Messages

76

DC Gamer Club / Re: Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game for free until Sep 30, 2017

« on: September 29, 2017, 06:48 PM »

20 Year celebration?

Damn, I'm getting old...

-Shades (September 29, 2017, 06:31 PM)

I haven't aged well ... : (

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game for free until Sep 30, 2017

« on: September 29, 2017, 06:48 PM »

Thanks for the heads up.

I already own it on Steam and GOG. But I haven't really played it much. I've heard it was wonderful, and I probably would have loved it back in the day. Which is why I bought it on both Steam and GOG. But some of the game elements haven't aged well, IMO. And it's hard to play older games that, in retrospect, and without the benefit of nostalgia, seem so cumbersome due to the limitations of the technology at the time.

Has anyone played this game recently, for the first time? If so, what did you think? Is it worth it (the time investment)?

-Deozaan (September 29, 2017, 06:18 PM)

Hi Deo! I for one missed you in the Chat!

And somewhere in this post is what became the magic for me of Ludum Dare, of which I have slid alarmingly and have to get a few more good sessions back in!

And somewhere also there when it's not LD-Powered anti-nostalgia or something, is "haven't aged well". That's an ominous deep concept I don't have any kind of answer to!

 

78

Living Room / Re: Who's your favorite scientist ?

« on: September 29, 2017, 06:43 PM »

I'm seconding etc Stephen Hawking. Also see he had a guest cameo role in Star Trek Next Generation!

Einstein is almost "too easy", possibly the most "over quoted" scientist (aka the abuse of E=MC^2 ), but with that modestly well known quote (I think) that problems cannot be solved at the same level that generated them. But also Einstein's Hair and that (hopefully legit) pic of him I think with his tongue out!

I don't know anything actually about Paracelsus but he was a Bad Guy on Warehouse 13 as one a rogue Warehouse Caretaker.

"Not Strictly a Scientist" is Scatman John, who famously used neuroscience to sidestep a terrible stutter to do some music, and I think James Earl Jones had speech problems too, and became Vader!

But then the surprise entry is, isn't Mouser a scientist!? Slight problems at the end of the thesis track, but we luv you!

    

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Living Room / Re: Chess?

« on: September 29, 2017, 07:02 AM »

(edit - tired - didn't read.)

There are several, but see above, look for Arena, because I think it's supposed to be easy to just "add engine". I think even poor ol' me managed it once. : )

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Living Room / Re: Chess?

« on: September 29, 2017, 07:01 AM »

^ I kind of followed that lol

So sometimes older computers still don't "drop pieces" "inhuman" but the moves are almost recognizable.

-TaoPhoenix (September 28, 2017, 05:18 AM)

meaning inhuman in the sense they willing to sacrifice a lot?

-tomos (September 28, 2017, 05:49 AM)

Not exactly, there are several classes of "inhuman".

The lowest level is simply that without sacrificing, you attack and they simply don't lose a piece or get checkmated either. You might have a good chance against a living player but it keeps finding these "how the hell do you do that" moves and escapes.

The next level up is sorta in the middle of the game yes, those sacrifice combos, that "only make sense on the final two moves".  The first two moves have you going "yeah, so... show me" and then it's kinda neat.

The one I am talking about is with no special combo it just DOES things, some of which overturn 100 years of "established wisdom" except it just somehow works. Besides the weird one I mentioned, a famous category is insane combos that somehow just all amount to getting one piece. Then you just lose from level 1 see above.

81

Living Room / Re: Chess?

« on: September 28, 2017, 05:18 AM »

hi Tao, do you have any sites to recommend?
Do you play online?

-tomos (September 28, 2017, 04:17 AM)

Yeah I was sayin' in chat that was a bit of a "phone in post" the first time, just to prove I'm inching back into watching the board.

I have Arena and I'm pretty sure that's it too, without firing it up.

I do play online, and I play on several sites. I have official accounts on Chess.com and LiChess and Playchess. I've played on ICC (Internet Chess Club) for decades, but I let that one lapse.

As for Contro's question, "best free chess software" goes all over the map. "Strongest free chess computer player" is probably Stockfish. But I used to have a small hobby of playing weaker older chess programs because it can be less dispiriting if you actually have a chance. Also, if you can get an engine to more accurately mimic what you might actually see (to a point), that's sometimes "better".

What that complex statement means comes up in a now decade long famous discussion of "what is a computer move". After people stopped laughing at computers about 1997 (Kasparov) and up to about 2003 (Kramnik was about the last one to reliably hold draws in a big match), what transpired is everyone and their chess playing insects under the floorboard started cranking computers at the 8,000 older chess books and discovered they didn't need the old days of $70 an hour lessons anymore.

Then came the rise of the "computer move". One of the most famous is "conventional wisdom" says if you "fianchetto" your Bishop, which is sticking it on the longest diagonal "sitting next to the king" that was nearly the 4th strongest piece on the board after the Queens.

Then came the computer who ditched it for "no reason for a crappy little knight" ... to create this fantastic result where exactly every square was somehow radioactive for the opponent, then you win because you have a hazmat suit and your Russian girlfriend is wearing a bra designed for ex Chernobyl survivors and the bra can unhook into two face masks!
(Not kidding!) Then you win. Then your opponent whines. Then you shrug and drink another redbull and watch more Naka.

So sometimes older computers still don't "drop pieces" "inhuman" but the moves are almost recognizable.

82

Living Room / Re: Chess?

« on: September 27, 2017, 05:25 PM »

Mouser tipped me off to this!

I'm pretty up on chess lately. I play decently well, so maybe tomos and contro we have to cajole you guys to visit the DC chat.

I'm far from clear how we only about about eight regular chatters out of all of DC but maybe 2018 (with this a New Chatters for the New Year NCNY ) new thing could be cool.

I live on an alternating 18 hour day and Australian time, and mouser is famous for his 3am "good mornings" and "Happy lunch" at 5pm.

So both of those topics are things I could rampage on for 1000 words!

83

Living Room / Re: Badly explain your occupation

« on: September 23, 2017, 02:12 PM »

Not sure if you know the answer already or not but any non httpS Firefox will give that warning, any such site, no exceptions.

-rgdot (September 23, 2017, 01:05 PM)

I didn't, and I haven't been around the tech scene for a while at all. : (
So interesting to know, my opinion of said thing unclear.

84

Living Room / Re: World Wide Web Consortium abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

« on: September 23, 2017, 02:10 PM »

" In their public statements about the standard, the W3C executive repeatedly said that they didn't think the DRM advocates would be willing to compromise, and in the absence of such willingness, the exec have given them everything they demanded."

So if you don't compromise, you win?!

 

85

Living Room / Re: Badly explain your occupation

« on: September 23, 2017, 12:55 PM »

I reported that Firefox gives me a warning on DC's password login saying it's not secure, and asked for what to think about it, whether I should just trust that mouser is a legend in our time and ignore it, or if it's a valid to do item he's already working on.

(No really, that was the kind of thing I did a lot at my old job!)

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 2017 Thread

« on: March 09, 2017, 02:22 PM »

Super Crash Box by Drury
http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=62808

A cute little game that seems to combine portions of three genres - platforming, sliding blocks, and your choice of a third.

(Shell post)
(This means I am using it as partial work / placeholder and plan to add to it.)

Here is one of the official LD entry pics, and about where I began to have trouble. The YEP boxes are explosive on a 3 second timer and the LOL boxes are (mostly) fatal, but you can get rid of them (and good blocks) by making the YEP boxes explode.

I'm borrowing one of the official pics of the LD site to round out this part of the post since it's quite close to some of my games.

http://ludumdare.com...2.png-eq-900-500.jpg

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 2017 Thread

« on: March 09, 2017, 02:16 PM »

This thread will also have some misc notes about production levels of LD games.

Running out of time is at least a quarter of the developer experience! But there IS an art to thinking meta a couple of times in the compo/jam weekend and if an element is getting out of control, perhaps ditch it and try to re-package the remaining pieces.

The first couple entry especially caught my eye as a compo entry (not jam! I'm growing aqmbivalent about what to do with that..) that really seems to have care in the spit-polish stage at the end.

Cozy Christmas Village by juxipolo - Compo Entry
http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=45848

A sweet little Sim Villiage remake. Reminding people of my rating scale, it scales a bit lower than veteran gamers here. So you take that overall mood and when I rate it Phoenix-Easy, it's generally something pleasant you can just idle with for a couple hours of procrastination before you Get Serious again.

I didn't find any lose conditions, there's no timers and things you lose if you're too slow, and not all that much complexity.

I'm fuzzy on terms, but graphics are some sort of "2.5", 2d with a perspective angle shift, as opposed to "3D" with all the blocky rendering people are experimenting with lately.

Browser note - not all the little settings on my new-ish machine are tuned yet, but currently I am getting errors Unity stuff is unsupported at best in Pale Moon browser, and it suggests downloading the full Firefox.

This is my first completed villiage. I am pleased I had a sane design, though I tried to put in roads for cars but that wasn't clear if that was any better than sidewalks.

So I could optimize the exact placing, but it was netting positive cash per day and letting it sit over night yielded several million into the treasury.

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DC Gamer Club / Ludum Dare 2017 Thread

« on: March 09, 2017, 02:02 PM »

After some time away from D, I am doing some more. Some will be from the Dec 2016 set, soon-ish we hope to have April 2017 en route, and I plan to at least poke a little at older sets just to chip at the ice.

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N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: NANY 2017: Scratchpad - A simple way of recording notes, with autosave!

« on: January 19, 2017, 02:11 PM »

I JUST had Win10 reboot on me and I keep stuff on open tabs and apps so I will try to look at this because that wipes everything out!  : (

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N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: NANY 2017: Affirmator - Cepstral Damien

« on: January 19, 2017, 02:08 PM »

Cepstral Damien is a rare experimental voice that sounds fairly close to Tron's MCP.

This fits in with a long joke I have had whre MCP retires from being evil and becomes a motivational speaker!

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N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: Mouser Android Code idea - pomodoro time

« on: October 04, 2016, 04:10 AM »

Just to help people who don't know the term, here is the wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia...i/Pomodoro_Technique

It's basically chopping up stuff into task chunks and breaks, and I may fiddle a bit with it roughhand for a few days.

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N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: October 04, 2016, 03:43 AM »

It's that time already?

-Deozaan (September 02, 2016, 01:19 AM)

And that's what I just said in the chat just now!

(And I'm inching my way back to the boards!)

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General Software Discussion / Re: Brave: A new browser with built-in adblock and payment solutions

« on: February 04, 2016, 12:04 AM »

"I personally couldn't care less if they put 1,000 ads on a page, as long as they don't slow my roll."

I found a new wrinkle this week.

On YouTube, pre-loaded non-skippable-until-x-seconds ad, "Annotations", that you have to click the gear to turn off, the "ad ad" that needs an x-close, and the Closer ad.

THAT slows down my roll !

94

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: UnhackMe 7.90 [gotd]

« on: January 05, 2016, 11:59 AM »

I have kinda felt that about six of these groups get together and chain their programs because this is another one and I have no idea what it does, or even what category to compare it to anything else.

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N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge/Release: Lucid Dream Inducer

« on: January 04, 2016, 04:15 PM »

I think this will be one of the more complex threads so I will try to follow it for a while.

I'd be concerned about the sleep loss and disruption of sleep patterns. But since it (maybe?) worked at least once, what do you feel about the dream that resulted?

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N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Release: Skully the Training Virus ... /Prank

« on: January 03, 2016, 11:24 AM »

I'd suggest some real caution here because if the user's computer is already beginning to be not stable, and then he decided to use this thing, it's not impossible he'll just jam the power button. I did that this week on some other wholly unclear issue and now my computer won't boot!

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N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Release: SysTrayIconsManage

« on: January 03, 2016, 11:12 AM »

Wow, another use for a Nany - to confirm that certain new things are NOT my imagination to be annoying!

I'm coming up on some kind of "culture clash" very soon moving from Win XP to Win 10 so if this is a "thing", I am trying to learn how to handle frustration better and knowing this issue exists is the first part!

 

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N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge/Release: Lucid Dream Inducer

« on: January 03, 2016, 11:00 AM »

I remember a lucid-dreaming "guru" who recommended repeating the phrase "Am I awake, or am I dreaming?" to yourself throughout the day, and even sold tshirts with the phrase on it, so you would be reminded.  Then, the habit would continue into your sleeping life and you might find yourself saying "Am I awake, or am I dreaming?" while dreaming and *ding*... you're lucid dreaming. 

Perhaps that could be the 'trigger phrase'...

As for doing it on a mobile device, simply recording a chime and phrase and setting as the alarm tone on your clock should do the trick.

-Edvard (January 02, 2016, 08:08 PM)

I'm keeping an eye on this one in general because of the topic, the description says "voice file" and I used to ages ago actually to make custom copies of whole stories and books with text-to-speech software, so as one example you can devise whole settings and milieus which relates to one of the systems I learned (and now prob lost the skill again).

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Non-Windows Software / Re: Post your Linux/FOSS humor here.

« on: January 01, 2016, 04:25 PM »

Oh gawd Edvard, that's damn scary...

"Phoenix vs Linux round four"

This month I'm drifting into trouble but here goes...

Despite the easy jokes, Windows OS has worked for me. But since my main rig keeled over without even allowing Safe Mode, well, I'm cashing in a coupon from Dad to get a new comp. (Multi B-Day and X-Mas all mashed together).

So I no longer have either of the boxes that led to my bad experiences, plus time has this way of passing, so I might be able to do some kind of wild triple-boot with my new rig.

Now I get to go back to what I avoided for x years, the wild questions of distro and version and ... stuff.

But look! It's brand new hardware, it's 2016 and neither 2006 or 2009, and Things!

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N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge/Release: Lucid Dream Inducer

« on: January 01, 2016, 04:10 PM »

If I were dev'ing this program, I'd want some twelve more features in it.

All the "beginner" systems I learned for lucid dreaming have intensity in the mix.

So first you "pre-load" your conscious/subconscious/other minds with data, coupled with a desire of what *type* of lucid dream you want.

That's why they're lucid - crap reg dreams, you get trapped "in a dream". In a Lucid dream, to varying points, you *control* the dream. It's easier to start staying in the bounds of sane physics.

So if I were to "preload" one as an example, let's say I want to go to a nice chess tournament in the midwest but I have no way to get there. I can hitch a ride with a trucker. I can decide he's driving International brand truck rather than Mack because it has a nicer tonal gear shift range. I can make sure my three sandwiches are two diff types of ham and cheese.

These are the details that run lucid dreams. These were just the beginner examples. I'm still only a low beginner myself. But just sayin' it's more than a chime and an audio phrase in the systems I studied.