alanschu

Uh, that doesn't mean they voted left. And it's not unusual either. It is exceptionally rare for a party to have a majority fo the vote. The Liberal majorities recently haven't been much better, often receiving around 40% of the vote. In the 2004 Election, the Liberal Party received approximately 37% of the popular vote. In 2000, the Liberal Party only received 40.8% of the popular vote, and in 1997, they received 38% of the votes. Were you up in arms because of these results? What are these reasonable outcomes? And does it make sense to spend the money just because we have it? Kalfear asked specifically about theft. Your examples do not indicate anything about theft.

Sorry. I was using it in a way that is common in Computer Science. I was stating that the ruleset IS the abstraction here. Looking now your comment did seem to think that I was talking about abstracting something out of the ruleset. This is likely where things got confused between us. As long as it's all sorted out now. It sort of reminds me of the arguments my roommate and I have, where we realize we're both arguing the same thing, just from different perspectives or because of a miscommunication.

Lets not exaggerate too much. The Conservatives only beat the Liberal party by 6% of the vote. And given that the Liberals did in fact win seats in the prairies, demonstrates that it is in fact an exaggeration that the only votes the Liberals got votes in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Even in super conservative Alberta, 15% of the people still voted for the Liberal Party. They also won the majority of the seats in the Atlantic. Which isn't actually that bad, given that the Conservatives only won by a small margin. I wouldn't call that messed up. The House of Commons is not a regional legislature. It holds the Members of Parliament that represent the people. The regional representation is done by the Senate, and that's where things are insanely screwed up. Uh, I wouldn't say that. Especially since you apparently feel they are "communist." The NDP Party focuses TOO much on the people. So much so that, as you mentioned, they don't have a fiscal policy to make it work. That would be me. And what poll is this? And those statements are political positioning. It's a threat in order to get something done. If Alberta was so pissed off about the political mistreatment from Ottawa, they would have left back when Trudeau implemented the National Energy Program. The "mistreatment" is easy street compared to then. You know what, I have no problem with this. Alberta was lucky enough to live on Oil. The thing is, the ONLY province to never receive money in transfer payments, is Ontario. There was a time that Alberta was receiving money from Ottawa. Furthermore, I do not feel that economic strength should garner significantly more political power. Otherwise, provinces that are typically poorer such as the Maritimes have their voting power marginalized. Furtheremore, where do you get your numbers for transfer contributions? The official site only talks about who receives what. I can't find who contributes what exactly, since it's based on an amalgamation of all sorts of taxes and so on. This is not an issue of electoral seats. As I said, the House of Commons is a Represenation by Population legislature. This should not change. Granting Alberta more power simply because the province makes money is effectively purchasing the power. It gives additional power to the wealthy, which is exactly how the democratic process should NOT be. I am not in favour of giving Alberta more power in the House of Commons simply because of oil and the wealth it provides.

Considering I keep the side of my case open and I make sure that there is no cables cover any fans, I consider it a rather low priority.

I'd recommend not arguing with her on this particular point. I *think* she's just trying to be silly.

It just seemed odd to spontaneously start talking about the technical aspects of a game engine.

I think the NDP gaining power would probably be the worst thing possible for Canada. I don't hold much faith in a political party who's response to questions about where they plan to get the money for their plan of increasing spending for Health Care and Education is "Don't worry about it." And I support public spending for both Health Care and Education. And the Liberal Party is not a left leaning party, they're a pragmatic party. If you were to classify them, they'd be Centrist, with the exception of Chretien/Martin's Liberals, who (especially financially) would be more on the right than on the left. The recent Liberal Party has only been to the left when it comes to social concerns, but this is more of a reflection of their pragmatism than anything else.

That's partly why I was surprised. I was wondering if someone asked some questions or something.

I could see it working.

Yep. Also, it's entirely possible that licensing the engine allows for local modifications and whatnot. This seems to be the case with Half-Life 2, as according to IGN, it uses a modified version of the Havoc Physics engine.

Errr, I think we may have miscommunications about what the term abstraction means. I'm using it with this definition: "a concept or idea not associated with any specific instance." SPECIAL does not require Fallout to exist. It's not associated with any specific instance (i.e. world/game). It can be applied to whatever game world you want. Rulesets are important, but they abstract aspects of the world (such as the attributes of characters, how weapons are fired, and so on) in such a way that allows designers/players/whatevers to quantify aspects of the game world. In real life, a Strength value of 12 means nothing. What exactly does it mean to have 1 hit point remaining? And does it mean the same thing if you have 1 hit point remaining out of 4, or 1 hit point remaining out of 200.

I'm not sure what you mean here when you use the word robust. I can't make sense of this.

I remember PC Gamer talking about it in a sidebar during an article about Prey.

Just curious, why the sudden lecture about aspects of Half-Life 2? It just sort of seemed to come out of no where.

Oh?

What are you talking about? The ruleset is the abstraction because it doesn't need to be associated with the Universe. You can use a ruleset to do whatever you want, it doesn't have to be a specific game. In this sense (not being associated with a specific instance), it is an abstraction. In the case of computer game, it served as a mechanism by which we can quantify the attributes and abilities of a character (among other things). But it's still an abstraction. I mean, what exactly is a Strength value of 12? The only real thing we can get from it is that a Strength value of 12 is greater than a Strength value of 11 (i.e. relative comparisons). On specific gameplay yes, because it's the mechanism by which the player interacts with the setting. In terms of what makes a game fun, I don't think it's any more important than the setting and other creative aspects. Rock solid rulesets can't carry a poor, boring game, and a great game creatively will be hampered by a poor ruleset. The thing is, how the ruleset works is arbitrary. As long as it is functional and doesn't hinder experiencing the game world, it doesn't matter really matter what it is. Had Fallout not had an interesting premise and been an overall boring game, I suspect there'd be little fun to be had from playing the game just the same.

Why wouldn't they?

Say what?!?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Your optimism is palpable!

Not really. If someone decides not to buy Bethesda's FO3 based on something he/she reads on the site, say a comparison between FO1's turn-based combat and FO3's (hypothetical) real-time combat, an accomplishment has been made. Why? Because if Bethesda makes a FO3 which doesn't appeal to some people who liked the past two games, and they refuse to buy it because of certain features that were altered, the resulting lack of sales would signal the developers that they lost a portion of their customers due to such design decisions. That's what I'm advocating here. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Is it still an accomplishment if you convince old school Fallout players to actually buy Fallout 3?

Those "simple rulesets" are what dictate how a game plays, which is far more important in interactive entertainment than how good it looks. I think the idea was that a ruleset is an abstraction. It's possible that you could have a infinite number of rulesets that all work and make for a fun game with a particular setting.

Hey, the spreadsheet interface is letting me refuel my carriers in the Marshall Islands to go and decimate more Japanese shipping! Next goal is to conquer Truk, to cut off Rabaul, which recon has counted 33 (!) divisions at. I'd very much like to cut them off.

I don't know. I think the cameras may have been close to the ground. I do think that the Dam is probably bigger, though it's hard to say.

It was cool recognizing all those places. It'll be nice because enemies won't necessarily be in all the same spots any more!

Agreed, Close Combat was a very fun game to play, and it was real-time. As Llyranor pointed out, an RTS does not need to be a clickfest. I think the game he was describing was Red Devils Over Arnhem. When I worked on ORTS, we were looking on making an intelligent AI that worked well tactically from both sides. This was so that players were no longer small scale tacticians that had to click 1000x a second, but the strategic scale Generals.