Posts made by Rook

Yeah, I know, @Arkandel. My job is actually helping ITs in companies mature their organization into automation taking over menial IT tasks. It's what I do, so yeah, right there with you. I see things starting in that direction, but I think that lots of things will have a LONG way to go to be automated.

I think @Thenomain and I were more having a commentary on the state of interactions, socially. Lots of different things coming up that have been there for years, but with social media accelerating and changing the national/world conversation, it is like the natural development and adoption rate is not only speeding up... it is having the natural bumps and challenges that one might imagine with a sped-up adoption rate.

They say that it takes at least a generation for an idea to be absorbed into social norms. That rate is changing into sometimes a decade or less. I think society (especially older society or the non-digitally-integrated) is having trouble 'speeding up' to that pace. It was one of my points, somewhere in this sub-thread discussion, that I think that slowing down the conversation every now and then... simply with some listening... is something we could all do well with.

I am loving the Assassin's Creed: Syndicate game. The difficulty (see? back on thread-track) is much higher, by default, than the previous AC games I've played (almost all of them). It has really drawn me in, made me relearn the game, tactics and how to approach the problems.

@Thenomain said (in the Video Game thread)
I also cannot think of a time I am any more nervous and anxious about our future. Obviously I want it to go one way over another, but I called it a war because I think we have some core ideologies that are clashing hard. It's nerve-wracking. It's amazing.

I want to find the happy middle ground. Except for over science. Businessmen and religious organization who are trying to push an anti-science agenda for their own profit or beliefs can fuck right off. Humanity will be worse off for the attempts of these people.

This is now the entirely wrong thread for this. Hm.

New thread!
Ideologies are clashing all the time, the world over. That's why we have news. Now is no different than a hundred years ago, or fifty. The topics are just different.

Progress can keep marching, I say. I have zero issue with people gaining equal rights, I support the fuck out of it, both verbally and with my donated time now and again.

@Roz Apologies, you're right. My focus of my response was more toward assumptions of what was being thought rather than my counter-example. I could have chosen a better one, sure.

@Thenomain
Cannot disagree. However, I think that society needs to remember that times like this are volatile, at best. Creeds clash, beliefs moreso.

While one can 'enjoy' this time, others hate it, and it seems like escalations by the loudest of both of those groups causes friction that is counter-productive to movements, thought groups, forward thinkers and etc.

Like you said, talking and understanding, not just talking to get your point out, but flipping the coin and listening... that's the key. That's something that all of us have to keep spouting.

Without knowing if he was actually expressing disapproval or not (and I have been in those situations where I didn't know), I usually give them a chance to prove themselves dicks or not. I usually speak up and ask calmly but firmly, 'Is there a problem, sir?'

This is one of those things that I try to backwards-think. Such as, if this were a man and woman (the opposite situation) holding hands and he was smirking at them, what would your supposition of the reason of his smirk be then?

I try to gauge my reactions based on both angles. Maybe one of the boys had burned him with a witty quip and the baffoon was still trying to think up a snazzy comeback. You don't know.

My thought? Don't police someone based on your suppositions of their thoughts. It's just asking for drama that no one needs.

If he had /said/ something, light into the fucker with both barrels, but don't put spark people into hating the guy because he had an issue with the shirt one of the persons was wearing, or whatever.

@Thenomain I dunno....... I kinda liked it.
Apologies to anyone who did not, I guess. By proxy. Kinda.

Good conversation. Good points.

I am reminded of something I learned in the 8th grade:
"I am not who I think I am.
I am not who you think I am.
I am whom I think you think I am."

I think it applies in life, and I also think that this is somewhat changing recently to something like:
"I am not who you think I am.
I am whom I say I am."

<offtopic> This whole new 'thing' of 'self-applied' or 'name calling' debate that seems to have come up in recent years, while I am not saying that doesn't have merit, is weird to me.

To highjack @Thenomain's words as my illustration:

I consider a "jackass" to be something you self-apply, not something that is applied to you. Mind you, you can self-apply by association; if you <do jackass-y things> then you're probably a jackass whether you call yourself that or not.

This doesn't always work, and it is exactly what I try to ask/explain to people who have this thought process about "Don't call me a <thing> because I'm not a <thing>!" Well, you might be a <thing> if you act like a <thing>, don't you think?

@ThatGuyThere doesn't consider himself a video gamer, but I do consider him one.

As I have explained to others before, you are a cop if you carry a badge and enforce the law, whether you call yourself a cop or not because you think that you aren't a great one, or others around you are better, or you just hate the word 'cop' for whatever reason. You're still a cop.

What? Has this been discussed recently and I have opinion on it? Well... yes, I suppose so.

</offtopic>

Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

I also think that Borderlands 2 is the world's perfect single-player MMO

Quoted for truth.

First sentence had the word 'MOO' in it. I'm out.

A plea: please add to your export options a JSON option. XML is dying (in the eyes of most) and JSON is seeming to be the new standard. It is much more consumable by, for instance, web services.

A few Nice-To-Haves that most game builders will want:

• Report on completeness of Rooms and Exits.
  • Configurable attributes to check for (osucc, odrop, desc, flags, etc)
  • Badge/flag rooms with certain Flags set (such as unapproved flags)
• Configurable to use different server codebase (MUX, Penn, Rhost, at minimum)
• While doing the above, you might consider making the commands ran very configurable.

Gamer is someone who has the hobby/passtime of playing games, be they video, board, or otherwise. Interestingly, I doubt that cardplayers are looped in, as they have their own culture and word. Huh.

I think it depends on whom you are speaking to as to which they immediately assume (video, non-video) 'gamer' means. I think most people today associate 'gamer' with video gamers. Board gamers are just geeks.

This never got off the ground. Too many people didn't seem to like a realistic approach to trait advancement past 'above average', so this was nothing more than an exercise on the how-could-we in RPG building.

I learned that most gamers not only -want- godlike characters, they will not be as interested in your game if they can't have one. I started hearing complaints about "That'd take too long to get 4-5 5s on my character". Mind you, this was the same self-proclaimed haters of so-called supercharacters.

Again, interested in seeing people's answers to @Arkandel, above.

Interested in this answer. When I was working on my game/RPG, I was toying with a system that 'rubber-banded' skills and abilities. In essence, you have a set pool that you distribute. As you trained up something, you put time into doing so, and you could raise that trait a bit. But at a point, it takes an entire-character focus to go from 'Okay' to 'Amazing', just like it does in real life. If you want to be the most amazing gunslinger in the world, it takes hours a day of practice. Thus, it stands to reason that you aren't building skills (maybe even slacking talent) in Cooking or Basketweaving.

Thus, if you wanted a '5' in a trait, you had to voluntarily give up points to get there. It wasn't fast.

I toyed also with 'maintenance cost' of '5' stats. You sacrificed XP every month or so to maintain that amazing edge. When you stop working out 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, you cannot keep the Arnold physique, sorry. When you aren't doing 20 brain surgeries a week, you aren't as fast and good at them, etc.

Advancement was to either lessen (over time) this maintenance cost or allow for more 5's. But, also, my system allowed for dumping of XP into non-stat purchases, such as money, holdings, status/prestige.

RE: Multiplayer - used to. A decade or so ago, when my evenings were gaming time (had an ex-wife who was also a gamer, it was our life). Not today. I don't even look at MP games on Steam if they don't offer a SP experience. I don't game in the evenings anymore, which really takes away a large chunk of devotable time.

In addition, the MP mentality that I ran into on several games (played Clancy's Seige for a while) was just anti-social-driving crap.

Eh, I have different experiences.

It is very rare that I run into any 'men' that are self-identified gamers ('serious' PC/Console versus someone who plays games on their phone). Most of the 'Broz' that I run into are teenaged kids focusing their lives into this one little area of interaction where they can be someone other than whom their classmates see day-to-day. Oddly, I know more women/mother gamers due to children than fathers that are gamers. I have more game-related conversations with those mothers than I meet any fathers that don't immediately scoff at games as a complete waste of time.

Then again, I live in a small rural area, not a metropolitan area where these stereotypes wildly differ.

I have read somewhere that 'Normal' is normally the mean-coded difficulty for the story/system/whatever, meaning that it is the difficulty that the developers built to. Anything softer or harder is just tweaking spawn rates, damage amounts, Hitpoints of NPCs, etc. In a rare few games, the NPCs actually use different, smarter AI (searching, following, finding, guessing and even to the point of combat tactics such as pinch maneuvers and flushing) but those are very rare and mostly in the military sim arena.

Common building practices enforce @odrop/@osucc, and most @tel usage is softcoded now, which can be coded to do the emits. If not, set an @otport on a Player Parent Object, or set/lock it in CharGen.