Bay 12 Games Forum

If... that was talking about the hardcore optimization? I mean, yeah, particularly if they're not going hardcore enough and including "this will lead to the collapse of society" in their number crunching. Don't think I'd call it good for society, just pointing out a few of the ways firing (or not hiring) someone that's pregnant (or has kids) is way less of a bullshit reason than your average cold.

Employer's perspective, a worker (and particularly a pregnant one) with kids as a concern is probably going to be a lot more trouble (and for questionably acceptable returns) than one without. Plenty have enough worry for the law or just aren't a raging jackass and can let some margin slip to keep a parent hired, but it (pregnancy/kids) has pretty good odds of being a net negative, particularly in a way a cold isn't

... now, that said, colds are in fact one of the larger human resource costs companies face (particularly folks trying to work with one, cheerfully getting other workers sick). You even occasionally have a company not sufficiently blinded by profit motive's schlong jammed in their eyes that recognizes that and has decent SOP for making sure their workers can get and stay healthy.

It's getting annoyingly difficult to track a caller if they don't want to be, actually, and apparently without requiring all that much effort on the caller's end. Probably one of the reasons there hasn't been a string of murders inflicted on the various fucks running con jobs on the elderly, among other things.

Any case, wtf of the day is that feeling when you spend a few hours wondering why the hell there's intermittent explosions and gunshots going off outside before having someone remind you it's the 31st of december.

New year's celebrations sound remarkably like homicide attempts when you've forgotten what the date is.

Wonders of translation and half-hearted phonetic parsing of pronunciation. Dramatic scene becomes far less dramatic when your post-selling-soul-to-devil-for-revenge renaming nets you heart-shakingly terrifying name of... "Gooey Poo" (lit. Gui Pu).

I can only imagine how difficult it is to build up your evil vengeance hunter rep when your name is very literally shit. Though I guess it's conceptually a decent opening gambit? Might get that opening extra moment of hesitation when you come flying out of the bushes screaming that poo comes for their head.

... any case, work itself is Upgrade Specialist in Another World.* I'm sure the name is something innocuous in the original language, but as the with myriad dongs of punch magic, it holds up somewhat poorly to a primarily english speaker.

* Which is a'ight as punch magic stories go, so far. MC is fairly murderous, but largely not a raging asshole about it and most of the rest innit particularly bad. Ranking it as number two or three of what I've read of the stuff over the last half year or so, I think. #1 is hands down World of Cultivation, at the moment (it's actually something approaching pretty good, imo), and I think there's a few other contenders for whatever's left of the top three. Library of Heaven's Path takes second, probably, now that I think about it a little has its rampant power fantasy issues but characterization and whatnot is fairly enjoyable...

... though, that said, it's not exactly a thing of amazing difficulty to stand out quality wise for this stuff. Most of what I've read since I started doing much of it a few years back has been like sub fanfiction averages in terms of construction.

I doubt anything would happen.  Libel and slander are almost always used in lawsuits, I don't think the government even can bring legal charges for slander.

Not entirely sure about that, but pretty entirely sure the DNC or whatever individual(s) that'd be implicated by the claims would have the at-least-conceptual grounds to file. Fraud claims about a nebulous "someone" innit exactly amazing at passing legal muster, so an actual attempt at 'em would presumably have, y'know, actual targets. Specific voting precincts and whatnot.

Fairly sure that's what happens when the GOP tries to shit on voter suffrage for the Nth time and gets caught at it, again, so I'd assume fraud charges would have to be similarly directed. If moore and co. aren't just blowing hot air out the ass they're trying to pass off as a mouth, anyway.

Half want to say individual departments of the gov't might have the grounds, too... assuming there was actually something to hit with our ten penny whore's orifice level loose libel or slander laws, heh. Any case, whatever legal grounds might exist, near as I've noticed it's just arse gas flowing out their craw again so we probably won't even have the small chance of finding out.

It'll be hilarious if that gets investigated, and it ends up finding it was moore/the GOP that committed it.

So I'd say it's probably even odds between some of them being around in the WC/SC custom map scene or some of them drawing inspiration from the same sources as those folks. Remember, the first Anno released in '98, AoE I in '97. I don't have much experience with Anno, but I damn sure do with AoE, and the whole tech-up and research process + increasingly high-tech building visuals reminds me very much of AoE, especially combined with the high-tension economic macro game.

Never played any of the anno series at all m'self, heh. Could see the visual aspect with AoE (though it was pretty common with custom junk, too, if generally with notably more limited models, ha), but the eco part (however high tension) is way closer to how some of the custom map stuff did things than just about anything AoE's way. Infinite (but limited slots, so to speak) resource nodes were a vaguely common thing to do. Territory focused (risk style, etc.) ones moreso than freeform stuff, but it was a fairly general thing.

Add on the housing upgrade for money and pop thing in particular (especially with the individual upgrading vs AoE's general age advancement), which was damn near ubiquitous, and, well... if it was arrived at without strong influence directly from the maps, they very much ended up making a buncha' the same decisions a good few other folks did a handful of years back. Which is totes possible by way of shared influences or whatev', it'd just make me a bit surprised.

Could you provide links?

Eh... not without a lot of very annoying digging (more than I have the will to do), tbh. There's a fair bucketload of the particular style of play, of very much varying quality and often identical or near identical names, heh, and while I directly played more than a few back in WC3 days (which is why the similarity hits me), it was never a major interest (and I kinda' sucked at it :V) so I don't remember much in the way of specific-enough-to-link examples. SC2 exposure's been more youtube vids, but it's been a good number of moons since that, too

There's almost certainly some on hive workshop or somethin', though. Civilization, world war, empire building, that'd probably be keywords that'd pull something up.

But I don't get why there are parallels being drawn to WC or SC...

Least in my case it's specifically parallels with one of the sorta' more popular general styles of custom/player created maps that were made for 'em. Mechanics wise there's a good number of similarities with bits of design common to the general lot I've been mentioning. The base games for either have little to no resemblance, heh.

Graphics wise, the only thing that's really hit me there is the first two available military units, as mentioned. The ranger and solider bear fairly notable (least to me) resemblance to the night elf archer and space marine models, respectively, and they were both common model choices for non-vanilla ranged units in WC3 custom maps. Marine was usually later on in tech trees, but not always.

... graphics wise, tbh, I think I might be most reminded of Heroes of Annihilated Empires, just... newer and more generally steampunk as opposed to a single faction. I have a sneaky suspicion that's more because I've just been watching vids and don't have free reign to zoom it or whatev', heh. It's in no small part just due to how the zombies clump up. The undead in HoAE could do stuff that looked pretty similar, if generally with fewer numbers... well, everyone did, but the undead specifically had zombies, too, so.

Hmm whilst I know what you mean, this is far, far superior to the custom maps. It just feels so much better put together generally - the feel is spot on and it feels so...snappy playing it. It runs 1000s of units without a problem on my old laptop. Yeah, old SC2 and WC3 had similar modes, but it's just the same as saying SC ripped off C&C ripped off TA ripped off etc. etc.

Eeehhh... more like Brood War ripped off Starcraft, at least from what I've been seeing. Actually probably closer to something like RA vs Tiberian Sun (or either of those and RA2, I guess)... base SC and its expansion are a bit too similar.

The biggest departures I've seen are basically all engine; better performance, stuff not being kludged to, say, have buildings need to be near power nodes to work, etc. Definitely looks like it plays better so far as performance and UI built specifically for it and whatnot goes, but the major thing holding back those old maps has always been that side of things, rather than much so far as the mechanics involved are concerned.

Mechanics/gameplay wise, just about all of it I've seen before, far as I can recall mostly in the same place a few times, too. Survival style wave stuff was pretty uncommon, if existent, but the rest of it is pretty much bullet point late stage WC3/SC2 city builder/civ style design.* I'd definitely say it's not nearly as different as SC vs C&C vs TA (particularly TA), heh, but... maybe during some of the notable-but-not-seriously-major breakpoints in the C&C series. First one/RA/TS, RA 2, C&C/RA 3, etc.

Which, uh. Dunno if I've said it before, but for all the similarities strike me real hard in this case,** folks lifting some of the better WC3/SC2 maps, either explicitly or by yoinking great swathes of the design common to particular strains of 'em, isn't something I mind, per se. Particularly when it's actually riffing on some of the more interesting ones, as opposed to yet another DotA style AoS riffs. It's just been hella' easy to spot the relation in the case of this game, to the point it's been a bit distracting while watching gameplay vids :V

* Though, note again, just to really reiterate it, don't take that as being a bad thing, exactly. The biggest downside those maps had was the engine not being specifically built for that style of play. Tab here being built more or less ground up for it totally means it's a major improvement over what was managed with the WC3/SC2 engines, and to all appearances a pretty damn decent one regardless.

** You have no idea how much the ranger/soldier starting pair hits me right in the night elf archer/space marine ranged unit norms of WC3 maps, ferex Right down to the character models being suspiciously similar. That more than just about anything I've seen so far makes me think the game is a very much intentional homage.