Bay 12 Games Forum

Many of you have read my daily journal comic (and I thank you all for that), but I want to start another comic.  Almost all the ones I've done in the past have been based on my real life, and I want to finally do something fictional. 

My current idea for a premise is that the characters are a group of employees at the company "Soulmates, Inc."  It turns out that soulmates *do* exist, but unfortunately they are randomly scattered around the globe so almost no one ever encounters theirs.  This company is like a specialized PI service that finds your soulmate for you (I haven't decided how yet).

Another idea, courtesy of a friend of mine, is about a company of "sanity inspectors" who visit companies to inspect their employees for sanity.

I'm open to other ideas as well.  I don't want to do any fantasy setting stuff or anything like that.  It could just be a group of people who live together, we'll see.  The most important thing, in any case, is not the setting but the characters.  I need interesting, memorable characters.  I can throw them in just about any situation or setting and see what they do.  But I'm having trouble coming up with good ones.

One idea a friend of mine gave me is to think of people I know in real life, and make the characters their polar opposite.  So far I have one, based on another friend: a really uptight, straight-edge guy who is really neat, organized, clean, and always on time, but will happily eat moldy old food that's been sitting around for ages and has an irrational hatred of animals, especially cute and fuzzy ones.

The reason I'm posting all this rambling nonsense is that I'm looking for ideas for more characters.  Especially ones come up with using the "exact opposite of someone you know" technique.  It seems to produce some hilarious results.  Anyone care to toss out some ideas?  If I use anything I get from you guys, I'll give you credit of course.  And if anyone has any new suggestions for a setting or premise, I'm absolutely open to new ideas.

I used to play DF happily with a framerate around 100 until I got a really big fortress.  The lowest I ever had was around 30 (with my massive pyramid).  Today I decided I wanted to play the old zombie mod, so I downloaded a fresh copy of 40d and installed the zombie mod over it.  (I didn't try playing it vanilla.)  I've played the zombie mod lots of times before and had fun with it, but it's been a long while since I played any version of DF.

I can't get my FPS up over 10 now.  I tried lowering the G FPS to 20 but it didn't change things at all.  Any idea what's wrong here?  It's unplayable at this rate.

I just tried playing 31.18 and I'm getting a framerate around 85.  Is there something I'm missing here with the old version?  Before playing I changed the tileset and made the window bigger, lowered the population cap, and turned on the FPS counter, but I didn't turn graphics on.  I only embarked in a 3x3 area and there aren't very many critters on the map.  I'm so confused!  I don't think I ever had this problem before.  As I said, I've played this very mod on this computer before.

I'm sorry, I'm sure this same question has been asked a thousand times before, but this is an old version so I don't see any recent discussion of it.

Ugh, second town in a row where people are just ignoring the group decision completely and building whatever they like. It's not even that they're new and don't know what they're doing - they posted on the forums and basically said "well, I think that we need armor plating more than a workshop, so I'm going to build it regardless of what everyone else in the town has agreed upon."

Updated the first post to include new usernames. There's a lot of us over there it seems! We should invade one of the multiplayer games sometime.

Yes, tryptophan makes you sleep, but the amount found in turkey is so minuscule that is has no effect.  The reason people get tired on thanksgiving is the overeating - the tryptophan is just an excuse.

I'm off to bed now (man, US time is confusing...) so I'll give some of these thoughts a try. Jet lag isn't helping but we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

Thanks for the tips so far. I'm still trying to figure things out.

I have experimented on weekends to find out when I wake up naturally.  The answer seems to be: I don't.  I sleep until something wakes me up.  I think my record is something like 15 hours before construction noise outside got me up around 3 pm.

I can't imagine not using the computer before bed.  It's the only real time I get to myself, and watching shows with my flatmate is a big chunk of my social life.  I don't know what else I would do with that time.

As for eating, I've never really believed that idea that eating before bed keeps you awake or gives you nightmares.  Maybe for some people, but...  If eating keeps you awake, why does overeating make you sleepy?  I present my entire family, which passes out from overeating every Thanksgiving, as evidence of this.  I tend to be sleepier when I've eaten than when I haven't.  Many a night I've lain awake feeling hungry and eventually had to get up and eat something before I was able to fall asleep.

I'm starting to think that my current apartment is a big part of the problem (or at least its recent worsening).  I'm living in a basement apartment now because I can't afford anything better.  (I'm seriously incredibly broke.)  There is a window in my room but it opens into a ventilation shaft.  It does get brighter in my room when the sun comes up, but except in the middle of summer, no direct sunlight enters the room.  And in the rest of the apartment, no light comes through at all.  It's artificial light all day.  Now, during the week, I'm often not home until after dark anyway, but on the weekends I often stay in all day in artificial light.  I know this isn't helping matters.  There's also a problem with damp air down there (which will be alleviated when we finally turn on the heaters, but since all we have are electric space heaters and they're massively expensive to run, we're waiting until it's frigid cold - right now it's averaging around 17 degrees during the day, which is uncomfortable but not unhealthy).  I have mild asthma and pretty bad allergies, so that's probably not helping either.

I'd love to move out of this place and into somewhere healthier, but I don't see how I can.  I just don't have the money to live anywhere better.  I'll keep looking for somewhere else that I can afford, but it'll be tough.  Also my flatmate can't move out until he's paid his back rent (he still owes a lot of money and he's only slowly catching up) and I don't know anyone else who's interested in or able to move to a new place, so I'd have to move out on my own - even more expensive and also I don't really want to live alone.  I'd be too lonely and bored I think.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can make my basement flat healthier and more sleep-friendly?

EDIT: By the way, can anyone give me some examples of these "calming" things you think about before sleep?  I can't come up with any ideas for stuff I could think about.  The most successful thing to think about in terms of actually falling asleep seems to be video games.  I imagine my perfect game or think about one that I play a lot and enjoy, and it seems to put me closer to dream-mode, which in turn makes it easier to sleep.

I have no opinion regarding the state of gender or sexism in Armageddon, and I've never tried playing the game, but reading this argument is reminding me of the game book I wrote for the QAGS pen-and-paper rpg system which played heavily on the differences between men and women.  Most of it was intended as satire and I was taking the issue lightly, and I even put in a little prologue pointing out that it was all in good fun and not to take it too seriously.  The book was reviewed only once, by a female reviewer I believe, and she made a big deal about how sexist I, the *female* author, was being.

You can have a look at the book and the review here if you're interested: http://www.hexgames.com/qags/component/virtuemart/details/15/12/pdfs/herland--perfect-genetic-utopia-pdf

And the review is here: http://www.rpg-resource.org.uk/index.php?article=4473&visual=4

Anyway, my point is that there are so many oversensitive people who either think everything is sexism or nothing is sexism and will argue to the death over it that it's probably easier to just disregard gender overall in games.  People take it too seriously.  (The reviewer also criticized me for making a setting which was "too serious" for a game.)