| --- Log opened Sun Jan 27 00:00:02 2008 |
| 00:00 | <@EvilDarkLord> | $words{"blah"} as opposed to %words = (). |
| 00:01 | <@Vornicus> | I don't know, I never had that trouble with SDL |
| 00:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | ...isn't the former illegal? |
| 00:02 | <@EvilDarkLord> | Uh, I tried using %words{"blah"} and that was certainly an error. |
| 00:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's been a while since I used perl, but I thought scalars couldn't contain subvalues. |
| 00:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | Although #hashes can. |
| 00:03 | <@EvilDarkLord> | This is a hash, yes. |
| 00:04 | <@EvilDarkLord> | It works as it should with this syntax. |
| 00:06 | <@AnnoDomini> | What's the name for the COM port? The printer port is 'parallel'. What's the COM port? |
| 00:06 | <@Vornicus> | is that the one that connects to old joysticks? |
| 00:06 | <@ToxicFrog> | Hmm. |
| 00:06 | <@ToxicFrog> | If I had to guess, I'd guess that the issue is... |
| 00:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | words is a hash. |
| 00:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | words{"blah"} is scalar. |
| 00:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | So, it gets a $. |
| 00:07 | <@AnnoDomini> | Vornicus: Yeah. |
| 00:07 | <@Vornicus> | Then it's the serial port |
| 00:07 | <@AnnoDomini> | Yes! |
| 00:07 | <@AnnoDomini> | Thank you. |
| 00:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | I thought old joysticks connected to the soundcard gameport, and old mice connected to the serial port. |
| 00:07 | <@EvilDarkLord> | ToxicFrog: Ah, I see. That does make sense, in a weird way. |
| 00:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | (although for all I know, gameports are also RS232) |
| 00:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | EvilDarkLord: in any case, that's not AFAIK context sensitive, it's type sensitive - words{"blah"} is $scalar regardless of where you refer to it. |
| 00:08 | <@Vornicus> | They're 9 pins. |
| 00:08 | <@Vornicus> | In two rows. |
| 00:09 | <@AnnoDomini> | I have two serial ports on my old C64. |
| 00:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | The old joystick I have is 15,2 DIN. |
| 00:09 | <@Vornicus> | The C64 ports are myriad and wacky. |
| 00:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | So, not RS232. |
| 00:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | (which is as you said 9,2 DIN) |
| 00:14 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 00:14 | <@EvilDarkLord> | ToxicFrog: Yeah, it makes more sense now. Thanks. Not very used to the practice of characters in front of variable names to denote type. |
| 00:14 | | Derakon [~Derakon@Nightstar-8000.hsd1.wa.comcast.net] has joined #code |
| 00:14 | | mode/#code [+o Derakon] by ChanServ |
| 00:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | This is because it's a terrible idea which most languages wisely avoid~ |
| 00:15 | <@Derakon> | ? |
| 00:15 | <@Derakon> | Implicit variables? |
| 00:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | Type warts. |
| 00:16 | <@Derakon> | Ah. |
| 00:16 | <@Derakon> | @$%! |
| 00:17 | <@Derakon> | On the one hand, they can be handy for when a variable's being used so far from the declaration that you don't want to page back to there to see what it actually is...on the other hand, you shouldn't use variables so far from home. |
| 00:17 | | Vornicus is now known as Finerty |
| 00:18 | <@Derakon> | What does Finerty signify, again? |
| 00:18 | <@AnnoDomini> | Roleplaying. |
| 00:18 | <@Derakon> | Which system, if any? |
| 00:19 | <@Finerty> | D&D |
| 00:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Derakon: furthermore, the type should be evident from the name, ideally. |
| 00:19 | <@Derakon> | To an extent, TF. |
| 00:19 | <@Derakon> | I don't agree with sticking "Hash", "List", "String", etc. on the end of every variable. |
| 00:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | If not the exact type, then at least the general typeclass. |
| 00:19 | <@Finerty> | Ew, systems hungarian |
| 00:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah. But I mean, nrofConnectedPlayers is pretty obviously going to be an integer of some kind; connectedPlayers is going to be a collection of type of some kind. |
| 00:21 | <@ToxicFrog> | If you can't at least distinguish between scalar and collection by name, you're probably doing it wrong, and that's pretty much the only informatio Perl's type warts give you. |
| 00:21 | <@Derakon> | In Perl that could as easily be a hash as a list, though. |
| 00:22 | <@Derakon> | Mind you, the first time you try to treat it as the wrong type and it blows up in your face, you'd figure out what you'd done wrong. Probably. |
| 00:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | Not to mention that in a statically typed language, the IDE can either figure it out or take you to the declaration, or the REPL can, and even if you have neither it's not hard to search for; and in a dynamically typed language they're meaningless anyways. |
| 00:23 | <@Derakon> | REPL? |
| 00:23 | <@McMartin> | Except when it secretly works and means something else! |
| 00:24 | <@McMartin> | Read/Eval/Print Loop. |
| 00:24 | <@Derakon> | That's more an argument against loosely-typed languages though, McM. |
| 00:24 | <@McMartin> | Well |
| 00:24 | <@McMartin> | No |
| 00:24 | <@McMartin> | Because lots of loosely-typed languages don't let you declare $foo and @foo to exist simultaneously. |
| 00:25 | <@McMartin> | (For added fun, $foo[3] has nothing to do with $foo!) |
| 00:25 | <@Derakon> | Well, yes, but I've yet to see a situation in which you'd want that. :\ |
| 00:25 | <@McMartin> | Exactly. |
| 00:25 | <@McMartin> | But it can happen with implicit declaration. |
| 00:28 | <@Derakon> | ...it occurs to me that making my photo album webapp all Javascripty is going to break bookmarks. |
| 00:29 | <@Derakon> | Or, more specifically, weblinks, since I doubt anyone's bookmarking me anyway. |
| 00:29 | <@McMartin> | CGI redirector |
| 00:29 | <@McMartin> | Or actually, JS hax on GET arguments for initial value |
| 00:30 | <@Derakon> | No, no, I mean, you go from the overall view of the album to an individual photo, and from there you can change the photo you're viewing without changing the page you're on. |
| 00:30 | <@Derakon> | So the URL and the page get out of sync, so to speak. |
| 00:30 | | * McMartin nods |
| 00:30 | <@McMartin> | I suggest the Google Maps approach, and include a JS link that is "link to this page", which you copy to get where you are now |
| 00:30 | <@McMartin> | And which changes as the picture does. |
| 00:30 | <@Derakon> | Right. |
| 00:33 | <@Derakon> | Of course, first I have to get the image swapping code to work. |
| 00:36 | | Chalcedon [~Chalcedon@203.211.126.ns-3357] has joined #code |
| 00:36 | | mode/#code [+o Chalcedon] by ChanServ |
| 01:26 | <@McMartin> | Anyone here running OS X 10.4 or earlier? |
| 01:27 | | * Finerty is running 10.4, on powerPC. |
| 01:27 | <@AnnoDomini> | This guy is IMing me about a VHDL implementation of a 3 to 8 counter. He wrote the code correctly for what he came up with on paper, but what he came up on paper is patently wrong. |
| 01:27 | <@AnnoDomini> | http://phpfi.com/292421 |
| 01:28 | <@McMartin> | Finerty: Can you try to run Sable from Terminal with Sable.app/Contents/MacOS/Sable ? |
| 01:28 | <@AnnoDomini> | I give him the correct table of values for Qt and Qt+1. |
| 01:28 | <@McMartin> | And see if keyboard input works? |
| 01:28 | | * McMartin is trying to figure out if this is a Leopard bug, a Terminal bug, an SDL bug, or what. |
| 01:28 | <@Finerty> | It gives me "Bus Error" |
| 01:29 | <@McMartin> | That's interesting. |
| 01:29 | <@McMartin> | But "open Sable.app" works fine? |
| 01:29 | <@AnnoDomini> | He tells me, "hey, your wrong. there's no 1 and 2". I reply, "What for?" |
| 01:29 | | * AnnoDomini just facepalms. |
| 01:30 | | * Derakon watches a segmented playthrough of I Wanna Be The Guy. "Good gravy, this game is sadistic." |
| 01:30 | <@Derakon> | I don't even wanna see the versions that show the player dying over and over. |
| 01:30 | <@Finerty> | Well, open -a Sable.app |
| 01:30 | <@McMartin> | Wjat |
| 01:30 | <@McMartin> | That's -a? |
| 01:30 | <@McMartin> | Er. "What's -a"? |
| 01:30 | <@Finerty> | open [-a <Application>] [<file>] |
| 01:30 | <@McMartin> | Derakon: The game is intended as Satire, of course. |
| 01:31 | <@McMartin> | Finerty: Huh. Interesting. Apparently it autodetects in Leopard. |
| 01:31 | <@Finerty> | Is sable.app in pwd? |
| 01:31 | <@McMartin> | No, you need to be standing in its parent. |
| 01:31 | <@Derakon> | I'm aware, McM...but still! |
| 01:31 | <@Finerty> | McM: ah, that's what you did. One moment. |
| 01:31 | <@McMartin> | As in, ls Sable.app gives "Contents/" |
| 01:32 | <@Derakon> | `open` has always autodetected for me. |
| 01:32 | <@Finerty> | No, no |
| 01:32 | <@Finerty> | is as in the conjugation of "to be" |
| 01:32 | <@Finerty> | I'm saying, are you in the folder that also contains Sable.app |
| 01:32 | <@McMartin> | Yes. |
| 01:32 | <@McMartin> | But not in Sable.app itself. |
| 01:33 | <@McMartin> | It's in cwd. |
| 01:33 | <@McMartin> | Not pwd. |
| 01:33 | <@McMartin> | pwd prints a string, that Sable.app is not in. |
| 01:33 | <@McMartin> | Hence my confusion. |
| 01:33 | <@Finerty> | Okay, going from /Applications/Games as opposed to ~, it works without a bus error. |
| 01:34 | <@McMartin> | And the keys work too? |
| 01:34 | <@Finerty> | yes. |
| 01:34 | <@McMartin> | They don't just spam ^[[B or whatever into Terminal? |
| 01:34 | <@McMartin> | Well, well. |
| 01:34 | <@Finerty> | Apparently I suck today though |
| 01:34 | <@McMartin> | OK |
| 01:34 | <@McMartin> | This is a Leopard bug. |
| 01:34 | <@Finerty> | 225 for my first life. |
| 01:34 | <@Derakon> | Where do I get Sable, again? |
| 01:34 | <@Derakon> | Or in any event, the one you're working on for Leopard? |
| 01:35 | <@Finerty> | Send him the one with the music, the music makes it better. |
| 01:35 | <@McMartin> | http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/sable/Sable_music.dmg |
| 01:35 | <@McMartin> | It's basically done now. |
| 01:36 | <@McMartin> | This is a bug in either Leopard, OSX/x86, or the Terminal.app for some combination thereof. |
| 01:36 | <@McMartin> | Just running Sable.app normally will Just Work. |
| 01:37 | <@Derakon> | Ahh, it's not loading SDL_image.framework. |
| 01:37 | <@McMartin> | What's the error? |
| 01:37 | <@Derakon> | dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/SDL_image.framework/Versions/A/SDL_image |
| 01:37 | <@Derakon> | Referenced from: /Users/chriswei/proj/sable/Sable.app/Contents/MacOS/Sable |
| 01:37 | <@Derakon> | Reason: image not found |
| 01:37 | <@Derakon> | It's not installed. :) |
| 01:37 | <@McMartin> | Hrm. It's supposed to be bundled with it. One moment. |
| 01:38 | <@McMartin> | Hmm. And it isn't. What the leeg. |
| 01:38 | | * McMartin punts X-Code. |
| 01:39 | <@McMartin> | OK, I'll upload a correct .dmg after dinner. |
| 01:39 | | * Derakon collapses laughing at IWBTG when Ryu leaps out of a pit, doing the Hurricane Kick. |
| 01:41 | | * Derakon also snickers at The Kid saying "Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!" |
| 01:49 | | * McMartin stabs X-Code, goes to get tea. |
| 02:04 | <@McMartin> | It's smart enough to autocopy SDL, but not anything else. |
| 02:05 | <@McMartin> | And now that I tell it to copy SDL_mixer and SDL_image, it refuses to link against them and gives linking errors. |
| 02:13 | <@McMartin> | AHa, there we go. I think. |
| 02:22 | <@McMartin> | OK, Derakon, can you try http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/sable/Sable_music.dmg again? |
| 02:26 | <@Derakon> | Works fine. |
| 02:26 | <@Derakon> | Nice end-game music. :) |
| 02:26 | <@Derakon> | (Score: 4425. I got really greedy) |
| 02:28 | <@McMartin> | All of the music is looted. |
| 02:28 | <@McMartin> | The end-game music is the only one I know I'm licensed to use. Woo CC. |
| 02:29 | <@Derakon> | What's the main gameplay theme? |
| 02:29 | <@McMartin> | Famous mod from an old demo. |
| 02:29 | <@Derakon> | Cool. |
| 02:29 | <@McMartin> | Decompiling gives the composer's handle as "Scirocco". |
| 02:29 | | * McMartin got DCCed it once many years ago. |
| 02:29 | <@McMartin> | The title is another random MOD that I've had since High School, and will in fact start chanting about hippos at you if you leave it running. |
| 02:32 | <@Derakon> | Heh. |
| 02:32 | <@Derakon> | Did you make the "SABLE" logo? |
| 02:32 | <@Derakon> | ISTR ASCIISkull made the ship. |
| 02:33 | <@McMartin> | Yeah, the textures are all mine |
| 02:33 | <@McMartin> | Or, more properly, all the graphics scripts I used. |
| 02:33 | <@Derakon> | ...that's chanting about hippos? It's gibberish to me. |
| 02:34 | <@McMartin> | The ground is a chainable procedurally-generated plasma fractal interpreted as a height map and colored appropriately by height |
| 02:34 | <@McMartin> | ASCII did the Sable, the Interceptor, and the pillar; I did the Death Blossom and the shots. |
| 02:35 | <@McMartin> | Also, ASCII didn't get to see his work until years later because his card was D3D only. >_< |
| 02:36 | <@Derakon> | Unfortunate. |
| 02:36 | <@Finerty> | It is nice work though |
| 02:37 | <@McMartin> | Yeah, it's really quite impressive what you can do with reasonably low polys. |
| 02:37 | <@McMartin> | And how textures, which we don't have here, limit heavily the kinds of stunts you can pull without ridiculously boosting the polycount. |
| 02:38 | <@Derakon> | Okay, what's the music playing during the minecart part of this video? |
| 02:38 | <@Derakon> | Sounds like an NES Megaman credits roll, maybe? |
| 02:40 | <@Finerty> | what video? |
| 02:40 | <@Derakon> | Oh, right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlP91nQ5WSU |
| 02:40 | <@Derakon> | Ahem. |
| 02:41 | | gnolam [lenin@Nightstar-10613.8.5.253.static.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Quit: Z?] |
| 02:41 | | * McMartin is out and about, and so canot check |
| 02:42 | <@Finerty> | No, it's the Moon level music from Duck Tales. |
| 02:42 | <@Derakon> | Ahh. |
| 02:42 | <@Finerty> | It's not a bad game, either |
| 02:42 | <@McMartin> | Love that theme. |
| 02:42 | <@McMartin> | Indeed |
| 02:42 | <@McMartin> | Duck Tales adaptations tend to always be at least competent. |
| 02:42 | <@Finerty> | The controls are a bit baroque, but that's to be expected |
| 02:42 | <@Derakon> | A rarity for cartoon->game translations. |
| 02:42 | <@Derakon> | Helps that it was made by Capcom. |
| 02:42 | <@Finerty> | Duck Tales 2 was not nearly as good |
| 02:43 | <@Finerty> | They added a lot of, uh |
| 02:43 | <@Finerty> | minigame-ish-ness. |
| 02:43 | <@McMartin> | Well, the list of Good Licensed Games is actually now long enough that I'm leaning heavily towards "Actually, they aren't on average much worse than other games; we just notice because there's some reason to. Yay Sturgeon's Law!" |
| 02:43 | <@Derakon> | Heh. |
| 02:43 | <@McMartin> | Duck Tales is particularly ripe for it for two reasons: |
| 02:43 | <@McMartin> | (a) DT itself is an adaptation, of Carl Barks's awesome comics. |
| 02:44 | <@McMartin> | (a.1) They named an asteroid after him! |
| 02:44 | <@McMartin> | (b) The basic theme here is "Hooray for treasure!" which translates well into a game context. |
| 02:44 | <@Finerty> | Or, more precisely: Bad games without licenses don't get media attention; bad games with licenses get media attention. |
| 02:44 | <@McMartin> | Well, don't get *attention*, period. |
| 02:45 | | * McMartin has, over the past few years, also been using an addition metric on licensed games, which involves doing things that one would actually require the license to do, that couldn't be done with the serial numbers filed off. |
| 02:45 | <@McMartin> | The classic example of this is EA's Two Towers brawler, which is largely undistinguished (though very competently done), and includes unlockables like video of Ian McKellan trying and totally failing to operate a Dual Shock. |
| 02:46 | <@Finerty> | I think I need to see that. |
| 02:47 | <@McMartin> | It was part of a more general making-of documentary. |
| 02:47 | | Thaqui [~Thaqui@222.154.186.ns-24386] has joined #code |
| 02:47 | | mode/#code [+o Thaqui] by ChanServ |
| 02:47 | <@McMartin> | They had the actors on board for most of the development of that one. |
| 02:47 | <@McMartin> | Not so much for the sequel, so it suffers for it even while being a richer game. |
| 02:56 | <@Derakon> | Bah. The final boss of IWBTG has only two forms. |
| 02:57 | <@Finerty> | Yeah, you'd think, as a parody, that it would have like twelve. |
| 02:57 | <@Derakon> | I know! |
| 02:58 | <@McMartin> | That's work |
| 02:58 | <@Finerty> | True, the design of iwbtg seems to be very lazy. |
| 03:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Eeee, I have been helpful with the design of gtk-server |
| 03:19 | <@Finerty> | TF: rockence. How have you been helpful |
| 03:19 | <@Finerty> | ? |
| 03:21 | <@ToxicFrog> | A proposed design for general handling of multiple-return functions. |
| 03:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which you may recall C fakes by having the caller pass in pointers to variables to be filled in by the callee. |
| 03:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | At present the only way to handle these in gtk-server is to add specialized bindings to the server code itself. |
| 03:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | I have proposed an extension to the config file format and return string format to permit saying "these arguments are pointer types which should be filled in and returned to the caller", and some thoughts on how to implement it. |
| 03:24 | <@ToxicFrog> | van Eerten likes the idea and now we're nailing down the fiddly little details. |
| 03:47 | | * Derakon glares at his website tests, which appear to be not running his Javascript at all. |
| 03:47 | <@Derakon> | (And yes, my browser has Javascript turned on) |
| 03:47 | <@McMartin> | The Dutch have the best last names ever. |
| 03:48 | | * McMartin is guessing van Eerten to be a Dutch last name. |
| 03:48 | | * McMartin also finds an interesting case in the UQM code where the comments and the data agree, but the names of the #defines are lies. |
| 03:59 | <@Derakon> | Allow me to reiterate that Small Luigi in SMB2 looks freakish. |
| 03:59 | <@Finerty> | Quite. |
| 03:59 | <@Finerty> | NES, or All-Stars? |
| 03:59 | <@Derakon> | NES. |
| 03:59 | <@Derakon> | Basically he's Luigi's full-sized head stuck onto a pigmy body. |
| 03:59 | <@Derakon> | His body is fully half the height of his head. |
| 04:00 | <@Finerty> | *snrk* |
| 04:15 | <@Derakon> | Come, chat with me! http://derakon.dyndns.org/~chriswei/chat/chat.html |
| 04:17 | | * Finerty pokes it. |
| 04:17 | <@Finerty> | It seems to have stopped working. |
| 04:17 | <@Derakon> | Howso? |
| 04:18 | <@Finerty> | I'm pressing return and instead of sending it just jumps back to the start of the field. |
| 04:18 | <@Finerty> | I have to actually click Send. |
| 04:18 | <@Derakon> | Yeah, you have to click the button manually. Not sure why; maybe because it's not an actual form. |
| 04:18 | <@Finerty> | You can set up hotkeys. I don't know how though |
| 04:20 | <@Finerty> | I need to learn ajax. |
| 04:20 | <@Derakon> | It's very simple. |
| 04:20 | <@Derakon> | Annoying to debug, but simple. |
| 04:20 | <@Finerty> | Well, more to the point, I need to learn how to actually manipulate the DOM |
| 04:21 | <@Finerty> | I know how to change attributes on things, but I don't know how to add text, create objects, or any of that, and I can't find any references for it at all. |
| 04:21 | <@Derakon> | Take a look at the Javascript in that file, and here's chat.cgi: http://derakon.dyndns.org/~chriswei/chat/chat.txt |
| 04:21 | <@Derakon> | Adding and removing objects from the DOM is also fairly straightforward. |
| 04:22 | <@Derakon> | var foo = document.getElementById('foo'); var bar = foo.addChild('img'); bar.src = 'images/happy.png'; |
| 04:23 | <@Finerty> | ok. |
| 04:23 | <@Derakon> | for (index in foo.childNodes) {var quux = foo.childNodes[index]; foo.deleteChild(quux)} |
| 04:23 | <@Derakon> | I may have my syntax slightly off, but that's basically it. |
| 04:24 | <@Derakon> | You're gonna want creation and deletion of node elements for WebSettlers. |
| 04:24 | <@Derakon> | Or, creation at least. |
| 04:28 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[zZzZ] |
| 04:30 | | Finerty [~vorn@ServicesOp.Nightstar.Net] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
| 04:31 | | Finerty [~vorn@76.239.44.ns-12400] has joined #code |
| 04:31 | | mode/#code [+o Finerty] by ChanServ |
| 04:32 | <@Derakon> | You can do some neat things with AJAX. |
| 04:33 | <@Derakon> | For example, if you return a valid Javascript object as the result text from your asynchronous request, you can simple eval that text to load the object. |
| 04:33 | <@Derakon> | This is known as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) because everything's better with an acronym. |
| 04:33 | <@Finerty> | JSON is also pretty well supported; I've seen generation libraries for Python and Ruby for them. |
| 04:34 | <@Finerty> | It's pretty convenient. |
| 04:34 | <@Derakon> | Well, it's basically just serialization of your objects to a specific (simple) syntax. |
| 04:34 | <@Finerty> | I know |
| 04:40 | | * ToxicFrog eyes Jeanne d'Arc. |
| 04:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | Someone, when writing these level scripts, didn't think to take into account that the player might stand and fight. |
| 04:41 | <@Derakon> | What kind of game is this now? |
| 04:41 | <@ToxicFrog> | TRPG. A retelling of the historical events in which Henry VI is posessed by demons and Jeanne has power armour. |
| 04:42 | <@Derakon> | Fun. |
| 04:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anyways, someone didn't bother to attach triggers to Talbot's death in the last battle, because he's right back for more in this one. |
| 04:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | And no-one seems to be at all surprised that he's back from the dead, either. |
| 04:44 | | * Derakon facepalms. |
| 04:44 | <@Derakon> | So this mission is something like the timered level in Starcraft? |
| 04:45 | <@Derakon> | Where you're supposed to turtle up, but in fact you can go and wipe out the forces that are attacking you before the timer expires? |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, what's meant to happen in the previous one is a mad dash across the valley. |
| 04:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | You have 12 turns to get everyone across the map with no fatalities. |
| 04:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | And to help ensure that you didn't stick around, they tossed in a force of lancers with archer support to harass you from behind, and made the enemy commander kind of overpowered. |
| 04:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | In the next map, you find out that he's headed you off, and you have to stand and fight. |
| 04:46 | <@Derakon> | But in the current map, the enemy discovered that TF has overleveled a touch? |
| 04:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | Er. Next map == current map. |
| 04:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | I mean the map after the cross-the-valley one, which I just completed. |
| 04:47 | <@Derakon> | Yes, but you completed the cross-the-valley one by beating up your opponents. |
| 04:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | What I actually did was took control of one of the bridges, dug in, and slaughtered the force coming up from behind. |
| 04:47 | <@Derakon> | Which you are not meant to do, meaning either bad game design or overleveling has occurred. |
| 04:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | Then powered up Jeanne's armour and beat the hitpoints out of the enemy commander. |
| 04:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | I suspect a bit of both. |
| 04:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | On the one hand, I did go back and re-play every previous level at least once, where possible, because they're usually different on the second playthrough (since they don't need to worry about plot). |
| 04:49 | <@Derakon> | At least in Disgaea 2, when you're meant to lose, the enemy outlevels you by two orders of magnitude, and if you do win, you get a different reaction. |
| 04:50 | <@Derakon> | Granted, the reaction is "Ahh, I'll just blow up your entire planet then!", but it's different! |
| 04:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | On the other hand, proper design would have either changed events when you kill Talbot, or made him effectively unkillable, or - just in case - both. |
| 04:50 | <@ToxicFrog> | (even something like having him teleport out, FFT-style, would have worked) |
| 04:51 | <@Derakon> | That's a Dynasty Warriors trick, IMO. |
| 04:51 | <@Derakon> | Even if FFT did it first. |
| 04:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | I've never played Dynasty Warriors, but I first saw it in FFT. |
| 04:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | And pretty much every boss that Can't Die Yet for plot reasons appears to know the Teleport skill. |
| 04:51 | <@Derakon> | Yeah... |
| 04:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | (although there are a few that Aren't Dead, Only Unconscious, and limp away while the party's back is turned) |
| 04:52 | <@Derakon> | Basically, you meet every opposing hero at least twice during the storyline, and some much more than that, but every time except the last, they retreat after being defeated. |
| 04:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Retreat, or -teleport away on the spot-? |
| 04:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Because it's the latter I'm calling out. |
| 04:53 | | * Finerty sucks at FFT, has never been able to beat the first mission with mages. |
| 04:54 | <@Derakon> | Retreating is teleporting away, since they vanish off the map. |
| 04:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, I mean specifically in FFT, they stand up, raise their hands, and execute the sparkly teleport fade out effect you get when your own characters use the Teleport skill. |
| 04:55 | <@Derakon> | Yes, I gathered. The mechanic is the same, though. |
| 04:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | Rather than just running to the edge of the map and vanishing or whatever. |
| 04:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | The latter at least makes some sense. |
| 04:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | The former implies that every single boss has multiclassed as Chronomancer. |
| 04:55 | <@Derakon> | And there's a problem with this? >.> |
| 05:03 | | * Derakon goes to play some Ratchet & Clank. |
| 05:03 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 05:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | Just strikes me as kind of lazy. Have one of them drop a smoke grenade or something! |
| 05:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vorn: knights can often one-shot them. |
| 05:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | Knights with archer support pretty much always can, at least early on. |
| 05:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | Furthermore, their spells take long enough to cast that you can usually get an action after they start casting but before they finish. |
| 05:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | Sometimes this lets you kill them. |
| 05:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | Most of the time, even when it doesn't, it lets you run next to one or several enemy units and catch them in the blast. |
| 06:44 | | Derakon[AFK] is now known as Derakon |
| 06:47 | | Finerty is now known as Vornicus |
| 07:14 | | Vornicus is now known as Vornicus-Latens |
| 07:25 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 08:34 | | Derakon[AFK] [~Derakon@Nightstar-8000.hsd1.wa.comcast.net] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 10:28 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
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| 14:05 | <@Reiver> | Is it possible to set up two wireless access points to provide a network bridge between them? And if so, how does one set such a thing up? |
| 14:06 | <@jerith> | Depends on the AP firmware. |
| 14:07 | <@jerith> | But it should be quite simple using openwrt or something. |
| 14:08 | <@Reiver> | openwrt? |
| 14:09 | <@jerith> | It's a linux-based router os. |
| 14:09 | <@jerith> | Mostly for linksys wrt boards. |
| 14:09 | <@jerith> | But has been ported to other devices too. |
| 14:50 | < Serah> | Yes, yes it is. |
| 14:50 | < Serah> | Most has a signal boosting option. |
| 14:51 | < Serah> | Our local wireleess ( in the house ) is set to 8% strength, and all our computers is set to boost it. |
| 17:14 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[afk] |
| 18:24 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 18:25 | | McMartin [~mcmartin@Nightstar-7862.dsl.pltn13.sbcglobal.net] has quit [Quit: Messing with local network] |
| 18:43 | | Vornicus-Latens [~vorn@76.239.44.ns-12400] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 18:52 | | Vornicus-Latens is now known as Vornicus |
| 19:26 | | * AnnoDomini grits his teeth at this guy. He fails utterly at comprehending writing. While intelligent enough to get to third year at Uni, he is unable to follow written instructions or to debug his code without someone to help him. And he bothers me about VHDL. :/ |
| 19:28 | <@McMartin> | Literacy is one of those pansy liberal-arts-major things, right?~ |
| 19:28 | <@AnnoDomini> | Pfft. |
| 19:30 | <@AnnoDomini> | In our Electronic Documents class, we got to practice TeX. We were given PDFs with a complete set of instructions on how to do particular formattings needed, along with an example to replicate. This guy somehow managed to be confused about something every 10 minutes, when everything was in the fucking PDF. It just grates on my nerves. |
| 19:33 | <@McMartin> | Please tell me you guys are at least using the LaTeX package. |
| 19:33 | <@McMartin> | Unsafe TeX is not recommended. |
| 19:33 | <@AnnoDomini> | We were using LEd with with MikTeX packages. |
| 19:33 | <@AnnoDomini> | *with the |
| 19:34 | <@McMartin> | Well, that downloads them. Whether you're using them or not is up in the air still. |
| 19:34 | <@McMartin> | I think \section and \subsection and friends are part of it, though. |
| 19:34 | <@AnnoDomini> | Yes, they are. |
| 19:42 | <@MyCatVerbs> | "<@McMartin> Literacy is one of those pansy liberal-arts-major things, right?" <-- and yet, this room is full of coding nerds and *also* IF affectionados. |
| 19:42 | <@McMartin> | MCV: You neglected to quote the tilde |
| 19:42 | <@MyCatVerbs> | McMartin: the latter being a rather unusually... literature-ey hobby, all told. |
| 19:42 | <@McMartin> | Which was not a typo, but rather the Sindeness Marker. |
| 19:42 | <@McMartin> | Er |
| 19:42 | <@AnnoDomini> | IF? |
| 19:42 | <@McMartin> | Snideness marker. |
| 19:42 | <@McMartin> | No, the line of mine you quotes. |
| 19:42 | <@McMartin> | Which ended in "?~", not "?" |
| 19:42 | <@MyCatVerbs> | McMartin: ahhhhh. Je n'ai sui... fuckit. I didn't know. |
| 19:43 | <@McMartin> | One of the very few things the b/tards popularized that actually has a use online! |
| 19:43 | <@AnnoDomini> | I knew it as 'not being serious character'. What's "IF"? |
| 19:43 | <@MyCatVerbs> | AnnoDomini: interactive fiction. |
| 19:43 | <@AnnoDomini> | Oh. |
| 19:43 | <@AnnoDomini> | Lone Wolf. :) |
| 19:43 | <@gnolam> | McMartin: What is the tilde supposed to mean, anyway? |
| 19:44 | | * gnolam didn't read enough backscroll. |
| 19:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | gnolam: it means you're not being the least bit snarky at all.~ |
| 19:44 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Wait, does it work for sarcasm too, or just genuinely subtle snark? |
| 19:44 | <@McMartin> | The best version I've seen anyone come up with is "Please do not associate my immediately previous statement with something I actually believe". |
| 19:44 | <@McMartin> | I also associate it as a tone marker, indicating a singsong voice, but I'm from California and so have something of a singsong voice. |
| 19:45 | <@gnolam> | It's a silly sign, in any case. |
| 19:45 | | * MyCatVerbs lightbulb. |
| 19:45 | <@MyCatVerbs> | gnolam: personally, I think it's faaaaaaaaabulous.~~~~~~ |
| 19:45 | <@McMartin> | Usually you drop the period~ |
| 19:45 | <@McMartin> | OK, stopping now. |
| 19:46 | | * AnnoDomini more frequently uses some sort of emoticon at the end for clearly marking out nonserious content. |
| 19:46 | <@McMartin> | Yeah. |
| 19:46 | | * McMartin just doesn't like emoticons. =P |
| 19:46 | | * AnnoDomini attempts deadpan simply by omitting emoticons. |
| 19:56 | | * AnnoDomini wonders just how many of his fellow countrymen are functionally illiterate. |
| 20:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | A worryingly high number. |
| 20:08 | <@AnnoDomini> | That I'm sure of. <_< |
| 20:22 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Define "functionally"? |
| 20:23 | <@AnnoDomini> | !wiki functional illiteracy |
| 20:23 | <+DiceBot> | [AnnoDomini] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/functional_illiteracy |
| 20:24 | <@MyCatVerbs> | Heh, RTFW. |
| 20:24 | <@McMartin> | Skeletor here agrees with my general experience. |
| 20:25 | <@McMartin> | (ObRPG-Geek-for-which-McM-blames-Dicebot: In GURPS, functional illiteracy is "Semi-literate" in a culture where this is a disadvantage.) |
| 20:45 | <@MyCatVerbs> | McMartin: that's a stunningly concise and precise definition. How useful |
| 20:45 | | gnolam [lenin@Nightstar-10613.8.5.253.static.se.wasadata.net] has quit [Quit: Z?] |
| 21:03 | | Vornicus is now known as Finerty |
| 21:21 | < Finerty> | Dammit, I should stop thinking about VornBall. I keep coming up with new abilities. |
| 21:22 | < Finerty> | "grit" lets you move normally on ice and also gets you up hills more easily. |
| 21:55 | < Attilla> | What's VornBall? |
| 21:56 | < Attilla> | Does it involve balls of non-euclidean geometry? |
| 21:58 | < Finerty> | VornBall: take Metroid, remove walking. |
| 22:01 | | AnnoDomini [AnnoDomini@83.21.46.ns-3566] has quit [Ping Timeout] |
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| 22:07 | <@McMartin> | Within a dark forest full of screeching energy vampires? |
| 22:07 | < Finerty> | Hee |
| 22:08 | < Finerty> | Well, more along the exploration-and-gain-abilities lines of metroid and Knytt Stories as opposed to the way WADF does it, and rolling instead of bouncing, and probably no screeching energy vampires. |
| 22:08 | <@McMartin> | I still need to play the Knytt games. |
| 22:08 | < Finerty> | Knytt is very relaxing. |
| 22:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | Knytt? |
| 22:09 | < Finerty> | Knytt, being the other game by Nifflas |
| 22:11 | < Finerty> | Explore, collect pieces of your wrecked space ship. |
| 22:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | Aah. |
| 22:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | I take it it's easier than WaDF, based on your description. |
| 22:12 | < Finerty> | Yes. |
| 22:12 | < Finerty> | By a lot. It's explorey, and you don't really have any abilities. |
| 22:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Aaw. I like abilities. |
| 22:13 | < Finerty> | You can walk, you can jump, you can cling on to walls. |
| 22:15 | < Finerty> | DC has a Let's PLay of it. |
| 22:31 | < Attilla> | Isn't that Knytt Stories, though? |
| 22:31 | < Attilla> | Or did he do a LP of the original first? |
| 22:32 | <@McMartin> | Didn't he LP WADF as well? |
| 22:32 | < Attilla> | WADF? |
| 22:32 | <@McMartin> | Within a Dark Forest, yet another Nifflas game. |
| 22:32 | < Attilla> | Ah. |
| 22:32 | < Finerty> | DC has LP'd WADF, Knytt, and about half a dozen Knytt Stories. |
| 22:33 | < Finerty> | (Tutorial, The Machine, A Strange Dream, Colors, Station 07) |
| 22:35 | < Attilla> | Yeah, I remember them, well. A few of them. I played a bunch of them, they were fun. Though I do remember Don't Eat The Mushroom and the hilarious LP that came of it :p |
| 22:35 | < Finerty> | The first episode of the DEtM LP was hilarious. |
| 22:36 | < Attilla> | Heh, yeah. He did what the game told him to do :p |
| 22:36 | <@McMartin> | I take it that the way DEtM works is "You have to eat the mushroom to have a game"? |
| 22:37 | < Attilla> | Well, the game has multiple endings, you can not eat the mushroom if you want to, it just makes it very short. |
| 22:38 | <@McMartin> | Which means you don't have a game. |
| 22:38 | < Finerty> | Quite. |
| 22:39 | <@McMartin> | The "player takes his ball and goes home" ending at the beginning is a... if not an honorable, at least a long tradition. |
| 22:39 | <@McMartin> | It goes back at least to Sorceror, which lets you do this if you abuse knowledge from previous plays. |
| 22:39 | < Finerty> | *** Christmas Has Won *** |
| 22:40 | <@McMartin> | The game opens in a dream sequence. Once you awaken, you find that you have been abandoned and are soon invonlved in a desperate struggle for survival. |
| 22:40 | <@McMartin> | If you > WAKE UP during the dream sequence you wake up in time and head off to town with everyone else, thus not being involved in said struggle... |
| 22:40 | < Finerty> | heh |
| 22:40 | <@McMartin> | ... and returning home to a smoking ruin and widespreaqd devastation because as nobody was there the good guys lose by default. |
| 22:40 | <@McMartin> | "Some days it just doesn't pay to wake up." |
| 22:41 | <@McMartin> | And yes, I suppose The Stars Are Right counts too, but as not simply ignoring the call to adventure only shortens the game by five or six turns... |
| 22:41 | <@McMartin> | er, only lengthens it |
| 22:42 | < Finerty> | hehe |
| 22:42 | < Finerty> | it's only a 5 or 6 turn game. |
| 22:42 | <@McMartin> | I?, Zrblm |
| 22:43 | | * Finerty ponders, opens The Stars Are Right, to see what zrblm does again. |
| 22:44 | < Finerty> | ah, of course |
| 22:45 | <@McMartin> | It's a synonym for PRAY, basically. |
| 22:45 | < Finerty> | ia and i? don't do anything |
| 22:46 | <@McMartin> | Indeed not. |
| 22:46 | <@McMartin> | I'm not sure the terp can even understand I?. |
| 22:46 | < Finerty> | >i? |
| 22:46 | < Finerty> | That's not a verb I recognize. |
| 22:46 | < Finerty> | Possibly. |
| 22:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | Understand "I?" as praising Cthulhu. |
| 22:48 | <@McMartin> | You have to do tricks to get Inform 6 to understand extended characters. |
| 22:48 | <@McMartin> | I *think* I7 does it under the hood. |
| 22:48 | <@McMartin> | Though I think on console Frotz you can't even *type* I? |
| 22:48 | <@McMartin> | I recall having trouble with ep?e as well. |
| 22:50 | < Finerty> | Zoom knows it |
| 22:52 | <@McMartin> | MacZoom is probably the best Z-Code terp in existence. |
| 22:52 | <@McMartin> | (Unix Zoom, on the other hand, is almost certainly in the bottom five.) |
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| 22:57 | <@MyCatVerbs> | McMartin: epee? What game gives you one of those to play with? |
| 22:58 | <@McMartin> | Weishaupt Scholars had one as a prop in an early draft. |
| 22:58 | <@McMartin> | One of the player characters is a fencer. |
| 22:59 | < Finerty> | MacZoom has transcript problems. |
| 23:01 | <@McMartin> | Unix Zoom has savegame problems. |
| 23:01 | <@McMartin> | WinFrotz has extremely clunky backscroll and copypaste, and no other terp properly implements the full spec. |
| 23:02 | < Finerty> | jeez |
| 23:03 | <@McMartin> | MacZoom these days as can also talk to to the IFDB and yoink games from it for you. |
| 23:06 | <@McMartin> | (Granted, the other Frotz variants dont implement the full spec primarily because you need to be able to display graphics to do so) |
| 23:06 | < Finerty> | ooh, it does TADS and stuff too. |
| 23:07 | <@McMartin> | Yes, which is nice, but not really why I was calling it out here. |
| 23:07 | <@McMartin> | Gargoyle and Spatterlight also cover multiple platforms. |
| 23:08 | < Finerty> | ...heh. I download what looks like the latest version, and it checks for updates, and finds one. |
| 23:10 | < Finerty> | ...except that it blew it, and now I can't open it. |
| 23:17 | < Finerty> | ...hey, cool. |
| 23:23 | | * McMartin pulls down one of the games he's ben meaning to play. |
| 23:23 | <@McMartin> | "It is pitch dark, and you can't see a thing." |
| 23:23 | <@McMartin> | "Which is not good." |
| 23:27 | < Finerty> | it even recommends games based on ones you have. |
| 23:29 | <@McMartin> | Well, that's more IFDB in general. |
| 23:30 | <@McMartin> | "People who liked Weishaupt Scholars also liked: Zork I" |
| 23:30 | < Finerty> | Hee |
| 23:30 | <@McMartin> | The one person who rated it liked it, but that person's taste is so wildly suspect I'm not proud of this fact~ |
| 23:30 | < Finerty> | *snrk* |
| 23:33 | <@McMartin> | They have a wildly horrendous case of "I am the world"-itis, and it's so unbelievably blatant that I can't believe they haven't noticed themselves. |
| 23:34 | < Finerty> | Heh |
| 23:34 | <@McMartin> | I mean, they one-star and rage and froth and scream about a game which has a huge disclaimer on it that says "Unless you are part of community X that is NOT THE IF COMMUNITY, this work of IF is not FOR YOU and you should RUN AWAY REALLY FAST" |
| 23:34 | <@McMartin> | And they spend paragraphs ranting about how this game should never have been written in the first place. |
| 23:34 | <@McMartin> | Because if it isn't for him, why bother? |
| 23:34 | < Finerty> | Who is this reviewer? |
| 23:35 | <@McMartin> | AmberShards? |
| 23:35 | <@McMartin> | No idea about "him", even, really. |
| 23:35 | <@McMartin> | There were some other backhanded nice things said elsewhere about WS |
| 23:35 | <@McMartin> | Like the one who disapproved of me including hints because if any player anywhere ever needs a hint in order to win this is a sign of abject failure on the part of the designer |
| 23:36 | <@McMartin> | While most people whose opinions I respect consider the On-Timed-Rails aspect of WS its weakest point. |
| 23:36 | <@McMartin> | (That guy was really happy that he *could* beat it without hints though!) |
| 23:47 | < Finerty> | >take pig |
| 23:47 | < Finerty> | Grunk walk right up to pig. Pig walk right away from Grunk. |
| 23:48 | <@McMartin> | Hum. Zoom dies horribly if you move it out of Applications. |
| --- Log closed Mon Jan 28 00:00:09 2008 |