 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>>> You lose nerd points for not knowing such basics.
>
>> You see this face? This is my "I'm really not worried" face.
>
>> Liberating, isn't it? :-D
>
> But you see. Being a nerd but not being *enough* of a nerd puts you in
> the uncomfortable zone of not being either hipster enough to be cool, nor
> nerdy enough to be cool. It's that middle ground where both hipsters and
> nerds mock you.
You may be right about that. But you know what? I'm still not worried.
Because right now, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. :-D
OK, granted, until now my life has been pretty miserable, so I guess
that's not much of a record. But hey, if I'm happy, why worry?
You know what I posted here exactly one year ago today? The announcement
that I finally hooked up with a girl. So, yeah, I can live with not
being the biggest nerd, or not being hip enough for the crowd. People
like me, and that's fine with me. :-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Am 30.08.2011 19:58, schrieb Orchid XP v8:
> You know what I posted here exactly one year ago today? The announcement
> that I finally hooked up with a girl. So, yeah, I can live with not
> being the biggest nerd, or not being hip enough for the crowd. People
> like me, and that's fine with me. :-)
Gee, time flies!
Enjoy!
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 8/30/2011 7:02 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> I have hard time believing that you have never heard of the concept of
>> exp in computer role-playing games.
>
> Apparently I don't play that particular sort of game very much. Why, is
> there a law against that? :-P
Uh.. Unless your main sort of game is puzzles and/or Go, its pretty hard
to never run across XP, of some sort, or FPS which *do not* let you
improve skills. Hell, even Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which I have just
been playing, has it (though I am wishing I had upgraded my armor for
electrical shock supressing, instead of putting all of it into
stealth/hacking, given the current boss I am fighting... lol).
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> On 30/08/2011 01:25 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>>> earn "XP" (whatever that is)
>>
>> eXperience Points. In most fantasy role playing games, a certain amount
>> of XP will allow you to improve your skill level. Allowing you to learn
>> new fighting techniques, or fancier spells, depending on your character
>> class.
>
> Riiiight. So that's why they named it "Windows XP"...
>
> Incidentally, I have no idea what "fantasy role playing game" actually
> means.
You see, back in the days before the advent of computers, people used to
sit around tables and play games. Some were board games (chess,
checkers, Monopoly, etc...), some were card games (poker, bridge,
etc...) Then, in the late 1970s, a new type of game came out, it was
called "role playing games" (RPG for short, not to be confused with the
RPGs you hear about on the evening news, which stands for
"rocket-propelled grenade"). Each player played the part of a character
and would interact with a story told by another player who also acted as
a referee. Some of these role-playing were set in a futuristic world
and were called "sci-fi RPGs", while others were set in medieval,
fantasy settings, filled with elves, dragons, and wizards; these were
the "fanstasy RPGs", the most popular of which was called "Dungeons and
Dragons". There were also "Horror" RPGs, based on the works of H.P.
Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, et al. And various quirky ones that were
difficult to categorize, such as Paranoia, Car Wars, War Hammer, etc...
If you've never heard of D&D, I'm going to have to side with Warp and
ask that you hand in your nerd card.
Footnotes:
- Some people still play RPGs.
- Some people even act them out in real life, this is called LARPing
(Live Action Role Playing). See for example,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw
- The D&D universe was of course introduced to the computer gaming
world, in the early 80s, but the most popular D&D-based games has to be
the "Baldur's Gate" series, that I'm sure you're familiar with.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 30/08/2011 11:31 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 8/30/2011 7:02 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> I have hard time believing that you have never heard of the concept of
>>> exp in computer role-playing games.
>>
>> Apparently I don't play that particular sort of game very much. Why, is
>> there a law against that? :-P
> Uh.. Unless your main sort of game is puzzles and/or Go, its pretty hard
> to never run across XP, of some sort, or FPS which *do not* let you
> improve skills. Hell, even Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which I have just
> been playing, has it (though I am wishing I had upgraded my armor for
> electrical shock supressing, instead of putting all of it into
> stealth/hacking, given the current boss I am fighting... lol).
OK, well let's see now...
Quake 2. No XP.
HalfLife. HalfLife: Opposing Force. Nope, no XP.
HalfLife 2, EP1, EP2... No XP.
Portal. No XP.
Team Fortress 2. No XP.
Call of Duty 4: No XP.
Modern Warfare 2: No XP.
OK, so that's a list of almost every computer game I've ever played. :-P
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> If you've never heard of D&D, I'm going to have to side with Warp and
> ask that you hand in your nerd card.
I've /heard of/ D&D. I just don't get why anybody would bother playing
it. It sounds incredibly boring.
A bit like those text-adventure games [which I'm sure somebody somewhere
still plays too].
PS. There used to be a TV series called D&D. I used to enjoy watching
that. I doubt it has anything vaguely related to the game in it though.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> If you've never heard of D&D, I'm going to have to side with Warp and
>> ask that you hand in your nerd card.
>
> I've /heard of/ D&D. I just don't get why anybody would bother playing
> it. It sounds incredibly boring.
>
> A bit like those text-adventure games [which I'm sure somebody somewhere
> still plays too].
>
> PS. There used to be a TV series called D&D. I used to enjoy watching
> that. I doubt it has anything vaguely related to the game in it though.
No, IIRC, the storyline was that a bunch of teenagers playing D&D were
sucked into the D&D world and were trying to go back home. All the
characters and monsters were mostly based on actual character classes
found in the AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) first edition books.
The only thing I remember finding very unlikely about that tv series was
that there were girls playing AD&D.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> PS. There used to be a TV series called D&D. I used to enjoy watching
>> that. I doubt it has anything vaguely related to the game in it though.
>
> No, IIRC, the storyline was that a bunch of teenagers playing D&D were
> sucked into the D&D world and were trying to go back home.
They were definitely trying to get back home. But as I recall, they took
a ride on a magic rollercoaster. Hmm. I'll bet Wikipedia has a page
about it...
...it does. And apparently I was right.
> All the
> characters and monsters were mostly based on actual character classes
> found in the AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) first edition books.
I'll take your word for it.
> The only thing I remember finding very unlikely about that tv series was
> that there were girls playing AD&D.
LOL! Yeah, that does sound implausible... although I hear Gail Shaw is
quite into D&D.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> > If you've never heard of D&D, I'm going to have to side with Warp and
> > ask that you hand in your nerd card.
> I've /heard of/ D&D. I just don't get why anybody would bother playing
> it. It sounds incredibly boring.
Tabletop role-playing games can be real fun, with a competent game master.
While the overall story is more or less predetermined, the details are
determined by the players themselves. Players choose what they do, and the
game master has to adapt the events and the storyline to suit (which is not
always trivial, as you have to keep the balance between avoiding the story
from derailing too much, and avoiding the players feeling that they are just
playing a prewritten script and are not free to do whatever they want).
How much a playing session can deviate from the script outline (which
the game master usually has on paper, either purchased/copied from
somewhere, or in some cases written by himself) depends on how much the
players ignore the GM's hints and do what they want instead, and how much
the GM is willing to bend. Sometimes the GM has to refuse to accept some
action (eg. if someone wanted to suddenly kill a very plot-relevant NPC,
the GM could say "your character wouldn't do that").
Which of course means that a good game not only requires a good GM, but
also good *players*. The players have to act and react according to the
personality of their characters. A good-tempered librarian would not
suddenly kill someone in cold blood for no reason whatsoever. A player
seriously wanting for this character to do that, completely destroying
the mood, is not a good player.
One of the great things about this dynamicity is that players can come
up with new things that were not in the original script. It can sometimes
become quite imaginative. There's much more freedom to do things than with
a computer game, which is by necessity very limited. (Just from the top of
my head, a player could come up with something like "I'll stack these chairs
in front of the door so that if someone attempts to come in, the pile will
fall, alerting us", or something along those lines.)
--
- Warp
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 31/08/2011 02:15 PM, Warp wrote:
> Tabletop role-playing games can be real fun, with a competent game master.
I can't say that I've ever actually tried it, but it doesn't sound like
something that would appeal to me. Maybe it's because seeing and hearing
exotic things is far more interesting to me than talking about social
interactions between semi-human creatures, I don't know.
> While the overall story is more or less predetermined, the details are
> determined by the players themselves. Players choose what they do, and the
> game master has to adapt the events and the storyline to suit (which is not
> always trivial, as you have to keep the balance between avoiding the story
> from derailing too much, and avoiding the players feeling that they are just
> playing a prewritten script and are not free to do whatever they want).
>
> How much a playing session can deviate from the script outline (which
> the game master usually has on paper, either purchased/copied from
> somewhere, or in some cases written by himself) depends on how much the
> players ignore the GM's hints and do what they want instead, and how much
> the GM is willing to bend. Sometimes the GM has to refuse to accept some
> action (eg. if someone wanted to suddenly kill a very plot-relevant NPC,
> the GM could say "your character wouldn't do that").
That sounds like an almost exact description of why designing a computer
game with a good story is so hard.
On the one hand, you're written a story, and that's how the game has to
play out. On the other hand, if the player(s) can't influence the game
at all, why bother playing? But if you take that too far, you end up
with something like Frontier Elite II, a game with so much "freedom"
that it's pointless to play.
In all, it's just one axis along which game design is really, really hard.
> Which of course means that a good game not only requires a good GM, but
> also good *players*.
If finding good D&D players is even remotely like finding good TF2
players... yeah, good luck with that one.
> One of the great things about this dynamicity is that players can come
> up with new things that were not in the original script. It can sometimes
> become quite imaginative. There's much more freedom to do things than with
> a computer game, which is by necessity very limited. (Just from the top of
> my head, a player could come up with something like "I'll stack these chairs
> in front of the door so that if someone attempts to come in, the pile will
> fall, alerting us", or something along those lines.)
It would be nice if computer games could be a bit more open-ended like
this. There are a number of reasons why they can't (in the foreseeable
future):
- The real world is far too expensive to simulate accurately. You have
to simplify it down, which basically means removing lots of possibilities.
- In the real world, you're generally fighting against other humans. AI
still cannot even begin to approach that level of intelligence. (E.g.,
if I *did* use chairs to block the door, the AI would be utterly
baffled, and would never figure out a solution.)
- In the real world, I can use anything I can lay my hands on. In a
computer game, I've got, like, a dozen buttons and a mouse. Very hard to
come up with a general control framework with such limited controls
available.
Those are the ones that immediately spring to mind, beyond "it would
also totally screw up the story" (which is also intractably hard for a
mere computer to sort out).
I note that while it's completely 100% possible to play computer games
with other humans, I tend to prefer playing them by myself. I guess
because that way it's more like reading a book. Or maybe just because
finding decent people to play with is so hard.
OK, I have to ask: How many times per week does this happen?
http://xkcd.com/244/
Does it ever get to more than 3 levels deep? Is it like Inception?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
