tube, we should be able to then carve some slits into the side—and then run like Rash Abysstwilights, the Faint Tomb of Nights was chasing us so as not to get toasted. Or melted.



Then on the level above, all we need to do is dig some channels down to tap the lava tunnels, and we'll have all we need for lovely magma-powered industry!



We'll even be able to put the stockpiles needed to keep all that work going smoothly directly above them, if I'm any judge.  The edges of all the pools on the plain are clay loam, and that should make the perfect floor for our main storage areas.  Though we will have to work around some of those pools...



Well, that's about all that's happened so far.  To close, I include two broader sketches of the entire area, one showing just the section we have worked, and the other showing most of the area included in our claim. 



In the second one, you can see the edge of the lava tube in the north, and the brook crossing it in the far southwest.



I will write more around the beginning of next month.  I am sure we will have made a great deal more progress by then.