Bay 12 Games Forum

Innit that just part of the fishing thing, though? By that measure, you have whaling in a few of the Breath of Fire games... which, hey. There you go.

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But maybe I'm wrong in my assumptions. Maybe you do understand that violence is something that should not be tolerated.

I certainly hope so.

It's definitely not an insult, no, and I'm not one of those people that support crime, et al.

I simply recognize what is as what is -- the human species isn't a very pleasant thing when you look at it large scale. The situation as a whole and specifics -- such as th'blood sport comparison, and the embracing of violent media by mass media and human culture in general -- sicken me, but I had to make the choice between laughing about it or killing myself, because there's not really a damn thing I can do on a personal level that'd make meaningful difference. There's a few societal-influence longshots that can be made, but I'm still a few decades from really being able to make those.

Obviously went with the first -- the smiley faces are me poking fun at society in general and the hypocrisy of it specifically. Gallows humor is still humor, so to speak

You and me, we might recognize that violence is something that can't be tolerated, not in any genuinely sustainable manner, but our species doesn't, and no culture on earth even remotely embraces that in a unilateral, non-hypocritical manner. Which is probably good, in some sick meaning of the term, because at this point in history (and every other point we've had so far), any culture that held that would be crushed by some culture that did accept violence -- to the out-group, if nothing else.

And really, a great deal of the opulence of first world nations is built on top of violence and exploitation of varying degrees. It's incredibly hard to actually separate yourself from the support -- especially implicit support -- of violence while you're part of a culture, etc, etc. So you either accept it and tolerate violence to some degree, bath in ignorance and not see it, lie to yourself about its existence, or either commit suicide literally to remove yourself from the situation, socially by removing yourself from the group supporting it, or effectively by trying to fight something entirely beyond the capability of an individual to fight. Violence inherent in the system, maan. Systemic change is effectively impossible for an individual to push through these days.

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Anywaay. Kusgnos, that would definitely be part of a wider historical picture. Slave trade's still pretty kickin' in modern society, from what I understand, for all that it seems to get downplayed in media. I'd be pretty curious to see a raw number (body count) comparison between modern slave trade and various historic slave trades. We've got a lot more bodies we wouldn't really miss nowadays.

Including th'periods in history where the main slave population wasn't african (ancient history stuff) and the main slave owners not specifically european/caucasian (i.e. not just rabble rousing, poorly) would let a dev make a game that would actually have a certain degree of legitimacy, especially if the historical aspect was played up ala Age of Empires. The history of slavery encompasses pretty much the history of humanity, after all. A broader focus might let stuff like indentured servitude or penal slavery be brought into the picture, too. Something that made an attempt to actually get into the head of the people running these systems at the time (instead of just playing to shock value) would probably be borderline brilliant, for a certain sense of the term.

Hit u, then activate... mining, I think. Something along those lines. Then just start walking into the wall, iirc. It'll give you 'lil info updates as the level becomes more unstable.

Haven't used mining much, outside of occasional strength training (for which it is very good). Gold is pretty prolific once you're inside the dungeon a bit... though even large amounts won't let you buy much if you don't have decent charisma and/or diplomacy. The shopkeeper gives a discount to dwarves, though, iirc. He's got some racial biases

Yeaaahh... see creature not seen before = go to knowledge bot and/or wiki and/or code. Crawl's a comparatively spoiler light roguelike (Sort of. A lot of the mechanics are either obscure or unintuitive, or both, and you need full monster info if you're going to get a win any time this millennium.), but not checking monster stats is going to net you a helluva a lot more deaths than checking them will.

The proper immediate reaction for almost any roguelike player -- who's actually aiming for victory -- when encountering something they've never seen before is. "Stop. Check in game information. Then check any and every spoiler available... and possibly the raw code, if it's accessible, just in case both in game and spoiler information is a damn dirty liar. Then act."

Excessive paranoia is the only real option in a situation where getting one or two shot is always a possibility. Crawl's pretty bad about that, too, since you can be running around wrecking crap that does 2-3 points of damage (when it hits) and suddenly lose >50% your health in one hit... sometimes to the same things that had been doing those 2-3 points of damage (wands *fist shake*)

Should really just make it an option in the game at this point, probably on by default, that gives knowledge-bot style stats on anything you examine more closely. It'd save some effort, hum.

Nothin' for it, then. Time to put on th'code divin' goggles.

E: Level seems to be defined... annoyingly. At least if I'm reading this junk right. Apparently each branch (including the main dungeon) just gets a flipping list defined in the code, with depth and/or rarity of creation defined in that list. The monster's depth isn't defined where the monster is, in other words, and I can't really make heads or tails of how the lists are working. Some seem pretty simple (the main dungeon list) but there's obviously some interaction going on between it and the pan/abyss lists (otherwise you'd never see crawlers outside vaults in the main dungeon).

Demonic crawlers aren't far from the dlvl 11 critters, though, which includes stuff like hippogriffs. It's definitely out of depth, but not terribly.

Boggarts can show up as early as D:5, though, if you stick around a bit. D:8 just on a lark. That's pretty nasty.

It is called a zipper.

The removal of pants is not strictly necessary for the adequately encouraged and intelligent individual.

Heh. Well, it'll likely be anywhere from one to three or thirteen to fifteen more months (possibly longer, depending), before we see any more public action from Inc, if nothing happens to boss M. So spawn adjustments might be a bit in the future

Could comfort yourself with the knowledge that spawn rate in general has been toned down a couple times over Inc's dev periods, I guess. Is cold comfort when there's five dragons brawling with twenty-something classed wozznames and a few greater demons.

That said, there's a lot of generic loot, period. This is mostly because the enemies are using the exact same inventory system you are, and must be equipped accordingly... so they, yanno', carry their junk around. It doesn't take long to figure out how to sift through the chaff, though -- especially if you change the 'sort pile cotents' to 'quality'. That'll put the highest enchantment items at the top of the pile, usually. The junk loot you just ignore.

There there. If you hadn't been playing mummy, you would have use-ID'd a cursed ring of hunger. That's how these things go.