31
Off-topic / Re: Kalevala in prose
« on: October 19, 2017, 01:04:05 AM »
Unfortunately, no. I read it in dead tree edition decades ago. The fact I remember it so many years later should tell you how unusual the story was, though.
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32
Off-topic / Other roguelikes
« on: October 18, 2017, 07:14:48 AM »
I'm guessing most people here are avid roguelike fans. What other games do others here play?
For myself, I've spent a lot of time playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, although I really don't like the direction they've been going. Grenade-throwing zombies? Zoombies? Laundry as a game mechanic? No thanks. When I got tired of playing 0.c with all its unfixed bugs and didn't want to switch to the (increasingly stupid) newer versions, I switched to UnReal World.
Before that, my main game was TOME with the Theme immersion plugin. Unfortunately they were shut down by the Tolkien Estate and their replacement was... well, it's just bad.
And before that it was Angband, NetHack, Moria, et al.
In the pre-Web days, I was an admin and coder on Gateway, the largest MUD in existence at the time. (We could handle up to one hundred concurrent players -- an unimaginably vast number in the days of Gopher and telnet. It was the beta test site for LPmud; yes, it was that old.)
For myself, I've spent a lot of time playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, although I really don't like the direction they've been going. Grenade-throwing zombies? Zoombies? Laundry as a game mechanic? No thanks. When I got tired of playing 0.c with all its unfixed bugs and didn't want to switch to the (increasingly stupid) newer versions, I switched to UnReal World.
Before that, my main game was TOME with the Theme immersion plugin. Unfortunately they were shut down by the Tolkien Estate and their replacement was... well, it's just bad.
And before that it was Angband, NetHack, Moria, et al.
In the pre-Web days, I was an admin and coder on Gateway, the largest MUD in existence at the time. (We could handle up to one hundred concurrent players -- an unimaginably vast number in the days of Gopher and telnet. It was the beta test site for LPmud; yes, it was that old.)
33
Off-topic / Re: Kalevala in prose
« on: October 18, 2017, 07:05:25 AM »
Estonian mythology is similar in some ways to Finnish and even uses some of the same names, but is fascinating. The great hero of Estonian legend is Kalevide (sound familiar?), which means "Son of Kalev." Like a lot of Scandinavian mythology, the story of Kalvide is quite dark and fatalististic. He murders a blacksmith for a magic sword, and the dying blacksmith curses the sword to eventually kill Kalevide as a result. Eventually, after many adventures, Kalevide loses the sword. While trying to cross a stream, the sword turns up under the water and cuts off his legs, killing him. The gods punish Kalevide for his treachery by forcing Kalevide's legless spirit to sit on his immortal horse with his hand trapped in a rock cleft, facing the gates of Hell. There is his cursed to sit for eternity, guarding the gates, unable to leave.
34
Suggestions / Sleep deficit
« on: October 15, 2017, 04:10:47 PM »
I, personally, have gone five days without sleep (although around day three I started having waking dreams, where I'd see dream imagery projected on surfaces), and I think most people can go at least two days without collapsing unconscious. I'd like to see the need to sleep work the way hunger does right now, where hunger kind of ramps up if you go too long without eating and can only be cured by overeating for a few days. Sleep deficits work the same way in the real world, where you can keep going for weeks on short rations of sleep, but you begin accumulating a sleep deficit and eventually have to pay it back over a lengthy period. Pre-industrial agrarian society was indeed much like this, where you'd have long periods of inactivity interspersed with sleepless periods of frantic activity for planting and harvesting.
(On a related note, I think hunger is too fast. I can overeat for weeks, but if I spend 9 hours straight erecting a cabin wall without snacking, I become instantly emaciated. If only it was that easy to lose weight in the real world...)
Edit: A "second wind" ritual would be useful too.
(On a related note, I think hunger is too fast. I can overeat for weeks, but if I spend 9 hours straight erecting a cabin wall without snacking, I become instantly emaciated. If only it was that easy to lose weight in the real world...)
Edit: A "second wind" ritual would be useful too.
35
Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Partially constructed trap fence eats spikes
« on: October 15, 2017, 12:50:45 AM »
Passed out from lack of sleep while building a trap fence. It removed the six spikes from inventory and produced a translucent place-holder the way partially-constructed built-menu things do, but trying to resume required six more spikes.
36
General Discussion / Re: Character Dementia
« on: October 15, 2017, 12:41:58 AM »
It's also that it was an entirely different way of thinking. The extended family all lived under the same roof, all the aunts and uncles and grandparents and kids and counsins, and often all in the same room together. It allowed for social bonding, emotional intimacy, mutual education, and shared burden of child-rearing. To people used to sleeping side by side in straw pallets, animals close enough to share warmth would be completely natural.
A lot of people don't realize that the we've evolved for the extended family, and that the idea of the nuclear family is barely 150 years old -- and why modern culture is creating epidemics of social isolation, mental illness, ennui, and sociopathy.
A lot of people don't realize that the we've evolved for the extended family, and that the idea of the nuclear family is barely 150 years old -- and why modern culture is creating epidemics of social isolation, mental illness, ennui, and sociopathy.
37
General Discussion / Re: Wild Animals in Villages
« on: October 15, 2017, 12:28:02 AM »
Wolf AI seems to be deliberately designed to be creepy. I woke up one morning to find my shelter completely surrounded by wolf tracks. It had explored the whole area while I slept, then quietly slunk away before morning, not having touched a thing. Freaked out, I surrounded my shelter with fences and traps.
Do you like my wolf fur boots? They're new.
Do you like my wolf fur boots? They're new.
38
Gameplay questions / Re: Your mastery in timbercraft is prone to succeed poorly
« on: October 15, 2017, 12:14:31 AM »
I noticed that the time to cut down a tree goes way up when I'm exhausted. When you're felling lots of trees for cabin-building, is it better to take a breather after each tree, or to let it build up to, say, halfway and then take a longer break?
39
Gameplay questions / Re: Harassment by a seal
« on: October 14, 2017, 09:12:56 PM »
Ha. I did as you suggested and went crazy with traps, leaving three or four in every single place he left tracks... and I GOT THE SON OF A BITCH. Beating him to death with a club while he barked in panic was disturbingly satisfying. And then on my way back home triumphantly hauling 150 pounds of meat and 25 pounds of fat, I came across a second one stuck in another trap. Turns out there were two of them. Seal jerky for the foreseeable future...
40
Gameplay questions / Harassment by a seal
« on: October 14, 2017, 05:45:59 PM »
I'm at my wit's end. I built my shelter near the sea in Driik territory, and a grey seal has taken up residence in the area. It constantly wakes me up at night while I'm trying to sleep, and is so skittish that it vanishes the second I spot it. I have a bow and arrow, but I am loathe to lose every arrow I miss with into the sea, and my stealth is too poor to sneak up on it. It won't fall into the traps I've set for it, and its constant splashing interrupts me again and again while I'm trying to erect cabin walls or tan hides.
I am being trolled by a seal. Help?
I am being trolled by a seal. Help?
41
Stories / Re: Poems of the Fallen
« on: October 12, 2017, 01:38:33 PM »
Pardon the anachronistic Shakespearian format, and not exactly fallen, but unfortunate.
The Lay of the Sexy Fisherman
He came to the town
With perches to sell
(A big cod as well)
And threw his catch down.
The men-folk all stared
And women they squealed
At muscles revealed
And all the flesh bared.
As naked as born
His arse in the draft
His clothes had he torn
For making a raft.
The Lay of the Sexy Fisherman
He came to the town
With perches to sell
(A big cod as well)
And threw his catch down.
The men-folk all stared
And women they squealed
At muscles revealed
And all the flesh bared.
As naked as born
His arse in the draft
His clothes had he torn
For making a raft.
42
Suggestions / Re: Lookout for X
« on: October 12, 2017, 02:47:22 AM »
Something like this would be useful for quests too. Having to march back and forth through villages (L)ooking at every single person again and again, trying to find that one guy to turn in your quest is both boring and infuriating -- especially since he moves around constantly. And if you're told to look for a guy "northeast of here" and there's multiple villages where he could be, it's just easier to ignore the quest instead of waste two or three hours of real time trying to run down every single person in every single village and still never being sure whether you might have missed someone somewhere behind a tree.
43
Suggestions / Building type: Soddy
« on: October 12, 2017, 02:41:42 AM »
Reading through some of the complaints about cabins (and having denuded an entire forest, eaten the content of an entire lake, and spent an entire year building one), I think there needs to be something in between the lean-to and the cabin. My suggestion is the soddy, and while it was more commonly used by Europeans in early Columbian North America, it was also historically used in places like Iceland, where trees were hard to come by. The soddy is constructed by carving out sections of grass turf and stacking them for walls. In North America, they'd usually dig into the side of a hill for a rear wall, then use sod to construct the other three walls for a soddy, which is where they would spend their first winter; in the spring, they'd build a wooden cabin on top of the soddy and turn the soddy into a root cellar.
In game, the soddy should be much faster to construct than a cabin, but require more time and effort than a lean-to or a yurt. The only problem is that cabins are already so nearly useless that I'm at something of a loss to figure out any way to make it less useful than a log cabin -- especially since a soddy is actually more cold resistant and thus arguably superior. In the real world, a soddy is much flimsier and requires constant maintenance, but I'm not sure the mechanics for this are available in the game since lean-tos are just as permanent structurally sound as a log cabin.
In game, the soddy should be much faster to construct than a cabin, but require more time and effort than a lean-to or a yurt. The only problem is that cabins are already so nearly useless that I'm at something of a loss to figure out any way to make it less useful than a log cabin -- especially since a soddy is actually more cold resistant and thus arguably superior. In the real world, a soddy is much flimsier and requires constant maintenance, but I'm not sure the mechanics for this are available in the game since lean-tos are just as permanent structurally sound as a log cabin.