metadigital

Has anyone noticed that, in the 904 and 907 folders in StreamVoice, it has the voice actors for Kreia and Atris saying the exact same lines in response to the planning of the sidekicks? ex: \StreamVoice\904\904KREIA\904904KREIA017.wav vs. \StreamVoice\907\904KREIA\907904KREIA210.wav I kinda suspect Atris was supposed to be much more integrated into the endgame. Since this is my first post and since I grabbed Kotor 2 later than most and the disappointment is still fresh in my mind, I'll go ahead and toss in my "Arggh!" to the chorus of people that were disappointed in the Kotor 2 endgame and believe it was seriously botched and painted over with wall-to-wall combat. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I just finished it and for some reason, I get the feeling that Atris might kill Kreia and become Traya at the end. That would have been interesting. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> This has discussed at length and the conclusion was that Atris was originally to be Darth Traya if the PC was LS.

Actually I think this is a good idea. I think a limited choice from a small number of well worked and researched characters from different "classes" and alignments is much preferable to random infinite hairstyles and select-by-dialogue histories. We are role-playing; we are taking the part of a character in a story. As long as the choice is one that we want, or ideally there are a couple to chose from that encompass at least one that we want (which would provide us with replayability of characters that we might not normally play: broadening the RP experience), than this is sufficient for a great game.

Man 15 did rock no responsibilities no need for an income, parents still treated you like a kid. Man those were the days! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I remember when my daughter was that age ... not responsible, completely dependent, answered back like an adult ...

I had a wisdom score of over 40 on my PC and similar charisma, so I managed to counteract Kreia's high defence. I also had a Froce Barrier belt and a few other trinkets. Anyway, I didn't say you could do it every time, I was helping explain why sometimes Kreia sat on her arse and sometimes she attacked co-operatively with the sabres.

Who's bickering? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, who's bickering? I think you mean bantering, and if we're not meant to banter than this is going to be a forum of 1 deep topics!

The UN (as the only legitimate offspring of the League of Nations) was incorporated as a forum for nations to discuss and argue their agendas, without need to resort to war. The UN is a validating body because it represents the best form of world government that we have at this time (a democracy of nations, with special rules for the nations that are big and ugly enough to go-it-alone, i.e. a veto in the UN Security Council). If nations start acting outside the auspices of the UN, then the UN is a pointless artriface, and we are bacck to pre-WW2 nation states and rampant Nationalism. I am sure I have no need to explain why this is a backward step on geopolitics. Think of how you would feel if the US was not the only HyperPower, but instead Russia or China or India was. Scared? I am.

Like a M

Well done I am constantly surprised at the rapid progress your team is making! Any proofing or such work I would be pleased to help with. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Rapid? It's June already and restoration isn't finished yet! <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You certainly have a lot of >ahem< experience with spam issues, so dealing with it would be second nature to you. (Like Frank Abagnale Jr, from Catch Me If You Can, was a great counter-counterfeiter. " )

Jedi would be "When You Wish Upon a Star ..."

Talk about inmates in charge of the asylum! Does anyone get a chance to post anything on the Romanian forum?

Probably not. My Kreia haven't help them too. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think it was all to do with the (opponent) party dynamics, where the "party" was Kreia and her sabres. For example, if you manage to Force Wave the sabres behind Kreia, she is able to get a clear shot and will attack. (Even though she uses distance attacks with Force Powers. )

I have but obviously he too considered it too much for the cinema audience and stripped the more complex elements out for general release. Which really only reinforces the point I made. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Um, that was a joke. True I don't envy them the task that they aquitted themselves of so well. (Iread the books when I couldn't wait any longer to findout what happened in the Return of The King. Longest two weeks in recent memory. Although I enjoyed it, the target readership is about teenage, I think, and I was not very interested in prolonging my agony by reading the extra historical appendices at the end of my copy. Tolkien, too, had quite simplistic characters, though: no bad characters doing good acts to bring about a evil masterplan, or good characters doing evil acts to mitigate worse evil, etc.)

I've got a laptop, so I can take my KotOR to the lounge.

I think you posted this as a response to the wrong thread. This is the thread started by the almost-pubescent "leet" boy who wants (assumedly female) penpals to his "sexgod" hotmail account.

They're pretty popular in Sith Space, though. (Ewwww, cannibalism.) BOT, I would like to meet a kindly, wizened old Terentarek that has learned simple BASIC and wants to reach out and build a bridge between the races ... maybe we could use the "The Man Who Ruled the Universe" template, by Alan Dean Foster (in one of his rare original manuscripts, and not a film-to-novel conversion).

I don't think so. In general, when the progressors started killing the way most RPGs implemented, they were considered insane (usually correctly) and were removed for treatment. The people in charge were none too happy with the idea of letting a killer with futuristic fighting techinques loose on a medieval world. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I haven't read any of the contributory novels, so I am flying blind here. Assumption: these "Progressors" are backward time-travellers from the utopian communistic future into the pitiful fascist medi

... while still limiting the work to a reasonable amount. Dragon Age is a good example of this, with about half-a-dozen detailed, seperate characters with their corresponding unique backstories. I concur.

I am pretty sure that I had some Gand running away at one point ... even so, I agree morale was woefully underutilized and the concept of detail and non-lethal combat completely ignored. I want to see " Lawful Good" Jedi exercising restraint -- even at their own personal peril -- by trying to detain rather than kill. For example, it might be twice as difficult to stun as it is to hit and damage normally. More practically, it would be some penalty adjustment to the normal combat, as well as some special animations, to keep the game in balance. And it would be possible to switch between modes, just as in real life. You might want to kick the stuffing out of a particularly large, ornery and battle-savvy opponent before attempting to knock them out. Or you might try to disarm them. Then you might be using non-lethal combat and suddenly your own life is in danger, so you would use all (lethal) force necessary. (It would probably be too much to ask that the AI could determine if the combat style adhered to the alignment of the PC. " )

Blair's New Labour platform garnered 35% of the popular vote, which is just slightly less than Hitler's National Socialists did (36%) in 1934. The electoral system in the UK is not proportional voting, it is "First Past The Post". Consequently you put an "X" next to the candidate you want to win, not a ordered number of preferences, which means the system is overly simplistic. (Commentators worked out on election night that each Labour seat cost 15,000 votes, each Conservative 30,000 votes -- 33% of the popular vote -- and each Liberal Democrat seat 65,000 votes. This is due to the relative population sizes of the electorates that were won by the parties.) Then again, the other extreme is Italy, where Berlusconi's Forza Italia is the longest serving government in Italy's republican history (i.e. since June 2, 1946).

I have not said that space is finite. In fact, current theories sustain the opposite. But you are still applying a mundane perspective. Why does it have to be anything outside space, even space itself? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I may be misinterpreting your concept of space, then. Infinite and with bendable properties like length, bredth and height AND vacuumous? It is not clear whether gravity is expressable in gravitron particles, for example, yet I would hold that space has no such particles. The space you refer to is jsut where those particles are present, on an energetic trajectory out from the Big Bang. (that's what I'd call the fabric of space and time.) So, technically you could term space inside a bigger infitinte vacuum, but this seems the most logical explanation to the observable pattern of star systems, so far. Sure is, I agree with that. I don't see how the universe of stars can be infinite, though, even if the Big Bang were many times further back in time than we presently believe. It would have to be infinitely far back. Yes, yes. That's great and all, but it's not what I meant. I know that scientific laws are reliable enough. What is not a self-evident truth is that science will be able to explain everything. You said so yourself in a previous post, in a quote of Stephen Hawking, I think. And even if we do what Hawking proposes, there is still no guarantee that reason can find answers for everything. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nope, no guarantee. As a punter I'd wager on scientific reason before religious dogma, though.

This is the problem. It is unconscionable -- knowing the foibles of humans as evidenced in Communist regimes, for example -- to deploy a government that doesn't include a form of representation. It makes sense to broaden the representation as widely as possible, with the understanding that not all parts are equal. Much as the personal computer is a complex group of components, so too a society is disperate groups of self-interested parties. I think part of the problem with our democracies is that the roles, responsibilities, penalties and costs are not codified: not clearly defined. I see no problem with giving the public servants, and this means politicians, whatever is required for them to do their jobs without impediment. I see a big problem with a laissaz-faire implementaion of this principle leading to politicians lining their own pockets (e.g. their superannuation packages), pork-barrelling (buying votes in constituencies), and generally creating a new powerbase just as dangerous as a monarchy or a plutocracy. One of the benefits of the class system in the UK (and I'm not a big fan of it, believe me) is that the nobility were groomed for selfless public service -- they had no need for reimbursement, after all. Democracies are a compromise. Majority rules, but minorities are not ruled out. The will of the majority may not necessarily be a sufficient mandate to control the minority who disagree. (There are obvious exceptions, like murder is not acceptable; but there are always soft edges to hard rules: what about self-defence? What about a slight, young female using the only means to prevent assault by a large, combat-trained brute by shooting him? What about state-sanctioned death penalty? Who decides? Etc.) All good management systems include a feedback loop, even development cycles. Otherwise the system can very quickly shoot off in a tangent to its purpose. The biggest issue with decision making ANYWHOW is information. Fewer contributors making an informed decision is must better than everyone making uninformed decisions. I'm all for voting on every issue, unfortunately that isn't going to work. The whole point of seperating government out as a task to be done by a specific group of individuals is to let that group specialise (savings in time and effort due to economies of scale) and leave the other group(s) to specialise in their particular areas of interest. The problem is verifying the work. This is done in business by employing an audit company. Enron notwithstanding, this system works. So what we need is a government that is elected based on similar principles as now, with a seperate group of auditors whose sole role is to check the rectitude of the members of parliament. They should have sufficient power to prevent abuse of the political system by politicians. This could be a funtion of the judicial system, although it would be a better idea to have a seperate entity. Another final point. A good constitution is not sufficient to produce a robust democracy. Liberia has the exact same constitution as the USA. What is required is a constitution, a judiciary, a legislature and an exexutive (and I would add an audit group) all elected independant of each other, all working together and seperately. Legislative Assembly (House of Commons) creates bills of parliament. Senate ensures the bills are consistent with the spirit and letter of established laws, especially the constitution. Executive is the Project Manager of the Legislature. The juditiary implements (further interprets) the laws. Auditors scrutinise the politicians and their decisions for fraud of any sort. Likewise with the juditiary. At the moment we are all reliant on the news media to alert the public to any egregious behaviour, ad hoc, in the legislative and judicial offices (and there is nothing that can be done about any judicial contraventions, especially in the UK). It needs to be spelled out, codified in law and enforced. That will prevent any misconceptions about roles and responsiblities and -- I think -- reduce all types of fraud.

And why does it need to exist inside of anything? You are applying a mundane, limited approach which may not be valid since it's the framework we are talking about, not what's inside it. Space exists in itself, and has some observable properties. If you think that "the fabric of space" exists within a reality of nothingness that you refer to as "space", you are introducing an unnecessary entity into the reasoning. Occham's razor? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, I think your concept of a finite space introduces a bigger problem of what's outside the finite space. At least I haven't added arbitrary boundaries. There is the assumption I was talking about before. You may believe that science may be a pathway to the ultimate philosophical answers, but that's just a supposition. Take for instance the notion of "luck". An idea as old as mankind itself, and still we have found no explanation for it. In all of this time, science has not come a single step closer to answering metaphisical questions than it was when we first began to develop numerical systems. You have faith in science and logic, but as any belief, it is not something absolute, not a self-evident truth. Is it so hard to picture that there may be something beyond the feeble grasp of our reason? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It may well be hubris to believe that -- certainly in our lifetimes -- science will explain the universe, chapter and verse. I take issue with science not being self-evident; it is there for all to test and re-test and observe the laws of physics and chemical reactions in situ, without any dogma from the scientific establishment. As for mathematics, one of the defining characteristics of mathematics is the ability to prove a concept, be it the description of the series of Fibonacci numbers by induction or FLT (Fermat's Great Theorem). Baring existential philosophical debate on the reliability of our senses to consistently describe the "all we can observe" universe to all of us identically, science is self-evident. No. It's more like "I would rather say 'I don't know' and forget about it". If Sir Isaac Newton had had the same attitude, he wouldn't have formulated his Principia. I'm not talking about religious revelations, mind you, because for starters, I'm not a religious person. However, "God" is a metaphysical entity needed to explain reality and existence in certain philosophical schemes. You might not accept those schemes, and that's just fine. But trying to prove them wrong wielding other arguments based in different kinds of faith is absurd. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No I am merely providing evidence that -- using the most reliable scientific rigour we have, i.e. logical reasoning -- religious doctrines are less reliable and therefore less good science than real science. God requires no science for faith. But science requires no god, either.