Cycloneman

Half of the US population thinks the world is less than ten thousand years old. Creationists have an extremely strong position in the United States, and it wasn't so long ago that acts making the teaching of evolution illegal passed by an overwhelming majority.

Summing it up: Ben Stein and Mark Mathis are a couple of creationist wankers. Mathis lied to Dawkins, saying this movie wasn't a bunch of creationist wanking. Dawkins tells it like it is: this is a crappy movie based on lies, deceptive quotes, strawmen and disinformation.

Rather than like in KOTOR 2 when you can't speak, only selecting an option. Right, I'm pretty sure that's it will use a voice actor for Michael, too. But since the question was "Does the article mention whether the dialogue is voiced yet?" And the article says "the development team is still determining the specific points at which the player will input commands." Of course, it's possible that they've got some dialogue already done to help test the engine, but it sure doesn't seem likely that they'd have much of it voiced if they haven't quite figured out how to have the dialogue system work.

What if all those 16 people don't have any family nor friends, and are suicidal? Wouldn't it be a good deed, then? Hint: look up the definition of "wanton." No, it is only mostly "good" or mostly "evil." Good and evil are opposites. Something is either good or evil. What's next, something is "mostly hot" or "mostly cold"? Something is "mostly fast" or "mostly slow"?

Neither does trying to say that actions are black and white - which is what you are doing if you deny that every action has a positive and negative element. Yes, every action has a positive and negative element, sure. But an action which has a significantly greater positive element is good, and an action which has a significantly greater negative element is evil. If an action, say, makes me happy, but causes the wanton killing of sixteen people, then it's obviously evil.

Sure, okay. But your original point was that entropy was evil, so... Guess we now agree? I disagree, firmly. Making words that describe things into nonsense words that mean nothing helps no one at all.

That abide by absolute rules. Sure. Absolutely made-up rules. Then give me an example of a group that could take control and no-one would be adversely affected. Even if, say, Secular Humanists took control, the religious groups would protest. So what? Just because someone might be adversely affected doesn't mean the act isn't "good". If I put Jeffrey Dahmer in jail, he's adversely affected. Does that make the act evil?

According to the rules of the language. So you admit that plural and singular are just labels? That's... that's contradictory to what I said. If fundamentalist Christians gained more power in the US, then the result would not benefit the majority of people. Even if it did, it would hurt the minority far more than it helped them. If FCs magically stopped being such huge ****, then it would be perfectly acceptable for them to gain more power. All consumption of energy is ultimately entropic, particularly for living things. By eating a fruit/whatever, you consume chemical energy to continue your body's current structure. However, when you die, all massive quantities of energy spent keeping your body together over the course of your life are wasted, since it is rapidly disintegrated by the nearby environment.

"Labeled"? Sounds as though you've admitted I'm right! What sort of group would you not want to get the benefits?

Why? Isn't a plural bigger than a singular? Aren't two men of greater number than one? For example, suppose I have a puzzle made up of four pieces. There are four pieces but only a puzzle, even though those two terms are interchangeable. How does that make any sense? If you can't accept more people getting benefits if you don't get any, you're a sociopath. Neither do I.

Want to watch me debate you on whether or not plural and singular have absolute, set definitions? I can do that, it's easy. What's the difference between a singular person and a plural person? I mean, after all, aren't all people made up of many atoms? Aren't those atoms plural? But for some reason the person that those atoms make up isn't. How can that be? Or, heck, a human is made up of multiple organs. How can he be singular? Doesn't a human become literally less of a person if he loses parts of his brain? Note there that "parts" is smaller than "brain" yet it's plural and brain is singular! This system doesn't make any sense! Here, I'll define good for you, then: the greatest positive influence for the greatest number. And evil: the greatest negative influence for the greatest number. Can you come up with a society where people thought that good was the greatest negative influence for the greatest number? It's relevant because you've been avoiding answering it so that there can be some sort of debate on what determines if it's moral or not, but whatever. I can see you enjoy avoiding the question, so I won't push it further. Actually, life, by it's very nature, accelerates entropy by breaking down complex chemicals.

I just did - moral and amoral are labels, nothing more and nothing less. Plural and singular are labels, nothing more and nothing less. They still have definitions. And I said that it matters not, for, even if the entire human race lauded something as "good," it would still not be an absolute "good" concept or act. Since you can't seem to define "good" it's unsurprising you'd have a hard time understanding consistent moral ideas. My own, but in general I do not disagree with any elective abortions other than the extremely-late-term - but yet, even then, I would still not call late-term abortions amoral. What are your own criteria for defining which abortions are immoral and which are moral?

Define moral, then. You missed the point. The point was that the ethic of reciprocity has been held within human conceptions of "good" for over two thousand years. What criteria do you use to define which abortions are amoral and are moral?

It didn't mention it specifically, but it's inconceivable to me that they would do a conversation system like that without full VO. I think that they're going for ME style cinematics, and you can't do something like that with just subtitles. Well, obviously the finished game will has voice acting, but the question is, does it have it now?

Just because we can debate something doesn't mean there isn't a correct stance on it. I mean, we could theoretically debate the color of my X-Box for hours. That doesn't mean it isn't black. But morality is not a physical object that can be examined, it is a ever-changing mental label. Which explains why we got rid of the ethic of reciprocity, of which one of the oldest uses was by Confucius, two thousand five hundred-ish years ago. Wait, no we didn't. That doesn't sound terribly "ever-changing" to me. I would tend to disagree, and that is the exact point I was making in my previous statement - morality, along with the concepts of "good" and "evil," is something that is assigned by individuals and groups. Those ideas are only titles that we use to help identify things we like and things we do not like - and thus they are always open to interpretation. Why do you disagree?

Well, first you need to make a few judgments on the comparative values of freedom, pleasure, lack of pain, life and social inclusion. Then you estimate/observe the total amount of freedom, pleasure, lack of pain and social inclusion which were taken away by one system and compare it to how much was taken away by another. Bam. Quantified suffering. The way you know that (early) labor unions were doing good when they helped workers gain better wages, working condition and shorter hours. Unless you tell me objectively what are the comparative values of all those things, you've got nothing. Alright then, here you go.

Well, first you need to make a few judgments on the comparative values of freedom, pleasure, lack of pain, life and social inclusion. Then you estimate/observe the total amount of freedom, pleasure, lack of pain and social inclusion which were taken away by one system and compare it to how much was taken away by another. Bam. Quantified suffering. The way you know that (early) labor unions were doing good when they helped workers gain better wages, working condition and shorter hours. No. You saved a life at a cost of only a slight business inconvenience to a successful merchant. The fact that it was your own is completely irrelevant.

Just because we can debate something doesn't mean there isn't a correct stance on it. I mean, we could theoretically debate the color of my X-Box for hours. That doesn't mean it isn't black. They're both wrong. Abortion becomes immoral (unless done to protect the life/health of the mother) when the fetus' neocortex becomes functional, since then the fetus has the mental functions of a human. Depends. Did your "force of arms" kill people/create more suffering than genital mutilation does?

Isn't there something about them not quite having nailed down how often to insert player choices? Wouldn't that probably mean they haven't gotten the voice acting done? I mean, for gameplay-based dialogue (like the article says the game has) you pretty much gotta nail gameplay down before script before voice acting. Oh shoot, I just realized something: in the particular example given, there would probably just be three responses that Michael could make after the "reset" (ie when Scarlet asks "what do you do/what brings you here?"). What I mean, is, that the dialogue tree might work like this: [bunch of free-flowing dialogue] [specific constant idea conveyed in different ways each time] [then one answer/response for each mood] So, for the question that's asked at the end of the example conversation, the answers could be the same for each. I mean, being curt in response to one could easily be the same as being curt in response to the other. So, there would actually be just 119 different lines in that method.

Having never played Fallout, I want to ask - how does it work?

Was going to edit this into my last post, but then H

What happens in the example dialogue is that you talk to Scarlet Lake. Between the two dialogues given, the tone, lines, and her general response to Michael are different, but at the end of each, she basically asks, "What brings you to these parts/what's your job?" In one, Michael is flirty all the way through. In the other, he switches to "huge jerk" mode for a brief moment rather than "cool and professional" like he is the rest of it. Her response in the first is pretty good stuff, funny and intelligent, with a couple nice burns thrown in. Her response in the second comes off as more prying into Mike. The overall flow of each one isn't really comparable, but here's the last line for each: "So, Mike, when you're not getting shot down, what do you do with yourself that would bring you out to this part of the world?" "If you don't mind me asking, what do you do that would make you want to come out here?" So, yeah, there's probably some overlap so that each conversation doesn't end up having tons of different ways to go. I mean, if you get to choose options ten times over the course of a conversation, that's a little over fifty thousand different ways it could go. Overlapping like that would definitely help keep production values down.

I'm not "mobbing" him because he likes Mass Effect more than Fallout. I don't have any ridiculous loyalties to some game I've never played. Indeed, I don't think anyone said they liked Fallout or that that's why they disagreed with him. I'm attacking him because he blatantly contradicted himself, saying on the one hand Mass Effect couldn't be any better and is so great (directly after a question regarding whether or not ME's plot could have been better!), and then saying it has a plot of inferior quality to Planescape: Torment. Well, you could just have him/her be named Casey or Jessie or Gabriel or some other androgynous name, and games where you choose your gender tend to have people change he/she when they're referring to you in the third person. It's more likely just a story function - this game is set in the modern day. Playing a female in Saudi Arabia doesn't sound like a fun time to me. That doesn't answer my question of why you put in a random segway from how Mass Effect couldn't be any better into how Mass Effect is better than Fallout, and, in fact, your #1 game of all time.

I went over this a bit before, I guess you missed it. (note: slightly adjusted because I think I messed up my second quote so it didn't point towards the right bit; also I mis-spelled diplomacy)

The currently mentioned mechanic for critical hits is you line up your reticle and wait a couple seconds while it and another circle meet then fire. You can pre-load assault rifle crits. So no die roll.