241
DF Suggestions / Re: Sleep/coma syndrome
« on: June 01, 2013, 11:55:31 am »
Already implemented. CE_DROWSINESS.
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242
DF Suggestions / Re: Another take on Magic - Magicmaker style
« on: June 01, 2013, 11:40:33 am »QuoteAlchemists work with with mercury, lead, sulfur, arsenic, acids etcMercury, Lead, Sulfur, Arsenic, and many acids can all be safely handled.
The chemicals and experiments that cannot, shouldn't be worked on by an amateur.
Are you arguing that alchemy was NOT extremely dangerous? I find that somewhat difficult to believe. I don't have any examples in mind for alchemists who blew themselves up, but then again I can't really name any alchemists at all. Plenty of modern chemists have died in accidents, though. Were they better with lab safety in the distant past, or did their lack of knowledge of how their reagents worked protect the alchemists somehow?
Also, "can be safely handled" is not very reassuring. It is possible to safely handle virtually anything. Hydrofluoric acid can be safe to work with, as long as you're careful. With proper precautions taken, plutonium-241 is quite harmless. Or for a different example, tigers are entirely safe to handle, provided you know what you're doing and don't do anything stupid. This does not mean that there are no risks associated with messing around with them. I guess that's what you meant with "shouldn't be worked on by an amateur", although I'm not convinced that that is a reasonable assumption to make with pseudo-medieval alchemy.
243
Creative Projects / Re: +The Engravers Guild+
« on: June 01, 2013, 08:59:50 am »Never accuse me of making bullshit excuses, lying, or making things up. I really fucking hate that.
I'm sorry that you feel that way.
There's a reason it's in first person. It's a picture from a first-person ISG.
And I don't want to illustrate a helicopter crash in a desert. The reason the sand's so uniform? It's a beach. With wet sand.
Dodge/burn and smudge tool's the only way I've figured out how to shade using GIMP. Because fuck the manual.
And is my hand broken or something? Because my hand was what I was looking at as I drew. That's the structure of my hand you're looking at there, in a perfectly normal position.
Well, I can certainly give some more in-depth critique on the anatomy if that helps:
The part connecting the thumb to the palm is too thin, making the palm look kinda stretched. Like the thumb was pulled outwards. There's this knobbly bit on the back of the palm that I'm pretty sure should be way lower, in the wrist. The knuckle joints, judging from the shading between the fingers, are in a straight line. I'm sure there's some individual variation in this, but mine are curved and tilted, with the pinky knuckle way closer to the wrist than the index knucle. The fingers look curved more than jointed, and the smudging makes them look lumpy. Nails look off-perspective; pictured from straight above when the fingers and palm are more from the side. And those pale lines seem superimposed on the hand rather than wrapped around it, and now that I look at them more, they're also criss-crossing in a way that makes no biological sense for blood vessels. That's what they are, right?
I've heard some serious artists vehemently preaching that the dodge/burn tool is from the devil, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about using it. I don't really like it myself, though. You should probably look into learning some other techniques as well.
What is an "ISG"?
244
Creative Projects / Re: +The Engravers Guild+
« on: May 31, 2013, 04:48:17 pm »I wasn't aware that I was being defensive, nor was I aware that justifying some of the stuff with perfectly valid reasons was frowned upon. And who are you to give me "options" as to how I should be? Am I not permitted to take a tertiary route and post for criticism for the sole fact that I want to see what others think is wrong compared to my view on it? For example, I forgot to do the lines in the knuckles and I'm disappointed with how the sand turned out. However, it seems nobody else made that observation, instead focusing on shading, which I admit I tend to neglect, sharpness, even though the blurring was intentional, and arrangement of the hand, which I personally did not see problem with. And please at least capitalize the first letter of my goddamn username. Shift keys exist for a reason.
Yeah, justifying stuff is generally frowned upon, because usually the justifications are bullshit excuses to cover actual unintentional mistakes. Either that or just bad decisions. Like, the blurring. It's not very good. Some parts are sharp, while in others the colors have bled all over, like you just rubbed your image with the smudge tool. And the anatomy is hardly flawless. And the composition? It's an empty field of beige with a green hand reaching in. The green and beige have pretty much the same value, so the hand's not even distinct against the sand, which is what McScoopbeard was saying. If you want to illustrate someone crawling up after a helicopter crash to a desert, I'd suggest spinning the POV around. Focus on the guy's face, with the smouldering copter wreckage in the background. Or pick a birds-eye perspective, showing the wreckage from above, with a humanoid silhouette next to it.
245
General Discussion / Re: Gunnerkrigg Court: Confusion, confusion everywhere!
« on: May 31, 2013, 02:09:10 pm »
That was back when Kat had just learned that Paz had assumed that she and Annie were a couple.
246
General Discussion / Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« on: May 31, 2013, 07:08:05 am »And people still faun over [Alyx] like she's the epitome of attractiveness.
Well it's not like she's ugly. She just, you know, doesn't look like a stripper. (Doing a Google image search for "alyx" just now revealed that some people have taken steps to rectify this.
) Plus, she's a likable character, which probably goes some ways to facilitate the fawning.For ugly women, I guess there's the "evil witch" archetype. They're kind of evil, though. And I can't really even recall a lot of examples with evil witches in actually important roles. Ravel Puzzlewell was badass, but who else is there?
247
General Discussion / Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« on: May 30, 2013, 04:34:07 pm »Yeah, that's the problem. You don't beat up female grunts, so when you beat up your girlfriend for her own good, it feels like we're putting violence against women on a pedestal. It's supposed to be violence against that particular woman that is motivating, but when there's only one of them, it seems like it's violence against all womanhood.
And why do we write it this way? Because it's not okay to hit a girl or kill a woman when she's an enemy soldier (no one wants to do that, and women can't be soldiers anyway, aren't strong enough to fight back--I think that's the argument), but it is okay to hit or kill a woman if she's emotionally significant enough to you and vulnerable.
I agree with the first paragraph. The second one, though... I don't think video games imply that it's okay to kill a woman you're on a first-name basis with. Rather, it's NOT okay, so by doing it anyway your game is being DARK and EDGY. And although female mooks are somewhat rare, when they DO happen, I think they're basically taken in stride. I'm thinking of Knights of the Old Republic or Baldur's Gate.
248
Other Games / Re: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND.
« on: May 30, 2013, 11:13:07 am »
Xom is the best god.
249
Other Games / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« on: May 30, 2013, 11:11:29 am »
You don't have to like every game. Not even if it belongs to a series you like. Just let go and go play something you actually enjoy. 
250
General Discussion / Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« on: May 30, 2013, 10:46:08 am »The highest cause of death for pregnant woman is spousal murder~
Just to add on another statistic.
That kind of makes sense, since most other causes of death are presumably fairly low for pregnant women. They usually get regular medical checkups, and need to be young enough to get pregnant in the first place. Anyway, I think quoting statistics like that without any context is kind of misleading. :/
Same goes for the numbers Sarkeesian gives. Neither adjusted for population nor compared to other numbers, the only thing they tell us is that sometimes women are assaulted or killed. That violent crime exists. It just feels like an emotional appeal to behold the evils of patriarchy. A beating every nine seconds gives 3504000 beatings per year, or an annual beating rate of 2232 per 100 000 people. I could only find numbers for aggravated assault, so no idea how this compares to men. Three murders by boyfriends, husbands or ex-partners per day gives 1095 murders per year, or a rate of 0.7 per 100 000 people per year, and amounts to a little less than a third of all murdered women. Men are about 3.8 times more likely to get murdered than women.
As for trivialising female suffering, I'm not convinced that is happening, either. Kind of the opposite, actually. Female suffering is put on a pedestal as a whole different kind of suffering. After slaughtering hundreds of nameless monsters and uniformed enemy soldiers, the player is so jaded to fantasy violence in general that to push him out of his comfort zone, the game has to make him hit a girl.
By the way, I got my murder counts from this CDC report based on 2010 data.
251
Curses / Re: Keeping old prison sentences for escapees.
« on: May 30, 2013, 07:47:16 am »
Wikipedia has this to say:
Apparently happens in Mexico. I could see it as being a thing in LCS if the prison laws swing Liberal enough.
Quote from: Prison escape
In some jurisdictions, such as in the United States, escaping from jail or prison is a criminal offense. In Virginia, for instance, the punishment for escape depends on whether the offender escaped by using force or violence or setting fire to the jail, and the seriousness of the offense for which they were imprisoned.[1][2][3] In other jurisdictions[which?], the philosophy of the law holds that it is human nature to want to escape. In Mexico, for instance, escapees who do not break any other laws are not charged for anything and no extra time is added to their sentence;[4] however, officers are allowed to shoot prisoners attempting to escape.[5] In Mexico, an escape is illegal if violence is used against prison personnel or property or if prison inmates or officials aid the escape.[6]
Apparently happens in Mexico. I could see it as being a thing in LCS if the prison laws swing Liberal enough.
252
General Discussion / Re: MSPA Homestuck
« on: May 29, 2013, 12:51:29 pm »Also it's sealed within a magic 8 ball and dropped into a volcano, no reason that can't be where it's supposed to incubate
You know, that would be SUCH a point-and-click-adventure-game way of doing things. To proceed, you must take the Genesis Frog that you just spend the whole game trying to breed, and throw it in a volcano so it can grow. Sensible puzzles are for the weak.
253
General Discussion / Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« on: May 29, 2013, 12:45:44 pm »
Baldur's Gate II does it twice. Right after the tutorial dungeon, your sister Imoen gets sent to Wizard Jail along with the main antagonist, for being a wizard. You bust her out halfway through the game. Later, your love interest (if you have one) will get abducted and turned into a vampire, and you have to kill him/her and haul the body to be raised.
254
General Discussion / Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« on: May 29, 2013, 08:11:45 am »She was only revealed to be girl at the very end, after you beat it, seconds before the game rolled credits. It was not fan service. It was "you played this game for weeks, you've been playing the greatest space hunter in the galaxy...by the way, she's a girl."You say that but then I have to wonder... Why is she dressed like that?
In Samus' case, I can actually think of reasons to be dressed like that. She has some kind of insanely sophisticated power armour made by the chozo. In most games, she is constantly wearing it. Why would she need any other clothes? It's not like she ever has to take it off when there are other people around. And since this is bullshit precursor technology we're talking about, you can even make up some excuse about the suit needing to directly interface with her skin. Even without such an excuse, wearing baggy clothes under a futuristic space suit sounds hella uncomfortable. How is the suit supposed to keep you clean through the clothes? How do you use the integrated bathroom?
Anyway, regardless of whether the ending screen is tarted up for the sole purpose of fanservice, I think Samus shows that it's okay for a girl to be a mute protagonist in power armour who guns down xeno scum by the thousands and has a distressing tendency to blow up half the planets she lands on.
255
General Discussion / Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« on: May 29, 2013, 05:48:52 am »Not every game needs to teach gender equality, or be empowering to females. But is our entertainment culture allowing such games to succeed beyond a few remarkable examples? Are we selecting heavily for male empowerment fantasies, and is that a problem? I think those are the questions she's trying to start discussion on.WHO is selecting for male empowerment fantasies, though? Games with female protagonists are a distinct minority, but the ones that do exist seem to be doing pretty well. Mirror's Edge didn't sell quite as many copies as EA wanted, but it sold okay, and a lot of critics liked it. Portal was almost universally liked. And everyone knows the Metroid series. Making your protagonist female clearly doesn't doom a game. It just doesn't happen very often for some reason. :/
really hard to find a good female-lead stealth gameYou might want to try Mirror's Edge, actually. It's definitely not a stealth game, but it does focus on getting to places you're not supposed to be and avoiding combat.