Messages

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2024

« on: January 28, 2024, 11:45:29 PM »

https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998

"A new global gender divide is emerging" - the political/ideological gap between young men and young women has been widening for the last 30 years, and widened rapidly in the last 10 years.

Why this has happened, and what the implications are, are pretty profound questions for democracy.

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The Welcome Hall - Start Here! / Re: Hey there!

« on: January 22, 2024, 02:59:20 PM »

Hey everyone!

My name's Cosmic Void and I make adventure games with pixel-art graphics, mostly point and clicks, but also some text parsers.

My upcoming game is Twilight Oracle, a comedy point and click adventure.

Some of my favorite adventure games include Space Quest II, Sam & Max Hit the Road, The 7th Guest, Sanitarium, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and Little Misfortune, just to name a few.

Yep, I also loved adventure games of that era.

Space Quest 3 was my favourite from that series, and I played the hell out of Leisure Suit Larry. Also loved the Police/Kings Quest series, and all the other late 80's-early 90's smorgasbord of adventure games, from Rex Nebular to Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle to BioForge etc.

I think the pinnacle for me was Grim Fandango. Damn, that was a game.

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Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Disabling strikes in game rules

« on: January 16, 2024, 06:35:10 AM »

Yeah, the shove of BG3 is largely unuseful except to throw someone off somewhere, for which it's borderline OP (because "disengage" or misty step are better ways to get a non-close-combat character out of melee range, which is another major reason for shoving, and because shoves don't cause knockdown).

But yes, I'm sure there are ways to do this, though making them streamlined is always a challenge - one can either end up with too many mechanics for the average player to remember, especially because D&D's spell system is already middling-weight, or you end up with all these things being specific actions for a certain class, such that you end up with a "grapple fighter" who can do makikomis as a bunch of special actions and nobody else can. BG3 feels like it has rather few positioning and control focused options compared to most things in its genre: often the front-line fighters have more options to control a larger area of space than seems to be the case in that game.

Yeah, one problem with grapple mechanics (and 'control' mechanics in general) is that it can be quite irritating to 'lose control' of ones characters.

One of the more annoying fights I encountered in BG3 was an enemy with the 'garrotte' ability (prevents the user and target from moving, silences target and applies damage per turn). However, the major irritant in this case was the critters also had the ability to teleport, taking their target with them... so the fight basically involved chasing teleporting enemies all over the map who were strangling my silenced and immobile casters.

*** and yes, of course they teleported to the most annoying, difficult to follow locations possible - roofs, platforms, round corners etc... and of course the casters capable of casting fly/teleport etc were being silenced and strangled

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Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Disabling strikes in game rules

« on: January 15, 2024, 01:04:57 AM »

Its modified 5e DnD. Excludes the specific 'grapple' rules of 5e.

But again, I don't think it would take much tweaking to make an effective 'grappler-lite' skillset with what is available in BG3 (shove/disarm/knock prone etc), such as
- the ability to knock prone/shove/disarm as combined actions
- extra choices around how to follow up such a move, such as
-- simulating a joint-lock by applying joint damage effects
-- simulating a 'makikomi' by knocking yourself prone after the throw and doing extra damage to the enemy
-- far more control of enemy positioning (being shoved off cliffs is already very effective/irritating)
- the ability to 'reverse/counter' shove/trip/disarm attempts with a successful saving throw
- changes to prone mechanics to make being prone far more punishing in heavy armor
- reduced fall damage (grapplers spend a lot of time learning how to fall)

Lots more possibilities I'm sure.

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Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Disabling strikes in game rules

« on: January 15, 2024, 12:00:21 AM »

Of course the other point that's usually overlooked about plate armour is that it is a weapon in itself to some extent, if an unarmoured combatant attempted to grapple with a heavily armoured opponent they'd most likely be pummelled to death by gauntlets, kneecops or the elbow thingies. Hell, just imagine getting squarely headbutted in the face by someone wearing a heavy steel helmet.

I could never get my head around the Agincourt melee situation, where lightly armored English men-at-arms and longbowmen were able to defeat heavily armored French knights.

Surely, I thought, even though the French couldn't move, their armor still worked and they could still swing their weapons?

Then I saw this video. Nothing to do with historical battles, its a video from a protest in Germany taking place in a muddy field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9l3bLAx4Ng

Those riot police are wearing equipment that is probably significantly lighter than medieval plate, and yet hundreds of them are rendered completely ineffective by the weight of their gear.

That protestor in the monk robe is simply dancing around them with impunity knocking them off their feet for fun.

Another thing is the definition of 'grappling'. It doesn't have to mean WWE-style suplexes or rolling around in the mud. A simple trip, shove or leg-sweep to knock over an opponent in heavy armor is very effective, and indeed these kind of techniques feature very heavily in a 'battlefield' derived grappling martial art like jiu-jitsu.

After upending an opponent, a skilled grappler has a choice to continue into a wrestle, or simply leave the opponent on the floor and move on or strike for a weak point in their armor, which would definitely be the choice against an armored opponent.

I recently played BG3, and many of these mechanics already exist - shoves, trip/knock prone, disarms, throw, falling damage, joint damage effects (eg one character got a dislocated shoulder) etc. These can already simulate an awful lot of a 'grappler' skillset, even without the full-on 'grab/wrestle' side of things.

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Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Disabling strikes in game rules

« on: January 13, 2024, 09:52:43 AM »

Would the bit about grappling hold true on a battlefield? I'd have assumed that in a combat with multiple opponents, the penalty of exposing yourself to strikes from your opponents' surrounding men would be sufficiently great that most of the time people wouldn't be that keen to initiate grapples and would rather stabbing and shield bashing if they had to be shorter than spear distance, because those things (at least I'd have assumed) keep you in a better upright posture for when the next opponent comes in at you.

I thought you'd know the answer to that, given your background in Judo

Judo is essentially a sport/sparring form of Jiu-Jitsu, which originated as a battlefield martial art for disarmed/unarmed combatants specifically to use against armed and armored opponents.

The throws and joint-locks definitely DO work against armored opponents, and things like foot/leg sweeps are arguably MORE effective against opponents unbalanced by heavy armor. In thick mud etc, a heavily armored opponent can be in serious trouble once they lose their footing (think Agincourt).

It's definitely dangerous to use if outnumbered, for the obvious reason that while you are rolling around in the mud with one opponent, another is free to do something very unpleasant to you.

So yes, grappling is a plan B rather than a plan A on the medieval battlefield, but its a useful plan B to have nonetheless if you find yourself disarmed or with a weapon ineffective against an opponents armor.

*** the mere thought of being hit with something like a hiza-garuma or tsuri-komi-ashi while weighed down with 20+kg of extra metal makes my knee and ankle ligaments hurt just thinking about it!!

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2023

« on: November 10, 2023, 11:06:31 PM »

At no point anywhere did I suggest that everyone must do their own research on all topics and discard all other sources of verification. I really don't understand such a binary and extreme way of looking at things.

Writing this reply cost 2 or 3 hours of concentration.

I'm not sure how to reply to that. Writing my replies have taken me no more than 5 minutes apiece. Its no wonder we seem have such a dramatically different perspective on these things.

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Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Game Maths Primer

« on: November 10, 2023, 05:32:57 PM »

I'm wondering if I should read/work through at least the first bits sometime: it's well over a decade since I did any maths and it might be good for my brain to have the refresher.

I'd say give Chapters 1-5 a try first, see how you get on. The difficulty ramps up slowly and the concepts stay pretty grounded in 'reality'.

Chapter 6 seems to be the point where things get 'messy', suddenly you are into 4D space, polar/spherical coordinate maths, multi-dimensional complex numbers...

... for me as a maths geek first and an engineering/science geek second (the distinction being that maths is a tool for the latter, and an end in itself for the former), its at this point that I become utterly bewildered by the fact that some of these crazy, esoteric concepts have any use in reality whatsoever

And then my head explodes and I go and have a cup of tea.

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Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Game Maths Primer

« on: November 10, 2023, 03:00:42 PM »

Thats quite a fun looking book.

Starts off nice and simple in Chapter 1 - how to count on your fingers

The first few Chapters seem to cover the basics well.

And it gets into some pretty complex stuff by the end. For example, Chapter 13 - Splines - my Maths MSc dissertation was on numerical techniques to use these critters to approximate solutions for non-linear differential equations.

Its the kind of book I'd happily work through to keep my skills 'fresh' in my head and to fill in gaps in my knowledge.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2023

« on: November 10, 2023, 02:41:49 AM »

To clarify, psyanojim, are you saying that "if news organizations in my country don't pass on facts about happenings in other countries (or build consensus about what those facts are) it does not matter because I can do my own research?"

Something like that, but with fewer binaries/absolutes.

Does it 'matter'? Sure. But less so than in the past, given that we live in an era where we have more access to vast quantities of global information than at any time in human history.

How we process and filter that information overload and awful signal-to-noise ratio is the critical question.

And that is also one of the key reasons that I enjoy reading a variety of biased sources. Learning about those biases themselves is fascinating information to me, even if (or especially if) they obscure the underlying story.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2023

« on: November 09, 2023, 10:19:35 PM »

Hence my point about 'signal-to-noise' ratio.

'Unverifiable' is not the same as 'incorrect'. There will be plenty of true, factual statements buried in the deluge of gibberish. The difficulty is in identifying them.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2023

« on: November 09, 2023, 06:00:34 PM »

On the contrary, I think we have access to more facts than ever before.

The difficulty is the signal-to-noise ratio. We also have access to more gibberish and nonsense than ever before.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2023

« on: November 07, 2023, 05:43:39 AM »

I mainly rely on Google News and make sure I'm reading articles on any issue from a cross-section of the political spectrum.

It gets quite amusing reading about the same issue through the lens of both the Guardian and the Daily Mail (or even more extreme, Morning Star and Daily Express).

I wouldn't recommend this approach for the faint of heart, however. Maybe take up meditation before attempting

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Exilian Pub Out Of Context

« on: August 25, 2023, 11:45:18 PM »

'Gilgamesh' is a hell of a thing to shout during an orgasm

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Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: What are you reading?

« on: August 24, 2023, 01:34:21 PM »

Just finished re-reading Peter Hamiltons 'Pandoras Star' and 'Judas Unchained', and remembering why he is one of my favourite sci-fi authors.

Curiously enough, Ursula Le Guins 'The Dispossessed' is sitting on my desk right next to me, in my queue of books to read or re-read.

Next in the queue is, somewhat randomly, Evelyn Waughs 'Brideshead Revisited'. I'm also about 2/3rds of the way through 'Moby Dick'.

Edit: on that note, I just rewatched a couple of minutes of the 'Brideshead Revisited' TV series from the 1980s. Jeremy Irons narrating Evelyn Waugh really is a match made in heaven. I find the languid, almost lazy pace at which he rambles through subjects like art, religion, history, poetry, beauty and philosophy to be utterly captivating.