Posts made by Packrat

Everquest was basically a graphical DikuMUD and the designers have stated as much in interviews. Some people even accused them of stealing code from DikuMUD though this was refuted.

Just because I do not have a car does not mean that I do not sometimes use my parking space or that it is free for you to use at your convenience.

Yes, it is underneath a hotel in the middle of the city, where it is impossible to find somewhere to park, also yes, it is very safe and secure with the CCTV and access restrictions. I also fucking own it, sometimes I lend it to friends or have visitors. If I wanted random neighbors or hotel staff to use it then I would hire the space out for fifteen to twenty pounds a day.

Actually, hotel who keeps letting their staff into the underground parking that you definitely do not own, if I find your staff parked in my spot again then I am going to start invoicing you for it.

@arkandel said in Favorite Minigames:

It's not really a mini-game per se, but I really quite the 'ladder' of gear upgrades on Arx when I played there.

I have to admit that the gear levels/upgrades system on Arx is one of the things that I really, seriously, do not like about it and definitely a mental barrier to my playing on the game. The advantages of 'high tier' equipment over default stuff are amazingly acute and to a degree I find difficult to match plausibility wise with what (at least when I played there) was a very low magic world.

A regular decently made sword vs a super fancy sword had no comparison, the super fancy sword person (at least a year ago) was potentially able to do ten times as much damage against an armoured opponent. It made it impossible to have say a Bronn like attitude of 'a sword is a sword' because the person who has a precious special sword can fairly easily slaughter you. Even if the focus is not PvP, that tells.

Especially tied with some characters having access to infinitely more money than others.

Though with such a system implimented it did strike me as odd that armour could be worn by anyone instead of it being custom fitted being a Big Deal, that would both make sense and be a good way to stop people handing off their now second best armour to a friend after upgrading, thus preserving the money sink aspect.

I loved Demon: The Fallen but the rules were a complete mess. Most of the powers were extremely arbitrary and did not really have... Well, rules for what they did. Coupled to that Thralls were not really limited to any degree, it really came down to what you could persuade your ST to let you get away with because there was nothing really stopping you jetting to some third world country and spending six months as a miracle healer to gain an infinite Faith income.

@rnmissionrun Ahh, I will work on adjusting that before trying again then, thanks!

Well I am currently streaming early game Aurora 4x, so... No graphics solar system survey and colonisation extravaganza so detailed that you have to design not just engines, or missiles, but engines for your missiles.

Right now I am converting my shipyard to make a colony ship so that I can ship people to Mars.

Whilst I monologue. Which is harder than it looks!

So I am going to try live streaming for the first time on Twitch and am choosing the most nerdy of all overly complex games, Aurora 4x.

Now to see if the software works!

Twitch Link

EDIT: It works, but this game is definitely the most overly complex thing ever and probably not the best choice for an understandable viewing experience.

I work in compliance, sometimes people do not take compliance seriously or assume they know exactly what to do and can just handwave it. Also doing things 'properly' is such effort! Useless bureaucracy!

In other news I finally got the report for how much the latest compliance breach that I had to contain, manage then try to control cost the company. Over £267,000 just in man hours as a conservative estimate, not yet counting any fines or less tangible reputation damage.

And that was with me getting the 'fixes' in place in half the time it should have taken!

@krmbm You say that whilst on book 3, by the time you hit book 9 I suspect you will either have gone mad or put it up to like x3 speed.

We were 4th level! In red box Basic D&D, do you know how long it takes to get to 4th level in that system? No way we were going to risk having somebody can openered by a flying magic sword. It was probably like a +2 sword in a best case scenario, or might have been cursed even if it was not some kind of contract triggered murder trap.

It was probably some kind of murder trap.

Pure D&D to me is exploring an ancient dungeon when you hear a weird humming noise from around the corner.

You have no idea what it is and approaching very cautiously indeed but eventually you round the corner and there is a sword hovering about 3 feet over the floor in the middle of the narrow corridor.

You have absolutely no idea what the sword is or why it is hovering in the middle of the corridor but further exploration reveals that you have no way of progressing without going past it. Is it a sweet magic sword that you can claim by just taking hold of it? Is it an enchanted guardian that will make mincemeat of anyone who comes within ten feet of it? Not a clue.

Eventually the party ends up crawling on their bellies underneath the sword without ever daring to touch it, as it simply hovers there ignoring them and making a constant loud hum.

@auspice I find that delivery drivers can never, ever find where I live regardless of directions. The problem? I live behind a hotel.

Basically the 'street address' points one to a hotel, there is a gate each side leading to the apartment complex behind, by the river, but we share buzzers/intercom with the hotel. Most people cannot even successfully buzz my apartment so that I can let them in through the gates.

Sadly I disagree with that, they are (according to their developer blogs) planning on a class/level system for the new edition. That does not fill me with confidence.

@auspice That kind of connection (@Tinuviel 's one) is pretty typical here to be honest if you do not live somewhere with fiber outside, you would be lucky to get that speed with ADSL or a good 4g tether.

@tinuviel Well that is your fault for fleeing civilisation to live away in the far reaches of the world instead of remaining somewhere sensible!

In other news, the sun came out for a whole twenty minutes earlier today, sending me scurrying from the unnatural brightness as the sky failed to maintain it's customary grey half light.

@surreality My internet is on the whole awesome, but it does on odd occasions drop mid day for unknown reasons, from a few minutes to a few hours with no exploitation or reported service outage.

I have no idea how it happens overall but it is supremely annoying if it manages to happen on a day when I am working from home and really do need consistent internet access.

Sadly our coder broke, or his computer broke at least, with no signs of recovery. Things never really recovered momentum so this is kind of in a limbo state with me occasionally poking at documentation rather than being properly worked on.

@mietze I remember having the reverse, my father is 6'4" and I always assumed I would grow to be the same kind of height.

Then I stopped at 6', in retrospect I am kind of glad given this means I fit in beds and stuff, but it was disappointing as a teenager!

@kanye-qwest The writing and tone is definitely all over the place there with things like female characters who have legitimate agency and personality then sort of drop out of the plot or change completely once things move into a different storyline.

The white part though? That is just weird, and I do not mean your bringing it up but the whole situation around the game. There being only 'white people' (of various different actual ethnicity and origins) in a small patch of rural 1403 Bohemia? Sure! I would honestly not be surprised if you checked the same area IRL right now and only found 'white people'. My grandfather grew up in eastern Europe and literally never met a non white person until he was captured by American soldiers at the end of World War 2.

That does not mean that the lead developer is not apparently a racist though.

One thing that I would look as is that in this period if you are a member of the upper/middle classes? You did not have to be a knight to do traditionally 'knight stuff'.

If you are a burgher (a middle class townsperson, a skilled crafter, a lawyer, a physician, etc) then you probably have a sword and likely train with it when a youth, along with owning armour, perhaps going off to fight for a few seasons either as a man at arms or attending such depending upon your wealth.

When older you likely continue to be a member of an urban militia and if you are a business owner or a guild master you are probably outfitted as well as many knights whilst leading a militia company of your apprentices/employees.

This is a few decades after real life events like the Battle of the Golden Spurs where Flemish militia slaughtered the flower of French chivalry. Those were not peasants with pitchforks killing knights, they were heavy freeman militia infantry.

Being a knight was a huge social cachet but especially in northern Italy the wealthy urban classes were often more influential and certainly did things like dueling or engaging in high level politics. Thank of Romeo and Juliet albeit a few centuries earlier.