Way, waaaay back in 1993, a German company released a game called The 
Settlers for Commodore Amiga. I played the demo, and I've been hooked 
ever since.

Put simply, the game involves building a thriving settlement. You don't 
control the actual settlers (i.e., people) directly. Instead, you build 
stuff. Put simply, each type of building takes one or more inputs and 
transforms it into an output. For example, the goldsmith's hut takes 
gold ore and coal as input, and produces refined gold as output.

Building an economy then consists of constructing the correct buildings. 
Some items are easy to produce, while others require several buildings 
to produce. Perhaps the hardest part of the game is remembering exactly 
what all the buildings are and what they do; there's quite a few of them!

As you'd expect, it's not merely a case of constructing all the right 
buildings, however. You also have to build an efficient network of roads 
to connect them. The longer the road and the steeper the road, the 
longer it takes for materials to traverse it. So ideally you want to 
build related buildings close together. Then you can adjust the 
priorities of which materials to transport first, which ones to store, 
what percentage goes to each building, etc. (E.g., coal is used by 
several buildings. You can set what percentage goes to the iron works 
and what percentage to the goldsmith.)

However, some buildings harvest natural resources, which only exist in 
certain places, which dictates where the buildings have to be put. And 
you only have a finite amount of space available; sometimes there just 
isn't room to put a building near the previous processing step in the 
chain. And then of course, your land might not /have/ one of the 
resources you need, in which case you need to expand your territory, 
which requires a whole /other/ sequence of buildings. Or perhaps you can 
/trade/ for the items you need, which requires yet other buildings and a 
neighbour willing to trade.



Now it wouldn't be too hard to knock up a program which displays a grid 
and lets you put boxes representing processing steps onto that grid, and 
lets you draw lines connecting them, and simulates the flow of materials 
through the system. But that would be incredibly dull.

Arguably one of the most captivating things about The Settlers is the 
amount of detail the designers poured into it. Yes it's 1993, so the 
graphics are a bit chunky. But every single building looks different. 
Every single type of worker looks different. You can visually /see/ 
materials moving from place to place. And every single worker has a 
different animation, and usually one or two sounds.

The woodcutter comes out of his hut, and walks to the nearest tree. He 
hits the trunk 3 times with his axe. Bang. Bang. Bang. The tree falls 
down. Crash. He then strips the branches off. He hits the trunk three 
times, and a few branches fall off. He hits it three more times, and 
more branches fall off. He hits it three more times, and the last few 
branches fall off. He then picks up the trunk and walks back to his hut, 
leaving behind a tree stump and a pile of discarded leaves. Over time, 
the leaves disappear, and eventually so does the trunk.

Set a baker to work, and you get to see him pick up the sack of flour on 
his doorstep and take it inside. Then through the window you see him 
kneading the dough. Then he comes out with a loaf of bread on a wooden 
paddle, and puts it into the stone oven. Then he stands there, paddle in 
hand, watching as white smoke billows out of the chimney. After a while, 
the smoke stops, and he puts the paddle in and brings the bread out. It 
deposits it on the doorstep, and it continues steaming for a moment. And 
then a carrier comes and takes it away to the next building.

The level of detail is staggering. This game comes on two 720KB 
double-sided double-density floppy disks. (Double-density is the one 
that came /before/ high-density. DD = 720KB, HD = 1.44MB.) And yet there 
are animations for almost every single trade. Stonecutters cut at stones 
with a pickaxe. Woodcutters fell trees. Farmers sprinkle grain on the 
fields, and then reap it with scythes. Foresters dig a hole, deposit a 
tree into it, and then carefully pack the earth around it. Windmill's 
sails turn when they're milling bread. Sheep farmers release sheep, 
periodically bring them food, and then gather up a sheep and bring it 
outside.

And there are sounds too. As well as the in-game music [which is now 
permanently burned into my skull like the INSERT CREDITS message on an 
arcade video game], there is the constant sound of birds chirping, the 
wind in the mountains, the babbling of streams, and other environmental 
sounds. (Depending on where you're looking.) Then there's the hammering 
of blacksmiths, the sawing of sawmills, the trundle of windmills 
turning, the patter of farmers scattering seeds, the sound of charcoal 
burners coughing their lungs up, the bleating of lambs at the sheep 
farm, the sound of mining carts being driven, etc.

Once your settlement really gets going, there's so much happening that 
sometimes you just have to sit back and watch in fascination as all your 
settlers busily go about their work. It's mesmerising to watch 
sometimes. And I should probably point out that a "quick" game is one 
that takes "only" an hour. Games are measured in multiple hours. Once 
you start playing, you utterly lose track of time...



It's actually quite impressive that this game is possible at all. As I 
said, it comes on 2 x 720KB disks. The machine it runs on is powered by 
a 7MHz Motorola 68000 (that's 16-bit, not 32-bit) with 1MB of RAM. The 
game does not come with hand-crafted "maps". Rather, it uses a fractal 
algorithm to generate a (repeating) map from a "random seed" number. 
That saves on disk space, but the computer's RAM still has to hold the 
entire map.

Let's consider for a moment what the map contains.

- The location of every individual tree, and its state of growth. (When 
you plant new trees, they start off tiny, and gradually get bigger, 
until they're ready to be felled.)

- The location of every tree stump and pile of leaves, and how long 
they've been there so they can be removed after a while. (Remember, when 
you cut a tree down, the stump and the leaves stay there for quite some 
time. And no, not just if it's on-screen. Scroll to a woodcutter you 
haven't looked at for 20 minutes and you'll see tree stumps and piles of 
leaves around the place.)

- The location and size of every stone pile.

- The location and maturity state of every wheat field.

- The location of all the fish stocks and how depleted they are.

- The location of all the mineable ores and how depleted they are.

- The location of every individual unit of every type of material you 
currently possess.

- The location and animation state of every building and every 
individual settler.

What's more, not only is 1MB of RAM enough to actually /store/ all this 
data, but the puny CPU is man enough to /update/ it all in realtime. 
Quite apart from all the things that can get depleted or that mature 
over time, and all the animation cycles that need to update, just thing 
about route-finding.

If I build a goldsmith, every unit of gold ore that I possess will be 
diligently transported towards the new goldsmith's hut. If I build two, 
every unit of gold gets transported towards the "nearest" one. Bear in 
mind that "nearest" means taking into account my road network, which 
might actually make it quicker to travel to a goldsmith that's 
physically more distant because it's topologically more close. (Or 
because the roads are flatter, so there's a lower route cost. Or because 
one route is more congested than another. Or...)

When I finish a new building, one settler is selected, walks to the 
nearest place where a suitable tool can be found, picks up that tool and 
turns into the specified type of worker, and then walks to the new 
building. That's a fairly hoopy piece of AI right there, if you really 
think about it. I've got 200 settlers; how does the game engine decide 
which one to pick, which warehouse to get the tool from, and what route 
to walk to the warehouse and then how to get to the destination building?

On top of all that, the game gives you detailed statistics about your 
performance. You can see exactly how many units of every possible item 
you have, and view a history of standing volume for the last 5 hours. 
The game is /storing/ that data somehow. Then you can see how many of 
each type of building you have, and navigate to each one. You can also 
see how many are built, and how many are under construction. You also 
get a complete breakdown of which types of workers you currently have, 
and again a historical graph over time.

It's perhaps worth mentioning that it's impressive what you can do with 
32-colour graphics. The game runs at TV scan rates (depending on whether 
you bought a PAL Amiga or an NTSC Amiga), with a screen size of 320x256 
(PAL) or 320x200 (NTSC) pixels, and any 32 colours from 4096 
possibilities. The Amiga does of course have digital sound, which is why 
the geologists shout "yipee!" in a quirky chipmunk voice when they find 
gold, rather than just producing an electronic bleeping sound.



Because of the way the "food chain" of material processing is set up, 
the game tends to progress forward in stages. Much like the human body 
is made up of different "systems", the game has buildings or groups of 
buildings which perform different functions. There are systems for 
generating building materials, for mining ores, for building weapons and 
tools, for producing food, for storing surplus materials, for trade, for 
expanding territory, and for warfare. Many of these systems depend on 
what natural resources you have access to.

You begin the game with a single building planted in the middle of 
nowhere, and a small stock of materials. Your land consists of 
everything within a certain radius of your central castle. Everything 
outside your borders is black; you cannot see what's out there. Like 
everything else, you expand your territory by constructing buildings - 
in this case, guard huts. When a knight occupies one, your border moves 
outward, and after a second or two the darkness gradually lifts. Now you 
get to see whether you've obtained anything worth having.

Usually you quickly run out of swords, and so cannot recruit any more 
knights. At this point, you can no longer expand. If you haven't found 
iron ore, you have a problem. If you have, you can make more swords and 
continue your expansion.

If you're playing against a non-zero number of opponents, then at some 
point you'll expand and realise you're now up against an enemy border. 
Or maybe they'll expand and come into your field of view. (You can see 
slightly beyond your border, but not very far.) This is usually when you 
realise that they're doing way, way better than you are, and you're 
going to get wiped off the map. ;-)

This situation then develops into either a trading relationship, or 
(more usually) into a warfare situation. In war, whoever has the most 
knights and the most gold wins. (Although the defender always has the 
advantage over the attacker, all else being equal.) Usually the enemy 
can kick out knights at a seemingly endless rate, while you just can't 
produce them fast enough. And so you loose.

If you do win though, you can capture their guard huts, whereupon that 
territory becomes yours, and any buildings on it graphically burn to the 
ground. (So that's /another/ thing the game engine has to track.) After 
a while the buildings start disappearing, and you can build on the land.

Note that if your enemy captures your land, and you almost immediately 
capture it back, your buildings are still ruined. This is especially bad 
if you're struggling for building materials.

When land is captured, all the settlers on it run to find safe 
territory. If the last scrap of land belonging to a team is captured, 
the settlers wander around at random. If a settler stays off friendly 
territory too long, they die. They emit a little chipmunk squeal, and a 
little white ghost flies up into the air and vanishes. So if you capture 
all the land of a large settlement, after a while you get treated to the 
spectacle of mass settler death.

(It's a bit like Lemmings. You know, the bit where you trap fifty 
thousand lemmings in a space twenty pixels wide, and then select "nuke". 
And they all cry "f-f-five! f-f-four! t-t-three! t-t-two! o-o-one! OH 
NO!!" and start frigging /mining/ down to the center of the map. Don't 
look at me like you never did that. ;-) We all know you did...)



Later, they made several versions of The Settlers for PC. These were 
imaginatively named The Settlers II, The Settlers III and The Settlers 
IV. I'm fairly sure my dad and I have played them all.

With each new release, the graphics and sound got better, and the 
program reliability got worse. All these games still use a fixed 
isometric view with fake 3D perspective. In the later ones the graphics 
are clearly offline 3D rendered rather than hand-drawn.

Each game has different buildings with different production chains. Each 
time you play a new one, you have to spend a week or two relearning 
which building does what and which goods you need, etc. However, the 
core gameplay itself remains nearly identical.

They're been back and forth over whether you need to manually build 
roads; in some versions, the settlers work out their own routes. 
Gradually the walking of feet wears down the grass revealing bare mud. 
Further walking causes the path to callus over into a paved road. 
(Because that's how you build roads, right?) If a path isn't used for a 
long time, it gradually reverts back to mud, and then grass grows over it.

Most later versions of TS require you to build "residences" in order to 
produce settlers themselves. Depending on the version, settlers die or 
at least stop working if there are insufficient residences. (In TS1, you 
just got more settlers whenever you built more stuff.)

Some versions of The Settlers let you play as several different races. 
For example, TS4 has the Romans, the Mayans and the Vikings. Each race 
uses construction materials in different proportions, and each race uses 
a different food in which to worship the Gods, having a different (but 
functionally similar) production chain. There's a forth non-playable 
race ("the dark tribe") who are always AI-controlled.

TS4 was also nice in that it comes with a level editor. Which doesn't 
suck that much, surprisingly. But sadly, TS4 quit working once I 
installed a dual-core CPU. The same instantly crashes on launch. As it 
is, you have to search around the publisher's website and manually 
download and manually apply several "patches" to fix some of the 
ridiculous launch-day bugs the game had. Stuff like certain buildings 
not actually being functional. (!)



And then The Settlers: Heritage of the Kings came out. The newly-styled 
title tells you that something's up. Now I've never actually played or 
even seen this game. But I gather that fan reaction to it was 
overwhelmingly negative. As I say, the previous four games have all been 
more or less identical but for the cosmetic details and the fine detail 
of the individual building types. But this release was apparently quite 
radically different.

So it was with some trepidation that I started playing The Settlers 7: 
Paths to a Kingdom.

The first thing I noticed is that because it's now published by Ubisoft, 
it was that utterly retarded DRM system which /insists/ that you must be 
connected to the Internet at all times or it won't let you play. Urgh. 
So you have to create an online user account before you can even /run/ 
the game.

The next thing that I noticed is how hard it pushes all the online stuff 
in your face. It /demands/ that you create a globally-visible online 
player profile, and screams at you about how you could be playing online 
/right now/ against a real human opponent.

No thank you. :-P

I'm not the slightest bit interested in online gameplay. I'd much rather 
play offline. Fortunately that is still an option... for now. (I have to 
wonder for how much longer, however.) Even then, if still screams at you 
about how there's all this DLC you could be buying. And if you get an 
"achievement", it demands your Facebook username and password so it can 
spam all your friends. (Fortunately, you can cancel out of that.)

In short, it's been smothered in a crockload of corporate bollocks. But, 
if you try hard enough, you can still get to the actual /game/.

It used to be that you typed in a random seed number, got planted in a 
new randomly generated map which in all likelihood no other human had 
ever played, and started exploring the blank canvas. Later games had 
"missions" with human-crafted levels with vague open-ended objectives 
for you to complete. You sometimes even started with more than one 
building already built (which usually irritated me).

In this latest instalment, it begins with an epic prerendered scenematic 
about how you've been sent to retake the old kingdom and make it once 
more great... or some lame nonsense like that. I wasn't really paying 
attention. Essentially you're playing a series of tutorial levels. Which 
is what a game of this complexity could do with, to be honest.

You remember Clippy, the Microsoft paperclip? He of the infamous "It 
looks like you're writing a letter! Would you like me to completely 
bollocks it up for you?" Well this tutorial has one of those. His 
character animation just repeats mouthing the same words over and over 
again, while some bad voice acting delivers the actual lines, which are 
displayed on the screen anyway. (And occasionally don't match the spoken 
words.)

I mean, sure, I get it, it's a tutorial. But please, spare me trying to 
pretend it's part of some epic saga. Just TELL ME how to operate the 
controls. Don't feed me some prattle about "Excellent, my lady. Good 
navigation is fundamental to good kingdom rule." You just showed me how 
to use the mouse to move the camera FFS! Get ON with it!

So, the first big change to gameplay is that it's fully 3D now. Yep, you 
can look at your stuff from any angle. You can also zoom in and zoom out 
now.

This also means that /finally/ we have a slightly more convincing build 
animation. Every singe TS1, builders build buildings by walking up to 
the building and hammering on thin air. As they do this, a picture of a 
timber frame slowly reveals from bottom to top, followed by a picture of 
a finished building revealing in the same way. In TS7, we get actual 
timbers appearing one by one, in a cloud of brown dust. It's not /much/ 
more convincing (especially the way the timber frame instantly turns 
into a finished building at the end), but it's a start. Oh, and the 
builders still hammer on thin air. ;-)

Perhaps because these are tutorial missions, you always start off with 
half a dozen buildings already built. Which means you have to spent five 
minutes figuring out what you've already got before you can decide what 
you need to make. It's a bit irritating, but it seems to diminish in the 
later missions.

The really big change, of course, is the land. It used to be that you 
started in the center of a vast blackness, and you set out to explore 
it. You decide where to locate stuff, how to connect it, and so forth.

All of this is gone now. Instead, you have a network of "sectors". 
There's a minimap constantly showing you all the sectors, who owns each 
one, and how they're connected. A network of pre-existing roads runs 
through these. (Indeed, some sectors are divided on the ground by 
rivers, and have bridges across them. Hint: You can't build bridges.) 
Each sector has one guard hut in it, and a predefined set of 
"fortifications" which start as ruins and which you can optionally 
rebuild, repair and upgrade.

In short, the land is already explored, already parcelled up into 
sectors, all the roads connecting them are already build, all the guard 
huts are already built, and some of the defences are already built. All 
of these things have already been decided by the level designer, and you 
are powerless to change them. You can also see all the land, right from 
the start, so you can go see what your enemies are doing. So much for 
the thrill of exploration, or the satisfaction of building a settlement 
from nothing.

Obviously, you can only build stuff on sectors that you own. 
Irritatingly, there are parts of the land which are not part of any 
sector, and so can /never/ be built on by anybody. Isn't that wonderful?

You can also only conquer sectors in the order indicated by the minimap. 
It doesn't /matter/ if, on the ground, it's easy to walk from sector A 
to sector C. If the minimap says you have to go through sector B, then 
you have to conquer B first. And let me tell you, often the minimap 
doesn't seem to relate very closely at all to what's actually on the 
ground. (Some of the placements of cliffs, rivers, etc. also look highly 
unnatural and are /obviously/ just to divide the rolling landscape up 
into neat little sectors.)

Aside from the first few missions, it seems that gameplay now /revolves/ 
around beating your opponents. In earlier games, warfare was usually 
something that didn't happen until a game was well under way. Here it 
seems to be the main goal for play. If you don't start producing 
soldiers immediately, your AI opponents certainly will.

Perhaps most irritating of all, the way you win has changed. It used to 
be that you played until you got bored, or you played against the AI and 
you win when you've captured all their land. But in this new game, you 
win by accumulating arbitrarily-defined "victory points". Like, if I 
have 25 units of gold sitting around doing nothing, I get a victory 
point for that. If I actually /use/ that gold to do something useful, I 
lose the victory point. The first person to accumulate X victory points 
wins. (Assuming they can hold onto them for 120 seconds.)

It's daft watching a scenematic of a hooded monk promising death on the 
battlefield, and then playing a game where all I actually do is mine /a 
lot/ of gold, and then seeing my triumphant character taunt that we are 
victorious in battle. There hasn't /been/ a battle! I didn't even /have/ 
any soldiers! In a *real* game of The Settlers, I'd have lost miserably. 
But here, in this new-fangled thing, apparently that's good enough to 
win. Go figure...

In a similar way, there are certain buildings that you can't build until 
you "unlock" them by having a certain amount of "prestige". (You get 
this by building certain /other/ buildings which do nothing except take 
up space, and which require a lot of resources.)

You can also use priests to research "technologies" such as making your 
mines go faster or making your soldiers harder to beat. To do this, you 
have to produce enough priests of the correct types and wait 60 seconds 
for them to do their work. There's a whole minigame of noughts and 
crosses where only one team can own a given technology, you get it by 
sending priests, you can only research technologies connected to ones 
you've already obtained, other players can send more priests than you to 
out-bid you for a given technology, etc. Oh, and the most expensive 
technology in the center just gives you a victory point. Since once a 
technology is gone, it's gone, if you get this victory point nobody can 
ever take it away from you. (Or rather, WHEN YOUR OPPONENT gets this...)

There's a nearly identical minigame for "trade". You have to recruit 
traders and send the right number and type of traders to "establish 
trading posts" along predefined routes. Again, only one player can own a 
given trading posts, and once it's gone it's gone. Here the reward for 
owning a trading post is that you can then exchange X units of one good 
for Y units of some other good. If you have enough traders, that is. Oh, 
and some trading posts don't let you trade anything, they just give you 
a victory point.

In the old days, the AI would always start out with way more soldiers 
than you. But if you could produce soldiers really fast, you could still 
crush them. Today, the AI can research all 25 technologies and discover 
all 32 trading posts within minutes of starting the game, before you've 
had a change to even build a church never mind recruit any priests, and 
they've now buggered up the technology board and the trade board for you 
permanently. They've also got four victory points which can never be 
taken away. If you need four to win, it's now game over.

I can't help feeling that they've added all these things to make The 
Settlers "more like X". I just can't figure out exactly what X is. Then 
again, I don't play that many computer games...

And then there's the crashing. The game has flat-out crashed to the 
desktop at least three times now. And when you consider that a single 
game can take several hours to play, this is infuriating beyond 
description. The total lack of a pause button is also annoying and 
utterly unnecessary - especially when you consider that the Facebook 
messages the keep popping up manage to pause the game just fine. :-P

But the worst stability problem is "slow mode". From time to time, the 
game will just randomly enter slow mode. When this happens, the frame 
rate crashes, bits of buildings or landscape flicker between visible and 
invisible, and stray polygons sometimes flicker around the place. I've 
discovered that if you tilt the camera the right way, you can sometimes 
make it go away. Or sometimes it just fixes itself after a while. And 
then the game will play normally again. Even so, it's utterly 
infuriating to have paid money for a game and not be able to actually 
/play/ it. All the controls become so unresponsive while it's in slow 
mode...

(The game launcher checks for updates every single time you start the 
game. The first time I ran it, it found 1 update, downloaded it, 
"failed" to install it, and it's never found any updates since. So 
presumably it's a known problem that Ubisoft just can't be bothered to 
actually fix. All my /other/ games run just fine. :-P Only TS7 has 
problems.)



It is perhaps a testament to the addictive power of the original game 
that not only did it survive to its 7th incarnation, but that /in spite/ 
of all the pointless crap they've lumped on top of it, despite how badly 
they've ruined the concept and messed up the gameplay, and even 
considering how buggy it's now become, I /still/ can't stop playing it.

It's like when Westlift did a version of Uptown Girl. It's a special 
kind of song that can be covered by one of the worst bands in the world 
and /still/ sound decent...

Post a reply to this message

history, tl;dr, lol :D

  (Seriously, though, I hope you published this book also in a more
permanent location than just here, where it will disappear in a couple
of weeks...)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 05/04/2012 04:22 PM, Warp wrote:
>    history, tl;dr, lol :D

Yeah, that's pretty much the reaction I was expecting. The only 
surprising thing is that it took this long. ;-)

>    (Seriously, though, I hope you published this book also in a more
> permanent location than just here, where it will disappear in a couple
> of weeks...)

Nah, who cares? If nobody reads it here of all places, then nobody on 
Earth is ever going to want to read it. :-P

Post a reply to this message

On 05/04/2012 4:48 PM, Invisible wrote:
> Nah, who cares? If nobody reads it here of all places, then nobody on
> Earth is ever going to want to read it. :-P


I think that you should put it on your blog. I found it interesting 
enough to wander down memory lane. Thinking about the first computer 
game I played. It was called Kingdom, it was text based and I played it 
on a PDP-11. A similar idea to The Settlers but much simpler. You 
decided how much of the grain harvest you would let the farmers keep for 
planting next years crop, how much you would sell and how you would 
spend your tax money. Then I thought of the first (of two) PC game I 
bought. It was the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. So I went off to 
the BBC site to play it. Bugger me if it did not remind me of how 
useless I am at games and didn't even get out of Arthur Dent's bedroom 
before I got bored.

You have a good writing style so you should keep it available for an 
interesting party to read.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>> Nah, who cares? If nobody reads it here of all places, then nobody on
>> Earth is ever going to want to read it. :-P
>
> I think that you should put it on your blog.

I might do. Of course, there it has even /less/ chance of ever being read...

> I found it interesting
> enough to wander down memory lane. Thinking about the first computer
> game I played.

It's hardly the /first/ - that would be The Great Big Enormous Turnip, a 
preschool educational title that mum bought for our Sinclaire ZX 
Spectrum. ;-)

> Bugger me if it did not remind me of how
> useless I am at games and didn't even get out of Arthur Dent's bedroom
> before I got bored.

Haha! You know it's true. ;-)

> You have a good writing style so you should keep it available for an
> interesting party to read.

Oh hell, if an /interesting/ party were to read it, that would be great. 
(I presume you meant "interested"...)

Post a reply to this message

On 05/04/2012 04:22 PM, Warp wrote:
>    (Seriously, though, I hope you published this book also in a more
> permanent location than just here, where it will disappear in a couple
> of weeks...)

I do enjoy writing. The hard part is finding anybody who actually wants 
to read it...

Post a reply to this message

>> You have a good writing style so you should keep it available for an
>> interesting party to read.
>
> (I presume you meant "interested"...)

In other news, I tend to overuse the ellipsis.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I do enjoy writing. The hard part is finding anybody who actually wants 
> to read it...

  Nowadays YouTube videos are probably more popular than blog posts.
Try making one of those.

  (Of course you need a good camera, a good microphone, a video editing
software and experience on how to use it in order to make the video more
interesting, eg. by splicing footage from the game or whatever subject
you are talking about, and so on.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>> I do enjoy writing. The hard part is finding anybody who actually wants
>> to read it...
>
>    Nowadays YouTube videos are probably more popular than blog posts.
> Try making one of those.

Mmm, I had actually thought about that. Not for /this/, obviously. (I 
don't have any way to run the original game, for example.)  But for 
other topics, some of them would really suit a visual medium.

>    (Of course you need a good camera, a good microphone, a video editing
> software and experience on how to use it in order to make the video more
> interesting, eg. by splicing footage from the game or whatever subject
> you are talking about, and so on.)

Trouble is, videos are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes. How much 
interesting stuff can you possibly say in that length of time?

OK, I lied. The /real/ problem is that I talk like a mentally retarded 
person... >_<

Post a reply to this message

On 05/04/2012 6:41 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> Nah, who cares? If nobody reads it here of all places, then nobody on
>>> Earth is ever going to want to read it. :-P
>>
>> I think that you should put it on your blog.
>
> I might do. Of course, there it has even /less/ chance of ever being
> read...
>

You never know. You might become famous.

>> I found it interesting
>> enough to wander down memory lane. Thinking about the first computer
>> game I played.
>
> It's hardly the /first/ - that would be The Great Big Enormous Turnip, a
> preschool educational title that mum bought for our Sinclaire ZX
> Spectrum. ;-)
>

When you were two years old?

>> Bugger me if it did not remind me of how
>> useless I am at games and didn't even get out of Arthur Dent's bedroom
>> before I got bored.
>
> Haha! You know it's true. ;-)
>
Don't I just.
It is a big disappointment to me. Minesweeper is my limit.

>> You have a good writing style so you should keep it available for an
>> interesting party to read.
>
> Oh hell, if an /interesting/ party were to read it, that would be great.
> (I presume you meant "interested"...)

I did but an interesting party would be better. ;-)

(.) (.)   #-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 05/04/2012 7:45 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>
> OK, I lied. The /real/ problem is that I talk like a mentally retarded
> person... >_<

No you don't. You may feel that but you sound normal.
Make a script and practice so you don't stumble.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >    (Of course you need a good camera, a good microphone, a video editing
> > software and experience on how to use it in order to make the video more
> > interesting, eg. by splicing footage from the game or whatever subject
> > you are talking about, and so on.)

> Trouble is, videos are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes. How much 
> interesting stuff can you possibly say in that length of time?

  What videos?

  Even with a limited account the maximum length of a YouTube video
is 15 minutes. Most accounts are unlimited though, and there's virtually
no length limit. (There literally are videos of over 10 hours on YouTube.
The only limit is file size, at something like 2GB, not video length.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Trouble is, videos are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes. How much
>> interesting stuff can you possibly say in that length of time?
>
>    What videos?
>
>    Even with a limited account the maximum length of a YouTube video
> is 15 minutes. Most accounts are unlimited though, and there's virtually
> no length limit. (There literally are videos of over 10 hours on YouTube.
> The only limit is file size, at something like 2GB, not video length.)

Interesting. I was told [I don't recall by who] that it's limited to 5 
minutes, to stop people posting entire movies. (Not that this stops 
anybody; they just chop it into 5-minute chunks and number them!)

Post a reply to this message

>> OK, I lied. The /real/ problem is that I talk like a mentally retarded
>> person... >_<
>
> No you don't. You may feel that but you sound normal.
> Make a script and practice so you don't stumble.

I watched a video of a gathering I attended once. Everybody else is 
"talk talk talk talk". And then I'm starting there, "taaaalking 
reeeeaaaally slooooowlyyyyy". It was infuriating to listen to. Everybody 
else managed to utter a dozen sentences in the time it took me to say 
one. Jesus, no wonder everybody I meet thinks I'm a moron!

Post a reply to this message

On 5-4-2012 19:50, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 05/04/2012 04:22 PM, Warp wrote:
>> (Seriously, though, I hope you published this book also in a more
>> permanent location than just here, where it will disappear in a couple
>> of weeks...)
>
> I do enjoy writing.

pity you did decide not to go into research.

BTW settlers is the reason I stopped playing games on the computer.
Two reasons: it took too much time and at some point when trying to get 
some sleep I was still seeing these guys walking around on the inside of 
my eyelids.

Positive point: I used to play it also with my brother.



-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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> You never know. You might become famous.

Ha! Yeah. :-P

But I'm /already/ the POV-Ray mascot. Isn't that famous? :-P And of 
course, /now/ I'm fat-32. :-S

>> It's hardly the /first/ - that would be The Great Big Enormous Turnip, a
>> preschool educational title that mum bought for our Sinclaire ZX
>> Spectrum. ;-)
>
> When you were two years old?

Well, slightly older than that, but yeah.

>>> Bugger me if it did not remind me of how
>>> useless I am at games and didn't even get out of Arthur Dent's bedroom
>>> before I got bored.
>>
>> Haha! You know it's true. ;-)
>>
> Don't I just.
> It is a big disappointment to me. Minesweeper is my limit.

Minesweeper is actually surprisingly hard. I suck at that...

>> (I presume you meant "interested"...)
>
> I did but an interesting party would be better. ;-)

I agree.

> (.) (.) #-)

Apart from the final close-bracket, this is a valid Haskell expression. 
Isn't that wonderful? (Of course, it doesn't actually type-check, since 
the type of (.)(.) is (a1 -> b -> c) -> a1 -> (a -> b) -> a -> c, 
whereas the type of #- is Int# -> Int# -> Int#.)

Post a reply to this message

>> I do enjoy writing.
>
> pity you did decide not to go into research.

Are you kidding me? I *suck* at research! :-S

> BTW settlers is the reason I stopped playing games on the computer.
> Two reasons: it took too much time

Well, it /does/ take a hell of a long time, yes.

> and at some point when trying to get
> some sleep I was still seeing these guys walking around on the inside of
> my eyelids.

Haha! Try spending a week skiing. After a while, you say in bed trying 
to sleep, and you swear you can feel skis on the ends of your legs, 
pulling them this way and that as they run over the crisp snow... mmm...

Alternatively, try playing HalfLife 2. Ravenholm gave me nightmares. 
(Gotta love the way it's the level you're going to spend the longest 
time playing, because it's so ridiculously hard that you'll never get 
past it...)

> Positive point: I used to play it also with my brother.

Yeah, me and my dad are both addicts. It's one of the very few computer 
games he actually plays. The other one is freecell. You know, the shitty 
one that comes with Windows? Yeah, that. He's got an Access database 
tracking which game IDs he's solved and everything.

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On 5-4-2012 22:19, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> I do enjoy writing.
>>
>> pity you did decide not to go into research.
>
> Are you kidding me? I *suck* at research! :-S

That is not a problem. Let somebody else do the work and you write it 
down, that is a win win combination.
I wish it wouldn't but nowadays writing papers is much more important 
that doing good research.


-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On 05/04/2012 9:14 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> It is a big disappointment to me. Minesweeper is my limit.
>
> Minesweeper is actually surprisingly hard. I suck at that...
>

Different strokes for different folks.

>>> (I presume you meant "interested"...)
>>
>> I did but an interesting party would be better. ;-)
>
> I agree.
>
>> (.) (.) #-)
>
> Apart from the final close-bracket, this is a valid Haskell expression.
> Isn't that wonderful? (Of course, it doesn't actually type-check, since
> the type of (.)(.) is (a1 -> b -> c) -> a1 -> (a -> b) -> a -> c,
> whereas the type of #- is Int# -> Int# -> Int#.)

I knew that, of course. </lie>

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:41:50 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> I might do. Of course, there it has even /less/ chance of ever being
> read...

It's not just about it being read, it's about having writing samples 
available should you decide to look for work in writing.  Well-written 
writing samples are always good to have for a portfolio.

Jim

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On Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:08:56 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> OK, I lied. The /real/ problem is that I talk like a mentally retarded
>>> person... >_<
>>
>> No you don't. You may feel that but you sound normal.
>> Make a script and practice so you don't stumble.
> 
> I watched a video of a gathering I attended once. Everybody else is
> "talk talk talk talk". And then I'm starting there, "taaaalking
> reeeeaaaally slooooowlyyyyy". It was infuriating to listen to. Everybody
> else managed to utter a dozen sentences in the time it took me to say
> one. Jesus, no wonder everybody I meet thinks I'm a moron!

Everybody thinks they sound weird unless they've spent time watching and/
or listening to recordings of themselves.  It has to do with the way your 
voice resonates in your own bones when you talk.

I think I talk at a fairly normal speed, but most people think I tend to 
talk way too fast.

Jim

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On Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:19:14 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> pity you did decide not to go into research.
> 
> Are you kidding me? I *suck* at research! :-S

Arguably, things that you're actually interested in you research really 
well.

Jim

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On 05/04/2012 9:08 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> OK, I lied. The /real/ problem is that I talk like a mentally retarded
>>> person... >_<
>>
>> No you don't. You may feel that but you sound normal.
>> Make a script and practice so you don't stumble.
>
> I watched a video of a gathering I attended once. Everybody else is
> "talk talk talk talk". And then I'm starting there, "taaaalking
> reeeeaaaally slooooowlyyyyy". It was infuriating to listen to. Everybody
> else managed to utter a dozen sentences in the time it took me to say
> one. Jesus, no wonder everybody I meet thinks I'm a moron!

Well, if you remember we have met. And you seemed almost normal to me. :-P

I don't think that I've ever met anyone who does not hate the sound of 
their own recorded voice.
Trust me it is not as bad as you think.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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>> I might do. Of course, there it has even /less/ chance of ever being
>> read...
>
> It's not just about it being read, it's about having writing samples
> available should you decide to look for work in writing.  Well-written
> writing samples are always good to have for a portfolio.

Well, yes, there's always that...

Post a reply to this message

>>> (.) (.) #-)
>>
>> Apart from the final close-bracket, this is a valid Haskell expression.
>> Isn't that wonderful? (Of course, it doesn't actually type-check, since
>> the type of (.)(.) is (a1 -> b -> c) -> a1 -> (a -> b) -> a -> c,
>> whereas the type of #- is Int# -> Int# -> Int#.)
>
> I knew that, of course. </lie>

Heh. I sound like one of those guys who looks at a pair of boobies and 
makes some comment about biology or evolution or something, while all 
the other men in the room are thinking "mmm, boobies..."

Post a reply to this message

>> Are you kidding me? I *suck* at research! :-S
>
> Arguably, things that you're actually interested in you research really
> well.

As best as I can tell, "research" isn't about actually finding stuff 
out. It's about compiling long complex lists of citations to 
impressive-sounding journals. I've never actually /seen/ a journal in my 
life!

Post a reply to this message

> I wish it wouldn't but nowadays writing papers is much more important
> that doing good research.

I can believe it.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:33:16 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> Are you kidding me? I *suck* at research! :-S
>>
>> Arguably, things that you're actually interested in you research really
>> well.
> 
> As best as I can tell, "research" isn't about actually finding stuff
> out. 

I do a fair bit of research on various topics, and IME, it certainly 
is. :)

> It's about compiling long complex lists of citations to
> impressive-sounding journals. I've never actually /seen/ a journal in my
> life!

Get thee to a library henceforth! ;)

Jim

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Em 05/04/2012 17:08, Orchid Win7 v1 escreveu:
>>> OK, I lied. The /real/ problem is that I talk like a mentally retarded
>>> person... >_<
>>
>> No you don't. You may feel that but you sound normal.
>> Make a script and practice so you don't stumble.
>
> I watched a video of a gathering I attended once. Everybody else is
> "talk talk talk talk". And then I'm starting there, "taaaalking
> reeeeaaaally slooooowlyyyyy". It was infuriating to listen to. Everybody
> else managed to utter a dozen sentences in the time it took me to say
> one. Jesus, no wonder everybody I meet thinks I'm a moron!

you know what's funnier?  If you showed these people your long and 
elaborate posts about haskell, they would be far more sure you are a 
complete retard. :)

if you instead talked some non-sensical shit really slowly like a 
demented marijuana user, you'd be really popular. :)

BTW, I'm about as much of a moron talk-wise.  I don't see the point of 
most social talking, I don't enjoy the subjects, so I simply don't 
participate and instead come online to talk with other geeks like me. :)

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On 4/5/2012 11:45, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Trouble is, videos are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes.

They haven't been limited to 5 minutes for years.

  > How much
> interesting stuff can you possibly say in that length of time?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

Talk fast!

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 4/5/2012 13:12, andrel wrote:
> sleep I was still seeing these guys walking around on the inside of my eyelids.

I knew I was playing too much video games when I had dreams with crosshairs.

Or when I checked under the stairs for Deus Ex grackles.

Or when the baby starts crying in the restaurant and my first thought is 
"gas arrow".

All true stories.



-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 05/04/2012 11:31 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Heh. I sound like one of those guys who looks at a pair of boobies and
> makes some comment about biology or evolution or something, while all
> the other men in the room are thinking "mmm, boobies..."

But you are one of those guys. ;-)
Rejoice!

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 06/04/2012 2:26 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> >  It's about compiling long complex lists of citations to
>> >  impressive-sounding journals. I've never actually/seen/  a journal in my
>> >  life!
> Get thee to a library henceforth!;)

And hurry up before the current government closes them down.

And take ear plugs to cut out the incessant sound of keyboard clicking.
Our libraries are being turned into internet cafes and kindergartens.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 6-4-2012 10:15, Stephen wrote:
> On 05/04/2012 11:31 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> Heh. I sound like one of those guys who looks at a pair of boobies and
>> makes some comment about biology or evolution or something, while all
>> the other men in the room are thinking "mmm, boobies..."
>
> But you are one of those guys. ;-)
> Rejoice!
>

Now we know that he is even one of the guys that when someone puts the 
expression
(a1 -> b -> c) -> a1 -> (a -> b) -> a -> c
on the blackboard, he will think "mmm, boobies..."


-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On 06/04/2012 9:35 AM, andrel wrote:
> On 6-4-2012 10:15, Stephen wrote:
>> On 05/04/2012 11:31 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> Heh. I sound like one of those guys who looks at a pair of boobies and
>>> makes some comment about biology or evolution or something, while all
>>> the other men in the room are thinking "mmm, boobies..."
>>
>> But you are one of those guys. ;-)
>> Rejoice!
>>
>
> Now we know that he is even one of the guys that when someone puts the
> expression
> (a1 -> b -> c) -> a1 -> (a -> b) -> a -> c
> on the blackboard, he will think "mmm, boobies..."
>
>
In here, I sometime feel that I’ve walked into a Beckett play and have 
just asked Lucky to think.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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>> Trouble is, videos are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes.
>
> They haven't been limited to 5 minutes for years.

O RLY?

>> How much
>> interesting stuff can you possibly say in that length of time?
>
> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
>
> Talk fast!

Oh yeah, AS IF there's any way I could match the genius of Yahtzee. Did 
you know, that's guy's written a *book*? (You know, actually published 
in actual bookshops?)

Post a reply to this message

Em 05/04/2012 07:47, Invisible escreveu:
> Way, waaaay back in 1993, a German company released a game called The
> Settlers for Commodore Amiga. I played the demo, and I've been hooked
> ever since.
>
> Put simply, the game involves building a thriving settlement. You don't
> control the actual settlers (i.e., people) directly. Instead, you build

sounds like all other strategy God-view game out there, including 
Populous, Civilization and Simcity.  Growing as an arcade button masher, 
I yawn at those games... (yet weirdly enough I'm fond of text adventures 
and japanese "RPGs")

Post a reply to this message

>> Put simply, the game involves building a thriving settlement. You don't
>> control the actual settlers (i.e., people) directly. Instead, you build
>
> sounds like all other strategy God-view game out there, including
> Populous, Civilization and Simcity.

Yeah, I tried Civilization once. It's more like playing a board game. 
Couldn't figure out how to work it at all. Very dull.

As far as I can tell, Simcity is for people who enjoy making virtual 
people do silly and/or erotic things to each other.

I know nothing about Populous.

> Growing as an arcade button masher, I yawn at those games...

Oh, I enjoy a good side-scroller too. But they don't make those any more.

> (yet weirdly enough I'm fond of text adventures and japanese "RPGs")

Never interested me.

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Em 08/04/2012 06:06, Orchid Win7 v1 escreveu:
>>> Put simply, the game involves building a thriving settlement. You don't
>>> control the actual settlers (i.e., people) directly. Instead, you build
>>
>> sounds like all other strategy God-view game out there, including
>> Populous, Civilization and Simcity.
>
> Yeah, I tried Civilization once. It's more like playing a board game.
> Couldn't figure out how to work it at all. Very dull.

they are all very dull, yes.  Yet, many people seem to enjoy...

> As far as I can tell, Simcity is for people who enjoy making virtual
> people do silly and/or erotic things to each other.

That's actually a lame interactive soap opera by the name The Sims, 
following the success of the original series which is a resource 
management game putting you in the role of Mayor of a city.

> I know nothing about Populous.

Shame on you.  It's one of the pionners of such games, by a UK company 
BTW, Bullfrog (see also Syndicate).  It launched Peter Molyneux's 
career, also of Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park and Black & White fame.

>> Growing as an arcade button masher, I yawn at those games...
>
> Oh, I enjoy a good side-scroller too. But they don't make those any more.

surely you won't waste your whole 3D world by allowing the player to 
only scroll right or left, right?

Uncharted and God of War for Playstation 3 are 2 modern 3D games that 
have as much perfect and solid good old 16-bit side-scroller feel to 
them as possible in a 3D world.  Seriously, action games need not be 
just FPS...

Post a reply to this message

On 4/8/2012 2:06 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> Put simply, the game involves building a thriving settlement. You don't
>>> control the actual settlers (i.e., people) directly. Instead, you build
>>
>> sounds like all other strategy God-view game out there, including
>> Populous, Civilization and Simcity.
>
> Yeah, I tried Civilization once. It's more like playing a board game.
> Couldn't figure out how to work it at all. Very dull.
>
> As far as I can tell, Simcity is for people who enjoy making virtual
> people do silly and/or erotic things to each other.
>
That is "The Sims". Simcity centers on trying to build just the 
infrastructure, like buildings, roads, etc., to keep a basically 
non-visible (unless you count cars moving on roads) population happy and 
productive. And, its a pain in the butt to play, especially when the 
simulation drops in some sort of disaster. At that point, everything was 
going fine, and now the city is in chaos, all your careful planning has 
gone down the drain, and you have to decide to either pick up the 
pieces, somehow, or get pissed off and just generate more disasters, to 
watch the city burn. lol

Post a reply to this message

On 4/8/2012 13:08, nemesis wrote:
> Uncharted and God of War for Playstation 3 are 2 modern 3D games that have
> as much perfect and solid good old 16-bit side-scroller feel to them as
> possible in a 3D world. Seriously, action games need not be just FPS...

Uncharted as a 3D side-scroller?  That's ... a novel way of looking at it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

Em 08/04/2012 19:22, Darren New escreveu:
> On 4/8/2012 13:08, nemesis wrote:
>> Uncharted and God of War for Playstation 3 are 2 modern 3D games that
>> have
>> as much perfect and solid good old 16-bit side-scroller feel to them as
>> possible in a 3D world. Seriously, action games need not be just FPS...
>
> Uncharted as a 3D side-scroller? That's ... a novel way of looking at it.

Sure, there's plenty of shooting and brawling, but the focus is on 
exploration and platforming.  It reminds me very much of classic 
side-scrollers such as Castlevania, Flashback, Blackthorne and even Pitfall.

of course, its more direct lineage is Tomb Raider, which was an early 
attempt at bringing side-scrolling action into 3D.

Post a reply to this message

On 4/8/2012 17:33, nemesis wrote:
>> Uncharted as a 3D side-scroller? That's ... a novel way of looking at it.
>
> Sure, there's plenty of shooting and brawling, but the focus is on
> exploration and platforming. It reminds me very much of classic
> side-scrollers such as Castlevania, Flashback, Blackthorne and even Pitfall.

I didn't say it was wrong. I said it was novel. :-) I can see that, yes. 
Certainly much the same sort of gameplay, at least if you leave out the 
story-driven nature of Uncharted.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Uncharted and God of War for Playstation 3 are 2 modern 3D games that 
> have as much perfect and solid good old 16-bit side-scroller feel to 
> them as possible in a 3D world.  Seriously, action games need not be 
> just FPS...

  I wouldn't call God of War a side-scroller, but more a bird-view 2D
game.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> As far as I can tell, Simcity is for people who enjoy making virtual
>> people do silly and/or erotic things to each other.
>
> That's actually a lame interactive soap opera by the name The Sims,

Oh, OK. Well what do I know?

>> I know nothing about Populous.
>
> Shame on you. It's one of the pionners of such games, by a UK company
> BTW, Bullfrog (see also Syndicate).

Oh, /that/ Bullfrog.

I think I still have my copy of Syndicate laying around somewhere. It 
was an OK game, but not great. (Either that or I'm doing it /completely/ 
wrong...)

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Le 2012-04-08 05:06, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
> Yeah, I tried Civilization once. It's more like playing a board game.
> Couldn't figure out how to work it at all. Very dull.
>
BURN THE HERETIC!!!!

-- 
/*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 }

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Warp escreveu:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Uncharted and God of War for Playstation 3 are 2 modern 3D games that 
>> have as much perfect and solid good old 16-bit side-scroller feel to 
>> them as possible in a 3D world.  Seriously, action games need not be 
>> just FPS...
> 
>   I wouldn't call God of War a side-scroller, but more a bird-view 2D
> game.

It's pretty much a mix of a side-scroller brawler like Golden Axe and 
fatalities from Mortal Kombat.

It only takes a bird view when there's too much action on huge 
environments... the rest of the time, the camera is close to the action.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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>> I watched a video of a gathering I attended once. Everybody else is
>> "talk talk talk talk". And then I'm starting there, "taaaalking
>> reeeeaaaally slooooowlyyyyy". It was infuriating to listen to. Everybody
>> else managed to utter a dozen sentences in the time it took me to say
>> one. Jesus, no wonder everybody I meet thinks I'm a moron!
>
> Everybody thinks they sound weird unless they've spent time watching and/
> or listening to recordings of themselves.  It has to do with the way your
> voice resonates in your own bones when you talk.

Sure. It's not so much the tone of my voice, it's the way I talk at half 
the speed of all the normal people.

Post a reply to this message

On 10/04/2012 9:13 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Sure. It's not so much the tone of my voice, it's the way I talk at half
> the speed of all the normal people.

I did not notice it.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Em 10/04/2012 06:09, Stephen escreveu:
> On 10/04/2012 9:13 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Sure. It's not so much the tone of my voice, it's the way I talk at half
>> the speed of all the normal people.
>
> I did not notice it.

his brain multitasks so much that it's causing a delay in the aural 
feedback loop.

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