| --- Log opened Mon Mar 19 00:00:51 2007 |
| 00:00 | | * Vornicus has designs for 8 - the 7 resource tokens, and the robber. |
| 00:14 | | ReivZzz is now known as Reiver |
| 00:39 | | Thaqui [~Thaqui@Nightstar-12370.jetstream.xtra.co.nz] has joined #code |
| 00:39 | | mode/#code [+o Thaqui] by ChanServ |
| 00:48 | | Mahal is now known as MahalAFK |
| 00:52 | <@Vornicus> | okay, robber done. Now, to make my resource token setup. |
| 00:59 | | ToxicFrog [~ToxicFrog@Admin.Nightstar.Net] has quit [Quit: Leaving] |
| 00:59 | | ToxicFrog [~ToxicFrog@Admin.Nightstar.Net] has joined #code |
| 00:59 | | mode/#code [+o ToxicFrog] by ChanServ |
| 01:20 | | MahalAFK is now known as Mahal |
| 01:22 | | Mahal is now known as MahalShop |
| 01:28 | | gnolam [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Quit: Z?] |
| 01:35 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 01:41 | <@Vornicus> | clay done. |
| 01:42 | | Reiver is now known as ReivClass |
| 01:47 | <@McMartin> | (Briiiiiiiiiiiick) |
| 01:47 | <@Vornicus> | that's what it's a picture of. |
| 02:01 | | Netsplit Troika.TX.US.Nightstar.Net <-> Blargh.CA.US.Nightstar.Net quits: @Chalcedon |
| 02:02 | | Derakon[AFK] is now known as Derakon |
| 02:02 | < Derakon> | Got some samples we can see, Vorn? |
| 02:02 | | Netsplit over, joins: Chalcedon |
| 02:02 | | mode/#code [+o Chalcedon] by ChanServ |
| 02:02 | | Chalcy [~Chalceon@Nightstar-869.bitstream.orcon.net.nz] has joined #code |
| 02:02 | | mode/#code [+o Chalcy] by ChanServ |
| 02:03 | | Chalcedon [~Chalceon@Nightstar-869.bitstream.orcon.net.nz] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 02:03 | <@Vornicus> | One moment |
| 02:03 | < Derakon> | Also, what was wrong with your original icons? |
| 02:03 | <@Raif> | TF: What game is this you refer to? |
| 02:04 | < Derakon> | Supreme Commander for TF, Settlers of Catan for Vorn. |
| 02:04 | <@Vornicus> | Well, first there was "I don't htink there's anybody in the world who uses omnigraffle" |
| 02:04 | < Derakon> | Heh. |
| 02:05 | <@Raif> | Supreme Commander sounds tasty. |
| 02:05 | <@Raif> | I think I'll pick it up this week. |
| 02:05 | <@Raif> | And a shiny new knife. |
| 02:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | It is so tasty. |
| 02:05 | <@Vornicus> | then there was "I have to make an individual illustrator file for each individual color/token/die/other thing that there's a lot of very similar items of, and then when I want to generate the output files I have to use a huge ugly javascript tool that demands focus loudly while it runs" |
| 02:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | And so moddable. |
| 02:05 | < Derakon> | Unfortunately, it does not run on Macs. |
| 02:05 | | Chalcy is now known as Chalcedon |
| 02:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | If you've played Total Annihilation, this is the (pre|se)quel. |
| 02:06 | < Derakon> | Postgresquel? |
| 02:06 | <@Raif> | I wasn't aware of that. |
| 02:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Surely if would have to be the prequel. |
| 02:06 | <@Vornicus> | Then there was "this postscript just plain rocks, but it's still a bit of a pain in the ass because my 'see what i've done' button regenerates /all/ images", and "makefiles suck cocks". |
| 02:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, it's by Gas Powered Games under the direction of Chris Taylor, who you may recall fled the ashes of Cavedog to found GPG. |
| 02:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Being as the premise of Total Annihilation is that the galaxy's resources have *already* been all but entirely spent. |
| 02:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: true. |
| 02:07 | <@Vornicus> | So now I'm using PostScript and Rake. |
| 02:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: it was actually going to be "Total Annihilation 2", but Atari has the copyright now and wouldn't let them use it. |
| 02:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | So, it's Supreme Commander. |
| 02:07 | | * McMartin dies laughing at the "Latest lines in the chat" at Galbadia Hotel |
| 02:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | So for SC to have the much, much larger armies and more awesome units, it'd have to be a prequel for the sake of not having used *everything* up yet. |
| 02:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | <ctaylor> Who says commanders and backpack-launched nuclear missiles don't mix? |
| 02:08 | | * MyCatVerbs drools. |
| 02:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: well, as far as army sizes go... |
| 02:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | SupComm: unit limit 2000. |
| 02:08 | <@MyCatVerbs> | So, um. Supreme Commander. What're the two sides called, anyway? |
| 02:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | TA: unit limit 5000 after patch. |
| 02:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | Three sides. |
| 02:08 | <@MyCatVerbs> | OH MY FUCKING YIKES |
| 02:08 | <@Vornicus> | And I'm very pleased with my current set up. |
| 02:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | United Earth Federation, Cybran Nation and Aeon Illuminate. |
| 02:08 | | * Derakon eyes MCV. |
| 02:09 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: yeah, but SC will go up over time as machines get much faster and people hack on it. |
| 02:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | True. OTA did the same thing; it started with a limit of 500. |
| 02:09 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Remember that TA was something like 250 when it was first reelased. |
| 02:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | 250 by default, 500 max. |
| 02:09 | <@Vornicus> | So, now, I can throw this at anybody, say "install ruby, rake, and ghostscript, and just type 'rake' in the main directory" |
| 02:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: anyways, that's not what causes me to flag it a prequel. |
| 02:10 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: oh? |
| 02:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's the fact that we don't have mind transfer tech yet. |
| 02:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which you may recall being the entire basis for OTA's storyline. |
| 02:10 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Ahhh. So they're *all* dudes in power armour suits, instead of just one team. |
| 02:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yes. Or robots, in the case of lesser units. |
| 02:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | But, yes, commanders are all actual people. |
| 02:11 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I dunno, do ARM really count? |
| 02:11 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~catan/postscript-art/ |
| 02:11 | <@Raif> | I just hope the tank rush doesn't work. |
| 02:11 | < Derakon> | 404'd! |
| 02:11 | <@Vornicus> | I can't type'd! |
| 02:11 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/postscript-art/ |
| 02:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | My current figuring is that after the end of SupComm, the Cybrans - possibly with the help of the Aeon, depending on which ending you prefer - develop mind transfer. |
| 02:11 | <@Raif> | Almost every strategy game that's gone out in the last 10 years has a flaw whereby manufacturing thousands of a single unit will win. |
| 02:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | And then KABOOM OTA |
| 02:12 | <@MyCatVerbs> | By the time they had reached the point in the war at which TA took place, ARM were reduced to brain-in-a-tank control. |
| 02:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: I don't recall seeing that. |
| 02:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | I do recall lots of cloning, though. |
| 02:12 | | * MyCatVerbs nods. |
| 02:12 | < Derakon> | Ahh, so these are the same icons as before, just generated more snazzily. |
| 02:12 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: in OTA, remember the mission with the spiderbots? |
| 02:12 | <@Raif> | Both of the commanders were robots, were they not? |
| 02:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yes. I hated that mission. |
| 02:12 | | * Raif doesn't remember that at all. |
| 02:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: nyet. The CORE commander was a human mind in a robot body, the ARM command was - I thought - a human wearing power armour. |
| 02:13 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: the story was that they were actually adding arachnid grey matter to the brains for make them process that quantity of legs effectively. |
| 02:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or, according to MCV, a human brain in a robotic exoskeleton. |
| 02:13 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: I haven't heard of any balance killers in SupComm, and people seem to be saying that it really encourages combined forces. |
| 02:14 | <@Raif> | In that case I hope it's not the same strategy, but with 1/3 each anti-air, -infantry, -armor. :) |
| 02:14 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: I note for the sake of posteriority that I could be totally wrong. I had merely assumed the brains-in-tanks thing because it'd work out cheaper and more efficient that way. |
| 02:14 | < Derakon> | No; it's also 1/3rd Apocalypse Kitten. |
| 02:14 | <@Raif> | That'd be 4/3... |
| 02:14 | <@Vornicus> | Judgement Kitten. |
| 02:15 | < Derakon> | I see no problem with that, Raif. |
| 02:15 | | * ToxicFrog grabs his manual |
| 02:15 | <@Raif> | Funny, I didn't peg you for a Java developer... ;) |
| 02:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: oh and I think I've read fiction-set-in-OTA which had the ARM units' brains wired directly in to their vehicles, which lead me to assume brain-in-tank status. I can't remember if it was fanfic or official, though. I have a sneaking suspicion of the former, except for the fact that it was actually well written. |
| 02:16 | | * Derakon sticks his tongue out at Raif. |
| 02:16 | <@Raif> | If that's the way it's gonna be... |
| 02:16 | | * Raif accuses Derakon of being a VB programmer. |
| 02:16 | <@Raif> | Yeah, I went there. |
| 02:16 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: 133% nuklear annihilation? Actually, that makes perfect sense, because Chris Taylor's creation are just *that* awesome. |
| 02:17 | < Derakon> | Oh, yeah? Well, when you write HTML with Dreamweaver, you say you're "programming the Internet!" |
| 02:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: there's nothing in the manual about it. |
| 02:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | Just says that the ARM developed power armour and cloning to counter the CORE's combat bodies and pattern replication. |
| 02:17 | <@Raif> | Actually, I've never been impressed with Chris Taylor's work. |
| 02:18 | <@Raif> | Dungeon Siege is fine, but it's by no means a classic. :) |
| 02:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | Dungeon Siege was meh. |
| 02:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | He needs to stick to making RTSes~ |
| 02:18 | <@Raif> | Yeah, TA was good too, but had issues. For its day, though, it was pretty groundbreaking. |
| 02:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: you fucking kidding me, dude? |
| 02:19 | <@Raif> | AFAIC, though, starcraft had the better universe and the better gameply. |
| 02:19 | <@Raif> | Even with the simpler mechanics. |
| 02:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: TA came out in 1997, dammit. |
| 02:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Better universe I will grant you. Way more storyline to sink your teeth into in Starcraft. |
| 02:19 | <@Raif> | So? :) |
| 02:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | But better gameplay? |
| 02:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | I'm sorry, but it had a crippled engine, interface, and unit AI. |
| 02:19 | <@Raif> | TA never got the balance down because they kept adding new units (which I of course felt compelled to download). |
| 02:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | There's good gameplay in there somewhere. |
| 02:20 | <@Raif> | Plus bertha was a game breaker. |
| 02:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | But god knows if you can find it, behind that engine. |
| 02:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: and it included massive UI improvements that *nobody* else ever cloned for a friggin' decade. |
| 02:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | And, yeah, TA kind of had balance issues. But at least both sides were equally unbalanced~ |
| 02:20 | <@Raif> | Yeah, the isometric sprite-based shit needed to go, but there was good stuff in there. The balance was spectacular. |
| 02:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | Oh, I don't mind the isometric sprite-based shit. |
| 02:21 | <@Raif> | Then what evil are you referring to? |
| 02:21 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I'm actually disappointed that nobody else ever stole TA's control scheme. It was *so* much better than anything else that's ever come before or after. |
| 02:21 | <@ToxicFrog> | I mind things like 5-unit build queues, 12-unit selection limits, a braindead, knuckle-dragging unit AI that doesn't understand basic concepts like "return fire" or "fire while moving" - or "dodge incoming fire", for that matter, not that it would matter if it did since Starcraft has no physics to speak of - |
| 02:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | About the only RTS I've seen that stole even half the amount of stuff from TA that they should've was Relic's Impossible Creatures, and that was barely a blip on the g'damn radar. :/ |
| 02:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | Tiny waypoint limits, no waypointing of build orders, no ability to modify or even see waypoints after they're placed - |
| 02:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | And a braindead resource scheme. |
| 02:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ...re: UI enhancements. Everything TF's starting to get his teeth into right now. |
| 02:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | And that's just the stuff that TA had. |
| 02:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | If we start to get into the stuff that Ground Control and Homeworld had as well... |
| 02:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Resource management in TAK: is awesome. |
| 02:23 | <@MyCatVerbs> | *TA:K |
| 02:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...isn't resource management in TAK identical to OTA, except with only one resource? |
| 02:23 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: er, build management. With the exception of Zhon. |
| 02:24 | <@ToxicFrog> | What did TAK do in that respect that OTA didn't, again? |
| 02:24 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You could do stuff like build fifteen cabals, set them all with "patrol" waypoints all over your enemy's base, and then control-click to get infinite zombies horders in their base, killin' their d00ds. |
| 02:24 | <@ToxicFrog> | (TAK had some nice ideas, but the implementation was kind of, well, terrible) |
| 02:24 | <@ToxicFrog> | Apart from the "infinite" bit, you could do that in OTA. |
| 02:25 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: not much, really. Things like infinite building were nice, but hardly revolutionary. That's actually more or less all I can think of offhand. |
| 02:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anyways. This is why I want to remake StarCraft in the SupComm engine. |
| 02:25 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I mean, hardly revolutionary *compared to TA*. |
| 02:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | Since all my complaints about it are all implementation complaints. |
| 02:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | The underlying concept is excellent. |
| 02:26 | | Chalcedon [~Chalceon@Nightstar-869.bitstream.orcon.net.nz] has quit [Quit: ] |
| 02:26 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ...oh my gawd that would be so fucking awesome dude I would pick dogshit up barehanded to earn cash to buy a faster computer with to play it if you ever did that |
| 02:26 | <@MyCatVerbs> | *with which to play it |
| 02:26 | <@MyCatVerbs> | </fanboy> |
| 02:26 | <@ToxicFrog> | The problem is that there's basically three parts that need to be done: code, art and maps. |
| 02:26 | <@ToxicFrog> | I can only do one of those. |
| 02:27 | <@MyCatVerbs> | "Attention all Starcraft fans who can model!" |
| 02:28 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Maps aren't a problem, really. So long as mapping tools are available, people tend to do the "scratch my own itch" thing and largely take care of the problem on your behalf. |
| 02:28 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, bear in mind, I wouldn't just want to port the multiplayer maps. |
| 02:28 | <@ToxicFrog> | I want to port the singleplayer campaign. |
| 02:29 | <@ToxicFrog> | I was never overly fond of Starcraft's multiplayer; the reason I want to do this is so that I can enjoy the singleplayer again. |
| 02:29 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You -might- run into copyright whining there. |
| 02:29 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's Blizzard. I will run into copyright whining if I attempt it. |
| 02:29 | <@MyCatVerbs> | It'd be a lot of work, but not intractable. |
| 02:29 | <@Raif> | TF: I completely agree. |
| 02:29 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which is why SOP would be to keep the entire thing quiet until it is done. |
| 02:29 | <@ToxicFrog> | And then release it in one fell swoop. |
| 02:29 | <@ToxicFrog> | Cease and desist? TOO LATE, BITCHES |
| 02:30 | <@Raif> | Even then you'd have trouble. |
| 02:30 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, yes, I'd have to stop distributing it overtly. |
| 02:30 | <@ToxicFrog> | Good luck removing it from bittorrent~ |
| 02:30 | <@Raif> | True. |
| 02:30 | <@Raif> | But that depends on getting it out there fast enough (Digg and /. are useful for that. |
| 02:31 | <@Raif> | Moronic though its userbase is, Digg does have its uses. :) |
| 02:31 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anyways. In practice, I don't have nearly the time I would need to do a project of this magnitude. |
| 02:31 | <@ToxicFrog> | Perhaps something to do after I graduate. |
| 02:31 | <@Raif> | s/Digg/\/./ if you prefer. |
| 02:31 | <@Raif> | Yeah, no... :) |
| 02:32 | <@Raif> | I thought that too about Shinyd. |
| 02:32 | <@Raif> | I haven't had the time to touch it. |
| 02:32 | <@Raif> | I did throw in some work a couple weeks ago, but it's been touch and go getting back into it since. |
| 02:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | longjmp()ing up a dozen conversation frames - concerning tank rushes, while it is a valid tactic, it's also a counterable one. Especially since you can have scouts camping the enemy base and watching them put the rush together well in advance. |
| 02:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | So, it might work, but only against n00bs, pretty much. |
| 02:34 | <@ToxicFrog> | That said, constantly harassing the enemy with small forces is often a good idea. Raid their outlying mexes and so forth. |
| 02:35 | <@Raif> | Good. |
| 02:35 | <@Raif> | I love that. |
| 02:35 | <@Raif> | I also love being able to strike from a distance. |
| 02:35 | <@Raif> | Bertha, while annoying for its unbalance, was by far my favorite unit in TA. |
| 02:35 | <@Raif> | Unless the enemy was behind a hill. |
| 02:35 | <@Raif> | In which case they had to pretty much turtle in there because if they came out I'd have a bertha on their ass in seconds. :) |
| 02:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | T3 artillery serves the same purpose here, for which reason it's often referred to as "bertha" even though that's not what it's called. |
| 02:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | However, unlike in TA...you have shield generators. |
| 02:36 | <@Raif> | ... |
| 02:36 | <@Raif> | YOU HAVE TO CALL THE BIG GUN "BERTHA!" |
| 02:36 | <@Raif> | It's a rule. :) |
| 02:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | A well constructed set of overlapping shield generators will effectively protect your base from bertha fire. |
| 02:36 | <@Raif> | How do shields work? Can enemy units walk through them? |
| 02:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yes. They stop weapons fire, but units can walk through them unhindered. |
| 02:37 | <@Vornicus> | Also, nukes fly through them. |
| 02:37 | <@Raif> | ... nukes. |
| 02:37 | <@Raif> | Hee hee. |
| 02:37 | <@Raif> | Hee hee hee. |
| 02:37 | < Derakon> | What happens if a nuke is destroyed on the landing pad? |
| 02:37 | | * Raif grins girlishly. |
| 02:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: actually, I was wrong about that. |
| 02:37 | <@Vornicus> | Oh? |
| 02:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Nukes detonate on the shield. |
| 02:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | And, of course, pop it like a soap bubble. |
| 02:37 | <@Raif> | Do they still take out the buildings? |
| 02:37 | <@Raif> | Ah, good. |
| 02:37 | <@Vornicus> | hee |
| 02:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | And yes, nukes. Just like CORE used to make. |
| 02:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | Drop them anywhere on the map, five nukes per silo...but you can shoot down incoming nukes with countermissiles. |
| 02:38 | <@Raif> | Nukes: Fun to give, infuriating to receive. |
| 02:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or rather, you can build countermissiles, which will automatically shoot down incoming nukes. |
| 02:38 | <@Raif> | Giving truly is better than receiving. |
| 02:39 | | * Derakon notes that if destroying silos makes any kind of interesting explosion, then someone should chain a bunch of 'em together. |
| 02:39 | <@ToxicFrog> | Concerning shields, you generally either (a) build enough artillery/battleships/whatever to break through the shields or (b) send in a ground force to whack the generator (or the target's reactors - shields draw a lot of power) |
| 02:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | However, fully upgraded Cybran shields, while more durable than other factions, have the interesting quirk that they are also larger. |
| 02:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | Large enough for bombers to fly through them and drop bombs directly on the generator. |
| 02:40 | <@Raif> | ROFL... awesome. |
| 02:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | A secondary shield generator and lots of SAMs are advised~ |
| 02:40 | <@Raif> | That's got to be a bug. |
| 02:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | Nope. |
| 02:40 | <@Raif> | Nice. |
| 02:40 | < Derakon> | Shield size is a two-edged sword, no matter the size. |
| 02:40 | <@Vornicus> | There isn't much that can take a nuke hit and live - the Judgement Kitten can apparently take four and a half before falling. |
| 02:40 | <@Raif> | My confidence is restored. |
| 02:41 | <@ToxicFrog> | The further you upgrade the shield, the more durable it gets and the bigger it gets. The bigger it gets, the more stuff it can protect - but the more easily the enemy can get inside it to strike directly at the generator. |
| 02:41 | <@Vornicus> | Does a shield block your own weapons fire? |
| 02:41 | <@ToxicFrog> | Outgoing, no. |
| 02:41 | <@ToxicFrog> | Incoming, I haven't tested. |
| 02:41 | <@Raif> | Incoming yes? |
| 02:41 | <@Raif> | Because if it blocked your own incoming fire that would have some pretty huge tactical implications. |
| 02:42 | <@Raif> | Like if an enemy force lured yours outside and then had another sneak into the base you'd have to run all the way back inside the shield to fight them. |
| 02:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | Testing it now. |
| 02:43 | <@Raif> | Y'know... I would like to see more attention given to space strategy games... like Homeworld. |
| 02:43 | <@Raif> | I'd like to see one truly in 3d. |
| 02:43 | <@Raif> | Rather than, essentially, on a plane without gravity. |
| 02:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...like Homeworld. |
| 02:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Homeworld was truly in 3d, it's just that the campaign didn't make much use of that. |
| 02:43 | <@Raif> | No, homeworld it was infeasible to build 3d defenses. |
| 02:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...well, yes, of course it was, it's space |
| 02:43 | <@Raif> | You had to pretty much block a line and hope the opponent forgot you were in 3d. :) |
| 02:44 | <@Vornicus> | pff |
| 02:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Although you can actually fake it fairly well. |
| 02:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Sphere formation + Guard. |
| 02:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | But >99% of the time they did. |
| 02:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | The guarding units will form a sphere around the unit they're guarding. |
| 02:44 | <@Raif> | Yeah, but it could be better. |
| 02:44 | <@Raif> | Like ORB and Hegemonia had bases. |
| 02:45 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Except that they'll get their asses kicked because their fire will be massively unconcentrated in most circumstances. |
| 02:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Haegemonia really was a plane, though. |
| 02:45 | <@Raif> | Hegemonia was actually pretty good about it, but gave you no say in WHERE a base was set up. |
| 02:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...yes it did! |
| 02:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | You could move a base anywhere before deploying! |
| 02:45 | <@Raif> | Maybe I'm thinking of ORB then? |
| 02:45 | <@Raif> | Dunno. |
| 02:45 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: yeah, but bases don't fit very well into Homeworld's storyline. The whole nomadism thing, y'dig? |
| 02:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yes. ORB bases were built into asteroids. |
| 02:45 | <@Raif> | I'm aware, I'm just saying in that style. :) |
| 02:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which actually /orbited/ |
| 02:45 | <@Raif> | Not Homeworld itself. |
| 02:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | ORB got a whole bunch of stuff right. The scale, the orbital mechanics... |
| 02:46 | <@Raif> | Yeah, they did. |
| 02:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | The problem is that it wasn't actually very fun. |
| 02:46 | <@Raif> | I think it was. |
| 02:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | No interesting units. |
| 02:46 | | * MyCatVerbs ponders. |
| 02:46 | <@Raif> | There were maps that were unwinnable in certain circumstances though. |
| 02:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | There's, like, six strike craft, a carrier, and a cruiser. |
| 02:46 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Could you actually, successfully, do Freespace and Homeworld inside a single game? |
| 02:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | And the cruiser is a box with beam cannons welded on. |
| 02:46 | <@Raif> | Frog: It wasn't really about the units with ORB. It was all about beating a ridiculously overpowered AI. :) |
| 02:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | And that's your entire fleet. |
| 02:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | On the other hand, boarding actions. |
| 02:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | <3 |
| 02:47 | <@Raif> | Cat: Wing Commander Armada came close. |
| 02:47 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: Homeworld rocks. The Cruisers are ion cannons with ships welded on the sides <3 |
| 02:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | I remember one case where I disabled an enemy carrier and told my marines to board it |
| 02:47 | <@Raif> | It took about 6 hours to play a scenario, but that's essentially what it was. |
| 02:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | Except, without its engines, its orbit started to degrade. |
| 02:47 | <@Raif> | Nice. |
| 02:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | And, with a whole bunch of my marines onboard, it plummeted into a gas giant. |
| 02:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | I was ;.; |
| 02:47 | <@Raif> | I had similar things happen. |
| 02:47 | <@Vornicus> | hee |
| 02:48 | <@Raif> | I actually had a key unit do that. |
| 02:48 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: well, my thought was that you could make it vaguely Quake-ish, with long running dedicated servers. |
| 02:48 | <@Raif> | It wasn't until I had wiped out every last enemy that I realized I needed that unit. |
| 02:48 | <@Raif> | I was pissed. :) |
| 02:48 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: Allegiance is kind of similar, except that there's no commander view. |
| 02:48 | <@Raif> | Cat: maybe. |
| 02:48 | <@Vornicus> | You know what had an awesome engine? |
| 02:48 | <@Vornicus> | Dungeon Keeper. |
| 02:48 | <@MyCatVerbs> | And definately a system to make it possible to swap commanders in and out, not to mention things like having multiple commanders in one battle. Subcommanders, like, each taking one smaller portion of the sleet. |
| 02:48 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: we know :P |
| 02:49 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: oh GAWD es. |
| 02:49 | | * Vornicus says this a lot, but it seems like that's what MCV is aiming at. |
| 02:49 | <@MyCatVerbs> | *yes |
| 02:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: ok, it looks like shields don't block friendly fire in either direction |
| 02:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: except IN SPAAAAACE |
| 02:49 | <@Raif> | I dunno, I'd just like to see more importance of terrain, but different than ORB. |
| 02:49 | <@Raif> | In ORB, I was constantly wishing I could tug an asteroid somewhere. |
| 02:49 | <@Raif> | (Because it wasn't a strategically sound location) |
| 02:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: oh, once you pick up SupComm, there is an incredible replay on GPG you should watch. |
| 02:49 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: if you made it possible for other LAN party participants to join in your DK games and possess critters for awesome combat++, it would be like the ultimate videogame, ever. |
| 02:49 | <@Raif> | GPG? |
| 02:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | A five-played FFA between some of the top ranked players. |
| 02:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | Err. GPGNet. |
| 02:50 | <@Raif> | Ah, the studio. |
| 02:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | The matchmaking/chat service for SupComm. |
| 02:50 | <@Vornicus> | GPGNet being Battle.Net or whatever for SupComm |
| 02:50 | <@Raif> | That's kinda exciting. |
| 02:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | It also saves player-submitted replays for global access. |
| 02:50 | <@Raif> | I've never seen truly skilled strategy players go at it. |
| 02:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | After you finish a game on it, it asks if you want to submit the replay. |
| 02:50 | <@Raif> | Nice. |
| 02:51 | <@Raif> | I expect I'll be submitting a couple then, if the opportunity arises. :) |
| 02:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | White gets brutally stomped by green early on. Then Blue does as well, but he manages to flee across the water and set up a stealthed base on a tiny island in one corner of the map and starts building nukes. |
| 02:51 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: they tend to be scary. |
| 02:51 | < Derakon> | Stealthy nukes, yay! |
| 02:52 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: if I were you, I'd try going on Youtube and looking for videos of South Korean professional Starcraft players. Hot *damn*. |
| 02:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | Then green and yellow get into a tangle and green comes out on the short end, relocating to his secondary base...which blue nukes and achieves revenge thereby. |
| 02:52 | <@Vornicus> | 30 nukes later... |
| 02:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | Meanwhile, red has been working on a Mavor, which is like a Bertha except it has an 80km range and perfect accuracy. |
| 02:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | (and takes seven hours to build unassisted) |
| 02:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Red starts pounding on yellow with the Mavor, and then the nuke-storm begins. |
| 02:53 | <@Vornicus> | Starcraft, it's so hard to get a sense of what's really going on, because of the tinyass screen. |
| 02:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Blue opens fire on everything, Red counters...I lost track around 25 nuclear launches. |
| 02:53 | | * Raif ponders. |
| 02:53 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: true dat. |
| 02:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | It ends when red finally locates blue's base with a scout and mavors it to death. |
| 02:53 | <@Raif> | I think if I ever go back to games, my first order of business will be to make a space strategy. |
| 02:54 | <@Raif> | Maybe I'll make one in my spare time some day. |
| 02:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | And yeah, as far as seeingn what's going on? Zoom. |
| 02:54 | | * Raif wants physics to matter. :) |
| 02:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | You can smoothly zoom from "the entire map" to "I can see individual rivets" |
| 02:54 | <@Raif> | You can do that in ORB too, kinda. |
| 02:54 | <@Raif> | Very nice. |
| 02:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | I no longer remember what a minimap is, or why it is useful. |
| 02:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | Some other supremely cool stuff - |
| 02:55 | <@Raif> | I think B&W pioneered that one. |
| 02:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | - you can see, and move around, waypoints after they are placed |
| 02:55 | <@Raif> | Bloody fine mechanism, right there. |
| 02:55 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: ahhh. Pity that game sucked to much. It had the most beautiful engine. :/ |
| 02:55 | <@Raif> | It did. |
| 02:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | - you can "ferry" - tell a transport to ferry from A to B and it places a beacon at A; any ground units moved to A will be picked up and transported to B. You can assign multiple transports to one ferry path, and move units to the ferry beacon right out of the factory |
| 02:55 | <@Raif> | The sequel was a vast, vast improvement. |
| 02:56 | <@Raif> | They took essentially the same engine and made a game on it. |
| 02:56 | <@Raif> | As opposed to the first one, which was a glorified sandbox. |
| 02:56 | <@MyCatVerbs> | It's actually -annoying-. Such a wonderful engine and then they fuck it up with such totally inept level design. :/ |
| 02:56 | <@Raif> | Yeah. |
| 02:56 | <@Raif> | Well, there were problems with the engine too. |
| 02:56 | <@Vornicus> | Factory to Front without any micromanagement hassle. |
| 02:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | - factory coordination: you can tell factories to assist each other; issuing build orders to one of them will cause them to be evenly distributed across the factories |
| 02:56 | <@Raif> | Like in the original one, you couldn't tell what your creature was thinking or how it would react to what you did. |
| 02:57 | <@Raif> | I tried to train my creature to stop shitting on villagers once... so instead it never shat. |
| 02:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | And of course the classic hotkeys. Like "select all units of type". |
| 02:57 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: oh? I didn't notice any. But then, the actual game was so annoyingly shit that I suppose they were overshadowed. |
| 02:57 | <@Raif> | I tried to teach it to go in the fields, and it would go on their houses instead... fucking game. :) |
| 02:57 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: oh yes, *that*. Totally random critter learning, indeed. |
| 02:57 | <@Raif> | Also, my favorite bug was where you could set some rocks on fire, and then tap them to break them over and over. |
| 02:57 | <@Raif> | If you did it fast enough you'd have perpetual fire. |
| 02:58 | <@Raif> | Because each rock would heat the others enough to keep them all burning. |
| 02:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | And I found the magic system annoying as Heck, too. Such a let down after having player Populus: The Beginning, which was designed by the same damn person and actually *perfect*. |
| 02:58 | <@Raif> | Also, trying to be a good god was painfully impossible. |
| 02:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | *played, dammit |
| 02:58 | <@Raif> | They only really tested evil. :) |
| 02:58 | <@Raif> | cat: never played populous. |
| 02:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Uhhh no they didn't. |
| 02:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | They evildently didn't test evil either. |
| 02:59 | <@Raif> | Ah. |
| 02:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Because I played *myself* evil and trained my *creature* to act good. |
| 02:59 | <@Raif> | That's fine. |
| 02:59 | <@Raif> | But you could not raise a good creature and be a good god. |
| 02:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | WRT B&W: http://machall.com/index.php?strip_id=102 |
| 02:59 | <@Raif> | In fact, you couldn't be a good god at all, really. Because their measure of "good" was how much you helped out villagers. |
| 02:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | As in, I'd sacrifice children to fuel fireballs. Whereas my creature was watering the crops in the fields and basically being awesome. |
| 03:00 | <@Raif> | But the more you help villagers the more dependent they get. |
| 03:00 | <@Raif> | Eventually you have two hundred of them sitting around smoking a pipe and screaming "WE WANT MORE FOOD!!!!" |
| 03:00 | <@MyCatVerbs> | And yet, my creature started to develop the characteristic evil hunch, while my hand went angelic instead of devilish. |
| 03:00 | <@Raif> | Funny. |
| 03:00 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Dumbest fucking bug... and that was fully patched, too. |
| 03:01 | <@Raif> | I never encountered that on the good side. |
| 03:01 | <@Raif> | My creature truly was evil. |
| 03:01 | <@Raif> | Little fucker. |
| 03:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I submit for your consideration that that team did no testing whatsoever of their most fundamental gameplay mechanics. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | (damn you, Raif, now I want to play ORB) |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | (and SupComm) |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | (at the same time) |
| 03:01 | <@Raif> | Muahaha. |
| 03:01 | <@Raif> | ORB was good. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Oh! |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | I was fiddling around in SupComm, and found the layers. |
| 03:01 | <@Raif> | It's the best space strategy I've played, which doesn't say much considering there are exactly 4 which didn't suck. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Sea floor. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Water. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Land. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Low air. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | High air. |
| 03:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Orbit. |
| 03:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Nice. |
| 03:02 | <@Raif> | Woohoo! |
| 03:02 | <@Raif> | That's cool. |
| 03:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | Orbit is, so far, used only by nukes. |
| 03:02 | <@Raif> | They should have satelites. |
| 03:02 | <@Raif> | ... |
| 03:02 | <@Raif> | Dare I say, orbital lance? |
| 03:02 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I bet they didn't even build a debug console in B&W to check the evil/good rating system or to make sure that the creature's responses were actually making sense. |
| 03:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | But orbital platforms, with added ortillery? Totally possible. |
| 03:02 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Niiice. |
| 03:02 | <@Raif> | Someone should remake C&C with SC's engine. |
| 03:03 | <@Raif> | C&C had some nice concepts, like the orbital ion cannon. |
| 03:03 | <@Raif> | Change the gameplay a bit with nukes being able to target any layer: You can now nuke orbital stations. |
| 03:03 | <@Raif> | Muhaahahahahha! |
| 03:03 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Meh. I don't think C&C was anything to do with the concepts, really. |
| 03:04 | <@Raif> | I just like the universe. |
| 03:04 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Mainly that it was just the first really good implementation. Contrast it with Dune 2. |
| 03:04 | <@Raif> | Yeah, I was just gonna say that. |
| 03:05 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: yes. that's precisely it. They were pretty much the first RTS to have built a whole universe and really brought it to *life* with FMVs, reporters, news stations, the GDI commander being interviewed on CNN. Not to mention well-tuned gameplay, something of a rarity back then. |
| 03:05 | <@Raif> | Yeah, the news reports were awesome. |
| 03:06 | <@Raif> | I'd argue that nobody's taken that approach since... at least not effectively. |
| 03:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I remember one reviewer of C&C compared it to something like, "a little glass box containing a tiny little world gone mad." |
| 03:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Or something along those lines. You could really believe it, y'know? |
| 03:06 | <@Raif> | Totally. |
| 03:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: well, KKnD? |
| 03:06 | <@Raif> | I remember one cutscene the commander was giving me his briefing... |
| 03:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | But that was black comedy rather than realism. |
| 03:07 | <@Raif> | And in the middle of it he started looking worried and the feed went dead. |
| 03:07 | <@Raif> | That shit is gold! |
| 03:07 | <@Raif> | And then it drops you into the mission. :) |
| 03:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Heh. |
| 03:07 | <@Raif> | Plus I liked the end where you got to decide which historic monument got nuked. :) |
| 03:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I thought EVA was a nice touch. A little overdone and haxx0ring-the-Gibson ish in retrospect, but it was pretty cool at the time. |
| 03:07 | <@Raif> | (It was totally the whitehouse) |
| 03:08 | | lm [lm_lappy@Nightstar-2930.228.63.142.Dial1.Denver1.Level3.net] has joined #Code |
| 03:08 | <@Raif> | Yeah, it was good. |
| 03:08 | | * MyCatVerbs saved the game just beforehand for the specific purpose of trying all four. |
| 03:08 | <@Raif> | Yeah, so did I. |
| 03:08 | <@MyCatVerbs> | In the end, I settled on the Houses of Parliament. |
| 03:08 | <@Raif> | I habitually save at the end of each mission whenever I play strategy games. |
| 03:08 | < lm> | Hi all would anyone in here mind helping me make a bookmarklet for firefox? |
| 03:08 | <@Raif> | Often it's the only way to play a particular mission. |
| 03:08 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Highest bodycount. Plus I'd love to see Maggie Thatcher vapourised. |
| 03:09 | <@Vornicus> | arg. I want to remake Uplink so that it feels like you're an actual hacker instead of just a script kiddie! |
| 03:09 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh yes. The multiple branching thing was pretty fucking awesome. |
| 03:09 | <@Raif> | But then how will you imagine her in a thong bikini on a cold day? |
| 03:09 | < lm> | I've got working javascript code, but it only works in an html file, if I execute teh code directly in the address bar or script debugger, it throws an error |
| 03:09 | <@Raif> | Vorn: Tried Darwinia? |
| 03:09 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: not possible. The only *actual hacker* game possible is Core Wars, and that's because it's based on vaguely realistic mechanisms. |
| 03:09 | <@Raif> | That was a pretty damn inspiring game too. |
| 03:10 | <@Raif> | Im: I don't think anyone in here has played with firefox extensions. |
| 03:10 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: thong bikini on a... what? Was that a "wrong room" thing or what? |
| 03:10 | < lm> | don't need an extension, just a bookmarklet |
| 03:10 | <@Raif> | MyCat: You've never seen Austin Powers? |
| 03:10 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh! And that reminds me. The chick in the A-10 warhog was hawt. |
| 03:10 | < lm> | I just gotta get the code into a bookmark, so a bookmark will execute the code. |
| 03:10 | <@Raif> | Ah, no idea how to do that. |
| 03:11 | <@Raif> | I have a vague suspicion you can't do it. |
| 03:11 | <@Raif> | You could work around that by putting the scriptlet into a file and bookmarking that. |
| 03:11 | <@Vornicus> | MCV: well, corewars was good, but at least make it feel like I am looking at the latest and greatest in information and security technology. |
| 03:11 | <@MyCatVerbs> | But I can only really say that in retrospect. I was like ten at the time I actually played C&C. Girls hadn't actually occurred to me as a concept at that point. =D |
| 03:11 | <@Raif> | LOL |
| 03:11 | <@Raif> | Yeah, I hear ya. |
| 03:11 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: personally I'd say the most realistic hacking game I've ever played was Deus Ex. |
| 03:11 | <@Raif> | And I can sympathise. :) |
| 03:12 | <@Raif> | Cat: Not realistic, but definitely a decent mechanic. |
| 03:12 | <@Raif> | All you ever really did was push a button. |
| 03:12 | < lm> | here's code from a bookmarklet I'm using as a reference... it takes the current location and looks it up on the bugmenot database: |
| 03:12 | < lm> | javascript:(function(){w=open(('http://www.bugmenot.com/view/'+escape(location)) ,'w','location=no,status=yes,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=500,h eight=400,modal=yes,dependent=yes');if(w){setTimeout('w.focus()',1000)}else{loca tion='http://www.bugmenot.com/view/'+escape(location)}})(); |
| 03:12 | | * Vornicus still hasn't played Deus Ex |
| 03:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | lm: no idea. I've only played with Opera bookmarklets, and that only barely. |
| 03:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: do eeet |
| 03:12 | <@Raif> | Vorn: You must. |
| 03:12 | <@Vornicus> | I know, I know! |
| 03:12 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: not the whole "level up your computer skills and click the 'Hack' button thing", but rather the fact that about 70-80% of the time, you're finding peoples' passwords written down in odd corners, hidden under pillows and such. |
| 03:12 | <@MyCatVerbs> | lm: for fucks' sake man, get a pastebin. |
| 03:12 | <@Raif> | Ah, yeah, that was cool. |
| 03:13 | < lm> | a pastebin? |
| 03:13 | <@Raif> | That's not really hacking though... that's social engineering. :) |
| 03:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | lm: also, knowing what error it throws would be handy. |
| 03:13 | <@MyCatVerbs> | lm: YES. There's one in the goddamn TOPIC. |
| 03:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | lm: pastie.caboo.se |
| 03:13 | <@Raif> | But yeah, it was cool how you could find the key codes, and they'd be good for another run through. :) |
| 03:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: in fairness, that's how the code actually looks. |
| 03:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | It won't be any more readable in a pastebin. |
| 03:13 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: yeah, that's the point. It's *realistic*. >80% of the real big hacks in history so far have been social engineering. |
| 03:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | This is because bookmarklets have absurd space constraints. |
| 03:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | So, any whitespace etc has to be cut. |
| 03:13 | <@Raif> | Cat: True, but I still wouldn't call that hacking. |
| 03:14 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: however, it won't be interjecting into my offtopic videogame discussions. ;) |
| 03:14 | <@Raif> | the media might, but that's because they don't have a fucking clue. :) |
| 03:14 | | * Vornicus needs to play many games - Deus Ex, Homeworld, SupComm, X-Com more than one or two missions... |
| 03:14 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: I would. Who wants to try cracking 2048 bit encryption when you can just walk around it? |
| 03:14 | <@Raif> | I never got into XCom. |
| 03:14 | <@Vornicus> | lots and lots of games. |
| 03:14 | <@Raif> | I think it's just because I sucked at it. |
| 03:15 | <@Raif> | Probably because I was around 7 when I first tried it. |
| 03:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: I submit that rubber hose crypto has more of the true hacker nature than real cryptoanalysis. |
| 03:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I never really got into Homewold myself. I kinda suck at it. |
| 03:15 | <@Raif> | Meh, point taken. |
| 03:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: X-Com's definately reccommended. A word of advice, give your soldiers names. |
| 03:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | Everyone sucked at X-COM. |
| 03:16 | <@Raif> | Re: Homeworld, it was pretty decent. Another game I liked almost entirely for the universe it was set in. |
| 03:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | But is so, so much one. |
| 03:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | *fun |
| 03:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | And once you get to see those lovely words, "Ethereal Commander has panicked!", it's all worth it. |
| 03:16 | < lm> | ok here's the code I use in the HTML file and it works. Executing it directly in the debugger however just throws a stop sign and an arrow pointing to the middle of the URL in the code |
| 03:16 | < lm> | http://pastie.caboo.se/47866 |
| 03:16 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: or at least learn their names. The game gets *way* more fun when you take an interest in the individual troopers and start to give a shit about then. |
| 03:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | lm: no actual error? |
| 03:16 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: uhhh no, I used to whupp butt at X-Com. =) |
| 03:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: generally, I appended codes to their names indicating what they were good at. Scouting, heavy weapons, etc. |
| 03:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...the first time you played? |
| 03:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | Like hell. |
| 03:17 | <@Vornicus> | MCV: I had the most fun with X-Com when I decided I would make an after-action report. |
| 03:17 | | ReivClass [~reiver@Nightstar-28874.ubs-dsl.xnet.co.nz] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 03:17 | | * Raif ponders. |
| 03:17 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: I have in the past hit alien armour + laser weapons while the aliens were still sending first- and second-wave martians at me. |
| 03:17 | <@Raif> | Wouldn't it be cool if strategy games could generate an interesting after-action report? |
| 03:17 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Can't remember the dudes' names. The first ones you fight. |
| 03:17 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: that would be great. |
| 03:17 | <@Raif> | Say, pick out some details from the biggest fights and throw them together? |
| 03:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: yes, but again, the first time you played? |
| 03:18 | <@Vornicus> | I want highlight reels. |
| 03:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | And it's Sectoids. |
| 03:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Thank you. |
| 03:18 | <@Raif> | That'd totally be doable. |
| 03:18 | <@Raif> | Just track large battles and pick events. |
| 03:18 | | Reiver [~reiver@Nightstar-28874.ubs-dsl.xnet.co.nz] has joined #Code |
| 03:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...Vorn hasn't played Homeworld? |
| 03:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | gnaaah |
| 03:18 | <@Raif> | Like your largest unit blowing up. |
| 03:18 | < Derakon> | Large battles aren't the only interesting bits, though. |
| 03:18 | <@Raif> | TF: I say we lynch him. |
| 03:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: no, but nobody is in *any* game. Didn't take me exceptionally long to get that far at X-Com, though. |
| 03:18 | <@Vornicus> | (a thought brought on by when TF accidentally hit an incoming bomber wing with a battleship salvo in SupComm) |
| 03:18 | <@Raif> | Der: No, but it's a start. :) |
| 03:18 | < Derakon> | Other things of interest include upsets, players that survive when they shouldn't, etc. |
| 03:19 | < lm> | the arrow points between "i" and "n" in the phrase "index+of" |
| 03:19 | <@Raif> | Those would be trackable too. |
| 03:19 | < lm> | oh wait I see my problem |
| 03:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: no. I say we introduce him to those games instead. |
| 03:19 | | * Vornicus needs to play many, many games. |
| 03:19 | <@Raif> | Before or after we lynch him? |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: well, he's full of Mac. |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which doesn't really run Homeworld. |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or Deus Ex. |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or SupComm. |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or TA. |
| 03:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: simultaneously. |
| 03:19 | <@Raif> | TF: So you're saying lynch him? |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | No. |
| 03:19 | <@Raif> | You're confusing me. |
| 03:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: what we actually do is a traditional lynching, but we replace the murder at the end with videogaming instead. |
| 03:19 | < lm> | forgot to escape the " as \"... instead I replaced the " with %22 and firefox reconverts it before it runs the script |
| 03:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | I'm saying have pity on him, and get him a dual-boot machine capable of running these games. |
| 03:19 | <@Raif> | First you say he's a mac user... then you say don't lynch him? |
| 03:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: bastard. =D |
| 03:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: and, hey, what about OOlite, hmm? =D |
| 03:20 | <@Raif> | :D |
| 03:20 | <@Raif> | What's OOlite? |
| 03:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Ever heard of a game called Elite? |
| 03:21 | <@Raif> | no. |
| 03:21 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/tssisat/oolite.html |
| 03:21 | <@MyCatVerbs> | OOlite is an Elite clone written in Objective-C. It requires either Apple's Cocoa, or GNUstep. |
| 03:21 | <@Vornicus> | Oolite? |
| 03:21 | <@Raif> | Vorn, that tells me nothing. |
| 03:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | It *works* on other platforms, but it's a complete cunt to get running because GNUstep is such an enormous unwieldly bastard to install. |
| 03:22 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: of course not, it has very little context. |
| 03:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Whereas Coca is *part* of Mac OS... |
| 03:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: it's a space trading game. |
| 03:22 | <@Raif> | Cocoa is nice... |
| 03:22 | <@Vornicus> | But it's actually an info page on a kind of planet from UQM. |
| 03:22 | <@Vornicus> | named an "Oolite world" |
| 03:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: you buy, sell commodities, attach guns, engines and so on to your ship. |
| 03:23 | <@Raif> | I confess that the only primarily-mac games I've played (at least since the advent of 8 bit graphics) were Myst, Marathon, and Myth. |
| 03:23 | <@Raif> | Interestingly, they all start with M. |
| 03:23 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: blow up space pirates to placate the police, *act* like a space pirate, or trade in illegal commodities in order to piss off the police and so on. |
| 03:23 | <@Raif> | Cat: So it's TradeWars. |
| 03:24 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Basically, it's EVE:Online, but a long time before the internet was widespread - let alone the concept of an MMO. |
| 03:24 | <@Raif> | So was TradeWars. :) |
| 03:24 | <@Raif> | Go ascii! WOO! :P |
| 03:24 | <@Raif> | ANSI, I guess, but whatever. |
| 03:24 | <@Vornicus> | Escape Velocity is Elite only better. EV:Nova is available for PC, and if you register it (so you can use plugins) you can get EV and EV:Override (the second of the three, and by my count the best) as plugins. |
| 03:25 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: I've not heard of TradeWars. But it did the whole "true 3d space adventures" thing and all that jazz. |
| 03:25 | <@Raif> | You are deprived, good sir. |
| 03:25 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: I think the original used vector graphics. True 3d lineart spaceships. |
| 03:25 | <@Raif> | I had enough knowledge of computers to hack the TW data files when I was younger. |
| 03:25 | <@MyCatVerbs> | OOlite is, of course, OpenGL fully textured. But it's cloned gameplay. |
| 03:26 | <@Raif> | There was a guy who would dial up religiously at midnight to play his TW turns. |
| 03:26 | < lm> | http://pastie.caboo.se/47867 <- finished bookmarklet |
| 03:26 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: you need to play Pathways into Darkness |
| 03:26 | <@Vornicus> | Indeed. |
| 03:26 | <@Raif> | Boy was he surprised when his habitual route sprouted a maxed out class O planet owned by yours truly... fully outfitted with hostile planetary defenses, of course. |
| 03:26 | < lm> | Thanks |
| 03:26 | | lm [lm_lappy@Nightstar-2930.228.63.142.Dial1.Denver1.Level3.net] has left #Code [] |
| 03:27 | <@Raif> | God damn, I was a shit. |
| 03:27 | <@Raif> | I deleted the planet two days later. |
| 03:27 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: heh. Similar large-scale concept, but totally different implementation. |
| 03:27 | <@Raif> | My dad started screaming at me and asked if I had cheated in the game. |
| 03:27 | <@Raif> | I logged in and pointed to the offending sector, now empty, and said nope. :) |
| 03:27 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: seriously, go find yourself a copy of Pathways and play it |
| 03:28 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's 100% of your recommended daily intake of W'rkncacnter! |
| 03:28 | | * Derakon snerks. |
| 03:28 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: wait, you ganked your own father in a BBS game by adding a bristling-with-guns planet to his favourite trade route!? |
| 03:28 | <@MyCatVerbs> | That is pretty awesome. |
| 03:29 | <@Raif> | No. But that was the first time I understood my knowledge of computing outstripped his. The guy I ganked was another user. |
| 03:29 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Aw, pity. That would've been *so* funny. =D |
| 03:29 | <@Raif> | See, TW logs any editing via the utility... I was smart enough to kill the logs and change the timestamp. |
| 03:29 | <@Vornicus> | For a game on the approximate technological level of Wolfenstein 3d (though it could do limited non-perpendicular walls, and indeed did do dynamically), it had an incredible amount of awesome in it. |
| 03:30 | <@Raif> | So, moral of the story: If you're going to cheat, you can get away with a lot if someone things the logging system is foolproof. :) |
| 03:31 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: it could? |
| 03:31 | <@ToxicFrog> | Where? |
| 03:31 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: see, this is why basically everything connected to the internet should be running a BSD derivative. |
| 03:31 | <@Raif> | Why? |
| 03:32 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: "chflags sappnd /var/log/*" aaaaand you're completely screwed. |
| 03:32 | <@Raif> | Hehe. |
| 03:32 | <@MyCatVerbs> | All logfiles can be marked append-only by order of the kernel at the superuser's whim if neccessary. |
| 03:32 | <@Raif> | Nah, I just abused some cool features of XTree Gold. |
| 03:33 | <@MyCatVerbs> | What's even better is that the immutability and append-only flags cannot be unset, even by the superuser. |
| 03:33 | <@Vornicus> | TF: beveled walls can be found in the entrance level and levels with the same tileset. |
| 03:33 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You actually have to reboot the machine into single-user mode in order to clear an immutable or append-only flag. |
| 03:33 | <@Raif> | Cat: sounds like you're leaving traces. |
| 03:33 | <@Raif> | Had I left any sign, I'da been beaten. The fact that I wasn't was a monument to my success. :) |
| 03:33 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: hmmm? What do you mean by that? |
| 03:34 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: I remember half-height walls, and bevel-looking textures, but not beveled walls. |
| 03:34 | <@ToxicFrog> | Unless by "beveled" you mean "not running N-S or E-W", in which case, yes. |
| 03:34 | <@Vornicus> | Yes. |
| 03:34 | <@Raif> | Vorn: Which game is this now? |
| 03:35 | <@Vornicus> | ...where were the half-height walls? |
| 03:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | Half-open doors, I thought. |
| 03:35 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: Pathways Into Darkness |
| 03:35 | <@Raif> | That kinda raycasting was never hard to do... it's just that wolfenstein had other priorities. |
| 03:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: still Pathways into Darkness. |
| 03:35 | <@Raif> | (I'm assuming this was in the days of raycasting) |
| 03:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | And PiD was closer to Doom than Wolfenstein. |
| 03:35 | <@Raif> | Cool. |
| 03:35 | <@Raif> | Doom was tricksy. |
| 03:35 | <@Vornicus> | TF: the only place I remember half-open doors was the "intro" area in M1A1 |
| 03:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: I may be confusing it with M1A1, then. |
| 03:36 | <@Vornicus> | PID had a very good plot. |
| 03:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: anyways. Pathways. Marathon prequel. Lots of atmosphere. Play it. |
| 03:36 | <@Raif> | I'll ponder it. |
| 03:36 | <@Raif> | Problem with games that old is that they're very hard to get into for me... I can't get past the technology, nostalgia notwithstanding. |
| 03:37 | <@Raif> | Though Doom from XBox live is every bit as good as I remembered. :) |
| 03:37 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: it helps to have a slow-ass machine. |
| 03:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Doom I seem to remember as being shit. |
| 03:37 | <@Raif> | Pfft. Philistine. |
| 03:37 | | * MyCatVerbs is even now not exactly far-divorced from 640x480 resolution. Heh. |
| 03:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | All of the engine of Marathon, except with none of the storyline, atmosphere, level design, or interesting deathmatch modes. |
| 03:38 | <@Raif> | Doom had atmosphere and pretty decent level design... story, however, no. |
| 03:38 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: no storyline to speak of, but plenty of violence and it was easy enough to get into to be playable on lunchbreaks. |
| 03:38 | <@Vornicus> | Doom had no atmosphere, no story, an incredibly hackneyed physics system, oh, and it couldn't do over/under or 5d space. |
| 03:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | Any of Marathon, Pathways, Ultima Underworld or System Shock could take it to the cleaners without even trying. |
| 03:38 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: oh and deathmatch. Very definately deathmatch. |
| 03:38 | <@Raif> | 5d space? |
| 03:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | Marathon also, I note, had plenty of violence and was easy to get into. |
| 03:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | And had vastly superior deathmatch.l |
| 03:39 | <@Vornicus> | 5d space: two corridors intersect, but they do not cross. |
| 03:39 | <@ToxicFrog> | I would have phrased it as "cross, but not intersect" myself. Interesting. |
| 03:39 | | Chalcedon [~Chalceon@Nightstar-869.bitstream.orcon.net.nz] has joined #code |
| 03:39 | | mode/#code [+o Chalcedon] by ChanServ |
| 03:39 | <@Vornicus> | hrm |
| 03:39 | <@Vornicus> | okay, I can see that too. |
| 03:39 | <@ToxicFrog> | More unambiguously: you can have multiple rooms/halls/whatever occupying the same coordinates without intersecting with each other. |
| 03:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | You can use this to implement portals, or many other interesting things. |
| 03:40 | <@Raif> | Vorn: I don't follow your definition of 5d. |
| 03:40 | <@Raif> | Are you talking about two rooms occupying the same physical space without actually being connected? |
| 03:41 | <@Vornicus> | I think I've only seen a couple levels that use it legitimately; the last (or is it second to last?) level of the Evil fanmission did it. |
| 03:41 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: yes. |
| 03:41 | <@Raif> | That doesn't seem like a feature to me. |
| 03:42 | <@Vornicus> | If I had a map editor and a movie recorder I could show you a really simple portal using it. |
| 03:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: why not? |
| 03:42 | <@Raif> | Why would you need that? |
| 03:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...to make portals? |
| 03:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | As in, teleporters you can see and shoot through? |
| 03:42 | <@Raif> | Except to put in annoying mazes like in Zork. |
| 03:42 | <@Vornicus> | Unreal Tournament could do it too; see the map "The Mirror" |
| 03:42 | <@Raif> | There are other ways to do that. |
| 03:43 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: How many of them existed in 1994? |
| 03:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | To make hideous non-euclidean spaces for Call of Cthulhu: the FPS? |
| 03:43 | <@Raif> | qTrue. |
| 03:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | To do things that make for a better level, but aren't actually physically possible because the corridor is six inches too high? |
| 03:43 | | * MyCatVerbs wishes UT's portals weren't so damn buggy. |
| 03:43 | <@Raif> | Frog: That's fine... but it pisses me off when I walk through a portal twice and don't end up where I started. |
| 03:43 | <@Vornicus> | Indeed, the first game I recall that advertised the ability to see through a teleporter was Quake 3, and that was, what, 2000? |
| 03:43 | <@MyCatVerbs> | If it weren't for the fact that bullets would not for some reason cross portal boundaries... |
| 03:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: Unreal could do it. |
| 03:44 | <@Vornicus> | And even then I don't think you could shoot through it. |
| 03:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Hell, if you could just make a map where projectile-weapons-only was enforced... |
| 03:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or at least, the build of Unreal used in WoT. |
| 03:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: "so near yet so far." |
| 03:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which was 1999. |
| 03:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: Unreal's engine, and UT's, did portals, beautifully. Except for the bug that ASMD rifles and bullets would not traverse them. |
| 03:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Aah. |
| 03:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | WoT did not, IIRC, have any points where firing through a portal made sense. |
| 03:46 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: so yeah, rocket launcher combat with portals would work perfectly, except that splash damage would be basically guaranteed not to quite work right if you were standing just on one or the other side of a portal. |
| 03:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | I mean, you could, if you wanted to blast the fuck out of that wall. |
| 03:46 | <@MyCatVerbs> | OTOH, if anyone were to try making an Unreal-based game with Max Payne style bullets-as-real-projectiles, it would work perfectly. |
| 03:47 | <@Vornicus> | Marathon had bullets as real projectiles; you actually had to shoot ahead of your target. |
| 03:47 | <@MyCatVerbs> | (Please may I take this moment to reiterate that Operation Flashpoint is absolutely awesome on many, many levels? Deflection shooting being one of them?) |
| 03:47 | <@Vornicus> | That threw me off so hard when I started playing stuff like Half-Life, where it's all raycasting. |
| 03:47 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: strange. The Marathon remakes made on top of the UT engine didn't. |
| 03:48 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raycasting's cheaper, and collision detection with very fast moving particles is *hard*, though. :/ |
| 03:49 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Witness the millions of flying-through-walls bugs that occur in pretty much all physics-based games where it's possible for the player character to reach insane speeds through some bizarre or mundane method. |
| 03:49 | <@Raif> | Not really. |
| 03:49 | <@Vornicus> | (for those who have played Marathon and are wondering: bullets move twice as fast as fusion bolts which move twice as fast as rockets and standard grenades which move twice as the bounce grenade) |
| 03:49 | <@Raif> | Collision detection in that way is simply casting a line segment instead of a ray. |
| 03:49 | <@Raif> | It moves X distance, and if it doesn't intersect any moving object it doesn't hit. |
| 03:49 | <@Raif> | (the motion of the projectile represents a line segment) |
| 03:50 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: ...touché. Though what if you want the bullets to be affected by gravity? |
| 03:50 | <@Raif> | Then do so. |
| 03:50 | | * Raif has done all this. |
| 03:50 | <@Raif> | Gravity just changes your velocity vector each frame. |
| 03:51 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh nevermind, you just kludge it, obviously. Change the angle every tick. Fake it, nobody even *cares* about the difference, seeing as it'll be like one part in 2^10 or more. |
| 03:51 | <@Raif> | Well, sorta. |
| 03:51 | <@Raif> | If you want to be super-accurate with parabolas, enjoy your own private hell. |
| 03:52 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I think this is why no Unreal based games ever had really good cluster grenades. |
| 03:52 | <@Raif> | If you're OK with discrete (and thus slightly inaccurate) slices of time, then it's trivial to do it properly. |
| 03:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | If you aren't ok with discrete time, why are you programming anything even vaguely simulation-related again? |
| 03:52 | <@Vornicus> | usually you can just say "okay where will it be in a frame?" and it will work just fine. |
| 03:52 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Ever play U4ET? They had nail grenades where which did it the naïve way and simulated each nail as a full object. |
| 03:52 | <@Raif> | That'll teach 'em. |
| 03:52 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Every time a bot let one off, the server and all the clients' CPUs would clamp. |
| 03:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Hee. |
| 03:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Like the Lagblaster in Q2. |
| 03:53 | <@Raif> | Well, that's dumb. :) |
| 03:53 | | Chalcedon [~Chalceon@Nightstar-869.bitstream.orcon.net.nz] has quit [Quit: ] |
| 03:53 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: yep. |
| 03:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | <3 the lagblaster |
| 03:53 | <@Vornicus> | the lagblaster... the, uh, shit, I can't even remember what guns there were in Q2 now. |
| 03:53 | <@Raif> | But a single bullet? There's no good reason not to simulate it at least moderately accurately. |
| 03:53 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I presume this is why the Marathon clones in UT never had fully simulated bullets. |
| 03:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: HyperBlaster. |
| 03:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | The energy minigun with no spinup. |
| 03:53 | <@Vornicus> | oh, the laser cnnon. |
| 03:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | And where each shot is an individual object rather than a raycast. |
| 03:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Plus particle effects. |
| 03:54 | <@MyCatVerbs> | All the performance-critical stuff like collision detection in Unreal was done in C++ code which modders wouldn't touch. |
| 03:54 | <@Vornicus> | heee |
| 03:54 | <@Raif> | Nor should they. :) |
| 03:54 | <@Vornicus> | Physics and graphics have to be done in your performance language. |
| 03:55 | <@Vornicus> | and networking, too. |
| 03:55 | <@MyCatVerbs> | And the only collision detection styles offered were basic non-portal-awayre raycastingg and fully-simulated, full-overhead objects. |
| 03:55 | <@Raif> | You mean Ruby? :P |
| 03:55 | <@Raif> | (Oh, snap!) |
| 03:55 | <@MyCatVerbs> | DAMN MY TYPING, ARRGH |
| 03:55 | <@MyCatVerbs> | *non-portal-aware |
| 03:56 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Eh, I bet Unreal's portals could've been made effectively flawless with about four or five code modifications. |
| 03:56 | <@Raif> | Yeah, they coulda. |
| 03:56 | <@Raif> | Just treat all objects like a player where physics is concerned. |
| 03:57 | <@Vornicus> | And, yeah, you really should make sure that your engine understands all the things in it. |
| 03:57 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Add a test to the distance-calculation routine used by splash damaging objects to check whether the damaged object was near a portal, then apply max(damage if it hit through the portal, damage if it hit without the portal) |
| 03:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Ruby is not a performance language~ |
| 03:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | ISTR it using ass-slow direct AST traversal for interpretation. |
| 03:57 | <@Vornicus> | Not vaguely. There's some recent work in VMs for Ruby, getting like ten fold performance increase. |
| 03:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Tack on a special case to the raycasting code so that whenever a ray hit a portal boundary, it'd be continued on the other side. |
| 03:58 | <@Raif> | TF: I was slipping in a jab against Ruby. :) |
| 03:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | That gets you both rocket launchers and miniguns working across portal boundaries, which is like 90% of the problem solved straight off. |
| 03:59 | | * Raif shrugs. |
| 03:59 | <@Raif> | The halflife engine supports this, actually. |
| 03:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ...what? |
| 03:59 | <@Raif> | Some fellow students got picked up by Valve to make a game based on a portal game they made at DP. |
| 03:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Half-Life does *not* have portal support, surely? |
| 03:59 | <@Raif> | Half-life supports a lot of things. |
| 04:00 | | * MyCatVerbs blinks. |
| 04:00 | <@Raif> | You just have to be smart in your scripting. |
| 04:00 | <@Raif> | Sorry, Halflife 2 |
| 04:00 | <@Raif> | Source. |
| 04:00 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Ahhh, okay. |
| 04:00 | <@Raif> | I should have specified. :) |
| 04:01 | | * Vornicus wants SupComm ;_; |
| 04:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Was gonna say. That would take either certain changes to the renderer's behavoir or some *really* kludgy hacks in game.dll to do in HL1. |
| 04:01 | <@Raif> | I was actually quite impressed with what they managed to do with a really basic game concept. |
| 04:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Since, IIRC, the renderer was *not* a part of the game that modders could actually touch. I might be horribly wrong there, though. |
| 04:01 | <@Raif> | http://www.digipen.edu/main/Gallery_Games_2004#Narbacular_Drop |
| 04:02 | <@Raif> | Narbacular Drop.... |
| 04:02 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Nowait, actually, it must be. I'm sorry, some guy implemented full screen shader support and everything. |
| 04:03 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: DOOM did have the advantage over Marathon that it ran on peoples' shitty IBM-MessDOS machines, rather than the rather rarer Apple boxes. >_> |
| 04:04 | | MahalShop is now known as Mahal |
| 04:05 | <@Vornicus> | Doom did not have that advantage over System Shock though. |
| 04:05 | <@Vornicus> | (which was also a great engine. I look at it and wonder how the hell they managed it with 1994 technology) |
| 04:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | True. |
| 04:08 | | * Raif suddenly misses Seventh Guest. |
| 04:08 | <@Vornicus> | (fullscreen true 3D, diagonal walls, floors, and ceilings, 3d models with physics, the ability to throw things at other things, wacky screen effects, cameras...) |
| 04:08 | | * Derakon adds texture to a model the hard way - by actually making it, y'know, textured. |
| 04:08 | <@Raif> | Vorn: Descent. :) |
| 04:09 | < Derakon> | Descent 1 came out in '95, according to Wikipedia. |
| 04:09 | <@Raif> | And? |
| 04:09 | <@Vornicus> | Descent beats it, yeah, but Descent is a king among games, and was a year later. |
| 04:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: by being filthy awesome |
| 04:11 | <@Raif> | I dunno what it is about me and wanting to bust out of pseudo-3d games, but I really hope somebody takes another crack at a descent sequel someday soon. |
| 04:11 | | * Vornicus wonder what question that answered. |
| 04:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | "I look at it and wonder how the hell they managed it with 1994 technology" |
| 04:11 | <@Vornicus> | oh, yes |
| 04:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | Except they did most of it in 1992, with Ultima Underworld. |
| 04:12 | <@Raif> | I think part of the problem is that when there's no clear "UP" people get dizzy, like Pi. |
| 04:12 | <@Vornicus> | Descent 3 was good. |
| 04:12 | <@Raif> | Freespace? |
| 04:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Keh! Up is whatever you want it to be. |
| 04:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Raif: no, Descent 3. |
| 04:12 | <@Raif> | TF: Exactly. :) |
| 04:12 | <@Vornicus> | that was back in 98/99 though |
| 04:12 | <@Raif> | And no, I was asking if 3 was freespace. |
| 04:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | No, it's not. |
| 04:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Descent 3 is Descent 3. |
| 04:12 | <@Raif> | Indeed. |
| 04:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | Freespace is a v. different game. |
| 04:13 | <@Raif> | Anyway, I'mma watch a movie from around that era. :) |
| 04:13 | <@Vornicus> | Descent 3 had model mipping, which I thought was awesome. |
| 04:13 | <@Raif> | TF: Every sequel that came after Descent didn't really even come close to the original, in my mind, but I didn't play all of them. |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | ..."every sequel"? |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | There were two. |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | Descent 2, and Descent 3. |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | Three if you count the Descent 3 expansion, which I can't remember the name of. |
| 04:14 | <@Raif> | Freespace attempted to link itself with the universe, did it not? |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | Nope. |
| 04:14 | <@Raif> | Hmm. |
| 04:14 | <@Vornicus> | "descent 3: mercenary" |
| 04:14 | <@Raif> | What game am I thinking of? |
| 04:14 | <@Raif> | Ah well. |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | Thankye. |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | I have no idea. |
| 04:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | Red Faction linked itself with Descent, kind of. |
| 04:15 | <@Raif> | Here's to old games, and the healthy social activities they prevented! *raises glass* |
| 04:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | *raises the hollowed-out skull of his nemesis* |
| 04:15 | <@Vornicus> | Descent 2 had worse level and monster design. Well, okay, the monsters were sorta okay. |
| 04:15 | <@Vornicus> | *raises the roof* |
| 04:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | Sorta ok is still <<<<<<<< Descent 1. |
| 04:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | Lifters. |
| 04:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | Goddamn Lifters. |
| 04:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | SCREEE |
| 04:16 | <@Vornicus> | Lifters were eeevil. |
| 04:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | And yes, the D2 level design was meh at best. Which is why I still haven't finished it. |
| 04:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | On the plus side, D2 has an Inherently Superior opening cutscene. |
| 04:16 | <@Vornicus> | I wonder what the various D1 monsters would look like if designed today. |
| 04:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | You can practically see slime oozing from your speakers when Dravis speaks. |
| 04:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | I don't know. |
| 04:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | Lifters are hard to top. |
| 04:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | The D3 version certainly lacked the OH SHIT factor of the original. |
| 04:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | Although it also lacked the original's penchant for lurking above doorways, following you around for twenty minutes, and pouncing just as you turn around. |
| 04:19 | <@Vornicus> | heee |
| 04:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | This one time, in D2X-XL...there's this room in D1 with something like six Lifters in it. |
| 04:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | I enter it. No lifters. |
| 04:19 | <@Vornicus> | Hee |
| 04:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | I explore the room, grab everything, still no lifters. |
| 04:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | I turn around to leave and ALL SIX OF THE FUCKING THINGS ARE RIGHT BEHIND ME |
| 04:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Heeehee. |
| 04:21 | <@Vornicus> | owies. :) |
| 04:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | Also. D2 gets a thwap for basically taking the Sec-1 model from D1 and giving it homing missiles. |
| 04:23 | | Thaqui [~Thaqui@Nightstar-12370.jetstream.xtra.co.nz] has quit [Quit: Leaving] |
| 04:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | This means that D1 reflexes categorize it as low-threat. |
| 04:23 | < Derakon> | See this? *This* is how you do texturing! http://66.235.5.124/~chriswei/temp/spider1.png |
| 04:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | And then *beep* missile lock |
| 04:23 | < Derakon> | Ow. |
| 04:23 | <@Vornicus> | Der: it is tasty. |
| 04:24 | < Derakon> | Danke. |
| 04:24 | | Thaqui [~Thaqui@Nightstar-12370.jetstream.xtra.co.nz] has joined #code |
| 04:24 | | mode/#code [+o Thaqui] by ChanServ |
| 04:24 | < Derakon> | Yo, Thaq. |
| 04:24 | <@Thaqui> | heyas |
| 04:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | argh, so many game remake ideas eating my brain |
| 04:25 | <@Vornicus> | I especially like the bow area. |
| 04:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | The biggie, more so even than StarCraft in the SupComm engine, being Wing Commander 1 and 2 in the Freespace 2 engine. |
| 04:26 | <@Vornicus> | TF: you too? |
| 04:26 | | * Derakon suddenly has a stupid ship idea: a giant spaceborne bow, with laser string and homing arrows. |
| 04:26 | <@Vornicus> | pff |
| 04:26 | < Derakon> | Something along the lines of the Vorlon Staple. |
| 04:26 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: always. |
| 04:27 | <@ToxicFrog> | I've had Wing Commander in FS2O kicking around in my head ever since I found out that FS2 was opensourced. |
| 04:36 | | * Vornicus completes Iron, rejiggers Mountain colors. |
| 04:39 | <@ToxicFrog> | I want to fly along the hull of the Tiger's Claw, dammit. |
| 04:41 | | * Vornicus begins on Grain. |
| 04:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | The problem here is that if I don't have time to port StarCraft to SupComm, I definitely don't have time to port WC to FS2O, even if the result would be the purest definition of awesome squared. |
| 04:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | Since it would need heavy engine modification to support things link the branching campaign, the damage model, and so forth. |
| 04:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | Plus writing tools to unpack the cutscenes from Wing Commander. |
| 04:42 | < Reiver> | TF: How many TA=>TA2 projects have been started? ¬¬ |
| 04:43 | <@Vornicus> | Speaking of unpacking stuff, how is OTA music hacking coming? |
| 04:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | And the whole thing is C++. |
| 04:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: none so far, AFAIK. |
| 04:43 | < Reiver> | |
| 04:43 | < Reiver> | Really? |
| 04:43 | | * Reiver is frankly shocked. |
| 04:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, OTA has aged really well. |
| 04:43 | < Reiver> | Yeah, but |
| 04:43 | < Reiver> | Imagine it in SupComm shininess! |
| 04:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Furthermore, no-one wants to start a really big project until the next patch, which will dramatically extend the modding API. |
| 04:44 | <@Vornicus> | OTA was the top of the line in terms of interface until SupComm came out, essentially. |
| 04:44 | < Reiver> | Ahh. Fair enough then. |
| 04:44 | < Reiver> | You could /probably/ write a script/FBI converter cludge. |
| 04:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: stalled. I keep getting distracted by other projects and ambushed by homework. |
| 04:44 | <@Vornicus> | aha |
| 04:44 | < Reiver> | Indeed, if you wanted to be lazy you could almost certainly write a model converter as an ad-hoc fillin for new graphics. |
| 04:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Now that the proof of concept and the wicked assembly hack is done, it's not as interesting~ |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: except that we haven't finished creating the tools for the SupComm model format. |
| 04:45 | < Reiver> | TF: Aah. |
| 04:45 | < Reiver> | Well then, hurry up~ |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Once we have, though, yes, I bet you could automatically convert a lot of it. |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | People are already porting the *maps*, I note. |
| 04:45 | < Reiver> | Hee |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Someone's gotten metal maps working. |
| 04:45 | | * Reiver nod. |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | And construction aircraft and the FARK. |
| 04:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | I think someone else is working on a Hedgehog. |
| 04:46 | < Reiver> | ...The FARK should have been the /easy/ part. |
| 04:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | It is the easy part. |
| 04:46 | < Reiver> | Oh. Right then. |
| 04:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | It was posted as an example/tutorial mod. |
| 04:46 | < Reiver> | Ahhh. |
| 04:46 | < Reiver> | Nifty. |
| 04:47 | < Derakon> | So, wait - Atari owns the TA name, but not the content? |
| 04:47 | < Reiver> | Der: I think TA got fragmented. |
| 04:47 | < Reiver> | But no, technically TA was never legally meant to be modified. |
| 04:47 | < Reiver> | This never stopped people from doing so once the file system got hacked though~ |
| 04:47 | < Derakon> | Heh. |
| 04:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: er. Cavedog was, ISTR, fairly supportive of modding. |
| 04:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | Although not nearly to the same degree as GPG is with SupComm. |
| 04:48 | < Reiver> | TF: Unoffically. |
| 04:48 | < Reiver> | Legally they weren't allowed to endorse it. |
| 04:48 | <@ToxicFrog> | Where modding questions have a 2/3 chance of getting an answer from the devs on any given day. |
| 04:48 | < Reiver> | They did, however, cheerfully turn a blind eye to it. |
| 04:48 | <@Vornicus> | From what I can tell, SupComm's mod community is already the biggest in many years. |
| 04:48 | <@ToxicFrog> | And ctaylor is on record as saying that he wants this game to be absurdly moddable, and thinks he's succeeded. |
| 04:48 | < Reiver> | (Mind you, if your approach to 'securing' the game files is to use a Hewlett Packard compression alograthm and hope no-one notices, you deserve to get cracked~) |
| 04:48 | <@ToxicFrog> | And you know, I think he has as well. |
| 04:49 | | * Reiver is inclined to agree too. |
| 04:49 | < Reiver> | TA was incredibly modifiable and hadn't been intended that way. |
| 04:49 | < Reiver> | It wouldn't take much to do it deliberately... |
| 04:49 | < Reiver> | ...And have it even /more/ so. |
| 04:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah. And with TA2 he went in deliberately intending to make it moddable. |
| 04:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | (and chose Lua, squeee) |
| 04:50 | <@Vornicus> | What it will look like when the extended API comes out and the third-party libs and tools mature, I don't know. |
| 04:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | Actual modding tools are kind of sparse - so far we have the file formats and a promise of an official map editor within a month or so. |
| 04:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | And three unofficial model viewers and an unofficial map editor and one guy's working on a blueprint editor and there's a model export module for Blender. |
| 04:51 | | * Reiver nods. |
| 04:51 | < Reiver> | Hey, TA was the same. |
| 04:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | Within a month of release? |
| 04:51 | < Reiver> | Nono. |
| 04:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's so nice having actual official file formats to work from rather than reverse engineering. |
| 04:51 | < Reiver> | I meant with all the 'unofficial' tools, several of which *cough* apparently got unoffically made official~ |
| 04:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | Aah. |
| 04:52 | | * Vornicus wonders how moddable the map editor will be~ |
| 04:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | Heh. |
| 04:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | The map format is actually wicked moddable in and of itself, consisting basically of: |
| 04:52 | < Reiver> | AKA: I have it on reliable rumor that several of the later offical maps actually utilised the fanwork map editor because it was better than the offical one. |
| 04:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | - a height map |
| 04:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | - a texture map |
| 04:52 | < Reiver> | Mind you, they eventually hired the writer. <g> |
| 04:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | - a huge (obviously automatically generated) Lua script that defines object and trigger locations and callbacks |
| 04:53 | <@Vornicus> | I get the impression that the guys at GPG understand the power of real tools. |
| 04:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | - any number of arbitrary Lua scripts for doing Stuff |
| 04:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Indeed, the only thing that makes it tricky is that (1) there is no way you can manually edit the entity table and retain your sanity and (2) the heightmap is 16bpp greyscale, which is supported by nothing on earth. |
| 04:53 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Wait |
| 04:54 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Gas Powered Games wrote Torque, didn't they? Or am I thinking of the wrong company? |
| 04:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | No, that's Irrational. |
| 04:54 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh, my bad. Thanks. |
| 04:54 | <@Vornicus> | Irrational... SS2 was done by them, wasn't it? |
| 04:54 | < Reiver> | TF: It's a shame they used a lua script for the entities. |
| 04:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Wait, no, I'm wrong. |
| 04:54 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 04:54 | < Reiver> | They should've used an actual, eh. Database thingy. |
| 04:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Irrational used Torque. |
| 04:55 | | * MyCatVerbs ponders. |
| 04:55 | <@Vornicus> | Who made Torque then? |
| 04:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | However, Torque was originally developed by Dynamix, bog rest their soul. |
| 04:55 | <@MyCatVerbs> | GarageGames own it now. |
| 04:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | They took it with them when they created GarageGames. |
| 04:55 | <@MyCatVerbs> | So says Google. All Hail Google. HAIL! |
| 04:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: the thing is, since it's a Lua table, loading it is one function call. |
| 04:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah, it loads more slowly than a database. So? Load times are cheap. |
| 04:56 | <@Vornicus> | I saw some images with trees in them. Do you get forest fires in SupComm? |
| 04:56 | < Reiver> | TF: But said lua table is a source of abject madness, no? |
| 04:56 | < Reiver> | (I sure hope so!) |
| 04:56 | | * MyCatVerbs ponders 16bpp greyscale. |
| 04:57 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Photoshop will do that, surely? |
| 04:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: yep, although not as impressively as in OTA. |
| 04:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | So far. |
| 04:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | I bet we could make them more flammable. |
| 04:57 | <@Vornicus> | Man I love moddable games. |
| 04:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: yes, but so would a database be. |
| 04:57 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Alternatively, I bet you could map it to a 16 bit palette, running from green through to red at either end and all shades in between. |
| 04:58 | < Reiver> | I wonder why they chose 16 bit. |
| 04:58 | < Reiver> | That's... not an /awful/ lot of resolution for height variance. |
| 04:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: 256 level heightmaps would suck. |
| 04:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: 24 bits is actually overkill. |
| 04:58 | < Reiver> | MCV: OTA had them~ |
| 04:58 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I think it's just an acceptable compromise. |
| 04:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Consider that standard IEEE float variables give you only 23 bits o' precision anyway. |
| 04:59 | <@Vornicus> | 256 level heightmaps were enough for TA - ut then TA had no actual 3D. |
| 04:59 | <@Vornicus> | I think TA only had 256. |
| 04:59 | < Reiver> | Vorn: Hrm. Point. |
| 04:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: I beg to differ! |
| 04:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: it's 65,535 levels of height. |
| 04:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which is plenty. |
| 04:59 | <@Vornicus> | Well, no free camera. |
| 04:59 | < Reiver> | ...Oh wait |
| 04:59 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: TA had better actual 3D than most... ah, right. |
| 04:59 | < Reiver> | 16bit |
| 04:59 | | * Reiver misread as 16, total~ |
| 05:00 | <@ToxicFrog> | No. |
| 05:00 | <@ToxicFrog> | That would be 4-bit. |
| 05:00 | < Reiver> | Yeah. I missed 'bit', somehow. |
| 05:00 | <@MyCatVerbs> | No free camera, true, but that's a result of the fact that the game had to be written to run on actual hardware. |
| 05:00 | < Reiver> | Free cameras suck. |
| 05:00 | < Reiver> | They look pretty, yes. |
| 05:00 | < Reiver> | They're utterly useless for RTS games. |
| 05:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: Impossible Creatures did a pretty swell job with them, as did Populus TB. |
| 05:01 | < Reiver> | The only form you ever want in /actual use/ is rotating the map, and zoom. |
| 05:01 | <@Vornicus> | 24bit would be enough to measure from Challenger Deep to Everest in millimeters. |
| 05:01 | < Reiver> | Vorn: Heeeee |
| 05:01 | < Reiver> | That's funny. |
| 05:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Though those weren't fully free, but close enough for practical work. |
| 05:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: squeeeee! That makes me feel giddy for some reason. |
| 05:02 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: thing is, if they'd had free camera in OTA, it would've chugged like *hell*. |
| 05:02 | <@Vornicus> | Yeah |
| 05:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: Ground Control had a free camera. SupComm has it as an option. |
| 05:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | And, yeah, it's usually not that useful. |
| 05:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | But sometimes you just want the shinies. |
| 05:02 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: think of the hardware that people were running it on back then. Software renderer, too. Wide shots would've totally broken the renderer. |
| 05:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | The sweet, sweet shinies. |
| 05:02 | < Reiver> | TF: I generally 3/4down, rotatable/zoom is more than ever needed. |
| 05:02 | <@Vornicus> | When I say "free camera", reiver, I mean something much less restrictive than what TA has, which is one angle at one zoom. |
| 05:03 | < Reiver> | ...Though having a free camera option can be nice. |
| 05:03 | < Reiver> | Vorn: Ah, so |
| 05:03 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: OpFlash had a feature for this built in by design. |
| 05:03 | <@Vornicus> | Rotation and Zoom are quite valuable - see Myth. |
| 05:03 | < Reiver> | I tend to treat 'free camera' as 'You are effectively looking at it like an FPS where you can hover'. |
| 05:03 | <@Vornicus> | and PTB |
| 05:03 | < Reiver> | AKA you can look at things from any angle. |
| 05:03 | <@Vornicus> | Which was also a great game. |
| 05:03 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: under pretty much *all* circumstances you could hit keypad-enter to get an external view of your soldier or vehicle. |
| 05:04 | < Reiver> | Which is wonderful in 3D modelling software |
| 05:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: but was it still following you around? |
| 05:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | Then it wasn't free camera. |
| 05:04 | < Reiver> | A PITA in anything else other than, you know, Descent. ¬¬ |
| 05:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: I use it to mean "you can position the camera at any coordinates and angle" |
| 05:04 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: Yes. Then if you held another key (can't remember what by default), the mouse would detach from your soldier or vehicle's controls and instead allow you to rotate the camera for the sake of atmosphere screenshots. |
| 05:04 | < Reiver> | TF: That's what I meant too. |
| 05:04 | < Reiver> | Effective result is, uh. |
| 05:05 | <@Vornicus> | I once designed a camera system, but never got around to implementing it. You got panrotatezoom by default, and then a really free camera if you turned on capslock. |
| 05:05 | < Reiver> | Vaugely FPS-with-hover result. |
| 05:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | If you don't like that, you just put it above the battlefield looking down and there you go, standard RTS camera + zoom. |
| 05:05 | < Reiver> | Vorn: Not bad. |
| 05:05 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: but that's an *FPS*, not an RTS. Unbounded player movement would rather break the gameplay. =) |
| 05:05 | <@MyCatVerbs> | (I mean, OpFlash is an FPS. Unless you mod it to Hell and back, which *has* been done, wierdly enough) |
| 05:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | MyCatVerbs: and thus not really relevant to this discussion. |
| 05:06 | < Reiver> | TF: Which is good, except a game that intentially designed to use a free camera tends to screw up the interface for using it 'normally'~ |
| 05:06 | <@ToxicFrog> | I mean, every FPS and its dog has third-person view somewhere. |
| 05:06 | <@Vornicus> | (this was for OTTD3d - another project dead to my lack of skill - and it was designed so that you could get glamour shots.) |
| 05:06 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: yeah, see, that's a problem with the UI team. Not with free camera itself. |
| 05:06 | <@ToxicFrog> | Check out Ground Control, if I can ever get the disc images to you. |
| 05:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: only to the part about using free camera for pretty screenshots and shinies. And yeah, but most deliberately hide or obfusciate it. |
| 05:06 | <@ToxicFrog> | Scroll wheel adjusts camera height, and you can't change the angle by accident. |
| 05:07 | < Reiver> | ...You can't change it by accident? |
| 05:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | So you put it looking down and it's a standard RTS camera and the mouse wheel zooms. |
| 05:07 | <@Vornicus> | TF: Half-Life didn't use third person in any actual sense. |
| 05:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | OF actively *embraces* the clichéd lens-flare-on-an-A-10 shot. =D |
| 05:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: no, but it had the feature. |
| 05:07 | <@Vornicus> | True |
| 05:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: holding down alt, IIRC, is changing the camera angle |
| 05:07 | <@MyCatVerbs> | But you had to set a cheat code to use it and it was broken anyway. |
| 05:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | Otherwise, moving the mouse to the edges scrolls the screen |
| 05:07 | | * Reiver ponders. |
| 05:07 | < Reiver> | Did it have a setting for watch-this-point-and-zoom-up-and-out? |
| 05:08 | < Reiver> | (Strictly speaking, you have to raise the height /and/ back the camera up if you don't want to lose sight of what you were looking at.) |
| 05:08 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Was trivial to get the camera outside the level's bounding boxes, so that you could spy ahead and cheat that way. Not to mention the fact that the aiming didn't work correctly with third person mode. |
| 05:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: it had watch-this-unit |
| 05:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | I can't remember if it had watch-this-point |
| 05:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | Because I never used or needed that feature. |
| 05:08 | < Reiver> | hm |
| 05:08 | < Reiver> | Close enough. |
| 05:08 | < Reiver> | Yeah, that would be probably usable. |
| 05:08 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: you ought to see StarTopia's "orbit" movement command. That was pretty cool. |
| 05:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | (for that matter, TA and SupComm also have watch-this-unit) |
| 05:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | (and homeworld, of course, has nothing but) |
| 05:09 | < Reiver> | (On the logic that while a free camera, you treated it as a fixed-angle camera 90% of the time. Which is the main point, really~) |
| 05:09 | <@Vornicus> | OTTD3D would have had stuff like "follow this train around" and "show me the view from this train" but, again, no skills here |
| 05:09 | <@MyCatVerbs> | ToxicFrog: and it annoys me that they're some of the only RTSes outside of Relic to actually have that. G'dammit. |
| 05:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: I have got to send you Ground Control once your new system is up and running. |
| 05:09 | < Reiver> | TF: You do that~ |
| 05:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | One thing that I was really disappointed SupComm didn't have was group-targeted actions. |
| 05:10 | < Reiver> | The OTA 'track' button was extra fun when you chose to track a big bertha. |
| 05:10 | < Reiver> | It tracked the shells |
| 05:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Eg, Homeworld style 'attack everything in this bandbox' |
| 05:10 | <@MyCatVerbs> | "(and homeworld, of course, has nothing but)" <-- I submit for your consideration the postulation that Homeworld is the Scheme of RTS games. |
| 05:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: yeah, it does that in TA2 as well. |
| 05:10 | < Reiver> | So you could watch your artillery zoom over the screen and impact. |
| 05:10 | <@Vornicus> | Reiver: SupComm does that too with big guns and nukes. |
| 05:10 | < Reiver> | Woo! |
| 05:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Tracks nukes, too. |
| 05:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's a flag in the unitBlueprint, IIRC. |
| 05:10 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Works on nukes in OTA, too. You just have to be patient. |
| 05:10 | <@Vornicus> | yeah |
| 05:11 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh and if you think that's cool, try it on a Buzzsaw or better still a Vulcan cannon. |
| 05:11 | < Reiver> | MCV: That just made me dizzy. |
| 05:11 | | Serah [~Z@87.72.36.ns-26407] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 05:11 | < Reiver> | 'cuz it reset to the most recently fired shell. >.> |
| 05:11 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You get THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDHTUD... jerking back and fore. |
| 05:12 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Then you hit the stop button on the Vulcan for a few seconds just for the sake of laughing at watching the last few shells hit. XD |
| 05:12 | < Reiver> | I remember the vulcan and buzzsaw. |
| 05:13 | < Reiver> | Making the buzzsaw useful at super-vet level was easy. |
| 05:13 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Course, that assumes you have the view control set on "Permanent" - C&C1 - mode. |
| 05:13 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Otherwise that doesn't work so well, heh. |
| 05:13 | < Reiver> | But I was the one that worked out how to make the Vulcan useful, something for which I remain quietly proud. ^.^ |
| 05:14 | <@MyCatVerbs> | But it is so goddamn *hilarious* to build a Vulcan in range of most of an opponent's forces and then set it to "Fire at Will" |
| 05:14 | < Reiver> | The problem was, the guns were more useful when new than when veteraned - because high levels of veteranship would improve a weapons accuracy. On a Bertha, this was good. |
| 05:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Then track that. *whzzzzzzt-CLUNK* into position. *THUDTHUDTHUDCRUNCHTHUDCRUNCHTHUD...* aaand the only shells you see hitting the target are the last few, finishing up on the target's corpse and the surrounding objects while the Vulcan shifts angle... =D |
| 05:15 | < Reiver> | On a Vulcan or Buzzsaw, this was bad, because they would eventually get to the point where you would hit what you aimed at, and /only/ what you aimed at, meaning your RFLRPC would fire twenty shots at the metal extractor, until the first shell hit and obliterated it, and then choose a new target. |
| 05:15 | < Reiver> | Wheras when it had been a 'newbie' cannon it would have leveled everything within approximately a screen-size while trying to hit the target. |
| 05:16 | | Derakon[AFK] is now known as Derakon |
| 05:16 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: really? I never noticed that problem. Even at over a hundred and twenty kills, I never saw the Vulcans get anything like that accurate. |
| 05:16 | < Reiver> | I said supervet. |
| 05:16 | < Reiver> | Try 900+. |
| 05:16 | < Reiver> | The Buzzsaw got 'fixed' by changing the firepoint to be only one of the spokewheel barrels, meaning that as it fired, because the 'aim speed' hadn't been changed, it would 'walk' the shells several inches forward and back. |
| 05:16 | < Reiver> | (Which was noted to be a wonderful thing when attacking a column of tanks.~) |
| 05:16 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Heck, at a hundred twenty kills I think they were only just equalling the Bertha's accuracy at *zero*. |
| 05:17 | < Reiver> | The Vulcan, however, was a gatling design for whom that fix did nothing. |
| 05:17 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Niice. |
| 05:17 | < Reiver> | And then I discovered a very interesting wee factoid. |
| 05:17 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You could set the accuracy-bonus-per-kill? |
| 05:17 | < Reiver> | You could not. |
| 05:17 | <@MyCatVerbs> | (make it negative! haha!) |
| 05:17 | < Reiver> | However. |
| 05:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Pity. That would've been awesome. |
| 05:18 | < Reiver> | Weapon accuracy increased with veteranship. Burst accuracy - the bit that made a Pyros flamethrower shoot out streams that splattered everywhere - did /not/ change. |
| 05:18 | | Serah [~Z@87.72.36.ns-26407] has joined #Code |
| 05:18 | <@Vornicus> | you made the Vulcan a burst weapon? |
| 05:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh, I see. |
| 05:18 | < Reiver> | So we made it a six-shot burst weapon. |
| 05:18 | < Reiver> | (Because it had six barrels and incidentally it fired six shots a second, so that way the energy drain remained smooth.) |
| 05:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | So you set the weapon accuracy to full and stuffed all of the inaccuracy into the burst percentage? |
| 05:19 | < Reiver> | Right. |
| 05:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | What about the firing rate change that occurred with veteranship? |
| 05:19 | < Reiver> | About this point, we found out another curiosity we hadn't realised: |
| 05:19 | < Reiver> | Burst fire innacuracy isn't truly random. |
| 05:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I rather loved the way that the Vulcan would need progressively more fusion plants to keep it running the more stuff you killed with it, heheeh. ^^ |
| 05:19 | < Derakon> | Whee...I think I'm about done texturing this guy. Thoughts? http://66.235.5.124/~chriswei/temp/spider2.png |
| 05:20 | < Derakon> | Where by "texturing" I mean "adding little bits of texture". |
| 05:20 | < Reiver> | Rather, it scatters shots along an arc of the circle - so you'd get something like a ) of fire. |
| 05:20 | < Derakon> | ...and I just realized that I haven't textured the bottom of the ship, like, at all. >.< |
| 05:20 | <@Vornicus> | That is a lovely ship, Der. |
| 05:21 | < Reiver> | We swiftly decided we were OK with this, because it meant that one gun fired a scattershot in a nice straight line forward, while the other gun fired it perpendicular to the direction of fire. |
| 05:21 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Wow, crikey. I concur. |
| 05:21 | < Reiver> | It got pretty quickly nicked by both Uberhack and Switecks Bugfix, IIRC. ^.^ |
| 05:21 | < Reiver> | That's awesome, Der! |
| 05:21 | <@Vornicus> | I want one. |
| 05:22 | < Derakon> | Thanks. :) |
| 05:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: so this makes the Buzzsaw superior at tank-column raking and the Vulcan superior at shredding bases up? |
| 05:22 | <@Vornicus> | What is the aperture at the front? |
| 05:22 | < Reiver> | MCV: Approximately speaking, yes. |
| 05:22 | < Derakon> | Stylistically, it's a mouth. Practically, either a gunport or the airlocks. |
| 05:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: ...ever seen what happens when you put a Vulcan on a naval metal map? |
| 05:22 | < Reiver> | Functionally, baseshredding, it meant you chose your Buzzsaw targets in columns, and your Vulcan targets in rows~ |
| 05:23 | <@MyCatVerbs> | And then build a targetting facility, of course? Hehe. |
| 05:23 | < Reiver> | Why bother? |
| 05:23 | < Reiver> | You just clicked a dozen times and then came back later to see if there was anything left. :p |
| 05:23 | <@Vornicus> | The fact that you needed a targeting facility sucked. |
| 05:24 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Because there's something indescribably awesome about watching an entire fleet of battleships get ripped to shreds. |
| 05:24 | < Reiver> | Vorn: An interesting mod for TA set the game to be Commander Death Continues, and your Commander was a targeting facility. |
| 05:24 | < Reiver> | Thus, losing your commander didn't lose you the game... |
| 05:24 | < Reiver> | ...But he was still hella valuable. |
| 05:25 | <@Vornicus> | I like that one. |
| 05:25 | < Reiver> | I was always fond of this, as it gave you the general effect of the battle pushing on even when you lose your leader - but your forces were drastically less co-ordinated. |
| 05:25 | <@MyCatVerbs> | That sounds pretty cool. |
| 05:26 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I do so love *interesting* ways to modify gameplay in RTSes like that. |
| 05:26 | < Reiver> | And meant you had to very carefully weigh up the pros/cons of whether or not to use your commander as a late-game bomb. |
| 05:26 | | * Derakon snerks. |
| 05:26 | < Reiver> | If would be worth it if you won almost immediately. |
| 05:26 | < Reiver> | You could cripple yourself if it didn't work. |
| 05:26 | <@MyCatVerbs> | One I've wanted to try in C&C: Tiberian Sun is to turn the MultiEngineer flag on, then set *all* infantry units Engineer flags on. |
| 05:27 | < Reiver> | Which was nice, because otherwise by late-game, that was all the commander was considered worthwhile as - a Nuke 2.0~ |
| 05:27 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Except for the actual Engineers themselves. Turns theirs off and give them C4 instead. |
| 05:27 | <@MyCatVerbs> | That way, light-infantry rushes would be *dangerous* and *useful* as they could be used to take enemy factories and refineries. |
| 05:28 | < Reiver> | You'd want to rig it so they weren't insta-capture, though. |
| 05:28 | | * Reiver ponders a gameplay mechanic he once fiddled with in a game doc. |
| 05:29 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Jah, that's what the multiengineer flag does. Most buildings take between two and four units to grab. |
| 05:29 | <@Vornicus> | Subs were entirely useless without a targetting facility. |
| 05:29 | < Reiver> | Vorn: Yes and no. |
| 05:29 | < Reiver> | You could manually target them, or more to the point have screening forces of skeeters. |
| 05:29 | <@MyCatVerbs> | That was a mechanic that was actually in the original Dune 2, by the way, in lieu of C&C-and-all-its-clones style engineers. |
| 05:29 | < Reiver> | (Which, if things were underwater but within sonar, still showed up.) |
| 05:30 | < Reiver> | I like that. It reminds me of a thingy I once had. |
| 05:30 | < Reiver> | Things - especially buildings - were only onstentiably on your side, or their side - instead of engineers you had 'influence'. |
| 05:30 | | * MyCatVerbs nods. |
| 05:30 | < Reiver> | So a soldier would have a region of influence, and a tank would have a much larger in radius one. |
| 05:31 | < Reiver> | ...But generally speaking you would likely have 5x as many infantry as tanks in a given area, simply because troops were cheap. |
| 05:31 | < Reiver> | So a squad of tanks could influence things from much further away; whilst you could probably just swarm something with troops. |
| 05:32 | <@MyCatVerbs> | So you'd flood a barracks with troops and suddenly it'd start sprouting your own soldiers instead of the enemy's? |
| 05:32 | < Reiver> | Power supplies, in addition to increased building efficiency, were mostly a drastic influence on 'morale' - if your buildings lost power, and then got surrounded by infantry, you would likely capture something an order of magnitude of faster. |
| 05:32 | < Reiver> | Eventually. The biggest thing this would have been was that resources were 'earned' by controlling 'neutral' items. |
| 05:32 | < Reiver> | Towns, oil refineries, etc. |
| 05:33 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Ooooh. |
| 05:33 | < Reiver> | This was intended to be a vaugely TA-esque resource model, in that you got income rather than harvester-loads. |
| 05:33 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Good mechanic, that. |
| 05:34 | < Reiver> | And yes - if you knocked out the opponents power generation abilities, wiped out his troops, and stationed a garrison, you could pretty quickly capture enemy buildings. |
| 05:34 | < Reiver> | ...Alternatively, you may have been forced to shoot them up on the way in. |
| 05:35 | < Reiver> | If you couldn't gurantee being able to hold a position after defeating the opponent, you were probably better off just blasting it to hell as you swept through, instead of take-and-hold. |
| 05:35 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I take it guard towers, gun turrets and the like did not normally acquiesce willingly unless you flooded them with tanks and knocked out their power first. |
| 05:35 | < Reiver> | Pretty much, yep. :) |
| 05:35 | <@MyCatVerbs> | s/./? :)/ |
| 05:35 | < Reiver> | You /could/ capture pretty much anything. |
| 05:35 | < Reiver> | But how willingly it was liable to be swayed depended very much on just how much loyalty it had. |
| 05:36 | < Reiver> | 'civilian' stuff could be swayed pretty promptly. Barracks, supply points and other semi-military stuff could be captured after a long seige, but much more easily if it lacked power. |
| 05:37 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I presume towns were hard to capture, oil refineries swimmingly easy, factories and the like difficult and defensive structures only with ridiculous difficulty? |
| 05:37 | < Reiver> | And actual weapon hardpoints and the like would be, well, if they're powered, don't bother. |
| 05:37 | < Reiver> | Pretty much, yep. |
| 05:37 | < Reiver> | Of course, you could swing things in your favor... |
| 05:38 | <@MyCatVerbs> | What game was this? Or is this a concept that you were thinking of implementing? |
| 05:38 | < Reiver> | This was a conceptual thingy. |
| 05:38 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Fair 'nuff. |
| 05:38 | < Reiver> | Vaugely set in a C&C:Generals type setting. (AKA sci-fi, but not quite lasers sci-fi.) |
| 05:39 | | * MyCatVerbs pokes the names list. |
| 05:39 | < Reiver> | Part of it was that defenses tended to be 'manned' rather than machinegun-buildings. You could build a pillbox, or a trench system, or barbed wire. |
| 05:39 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: out of curiosity, did you *mean* to set me +o yesterday or was that just accidental? |
| 05:39 | < Reiver> | You then threw infantry at it to actually /defend/ with. |
| 05:40 | | * Vornicus aimed |
| 05:40 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Uhuh. Makes more sense. |
| 05:40 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Vornicus: cool, thank you. |
| 05:40 | < Reiver> | MCV: Generally ops here is a trivial deal, not a big one. |
| 05:40 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: damn, you'd have to spoil it, of course! ;) |
| 05:41 | | * Reiver shrugs. He ascribes to the 'if everyone is an op, there's better odds of someone being around when an idiot shows up' theory of channel control. |
| 05:41 | <@Mahal> | Aye. TSC is unusul in it's op-erations |
| 05:41 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: so yeah, this was one the flaws with the MultiEngineer+make-all-infantry-engineers idea. |
| 05:41 | < Reiver> | Not unusual. Relatively uncommon for this server, perhaps. |
| 05:42 | | * Vornicus checks the access list, adds some more people. |
| 05:42 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: namely that if an opponent threw infantry at you there would be no mechanism to either send your own in to chase them out, or even to establish a garrison to keep the buggers out if you had the troops to spare. |
| 05:42 | | * ToxicFrog !! at the TA2 mod forum. |
| 05:42 | <@ToxicFrog> | Someone's working on Bolos. |
| 05:42 | | mode/#code [+v KarmaBot] by Reiver |
| 05:42 | < Reiver> | pfff |
| 05:42 | < Reiver> | Had to be done, TF~ |
| 05:42 | <@Vornicus> | Can things run over other things in TA2? |
| 05:43 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Mahal: really? Looking at the, uh, eleven channels in three networks I'm in... |
| 05:43 | < Reiver> | Vorn: I know you can crush them. |
| 05:43 | <@Mahal> | (unusual for nightstar) |
| 05:43 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Ten, more to the point. |
| 05:43 | | * Reiver points to his comment about 'not unusual, just uncommon on our folksey little server'. |
| 05:43 | <@Vornicus> | And when you say "bolo" in this case, how does this compare to other Big Honking Units in SupComm |
| 05:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: yes. |
| 05:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Three hand out ops in a TSC-like manner... |
| 05:44 | < Reiver> | Main aspect about this sever, MCV, is that 90% of the people here are ones I know on a longtime standing from other channels. |
| 05:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Indeed, all the promo videos featured a monkeylord squishing smaller units, and this works on treaded vehicles as well. |
| 05:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Two operate on a no-ops basis. |
| 05:44 | | mode/#code [+oooo AnnoDomini Derakon Reiver Serah] by Vornicus |
| 05:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | As for size...bolos are actually only slightly larger than the fatboy. |
| 05:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | (there are ops there but they remain cloaked unless a troll shows up) |
| 05:44 | <@Reiver> | This is... pretty much standard in /all/ my channels. Different groups are in different channels, but it tends to often be a relatively standardised collection of folks. |
| 05:45 | <@Reiver> | TF: Is the fatboy scary? |
| 05:45 | <@MyCatVerbs> | About three operate on a pretty much all-op basis, of which this is one. The other two are crap channels formed on hegemonic basises, though. |
| 05:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Reiver: yes. |
| 05:45 | | * Reiver is aware it's a landbattleship that has a factory attached. Isn't really aware of much more than that. |
| 05:45 | <@Vornicus> | What medium is the fatboy? |
| 05:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's a massive tank with guns that outclass a battleship's, a shield generator, an air staging facility on top and it can build stuff. |
| 05:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Land, but it can go underwater as well. |
| 05:45 | <@Vornicus> | aha |
| 05:46 | <@Reiver> | TF: When I saw the fatboy, I almost wished it wasn't T4 superunit. |
| 05:46 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: true... |
| 05:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | Why? |
| 05:46 | <@Reiver> | It struck me that having a 'mobile staging base' kind of concept would have been kinda nifty. |
| 05:46 | <@Reiver> | You bring it up as your front lines expand, and it acts as a focal point for the continual expansion. A mobile base, basically. |
| 05:46 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I think it's proportional to the quantity of drama any given channel gets. Drama-infested hellholes like #tsc and #schlock tend to be very conservative about handing out ops. |
| 05:46 | <@Reiver> | But it's a T4 superunit. |
| 05:47 | <@Reiver> | Thus it's designed to be used much more... agressively... than that. |
| 05:47 | <@MyCatVerbs> | I'm not sure what to think about the no-op channels. Both are on Freenode and I think it's a cultural thing over there. |
| 05:47 | <@Reiver> | (For one, you can generally drive it around blowing the crap out of everything, and then stop to build re-enforcements for it's escorts before pushing on. Which is... not quite the same.) |
| 05:47 | <@Vornicus> | Freenode definitely has an official culture of no-op channels. |
| 05:48 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Whereas, yeah, I definately respect the average randomly selected nightstar resident a *Hell* of a lot more than the average random dolt on any other network. |
| 05:48 | <@Reiver> | Similar logic to here, in a sense - if you're one of two folks in a channel that have ops, you might start to think there's a degree of ego supposed to be attached~ |
| 05:49 | <@Reiver> | MCV: The main channel /this/ channel was brought about was because I knew of three channels where code, and tech-based discussions happen reguarly. |
| 05:49 | <@Reiver> | Half the time I wished X was there, because they'd have a useful viewpoint. |
| 05:49 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You people are all awesome and I don't even need to be drunk to say that. Oh and that usually goes double for the nighstar zoo, except that it's mostly the same people in both places. ^_^ |
| 05:50 | <@Reiver> | So! I ended up jury-rigging a channel so I could have everyone in the same bloody place. I'm quite pleased that it seems to more or less work. :p |
| 05:50 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Good going. It's damn effective. |
| 05:50 | <@Derakon> | Okay, bedtime for me. Night, all! |
| 05:50 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Derakon: sleep well. |
| 05:50 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh and the zoo's political forums scare the bejeezus out of me. |
| 05:52 | <@MyCatVerbs> | These people all have wildly differing viewpoints and they're actually discussing them in a *civil* manner. That's more alien than little green men from Mars dancing around in five dimentional ballerina costumes at right angles to reality. |
| 05:52 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 05:53 | <@Reiver> | Welcome to Nightstar. |
| 05:53 | <@Reiver> | Please enjoy your stay. |
| 05:53 | <@Reiver> | :p |
| 05:54 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Reiver: creepy. =D |
| 06:02 | | * Vornicus completes Grain. |
| 06:02 | <@Vornicus> | Okay. Wool, Wood, Generic, and Back (the back of a resource token, used for resource counts) |
| 06:03 | <@Reiver> | Generic? |
| 06:04 | <@Vornicus> | Generic is for... |
| 06:05 | <@Vornicus> | Resource tokens appear on the board, representing harbors where you can get more favorable trade with the bank - usually you can only trade 4 of any one type of resource for one of any other; harbors with a specific resource give you the ability to trade 2 of that resource for 1 of any other. |
| 06:05 | <@Vornicus> | A harbor with a generic token trades at 3 of any one resource for 1 of any other. |
| 06:07 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/new_art/3/ <-- the ? tokens are generic tokens. |
| 06:08 | <@Reiver> | aha |
| 06:08 | <@Reiver> | Why do the harbours point at the edge of a token? |
| 06:08 | <@Vornicus> | The harbors point at sites, which is where you can build settlements and cities. |
| 06:09 | <@Reiver> | ohh |
| 06:09 | <@Reiver> | OK! |
| 06:09 | <@Vornicus> | YOu must build a settlement or city at a port in order to take advantage of it. |
| 06:11 | <@Serah> | Settlers! |
| 06:11 | <@Vornicus> | Settlers indeed. |
| 06:11 | <@Serah> | You're building it? |
| 06:12 | <@Vornicus> | Yes. |
| 06:13 | | * Serah bows for Vornicus. |
| 06:13 | <@Vornicus> | Right now I'm working on art - I need to complete the resource tokens in the new format (what you see there is in Illustrator, which is an incredible pain to do anything in with the amount of repetition I have, and has a notsogood scripting setup. |
| 06:13 | <@Vornicus> | I've done grain, iron, and clay; I am working now on wool. |
| 06:13 | <@Vornicus> | Wood needs a redesign, what's there now doesn't look woodish. |
| 06:13 | <@Serah> | The pieslices means how often it'll be rolled? |
| 06:14 | <@Vornicus> | Yep. |
| 06:14 | <@Serah> | ^_^ |
| 06:14 | <@Serah> | What format fo you want/need it in? |
| 06:15 | <@Vornicus> | Generic I'm making it actually say 3:1, and the back I am going to put the island you see there on. |
| 06:15 | <@Vornicus> | Um, PostScript, using my custom includes. |
| 06:15 | | * Vornicus sheepishes. |
| 06:15 | <@Serah> | Oh. |
| 06:16 | <@Vornicus> | I can give those to you, if you know PostScript and would like to try your hand. |
| 06:16 | <@Serah> | I don't. |
| 06:16 | <@Serah> | But if you were using a specific graphics set I might've been able to coax someone into drawing something for you. |
| 06:17 | <@Serah> | Or god forbid, do it myself. |
| 06:18 | <@Reiver> | Vorn: Get sketches for concepts. |
| 06:18 | <@Vornicus> | On the other hand, if you can draw a Wood token, keeping to the restrictions I've kept to in the rest of the tokens - you only get three colors besides the backing (which is the same as the background color of the forest tile), there must be three very similar objects on the thing (sheafs of wheat, bricks, horseshoes, balls of yarn), and rather simple to draw - i would accept a token as a bitmap. |
| 06:18 | <@Reiver> | ...Just like that, yes. >.> |
| 06:18 | <@Reiver> | He's going for a simplistic, and... consistent look. |
| 06:19 | <@Raif> | ... |
| 06:19 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: ? |
| 06:19 | <@Reiver> | hi Raif! |
| 06:20 | <@Raif> | Vorn: # |
| 06:21 | <@Vornicus> | sigh |
| 06:21 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: why the "..."? |
| 06:21 | <@Raif> | Your requirements amused me. :) |
| 06:22 | <@Raif> | Are you aware that SoC exists on the XBox? |
| 06:23 | <@Vornicus> | Raif: I am. Does it include saveable games and all the Seafarers and C&K stuff as options? |
| 06:23 | <@Reiver> | Raif: His requirements are immediately obvious if you view the link to what he already has. |
| 06:24 | <@Reiver> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/new_art/3/ |
| 06:24 | <@Reiver> | It's a somewhat verbose form of explaining it, but it's accurate enough. |
| 06:25 | <@Vornicus> | I need to remake the wood one because people keep thinking that they're limes and not wheels ;_; |
| 06:26 | <@Raif> | Schlock isn't a drama-infested hell-hole, btw.... we got rid of Pronto. |
| 06:26 | <@Vornicus> | Hee |
| 06:27 | <@Raif> | Reiv: I did view those, actually... I still found it amusing. :) Maybe just the way he worded it or something. |
| 06:27 | <@Reiver> | Aye. It was a tad... verbose, or possibly, uh |
| 06:27 | | * Reiver flails for the wording. |
| 06:28 | <@Reiver> | "Sounds like a EULA by microsoft" :p |
| 06:28 | <@Vornicus> | It wasn't that verbose. |
| 06:28 | <@Reiver> | 'strict'? No. |
| 06:28 | | * Reiver can't think of the word. |
| 06:29 | <@Raif> | Specific. |
| 06:29 | | gnolam [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has joined #Code |
| 06:37 | <@Reiver> | ....That'll do. :) |
| 06:40 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Precise? |
| 06:40 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oooh, I know. Evil! |
| 06:48 | <@Serah> | Besides, he didn't include "let me install whatever I want whenever I want" |
| 06:49 | | ChalcyLaptop [~Chalcedon@Nightstar-3692.worldnet.co.nz] has joined #code |
| 06:50 | | ChalcyLaptop [~Chalcedon@Nightstar-3692.worldnet.co.nz] has quit [Quit: Leaving] |
| 06:53 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: eh, #s_m still gets random people in off the street. |
| 06:53 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: and #tsc isn't really a Hellhole but it is from time to time a veritable *hive* of drama. |
| 06:57 | <@Raif> | I've been in #tsc twice, and both times it had an unbearable ratio of whiny_children:adults |
| 06:58 | <@Raif> | The second time I got into a discussion about the sophistication of Lexx (the TV series). In order to prove his point, the other guy used the stunning logic device of kickbanning me... I don't think I'm missing much. :) |
| 06:59 | <@Vornicus> | TSC was pretty bad, apparently |
| 07:01 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: *blinks* |
| 07:01 | <@Reiver> | Kickbanning you, huh. |
| 07:02 | <@Reiver> | Grue? |
| 07:02 | <@Raif> | No, Grue is cool. |
| 07:02 | | * Reiver didn't realise there were anyone else /there/. >.> |
| 07:02 | <@Raif> | I don't recall who it was, but it was silly. :) |
| 07:02 | <@Reiver> | With ops, I mean. |
| 07:02 | | * Raif ponders. |
| 07:02 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Shurely not, Grue's one of the most insufferably mature people I've e'er met. |
| 07:03 | <@Raif> | Am I thinking of the wrong channel? |
| 07:03 | <@Raif> | Maybe I am. |
| 07:03 | <@Raif> | What's TSC stand for? |
| 07:03 | <@Reiver> | Possibly. I'm not sure. |
| 07:03 | <@Reiver> | Tech Support Comedy. |
| 07:03 | <@Raif> | ... no, I'm thinking of another channel, my mistake. :) |
| 07:03 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: quite probably. There are only five ops in there right now and two of them are one person with two machines. |
| 07:03 | <@Raif> | LOL |
| 07:03 | <@Raif> | That happens when you get old, y'know. |
| 07:04 | <@Raif> | Also happens when a giant corporation buys your soul. |
| 07:04 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Against a total of 24 lusers total, including the ops and their clones. |
| 07:05 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh, and the two non-cloned chanops are almost permanently idle. As are all at least 40% of the wall fix-er, users. |
| 07:05 | <@Raif> | This doesn't sound very enticing. |
| 07:06 | <@MyCatVerbs> | It's mostly crude humour, hellos and goodbyes and people venting their frustrations. Plenty of drama but not much arguing. |
| 07:10 | <@Raif> | Meh... the reason I idle most of the time here is because whenever there's an interesting spur of conversation in most of my channels it's guaranteed to shift to Drama. |
| 07:14 | <@Reiver> | Sounds like most of mine. |
| 07:14 | <@Reiver> | ...Then again, we share half our channels. ¬¬ |
| 07:14 | <@Raif> | Indeed. |
| 07:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | So the common factor is you. |
| 07:15 | <@Raif> | The only channels I'm in that are particularly active anymore are this one and #B. :) |
| 07:15 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You're causing the drama! Ohnoes! |
| 07:15 | <@Raif> | Nah, it just likes to follow me around. |
| 07:16 | | * Reiver is much the same between this, the Fleetians, and HighRoadians, tohugh the latter is appalingly drama-laden, much to his dissapointment. |
| 07:16 | <@Reiver> | Schlock has... degenerated. |
| 07:16 | <@Reiver> | What isn't newbies is bots. ¬¬ |
| 07:16 | | * Serah PatPats Reiver. |
| 07:16 | <@Raif> | Yeah. Back when we had actual conversations, pibot was helpful. He'd start something just by picking up on a bad phrase or something. |
| 07:16 | <@AnnoDomini> | Newbies are fun. |
| 07:17 | <@AnnoDomini> | To make fun of. |
| 07:17 | <@Raif> | But when the bot is 90% of the conversation, it's not stimulating anymore. :) |
| 07:17 | <@Serah> | No. |
| 07:17 | <@Raif> | I disagree, they are fun. |
| 07:17 | | * MyCatVerbs apologises for having baited the bloody PiBot so much in the past. |
| 07:17 | <@Raif> | Newbies (the ones who stick around) tend to be polite and un-whiny. |
| 07:17 | <@Raif> | Meh, I think it's funny, to be honest. |
| 07:18 | <@Raif> | It's just not a conversation starter anymore. :) Needs new material. |
| 07:18 | <@Raif> | Or materiel... whichever. |
| 07:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | IMO, the PiBot goes from silent to annoying in a time period equal to the latency of Pi's internet connection. |
| 07:18 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Round-trip latency, even. |
| 07:19 | <@Raif> | That's because it lacks new material. |
| 07:19 | <@Raif> | (Or materiel, whichever) |
| 07:19 | <@MyCatVerbs> | You can use confectionary as materiel. |
| 07:19 | | * AnnoDomini also notes that the PiBot does have an on/off switch. |
| 07:19 | <@Reiver> | The main problem is that I think Pi lost interest. |
| 07:19 | <@Raif> | I found that out today. |
| 07:19 | <@Reiver> | Thus, it stagnated. |
| 07:20 | <@Raif> | I found a pot of rice that had been sitting, covered (thus not dried out) for 2 weeks. |
| 07:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Grab a box of Cadbury's Roses or something and sling them into the middle of a classroom full of bored kids. |
| 07:20 | <@Raif> | I've not seen that many colors of mold in a long time. |
| 07:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | The effect tends to be explosive. |
| 07:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Raif: wot, no penicillin? |
| 07:20 | <@Raif> | It also explains why my allergies have been on overdrive all weekend. |
| 07:20 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Oh, damn, that blows. |
| 07:21 | <@Raif> | Nah, it's a good thing, IMO. It means there's an explanation that doesn't need to be solved by acquiring drugs. |
| 07:21 | <@Raif> | I don't like being medicated, unlike so many people in this country. :) |
| 07:22 | <@Mahal> | Raif: ew |
| 07:22 | | * Serah wants to play Vorn's game. |
| 07:22 | | * Raif FTW! |
| 07:23 | <@Raif> | Mahal: I've got one better. I had a jug of milk I didn't get around to throwing out for almost a year. |
| 07:23 | <@Mahal> | =blinks= |
| 07:23 | <@Mahal> | ew |
| 07:23 | <@Raif> | It was awesome. |
| 07:23 | <@Mahal> | I know I've let a few things get past teh point of no return in my fridge. |
| 07:23 | <@Mahal> | but ew. |
| 07:23 | <@Mahal> | Not /that/ bad |
| 07:23 | <@Raif> | Toward the end I was keeping it around just to see what it'd do. |
| 07:23 | <@Raif> | But then I had to move out, so the milk did too. |
| 07:23 | <@Raif> | For reference, it didn't do much. |
| 07:24 | <@Vornicus> | Serah: it isn't ready yet! But it shall be, eventually. |
| 07:24 | | * Serah laments such fact. |
| 07:24 | <@Raif> | It seperated into three layers, the top layer a watery kind of brown oil (about half), the middle layer something else, (about maybe 10%), and the bottom layer (40%) was hardened like cheese. |
| 07:25 | <@Reiver> | Fat, water saturated with the soluble proteins, and the milk proteins proper. |
| 07:26 | <@Raif> | It didn't do much for the last few months, but my assumption is because it was more or less sealed and the bacteria had long used up the oxygen and died. |
| 07:26 | <@Reiver> | Milk is a marvel of biochemistry - it contains more protein and fat than should be soluble. |
| 07:26 | <@Raif> | Yeah, it's pretty neat. |
| 07:26 | <@Reiver> | By dint of some very clever proteins. Which break down over time... |
| 07:26 | <@Reiver> | </SCIENCE> |
| 07:27 | <@Raif> | and if you feed it to Mags or Pi, bad gasses come out. |
| 07:27 | <@Raif> | Which is also kinda neat, viewed from a distance. |
| 07:27 | <@Raif> | Anyway, I'm to bed. Nini. :) |
| 07:27 | <@MyCatVerbs> | G'ni. |
| 07:27 | <@Reiver> | *snrk* |
| 07:27 | <@Reiver> | Nini! |
| 07:27 | <@Raif> | Think about my fridge next time you pour yourself a glass of milk. |
| 07:28 | | * Serah puts Reiver into a wooden crate |
| 07:28 | | * Serah writes on the box "Reiver" |
| 07:28 | | * Serah mails the box to an incredible møøse in norway. |
| 07:28 | <@Mahal> | No thanks :) |
| 07:28 | <@Reiver> | niRaif! |
| 07:31 | | * Vornicus makes the generic resource token. |
| 07:34 | <@Vornicus> | Just the Back, and then I am down to the 13 images I have not yet designed. |
| 07:40 | <@Serah> | You should totally sell it. |
| 07:40 | <@Serah> | Had I money I'd buy it. |
| 07:42 | <@Reiver> | Copyright infringment kinda stuff, alas. |
| 07:44 | <@Vornicus> | Trademark, more like. |
| 07:44 | <@Vornicus> | In any case it will be a freaking webgame. |
| 07:44 | <@Reiver> | Right, right. |
| 07:44 | <@Reiver> | That thing. |
| 07:56 | <@Vornicus> | Then once I finish the main variants (Seafarers and Cities & Knight, and then there's the Anglers and The Great River, which are both small) |
| 07:56 | <@Vornicus> | I need a translator. |
| 07:56 | <@Reiver> | ? |
| 07:56 | <@Reiver> | Oh |
| 07:57 | <@Reiver> | "Then once I finish the main variants, I need a translator"? |
| 07:57 | <@Vornicus> | right |
| 07:57 | <@Vornicus> | Because there is a book of variant rules. |
| 07:57 | <@Vornicus> | In German. |
| 07:57 | <@Reiver> | You can find several european ones if you ask about - I know of at least polish, norwegian, and finnish. |
| 07:57 | <@Reiver> | And I believe Geeksoldier brags about speaking German all the time, you could try making him useful. ;) |
| 07:58 | <@Vornicus> | Hee |
| 07:58 | <@Vornicus> | But this is a ways off. |
| 08:02 | | * Vornicus ponders. |
| 08:03 | <@Vornicus> | Why do people seem to think that comp.lang.python is a good forum for arguments about crackpot 9/11 conspiracy theories? |
| 08:09 | <@Reiver> | ...whut? |
| 08:11 | <@Vornicus> | comp.lang.python - or python-list@python.org - gets occasional messages from people who, well, here's a subject line: 911 was a RACIST crime by YANK BASTARDS against all other NATIONS Re: *POLL* How many sheeple believe in the 911 fairy tale and willing to accept an Orwellian doublespeak and enslavement world ? |
| 08:12 | <@Reiver> | ...Sounds like propagandist spam to me. |
| 08:12 | <@Vornicus> | Indeed. |
| 08:12 | <@Vornicus> | Why the hell they believe that a mailing list about a /programming language/ is the appropriate place for this is beyond me. |
| 08:12 | <@Vornicus> | I mean, aren't there better forums for political spam? |
| 08:13 | <@Reiver> | I doubt they're checking. |
| 08:14 | <@Reiver> | For(room in mailingList) { |
| 08:14 | <@Reiver> | ¬¬ |
| 08:14 | <@Vornicus> | heh |
| 08:14 | <@Vornicus> | point. |
| 08:31 | <@Vornicus> | okay, that's pretty. |
| 08:31 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/back.png |
| 08:38 | <@Vornicus> | Okay. |
| 08:38 | <@Vornicus> | 13 images left. |
| 08:40 | <@Vornicus> | Wood, Longest Road, Largest Army, University, Chapel, Library, Governor's House, Market, Year of Plenty, Monopoly, Road Building, Soldier, and Development Card Back |
| 08:40 | <@Vornicus> | I don't have any designs for any of them. |
| 08:44 | <@Reiver> | University is one of those funny hats. |
| 08:44 | <@Reiver> | Chapel is a cross. |
| 08:44 | <@Reiver> | Library is a book, probably opened. |
| 08:44 | <@Reiver> | Governors House is... mansion, I guess |
| 08:44 | <@Vornicus> | a "mortarboard" |
| 08:45 | <@Reiver> | Market is a set of scales. |
| 08:45 | <@Reiver> | Year of Plenty is... A collection of styleised vegitables or such. |
| 08:45 | <@Reiver> | Monopoly is... um... a bit hard to draw... |
| 08:45 | <@Vornicus> | Year of Plenty is a cornucopia in the official art. |
| 08:45 | <@Reiver> | A what? |
| 08:45 | <@Vornicus> | a "horn of plenty" |
| 08:46 | <@Reiver> | Oh. I guess you could rig that. |
| 08:46 | <@Vornicus> | a curved wicker horn, with foodstuffs spilling out. |
| 08:46 | <@Reiver> | Road building should be a partially built road. |
| 08:46 | <@Reiver> | But I'm not sure how to do that at your level of simplicity. |
| 08:46 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/original_cards.jpg |
| 08:46 | <@Reiver> | Perhaps a bridge instead? |
| 08:46 | <@Reiver> | Soldier is a ... what time period is this? |
| 08:47 | <@Reiver> | If it is ~Greek, then a styleised hoplite would be pretty, if hard to Postscript-Draw. |
| 08:47 | <@Vornicus> | The original soldier carries a long gun. |
| 08:47 | <@Reiver> | Hm |
| 08:47 | <@Vornicus> | ...let me see if I can get you a better picture. |
| 08:47 | <@Reiver> | You know those 'male' toilet symbols? |
| 08:47 | <@Reiver> | Like that. But with a hat and gun as part of the sillouette. |
| 08:48 | <@Reiver> | Development Card Back should be... ehn. I get the idea of like the other ones, but grayscale or something. |
| 08:49 | <@Vornicus> | For reference, the existing back is the second item in the third row in the link. |
| 08:51 | <@Vornicus> | But that's some pretty good stuff - I think I'm going to steal your ideas for most of it. |
| 08:53 | <@Vornicus> | Monopoly I'm thinking, well, http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/images/historyparagraph.gif <--- that guy's hat. |
| 08:53 | <@Reiver> | Hee |
| 08:53 | <@Reiver> | Works! on a somewhat abstract level. :) |
| 08:54 | | * Reiver is pleased they were good. |
| 08:54 | | * Reiver has a fairly good idea as to the style you're after these days, so... |
| 08:54 | <@Reiver> | (FWIW, I envision them at the 'detail level' of the wheel.) |
| 08:55 | <@Reiver> | (A touch more detailed than the rest of the logos, but it's okay because they're a... different kind of thing.) |
| 08:55 | <@Vornicus> | I'm going to use a... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_capitol_building cupola. |
| 08:56 | <@Reiver> | Cupola? |
| 08:56 | <@Reiver> | Is that the roof bit? |
| 08:56 | <@Vornicus> | Yes. |
| 08:57 | <@Reiver> | For? |
| 08:57 | <@Reiver> | Oh, for Government? |
| 08:58 | <@Vornicus> | Yes. |
| 08:59 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/soldier.jpg |
| 09:08 | <@Serah> | Will there be multiplayer support? |
| 09:09 | <@Vornicus> | Of course. |
| 09:09 | <@Serah> | Yay. |
| 09:09 | <@Serah> | How can I help? |
| 09:09 | <@Vornicus> | I don't have the foggiest idea how to write an AI - for a while there won't be anything /but/ multiplayer support. |
| 09:09 | <@Serah> | Oh ^_^ |
| 09:09 | | * Serah pokes Reiver. |
| 09:10 | <@Vornicus> | I'm not sure. Do you know Ruby or Javascript? |
| 09:10 | <@Serah> | Jscript very vaguely. |
| 09:10 | <@Reiver> | ? |
| 09:10 | <@Serah> | I can make a menu. |
| 09:10 | | * Serah dances with Reiver. |
| 09:11 | <@Serah> | Oh oh, by the way Reivs I found what seems to be a sane M&M 2nd group elsewhere ^_^ |
| 09:11 | <@Serah> | To cater for my needs. |
| 09:12 | <@Vornicus> | Serah: I need the ability to dynamically add whole chunks of stuff to a page, repeatedly. |
| 09:12 | | * Reiver dances with Serah. |
| 09:12 | <@Reiver> | Oho? Do tell? |
| 09:12 | <@Serah> | Uh, as in removing everything and putting it back? |
| 09:12 | <@Serah> | Tell what? |
| 09:12 | <@Serah> | Just thought you might want to know. ^_^ |
| 09:13 | <@Reiver> | Yes, I do want to know. :p |
| 09:14 | <@Vornicus> | Well, images and form pieces. |
| 09:14 | <@Vornicus> | and divs to contain them. |
| 09:16 | | * Serah explodes. |
| 09:16 | <@Serah> | Is there something rather more simpler I can help with? |
| 09:16 | <@Vornicus> | Idunno. I can't think of any other javascript I need right now. |
| 09:17 | <@Serah> | I'm sorry then. |
| 09:18 | <@Serah> | Coding makes my head explode. |
| 09:18 | <@Serah> | It's logical, I can do it, it's easy. |
| 09:18 | <@Serah> | But whenever I try to write something it always doesn't work as supposed. |
| 09:18 | <@Serah> | Except when it's real simple. |
| 09:18 | <@Vornicus> | Two words. |
| 09:18 | <@Vornicus> | Unit Tests. |
| 09:19 | <@Serah> | Unit tests? |
| 09:21 | <@Vornicus> | Unit tests define a piece of functionality by calling the function that does it with certain parameters, and checking that the result is as expected. |
| 09:22 | <@Serah> | Oh yes. |
| 09:23 | <@Serah> | But it's like writing a webpage. |
| 09:23 | <@Serah> | You define a table to be 20 pixels tall, and it's 19 in IE and 21 in FF and it has to be 20 pixels tall. |
| 09:23 | | * Serah gets GRR at that. |
| 09:23 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/geometry/euclid.rb http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/geometry/tc_euclid.rb |
| 09:23 | <@Serah> | 403 |
| 09:23 | <@Vornicus> | yeah, I see that, hangon. |
| 09:23 | <@Serah> | I'll happily bugtest your thing though. |
| 09:24 | <@Serah> | Lots. |
| 09:24 | <@Serah> | I'm good at screwing people's code up. |
| 09:24 | <@Serah> | From the user's perspective, that is. |
| 09:24 | <@Vornicus> | Try now. |
| 09:24 | <@Serah> | Aaah! |
| 09:24 | | * Serah explodes. |
| 09:26 | <@Serah> | What is it? |
| 09:26 | <@Serah> | You are telling me what lines has to do? |
| 09:26 | <@Vornicus> | The first one is code to define some simple geometry. |
| 09:26 | <@Vornicus> | The second one is code to check to see if the code in the first one is right. |
| 09:27 | <@Serah> | oh. |
| 09:27 | <@Vornicus> | Now, which one did I write first? |
| 09:28 | <@Serah> | The checking code. |
| 09:28 | <@Serah> | Because I would've answered the other. |
| 09:28 | <@Vornicus> | Ouch, metagaming. :) |
| 09:28 | <@Serah> | :p |
| 09:28 | <@Serah> | With code I think it's ok. |
| 09:28 | <@Serah> | I never learnt how to code anything. |
| 09:28 | <@Serah> | I just either could, or couldn't. |
| 09:30 | <@Serah> | I praise my ability to code what I can. |
| 09:31 | <@Serah> | I lament my inability to code what I can't. |
| 09:36 | <@Vornicus> | Okay, step 1. |
| 09:36 | <@Vornicus> | Find a little problem. |
| 09:36 | <@Vornicus> | Step 2. Learn Python. |
| 09:41 | <@Serah> | :p |
| 09:42 | <@Vornicus> | Learn Python, by trying to solve your little problem. |
| 09:43 | <@Serah> | Heh. |
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| 10:05 | | mode/#code [+o Forj] by ChanServ |
| 10:24 | <@Vornicus> | Hrm. Part of the problem with some of these is that I also have future setups to worry about - C&K introduces a "paper" resource. |
| 10:25 | <@Vornicus> | (also coin and cloth) |
| 10:26 | <@Vornicus> | ...though now that I think about it I can guarantee that I won't see the library and paper in the same game, because C&K doesn't use the standard development cards. |
| 10:26 | | Forjeh [~Forj@Nightstar-3692.worldnet.co.nz] has joined #code |
| 10:26 | <@Reiver> | Problem solved! |
| 10:26 | <@Vornicus> | Indeed. |
| 10:27 | <@Reiver> | (Paper: A scroll with curly ends.) |
| 10:28 | | Forj [~Forj@Nightstar-3692.worldnet.co.nz] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 10:31 | | * Vornicus will probably have to cross a different bridge when he gets to C&K - but C&K has a lot of art - 25 development cards with three backs, 15 'buildings', 3 resources, 3*2*6 knights (three strengths, inactive/active, six colors), a new city shape, three city overlays (metropolis, wall, burning), a red die with six sides, the Merchant, the Barbarian and his track, an event die with four distinct sides, three metropolis tokens of different colors, and D |
| 10:32 | <@AnnoDomini> | "colors, and D"-- |
| 10:32 | <@Vornicus> | (Seafarers, by contrast, has very little art - 3*6 ships (three directions, six colors), a pirate ship, and the gold terrain) |
| 10:32 | <@Vornicus> | Defender of Catan |
| 10:32 | <@Reiver> | Strengths is easy. |
| 10:32 | <@Reiver> | Active/inactive is easy. |
| 10:32 | <@Vornicus> | I know how I'm doing the Knights. |
| 10:32 | <@Vornicus> | It's really easy. |
| 10:33 | <@Reiver> | One knight two knights three knights, white is active, greyed out is inactive? |
| 10:33 | <@Vornicus> | Well, knights have to fit in the same space as a settlement. |
| 10:33 | <@Vornicus> | And they'll be a little circle, a medium square, and a big star, solid is active, outline is inactive. |
| 10:35 | | * Reiver ponders. |
| 10:35 | <@Reiver> | Make 'em all circles. It's cleaner, and fits the style better. |
| 10:35 | <@Reiver> | Then |
| 10:35 | <@Vornicus> | Then it's harder to tell them apart. |
| 10:35 | <@Reiver> | You have one ring for knight, two rings, three rings... |
| 10:36 | | * Reiver shrug. Just a thought. |
| 10:37 | | Forjeh [~Forj@Nightstar-3692.worldnet.co.nz] has quit [Quit: Leaving] |
| 10:38 | < gnolam> | Vornicus: I have to ask. Why oh why Postscript? :) |
| 10:39 | <@Vornicus> | gnolam: it was easier to script and use templates than Illustrator, and more commonly used than OmniGraffle. |
| 10:40 | <@Reiver> | Vorn designs the object once. |
| 10:40 | <@Reiver> | It then resizes, recolours and redraws the whole lot on demand. |
| 10:40 | <@Vornicus> | http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/132185 <-- the original knights |
| 10:41 | <@Vornicus> | In this, yellow is active and white is inactive. It is so incredibly hard to tell the difference... |
| 10:41 | <@Vornicus> | but, note the rings. |
| 10:42 | <@Reiver> | Yes, the rings was actually what I was suggesting. :) |
| 10:42 | <@Reiver> | (I like the fade-out idea though.) |
| 10:42 | <@Vornicus> | Truly there is nothing new under the sun. |
| 10:42 | <@Vornicus> | I'm doing solid vs. outline, I think. |
| 10:43 | <@Vornicus> | Anyway the reason I'm not doing rings is that it is totally and completely illegible at size 1. |
| 10:43 | <@Reiver> | Works. |
| 10:43 | | * Reiver hm. |
| 10:43 | <@Reiver> | Isn't the game in /general/? |
| 10:43 | <@Vornicus> | Where I am working in an 8px at 8px. |
| 10:43 | <@Reiver> | ¬¬ |
| 10:43 | <@Vornicus> | http://vorn.dyndns.org/~vorn/catan/new_art/1/ <--- not really. |
| 10:44 | | * Reiver hm. |
| 10:44 | | * Reiver ! |
| 10:44 | <@Reiver> | Y'know how you have those pie slices on the numbers. |
| 10:44 | | * Vornicus ? |
| 10:44 | <@Reiver> | Have pie slices on the /knights/ |
| 10:44 | <@Vornicus> | I see where you're going. |
| 10:44 | <@Vornicus> | I'll think about it. I think circle-square-star will be easy enough to see though. |
| 10:45 | <@Reiver> | It's also... everything else you have is all circles, on the board. |
| 10:45 | <@Reiver> | It's practically part of your style, here. |
| 10:45 | <@Reiver> | The knights would be breaking it. And... arbitary, if that makes sense? |
| 10:46 | <@Vornicus> | I got circle-square-star straight from the original knights - note the helmets on the level 1 and 2 knights, and the crest on the level 3 knight. |
| 10:46 | <@Reiver> | ...That's... um. |
| 10:46 | | * Reiver frowns. |
| 10:46 | <@Reiver> | Make your knights circles squares and stars on a disc? :p |
| 10:46 | <@Vornicus> | :P |
| 10:48 | | Vornicus is now known as Vornicus-Latens |
| 10:52 | <@Serah> | Night, Vorn. |
| 10:53 | <@Vornicus-Latens> | ni |
| 11:48 | | Thaqui [~Thaqui@Nightstar-12370.jetstream.xtra.co.nz] has left #code [Leaving] |
| 12:09 | | Mahal is now known as MahalBedd |
| 13:03 | | Derakon[AFK] [~Derakon@Nightstar-12737.sea2.cablespeed.com] has quit [Connection reset by peer] |
| 13:09 | | Reiver is now known as ReivZzz |
| 13:45 | < gnolam> | ... and someone patented the linked list. |
| 13:49 | <@EvilDarkLord> | What. |
| 13:49 | <@EvilDarkLord> | Link? |
| 13:53 | < gnolam> | http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7028023.html |
| 13:54 | < gnolam> | Go go USPTO. |
| 14:44 | | Serah [~Z@87.72.36.ns-26407] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 15:32 | | mode/#code [+o Vornicus] by ChanServ |
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| 16:38 | < KarmaBot> | KarmaBot v1.19. online and ready. Type "!help commands" for command list. |
| 16:48 | | Vornicus [~vorn@67.50.40.ns-3674] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 16:54 | | mode/#code [+o Vornicus] by ChanServ |
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| 17:49 | | mode/#code [+o Serah] by ChanServ |
| 17:54 | | * gnolam ponders tesselation. |
| 18:14 | | * gnolam wonders how someone can name a triangulation algorithm "FIST" and get away with it. |
| 19:19 | | ErikMeso1 [~ejm@Nightstar-12747.bb.online.no] has joined #code |
| 19:19 | | ErikMeso1 is now known as ErikMesoy |
| 19:40 | <@Vornicus> | Okay. 13 things left to draw. |
| 19:41 | | * ErikMesoy ponders why Anno has banned Kamikosis. |
| 19:41 | <@AnnoDomini> | Because Misfit is an obnoxious, self-important, arrogant, ignorant ass. |
| 19:42 | <@Serah> | Vorn: Didn't you have 13 things left last time too? |
| 19:42 | <@Vornicus> | last night, yes, and I haven't drawn anything else since. |
| 19:43 | <@Vornicus> | And I banned him. |
| 19:46 | | AnnoDomini [~farkoff@Nightstar-28888.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl] has quit [Killed (NickServ (GHOST command used by AbuDhabi))] |
| 19:46 | | AnnoDomini [~farkoff@Nightstar-29729.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl] has joined #Code |
| 19:46 | | KBot [~karma.bot@Nightstar-29729.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl] has joined #Code |
| 19:47 | < KBot> | KarmaBot v1.19. online and ready. Type "!help commands" for command list. |
| 19:47 | | KarmaBot [~karma.bot@Nightstar-28888.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 19:47 | | * AnnoDomini admits that it was Vornicus who banned Misfit; was assuming that ErikMesoy thinko'd /ignore into /ban. |
| 19:47 | | KBot is now known as KarmaBot |
| 19:49 | | * ErikMesoy dances across channels because his laptop is fixed. |
| 19:59 | < gnolam> | So. Global thermonuclear war. Think it would be best to track missiles using Cartesian or spherical coordinates? |
| 19:59 | < ErikMesoy> | Spherical, imo |
| 19:59 | < ErikMesoy> | easier to calculate trajectory |
| 19:59 | < gnolam> | I'm leaning towards the latter, but it complicates some of the math... |
| 20:00 | < ErikMesoy> | which math? |
| 20:00 | < gnolam> | The arbitrary trajectories. |
| 20:00 | < ErikMesoy> | Do tell me about it |
| 20:00 | < ErikMesoy> | Because it feels to me as though spherical coordinates would be easier that way |
| 20:02 | < gnolam> | With a Cartesian system, I can just give each missile a proper v0, a(t) and burn time, and Euler integration and Mr Gravity will take care of the rest. |
| 20:02 | < gnolam> | With a spherical system, things get... complicated. |
| 20:03 | < ErikMesoy> | Wouldn't theta and phi both be linear? |
| 20:03 | < ErikMesoy> | while r is a second degree curve |
| 20:05 | < gnolam> | Hmm. |
| 20:08 | < gnolam> | Well, I suppose I could /approximate/ it to it... |
| 20:36 | <@Vornicus> | There is a map projection that makes great circles sine waves. i still haven't figured out what it is. |
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| 20:37 | < KBot> | KarmaBot v1.19. online and ready. Type "!help commands" for command list. |
| 20:38 | | KBot is now known as KarmaBot |
| 20:55 | | Otto_Flick [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has joined #Code |
| 20:55 | | gnolam [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 20:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Goddamn defective prenex normal form |
| 20:57 | <@McMartin> | ? |
| 21:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | I have a bunch of FOL sentences I have to convert to PNF. |
| 21:10 | | * McMartin catches up on OCR. |
| 21:11 | <@McMartin> | Nothing too exciting recently. I'm going to have to go back to keeping a selective playlist. |
| 21:19 | | MahalBedd is now known as Mahal |
| 21:24 | | Mahal [~Mahal@Nightstar-4998.worldnet.co.nz] has quit [Quit: Goodbye.] |
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| 21:28 | | mode/#code [+o Mahal] by ChanServ |
| 21:39 | | ErikMesoy is now known as ErikMesoy|sleep |
| 21:55 | | * Serah dances with Vorn's code. |
| 21:56 | | * Vornicus ponders |
| 22:05 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 22:22 | | gnolam [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 23:09 | | Gobleteer [~Gobleteer@Nightstar-1996.cinci.res.rr.com] has joined #code |
| 23:22 | | gnolam [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 23:30 | | Gobleteer [~Gobleteer@Nightstar-1996.cinci.res.rr.com] has left #code [] |
| 23:31 | | You're now known as ThWatcher[afk] |
| 23:31 | | You're now known as TehWatcher[afk] |
| 23:32 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[afk] |
| 23:43 | < Janus> | Alright... the code for creating and updating the softbodies is complete, and nothing explodes when they're run. |
| 23:43 | <@Vornicus> | bitchin. got a demo? |
| 23:44 | < Janus> | Nope, I can't see anything yet. :P |
| 23:44 | <@Vornicus> | heh |
| 23:44 | | * Janus read-reads the Red Book. |
| 23:48 | | Otto_Flick [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has joined #Code |
| 23:48 | | gnolam [Lenin@Nightstar-13557.8.5.253.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 23:49 | | Otto_Flick is now known as gnolam |
| --- Log closed Tue Mar 20 00:00:51 2007 |