So what happens when a griefer guild shows up and slaughters all the wolves and bears in your forest? How do prevent this or can they even?
What prevents real-life griefers from doing so? For one thing it's a massive task, not easily accomplished by twenty or thirty people (even if they're expert hunters). Another thing is that they would attract attention from local police, then armed militia, and in most places armed militia is more combat-effective than any civilian organization. Just implement that in-game. And if a faction does manage to overcome armed opposition and the sheer amplitude and execute such an amazing feat, then I want to see the ecology ruin and the local economy plunge. Just make it easy to regenerate scenario procedurally (the nethack approach -- things may die, but then you just play again with new things). If the players managed to ruin the whole world, why not have creator gods come up with a new one? Why not challenge these players to destroy the new one too, patching the game to be less and less exploitable -- wouldn't it be much more rewarding to the griefer guild to be known as destroyers of worlds than "those guys who narf n00bs in the town"? Hire some professional writers to come up with convincing explanations, the possibilities are endless.
I know, most gamers are power trippers and your level 99 "hero" needs to be the Strongest Creature on Earth and single-handled trample entire societies and gamers would oppose to be less powerful than guards. I for one wouldn't mind less powerful characters in a more immersive world. Hell, I bet I'd feel more powerful if I could somehow affect the world, however slightly.
If it is so darn "not difficult", why haven't you written your own game and have a few hundred thousand subscribers already?
Er, because it takes hundreds of people and thousands of dollars to put a 3D MMO online? I did experiment with roguelikes; I hacked a bare-bones ecosystem in a weekend in Ruby, and now I'm (leisurely) playing with fractal terrain in Scheme. By now I'm convinced a simulation-centric (as opposed to stats-growing--centric) MMORPG is feasible; it just wasn't tried yet.
And for that, you'll find that the part of the world that any player, even a superhero, can actually effect is rather small. So to create all of what you are looking for, you'd probably need 95% of your code (not to mention client and server resources) devoted purely to environment and "big picture" rather than on game play.
Yes, that's actually exactly what I want! Multiplayer Dwarf Fortress ftw.
As for any effect being small â"it's not like I can do much in WoW anyway. Even a small effect would be better than none.
An ecosystem. Doesn't need to have full-featured critters like in Spore or Creatures; just make the monsters eat each other, reproduce, and compete for resources in the obvious way. Come on, it's not difficult.
An economic system. Again, nothing fancy, just set a few resource sources and sinks (even invisible) and let the market forces decide the item prices. WoW does it for the player market, why not the in-game market as well?
Auto-generated, per-player quests. Gearhead can auto-generate quests, why canâ(TM)t you? I mean, most of WoW quests look the same anyway: talk to someone, find something, kill something, or escort.
Allow player actions to affect the world. If I kill all predators from an area I expect the ecology to be ruined. If you donâ(TM)t want players ruining the ecology, make it difficult to genocide.
Unlike most players I met in WoW, I find no fun in comparing the size of virtual âoeswordsâ or in optimizing numbers in a game of statistics. I want immersion. The way WoWâ(TM)s world is just some immutable scenario ruined immersion to me.
Why do you think the cattle is being grazed in the felled forest?
Er, maybe because, like in all rainforests, Amazon soil is completely unsuitable to any kind of agriculture whatsoever?
Because sugar cane is being grown in their former grazing land.
Grazing land? You mean like the vast oversupply of unused land in the South, Central West and Southeast? Like the ones I was raised in, or the ones I can see from my window right now?
Seriously, people, learn what you're talking about.
This is allegedly done for grazing cattle, not for sugar. I don't believe it. I remember reading that Brazilian ethanol imports were increasing; where's it coming from?
Please, please research a bit before mindlessly spreading FUD like this. Brazil has enough non-forest land to multiply the current cane production several times with no impact to native ecosystems. Contrariwise to what Americans apparently think, it's not like our whole country is a forest. It's not like it's even practical to plant cane in the forest in the first place. I mean, geez.
Amazon is being badly destroyed for cattle, yes. Want to stop it? Boycott the meat industry, not ethanol.
I'm a libertarian capitalist. However, I think libertarianism breaks when it comes to protecting the environment. The way I see it, there are at least three reasons for it being so:
Economics theory pressuposes rational agents. People often aren't rational; they do stuff that will get them into lots of trouble later, just to get some profits right now. They also do stupid shit like owning cars only because other people also do it ("status symbol").
Further, the theory pressuposes abstract immortal agents. People don't care about what will happen after they're dead.
Tragedy of commons. Air, water, tropical ecosystems etc. are "outside" the capitalist system, so people are free to abuse them for profit.
I don't know of any better alternatives though. Deregulated capitalism still seems to me to be the best system we got; but, even with my distrust of giving power to government, I've got no choice but to support regulation and taxation to prevent fuckers from destroying *my* planet.
Now if only I could figure out a way of making Americans giving up on SUVs...
I have no assurance, but I refuse to cower in the confort of my middle-class life out of fear of stupid laws. If I get in trouble, who knows, maybe *I'll* establish the legal precedent; it would be a nice story to tell to my kids! At the very least, I'm sure I could generate some media attention out of it.
I don't see what's the drama with open access. I leave my AP open on purpose, with an essid starting with "free_" to reinforce the idea, and a simple QOS setup to give me priority over my neighbors. I can't even notice when they're using the net, and I counted more than 10 different MAC addresses so far. More people using the net == good. It's not like I need all my bandwidth 24/7...
in b4 "but pedophiles will get you jailed, think of the children!!" -- I'm no more responsible for that than the hot dog vendor in the corner would be if ninja terrorists employed his hot dogs as lethal weapons.
Great idea! Why don't you start by leaving your door open and welcoming whomever wants in.
I do! It's great, really, I've welcomed strangers from all over the globe to spend a few days with my family. Join couchsurfing.com, open your house, ressurrect hospitality!
Haha disregard that, that one is just perfect. Tim's reviews of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Mother 2 blew my mind. After reading those, I gave up mainstream game media altogether.
In this corner of the net a lot of people have been experimenting with alternative game review forms for a long time. Some fun sites for starters are:
Like what you see? Are you into literary criticism? Do you spend more time talking about videogames than playing them? Join us in the pretentious side! We got doujin games! Pongism is the truth!
I tried it for a while, and this actually looks awesome! They even got voice acting for you to get the tones. Unfortunately it's a bit advanced for someone with no contact with the language â" the first shopkeeper I tried to interact with triggered a long conversation full of set expressions and hanzi. If you're a mandarin student, you have to play this!
I think they might be onto something with the idea of multiplayer language learning game --- I wish there was a Japanese equivalent.
The point with the Napster thing is that it's extreme hypocrisy, since Metallica became famous in the first place by encouraging fans to pirate cassete tapes. I'll do an one-person act to illustrate:
Old Metallica: We're the metal millitia!! Fuck the system!! Pirate our music!! Stick it to the man!! We'll never make an MTV videoclip!! Whiplash motherfucker!!
New Metallica: Hai guys, did you see our newest videoclip on MTV? Oh and pirating is stealing, play nice and pay for things like a good citizen. "So close, no matter how far / couldn't be much more from the heart <3 "
Change of mind? Perhaps, but it's easy to see how they pissed off the people they tried to attract in the first place.
What saddens me more is that these "the science of" things are often not about science but about technology, thus making the general people even more confused about science (equating it to "Gyro Gearloose science", that is, merely a means of coming up with new tech).
To be fair, I think debian's dash package prompted you to link/bin/sh to it since before Ubuntu came around. It's true that it wasn't the default, though; you had to manually install dash and explicitly select "yes" in the debconf dialogue.
I was born in a paper industrial area in southern Brazil. The native ecosystem is being invaded by the imported pinus trees, which spread without control in our climate and ruin the soil, overwhelming everything in its way.
Care to explain why exactly you think this question is flamebait or offtopic? We're dealing with the latest work of Christopher Tolkien here, and as everyone knows, his father's religious views are deeply ingrained in LotR's morality. If Christopher is not catholic, I guess he had to take extra care not to change Tolkien's worldview. I'm curious about it, I could not find this information anywhere, and slashdot seemed like the proper place to ask. I really cannot understand why do you think I'm trolling.
I can't find any info about how to change the language for spellchecking. Anyone can point me to documentation? If there's no way to use multiple dictionaries, it's useless.
Is the spellchecking code smart enough to guess the language from HTML (attributes lang or xml:lang)?
Slashdot Mirror
What prevents real-life griefers from doing so? For one thing it's a massive task, not easily accomplished by twenty or thirty people (even if they're expert hunters). Another thing is that they would attract attention from local police, then armed militia, and in most places armed militia is more combat-effective than any civilian organization. Just implement that in-game. And if a faction does manage to overcome armed opposition and the sheer amplitude and execute such an amazing feat, then I want to see the ecology ruin and the local economy plunge. Just make it easy to regenerate scenario procedurally (the nethack approach -- things may die, but then you just play again with new things). If the players managed to ruin the whole world, why not have creator gods come up with a new one? Why not challenge these players to destroy the new one too, patching the game to be less and less exploitable -- wouldn't it be much more rewarding to the griefer guild to be known as destroyers of worlds than "those guys who narf n00bs in the town"? Hire some professional writers to come up with convincing explanations, the possibilities are endless.
I know, most gamers are power trippers and your level 99 "hero" needs to be the Strongest Creature on Earth and single-handled trample entire societies and gamers would oppose to be less powerful than guards. I for one wouldn't mind less powerful characters in a more immersive world. Hell, I bet I'd feel more powerful if I could somehow affect the world, however slightly.
Er, because it takes hundreds of people and thousands of dollars to put a 3D MMO online? I did experiment with roguelikes; I hacked a bare-bones ecosystem in a weekend in Ruby, and now I'm (leisurely) playing with fractal terrain in Scheme. By now I'm convinced a simulation-centric (as opposed to stats-growing--centric) MMORPG is feasible; it just wasn't tried yet.
Yes, that's actually exactly what I want! Multiplayer Dwarf Fortress ftw.
As for any effect being small â"it's not like I can do much in WoW anyway. Even a small effect would be better than none.
Here's what I want from a medieval MMO:
Unlike most players I met in WoW, I find no fun in comparing the size of virtual âoeswordsâ or in optimizing numbers in a game of statistics. I want immersion. The way WoWâ(TM)s world is just some immutable scenario ruined immersion to me.
Er, maybe because, like in all rainforests, Amazon soil is completely unsuitable to any kind of agriculture whatsoever?
Grazing land? You mean like the vast oversupply of unused land in the South, Central West and Southeast? Like the ones I was raised in, or the ones I can see from my window right now?
Seriously, people, learn what you're talking about.
Please, please research a bit before mindlessly spreading FUD like this. Brazil has enough non-forest land to multiply the current cane production several times with no impact to native ecosystems. Contrariwise to what Americans apparently think, it's not like our whole country is a forest. It's not like it's even practical to plant cane in the forest in the first place. I mean, geez.
Amazon is being badly destroyed for cattle, yes. Want to stop it? Boycott the meat industry, not ethanol.
See also: wpedia on deforestation, ethanol.
I'm a libertarian capitalist. However, I think libertarianism breaks when it comes to protecting the environment. The way I see it, there are at least three reasons for it being so:
I don't know of any better alternatives though. Deregulated capitalism still seems to me to be the best system we got; but, even with my distrust of giving power to government, I've got no choice but to support regulation and taxation to prevent fuckers from destroying *my* planet.
Now if only I could figure out a way of making Americans giving up on SUVs...
I have no assurance, but I refuse to cower in the confort of my middle-class life out of fear of stupid laws. If I get in trouble, who knows, maybe *I'll* establish the legal precedent; it would be a nice story to tell to my kids! At the very least, I'm sure I could generate some media attention out of it.
"grammar nazi" is a well-established idiom, it doesn't trigger Godwin.
as for analogies, I'd rather have more analogies with ninjas and hot-dogs than yet another one about cars.
I don't see what's the drama with open access. I leave my AP open on purpose, with an essid starting with "free_" to reinforce the idea, and a simple QOS setup to give me priority over my neighbors. I can't even notice when they're using the net, and I counted more than 10 different MAC addresses so far. More people using the net == good. It's not like I need all my bandwidth 24/7...
in b4 "but pedophiles will get you jailed, think of the children!!" -- I'm no more responsible for that than the hot dog vendor in the corner would be if ninja terrorists employed his hot dogs as lethal weapons.
I do! It's great, really, I've welcomed strangers from all over the globe to spend a few days with my family. Join couchsurfing.com, open your house, ressurrect hospitality!
The more a review is âoeactually about the gameâ, the worse it is.
Haha disregard that, that one is just perfect. Tim's reviews of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Mother 2 blew my mind. After reading those, I gave up mainstream game media altogether.
In this corner of the net a lot of people have been experimenting with alternative game review forms for a long time. Some fun sites for starters are:
Like what you see? Are you into literary criticism? Do you spend more time talking about videogames than playing them? Join us in the pretentious side! We got doujin games! Pongism is the truth!
http://naruhodojapan.blogspot.com/ have fun.
I tried it for a while, and this actually looks awesome! They even got voice acting for you to get the tones. Unfortunately it's a bit advanced for someone with no contact with the language â" the first shopkeeper I tried to interact with triggered a long conversation full of set expressions and hanzi. If you're a mandarin student, you have to play this! I think they might be onto something with the idea of multiplayer language learning game --- I wish there was a Japanese equivalent.
The point with the Napster thing is that it's extreme hypocrisy, since Metallica became famous in the first place by encouraging fans to pirate cassete tapes. I'll do an one-person act to illustrate:
Old Metallica: We're the metal millitia!! Fuck the system!! Pirate our music!! Stick it to the man!! We'll never make an MTV videoclip!! Whiplash motherfucker!!
New Metallica: Hai guys, did you see our newest videoclip on MTV? Oh and pirating is stealing, play nice and pay for things like a good citizen. "So close, no matter how far / couldn't be much more from the heart <3 "
Change of mind? Perhaps, but it's easy to see how they pissed off the people they tried to attract in the first place.
I hate sequels and licenses.
What saddens me more is that these "the science of" things are often not about science but about technology, thus making the general people even more confused about science (equating it to "Gyro Gearloose science", that is, merely a means of coming up with new tech).
That's why my great-great-great^{875}-grandmother kept telling her husband Ugh not to burn black-rock-oil to make campfires, but he didn't listen...
To be fair, I think debian's dash package prompted you to link /bin/sh to it since before Ubuntu came around. It's true that it wasn't the default, though; you had to manually install dash and explicitly select "yes" in the debconf dialogue.
So this cancer is fighting a drug they found in dirt?
Or did they find in dirt some cancer fighting a drug?
I was born in a paper industrial area in southern Brazil. The native ecosystem is being invaded by the imported pinus trees, which spread without control in our climate and ruin the soil, overwhelming everything in its way.
Care to explain why exactly you think this question is flamebait or offtopic? We're dealing with the latest work of Christopher Tolkien here, and as everyone knows, his father's religious views are deeply ingrained in LotR's morality. If Christopher is not catholic, I guess he had to take extra care not to change Tolkien's worldview. I'm curious about it, I could not find this information anywhere, and slashdot seemed like the proper place to ask. I really cannot understand why do you think I'm trolling.
It is well-known that Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. Just out of curiosity, does his son follow the same beliefs?
I can't find any info about how to change the language for spellchecking. Anyone can point me to documentation? If there's no way to use multiple dictionaries, it's useless.
Is the spellchecking code smart enough to guess the language from HTML (attributes lang or xml:lang)?