Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: IamanElfCollaborator on December 07, 2012, 06:23:39 pm

What tools would we need, apart from a syringe and possibly whatever we can find?

Not enough information yet, but poison is probably a good option. Syringe serves no purpose other than to leave an identifiable mark. Our target will be at a party. Should be easy to slip something into a drink.

Depends on the poison. Fugul yes; cyanide, yes; blue-ringed octopus venom, no.

How about we not depend on methods that require him to have rare medical conditions or deadly allergies.

How about we talk about them in case he or a future target does.
It could make our lives MUCH easier. Pose as a new waiter who forgot Mr. Johnson was allergic to peanuts...

I like the "slip something in his drink" plan.

Use spider strength to break handcuffs! Escape towards hell-portal!

Ooh! Anxiety meds!

Take medicine, calm down...

I don't doubt that even 9-3=6 may end badly for our health. I suspect that GM has some hidden tables with nasty stuff

Well, GM just said he has no tables, and 4-3 ended well enough...

Now about your numbered actions:
1. Sensible, if we time-skip.
2. See above.
3. Riight, turn the trees against us when most of our enemies aware of our existence are elves and most of our allies chat with plants...
4. See above. Not right above, two above.
5. And the past.
6. See #4. No matter how you interpret that, it works.
7. Be subtler if we do it at all...

So, around than 3.15 million in the US--higher, because of the higher concentration of metahumans in the US. Let's say 3.5 million for a nice, round number. Also say that only 2% have powers that would be useful to us. That's 70,000. Assume that most of them aren't interested and some are evil; that leaves us with an estimate of at least 10,000 metahumans with useful powers that would be willing to join the team, and a much larger number who could serve as staff or something more effectively due to their powers, plus people like Bruce who are normal people with extraordinary technology...

Run a recruitment campaign.
Suggest to the President that this massive resource be tapped, to create a new military organization or something. In exchange for access to anything that s/he or Congress approves, we will offer a proof-of-concept by offing Epsilon. This leaves the president with the glory of both stopping a mass-murdering megalomaniac man AND starting a successful new organization which would probably put the Avengers to shame.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on December 07, 2012, 10:55:28 am

I did not continue the derail, I noticed that the other person did. Just like we're doing now.

"But it's okay when I do it!"

It's only okay because I didn't get a promise to stop the debate if they did, continue the debate, and then expect the other guy to shut up. That's really the only thing I seen wrong with Artanis00 continuing the debate.

Damiac: I agree with most of your statements, except the idea that selecting "closest stone/block" won't get added and the claim that this would be simple. It might be, I'm guessing it's not, but regardless Toady's likely going to go a bit farther with features before worrying about little UI things.

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How does this address your contradictions?

I did not contradict myself. UI is display plus getting input and sending orders to the game engine.

Sure. My arguments are bogus and you didn't acquiesce that point.
Oh wait, they're not and

1 and 2 - yes.

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How on earth could Toady let them do more than they have?

Like I said - make the UI a separate part of the engine and work through APIs.

As mentioned, the UI and game are pretty much intertwined. I'm kinda amazed at those people who managed to make Dwarf Therapist and its ilk.

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Toady's not likely to add others' work into his game, though, so don't expect him to.

"The Game" and the UI are - I believe - two different things in this case.

Debateable. Unless Toady comes, we'll just be butting heads over this argument, but like said earlier, they're as inextricably intertwined as Hershey's and chocolate.

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Each time the way dwarves choose jobs changes somehow, whether by adding new ones, improving AI, whatever, the UI with assigning jobs would probably be affected, especially if it's as complex as you seem to think it should be. Trust me, it's almost always more complex than you think it will be.

Ok. If the interface reads a list of states a dwarf can have and displays one of them on a dwarf. the same with his leg or whatever. The interface can be just as data-driven as the game itself is. Assigning jobs - if you need to assign a job to a dwarf, then you do it. The new job cfor a dwarf can be simply an entry in the description files. It's been done already.
Look. I'm a programmer. I do that for a living. I know that it can be done and how it can be done. Because the process is essentially the same for every data-driven system. All you need is good design.

I'm not a programmer, but I know that "good design" changes with what you're designing it for. DF 0.28.01 isn't like 0.38.01 will be. Toady's a genius, but he's not precognitive--he can't know what the UI will need to have programmed in 20-30 years from now. He didn't even know he was going to add in vampires and such when he did until he basically went, "I need to add vampires."

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1. Actually not. Currently the UI and game engine are pretty entertwined. (More so than the game and graphics part, which are actually seperate threads.) Hence why the game pauses while you designate, amongst other things.

If the game part and the graphics part are separate threads, it's just one step further.
The game pauses because the UI tells it to. Not because it's magically connected.
It's a simple: "Hey... engine. stoopp... he's designating a new garbage dump... it's gonna take a while."
And later" Ok, engine - this is the new designation, do what you will. Now start again."

Um...what relevance does your statement have to the topic at hand? We get it. However, your argument doesn't address that the two codes--"engine" and "UI" are darn intertwined.

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2. Don't forget the managing program (DF foreman or something) that actually ran as part of DF.

Yes. But that's all still another pretty much hacked-in tool.

So? Doesn't it still do pretty much what you want to be able to do?

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4. They kinda will. Memory adresses change, entire menus are added or replaced. Even adding a singe item category could break the whole thing.

Memory addresses don't matter when you do an API.
Entire menus don't matter if all you have is a list of actions that you can take, and that's categorized.
Adding an item category would in fact not break the system that's data-driven. It would simply work. Remember, that UI can have the same base data that the engine has.

Willing to bet Toady hasn't made it that simple. DF isn't like a big-name game, where it was broken down into parts before being programmed. It was built piecemeal, making it more of a tangled grove than silviculture, to use an elfy metaphor. Toady has said so himself, although not in the same way.

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5. Can't we use a system similair to Dfterm + Stonesense and use that as a different UI. Stonesense esque visuals, and Dfterm had a way of remotely controlling stuff.

I think that isometric is not the way to go.
1. Top-down gives you a much better overview over what actually happens where.
2. Can't cope with ASCII properly(it could be used as a fallback for items that have no sprites thus making additions to the engine not require graphics department.
3. I would rather have a ood way of controlling stuff ingame than through external tools. That's kind of my point. Not saying something like this wouldn't be used, but rather - it could be integrated easily.

1, 2: Obviously not, since there's Dfterm and Stonesense and such.
3. I use vanilla DF, no utilities or graphics or anything. No problems here except goblins and stupidity. Oh, and kobolds, badgers, carp, floods, megabeasts, zombies, falling logs...look, not UI.