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Messages - zaimoni

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1
AliensRL / Re: How do you avoid running out of ammo?
« on: June 18, 2010, 19:56 »
Don't waste ammo on drones, workers or overseers, unless they attack you or it is really necessary.
Or be seen by them.

2
Announcements / Re: AliensRL 0.8 RELEASED!
« on: June 13, 2010, 12:14 »
Alternately, install Opera (the one web browser with a working, interruptible, integrated download manager).  It  was very nice to be able to pull down a Knoppix LiveDVD (4.7GB) over 3 days.

Of course, both solutions do have the slight chicken-and-egg problem that you have to be able to download the installer first.

3
AliensRL / Re: More room ideas
« on: June 06, 2010, 09:33 »
Many of the elements described above can probably integrated with the generator, but I wouldn't sacrifice the random level generation for a deterministic scenario.
No determiinism is implied.

Remember, the entire system of levels is generated at the start of the game.  It shouldn't be much of a slowdown to impose constraints on legal levels.

4
AliensRL / Re: Tips and Tricks?
« on: September 06, 2008, 20:30 »
Ah...haven't actually done a proper playthrough of the latest beta (scheduled, but I actually need to be able to take six hours off at once).  So you'll have to find out how to use incendiary grenades on your own.

Basic notes:
* The shotgun is moderately useful until Elites start showing up.  You really need at least a plasma rifle (krak grenades are a bit rare to use freely).
* The maximum of 5 medikits is my idea; if you're playing correctly you should not need to use more than five at once.
* There's an old bug where splash damage doesn't exist for thrown grenades if they don't land on an alien.  I doubt it's been fixed in the latest beta.  You really do need throwing skill fairly quickly.
* I don't like Storage because of the visibility issues; you don't see Hunters in time to dispose of them with that standard pistol.  Magnum is nice, but my wins have been without it (cut straight to Military, go up to Military 6, then cut to Main, deal with the Queen, then backtrack.)
* Workers are not worth engaging.  Fortunately, their visual range is almost nothing (2).  It is strategically ok to one-shot-kill Workers as collateral damage.

5
Discussion / Re: Experience cap at level 19
« on: May 18, 2008, 06:54 »
rpgs without levels: (to name a few) Paranoia, Fading Suns, all Tri-Stat dX based games, Call of Cthulhu, all Savage Worlds based games, Neuroshima (very popular game in Poland)... - there are skill points, but no character levels
Yes.
it would be easier to say that nearly only D&D/d20 based games have character levels, but...
Back when I was actively collecting rules sets (admittedly before d20; I dropped out of that ~1998), maybe 75% of games had explicit leveling.  The proportion of levelless games went up by publication date.
there is more to RPG than D&D :-)
Yes.

6
AliensRL / Re: Greets and ammo disappearing?
« on: May 09, 2008, 07:40 »
Known bug; I think (but have not bothered to test) that picking up a weapon doesn't lose the ammunition in the currently held weapon.

Unfortunately, I do sometimes want to know where I can pick up a weapon quickly and (relatively) safely.  [Combat Shotgun and Pulse Rifle come to mind for this.]

7
Challenges = mods that ship with Vanilla DoomRL -> no mods inside mods.
Alternately, mods may specify that they must not be in other mods (and/or vice versa -- whatever makes challenges work).

8
If you're careful with the JavaScript, you could get both Opera and Safari for free by supporting Mozilla.

9
AliensRL / Re: Hello (and suggestions)
« on: November 30, 2007, 19:43 »
What's wrong if someone do this kind of movement anyway ? It doesn't make sense to wait for one ping after you just got one or wait for ping every two or few steps because aliens could change places anyway. However I wonder what idea you have in mind.
DaEezT might explain that better, but globaly, lighthouse movements become tedious and boring after some time.[/quotes]
Besides driving attention to detail up (and consequent tedium), there's a matter of time scale.

Requiring lighthouse movements doesn't make sense at time scales above a second or so.  And I don't see the player running in this game, but rather walking briskly and alertly -- so the "turn precision" is low enough that we can just assume lighthouse movements and give the player 360-degree field of view.

10
Discussion / Re: StarWarsRL
« on: November 30, 2007, 19:37 »
Hi
I wonder what you think of making RL in SW theme. I mean old StarWars (personally I pretend that new ones don't exist..). I was for long time under affection to it and it would be cool if some SW roguelike existed. However I am bit afraid that Lucas may be sort of shark on rights.
LucasArts definitely is more aggressive about enforcing intellectual property than many other corporations.

But I know I would like to see old Starwars atmosphere with stormtroopers, blasters, droids and subtle Force (new one doesn't really seem to fit into what was previously created)
Agreed; that was a pretty gross rewrite.

However, Lucas' background notes seem so extensive that even if it was a retrocon, it was one that he technically executed well.  (Whether the retrocon actually improves the setting is another question entirely.)

11
AliensRL / Re: Wierd (but nice) bug
« on: August 04, 2007, 07:31 »
Not so nice.

When that was introduced (death at <0 hp rather than <=0), it also applied to the aliens.  This eliminated at least one instant-kill of juveniles (ground zero of frag grenade), and undoubtedly messed with a number of corner cases in the damage levels that I haven't bothered to map out.

The bug I would like "fixed" (as a game world realism issue; some rebalancing would be involved as it really does make the game easier), is having frag grenades actually do damage when there isn't an alien at ground zero.

12
Off Topic / Re: Frozen Depth 1.02 released!
« on: July 25, 2007, 05:32 »
Quote from: Karry
ADoM has it.

I know ADOM punishes the player for level scumming in some places, but to my knowledge there's no protection against save scumming. Could you explain what you mean by 'it punishes cheating'?
ADOM's monster power reacts to how many of a given type you've killed already, even in the normal areas.  Save-scumming tends to drive this up.

Quote from: zaimoni
Hengband made it work. (...) I suppose one could always splice in Jeff Lait's Save Scummer to get integrated detection.

You mean it has good protection against save scumming, or in-game punishment? And AFAIK Save Scummer is a proof of concept, not a functional protection/detection method. Anyway, my remark was not about the quality of protection.
In-game punishment (one room, no stairs out).  It has some backup procedure (first-tier is the *.lok file that should not be in Angband 3.0.8 when it comes out "shortly").  I haven't checked the source code, but there is enough dead space in the Angband-style save format that "when recent saves were" statistics could be stuffed in.

I know that Save Scummer is a proof-of-concept.  But, after allowing for combinatoric grouping (equivalent results downstream), it will provide a heuristic approach in conjunction with an RNG audit trail.

13
Off Topic / Re: Frozen Depth 1.02 released!
« on: July 24, 2007, 16:13 »
That's why I said it was lame protection. :) It's rather hard to come up with decent protection against scumming. I just enjoyed the concept of punishing the scumming player in the game itself, and there's no roguelike I know of that actually does this. You're welcome to use the idea if you like it. My attempts at writing a complete roguelike have been postponed until 2040 anyway. ;)
Hengband made it work.

I suppose one could always splice in Jeff Lait's Save Scummer to get integrated detection.

14
What sort of articles have you had to back up, Zaimoni?
I'm backing up anything I may need to refer to in bootstrapping my second business.  [Strictly, an LLC I'm a founding member of; ....]

In practice, this means any page with substantive content in:
* Thermodynamics
* Kinetic gas theory/statistical mechanics
** At least three useful concrete-example pages are nominated for later deletion here, apparently because they require background equivalent to a higher degree in one of mathematics, physics, or chemistry to immediately understand.  I formally have this background (Master's in mathematics).
* Chemical reaction kinetics
* Chemical equilibria

In these domains, there currently is no other equivalently competent central website.  The next best contender for chemical equilibria is IUPAC, but they don't have sketched derivations. (Which is a critical problem, as I need to understand the models well enough to rederive them correctly.  I've already found a fundamental example where the standard construction is formally wrong.)

For the other domains mentioned, there is no "next best contender".

15
Regrettably, it doesn't seem to just be legitimate recreational articles up for deletion.

I've taken to backing up hard science pages as insurance during the current administrative policy panic (dating back to ~Jan 2007, and ongoing).  I think I've seen some esoteric ones I didn't need get removed for no reason -- so just back them all up, as they clearly have no problems deleting anything that is both not Politically Correct and beyond their limited knowledge.

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