INN OF LOST SOULS: general chit-chat thread

[oh_brother]

I drew New Zealand. My one consolation was that if your team finished bottom of the group you got your money back. Unbelievably Italy stole last place off them. The Azzurri owe me 5 euro!

[beowuuf]

One of the guys drew Austrailia and New Zealand...

[oh_brother]

That is terrible, were there at least prizes for coming last?

I organised a pool for the last World Cup, and to avoid something like that happening I had one pot of good teams and one pot of bad teams, and everyone picked one of each.

[beowuuf]

The only thing you get for coming last with our sweepstake is mocking laughter

[Bit]

So - I better post that here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQykRiXk ... re=related

[Jan]

LOL! That's more lethal than the funniest joke ever!

Fortunately, Czech TV mutes the vuvuzela's sound now, so the matches are now watchable (and listenable).

[Trantor]

Hehe, that's great! At least he got all secrets, I first thought he wouldn't get the Rocket Launcher. Now I want to play Doom again...

[Gambit37]

I think I must have played far too much Half Life 2 over the last few weeks. I keep hearing things when I'm out and about that sound exactly like stuff from the game. Sometimes I think I can hear the gravity gun following me around, and right now I can hear a distant train horn, which makes me think I'm racing over that bridge in the buggy trying to avoid being hit...

Years ago when I used to play network Duke Nukem 3D with workmates, we all used to have dreams about it. It got to the point that those dreams started to affect our waking moments and we'd be looking at bits of buildings when walking home and imagining how we'd use them to our advantage, in particular if we could hide a trip mine in a sloping surface (a game flaw). I still look at air vents fondly...

Do you have weird real-life experiences based on games you've played...?

[Hajo]

Dreaming about games seems to be quite normal. Our brain seems to sort and re-link experiences and memories during sleep, and sometimes parts of this process become conscious. During the re-linking process there are apparently a lot of strangely connected fragments being worked on, most likely explaining the weird dreams containing such elements.

If it follows your in daytime, you have manged to replace a lot of your "life experience background memories" with virtual memories from a game. I'd say then it was too much gaming for sure

I can tell that the rock pile monsters from DM gave me nightmares when I played DM the first time.

[Zyx]

Many times games have a specific logic or engine. After playing them intensely, I usually find myself involuntarily applying this learned way of thinking to real-life oriented thoughts. Sometimes it's absurd, sometimes it's novel and interesting. Sometimes I even think about philosophical problems, ie self-consciousness or the possible futures, in terms of a dungeon or through DSA mechanics.
And by the way, Paul was concerned a few days ago, I designed a DSA who commits suicide under certain low conditions of its own mental state. (We agreed on assisted death instead).

[Gambit37]

@Hajo: Memories from a game aren't virtual, they are still real memories after all But yeah, I know what you mean. I hadn't played any games for years though, it's only in the last few weeks that I got a new computer and I've played a lot of HL2. So no need to worry, I do have other real life things going on as well

@Zyx: Now why do I find a suicidal DSA hilarious?

[Adamo]

I designed a DSA who commits suicide under certain low conditions of its own mental state.

that`d be just great! I suppose the whole maleficient guild would commit group suicide right after ressurection seeing how treir low states are?

[Trantor]

I once thought that my friend's home would make a cool deathmatch level for Doom, so I built it. And one night, I dreamed about playing a new Deathmatch level, so I built that as well. Does that count?

[Jan]

Does that count?

Not really. Have you already discussed it with your doctor?

[T0Mi]

The last game managing to give me true nightmares (beside being constantly chased by ugly non-scanline grey pixels huge as houses) was "Dead Space". It haunted me in my dreams as well as in wake times. I'm still suspicious of man-hole covers and now fully understand the fear horses have for them.

I designed a DSA who commits suicide

This truely scares me. DSAs now have the ability to become sentient?

[Adamo]

this guy is truly sick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvmSSOfsiU

[Zyx]

Yes they always could. Now they can even access their own identity and existence through &THIS_DSA_ID, and they have a limited read-access to other DSA's minds through &DSAINFO@.

Here's an idea: make a DSA the mind of the dungeon who has read/write access to each and any event. Each monster wound, each opened door, each opened chest makes it suffer. Each party wound makes it rejoice.
At first it just collects data about events and try to find associations between things happening and things it likes/dislikes.
Then it starts intervening at random and retains positive actions. Little by little the dungeon learns to become harder and more hostile to the party.
Well of course each "intervention" should have a credible material form in the dungeon, maybe even tap into some resource. Thus, the party would have a chance to understand what is happening and what is allowing the dungeon to be strong.

For example, monsters could pray to the dungeon, giving it points of divine intervention to heal them/resurrect them through altars (it would also influence the monsters to pick their bones and go to the altars), to guide them in combat through better strategies, to feed them, to help them reproduce.
If the dungeon can spend points on construction, it would repair crashed doors, lock them and give keys to monsters or hide them, add traps, etc.
Besides the original indestructible layout, it could grow organic walls, destroyable by the party. It would be like an AI for dungeon keeper.

Then at the end of the dungeon the party would discover the physical brain of the mastermind and have a chance to destroy it. The mastermind would then use all the tricks it learned, spending all its remaining points, summoning all its faithful creatures.
If the DSA code is versatile enough the personality would be different for each game. But it would take quite a long time to code, though most of the interventions could be independent modules, allowing an infinity of developers to contribute.
The core is only about measuring co-variations between events and correlations between interventions and results.

There is also the problem of memorizing. Paul would probably have to add some big functions.

[Trantor]

Sounds like we finally have a concept for Conflux IV!

On a completely different note, I'm very impressed with the German football/soccer team. And after today's second game, I don't think the team needs to fear Spain. Go go Schland!

[Jan]

On a completely different note, I'm very impressed with the German football/soccer team.

Indeed. The way in which they defeated the Argentinians was just brilliant. Anyway - it's not fair - a third of German players are Turks, another third are Poles, and they are trained by a Jew!

I'm really looking forward to a German - Dutch final!

[Adamo]

They are german citizens, aren`t they? It`s the citizenship that counts, not the nationality.
In the final Germany will meet with Holland.

[beowuuf]

I'm only half looking forward to it - if it happens, I've already promised to take my first and second place sweepstake winnings and pay from drinks for everyone at work

[Adamo]

a third of German players are Turks, another third are Poles

Actually, it`s 2 players that has turkish roots and 3 players that has polish roots. So Poles and Turks are together 22.73% (13.63% + 9.1%) of the team, not two thirds (66.6%).

I love the way the Germany plays and look on them! I hope they will win the World Cup!!! Seeing how they beaten hard England and Argentine, it`s quite possible!

[Bit]

On a completely different note, I'm very impressed with the German football/soccer team.

Indeed. The way in which they defeated the Argentinians was just brilliant. Anyway - it's not fair - a third of German players are Turks, another third are Poles, and they are trained by a Jew!

I'm really looking forward to a German - Dutch final!

Good luck, I did press the wrong button and my whole long post was lost.

[Gambit37]

Oooh, exciting, I just had to let the police into our building. They wanted to "speak" to the people at number 1. They asked if I know them, which I replied "No" as I've never met them. I wonder what bad things they have been up to....?

2 years ago, the police broke down the door of #4. His car had been found trashed and they wanted to find him. I'm not sure exactly the full story here, but suffice to say, he wasn't happy they broke his door down (it was joy riders who'd stolen his car and smashed it up.)

Last year the police came round to all the houses in our street, with a picture of a guy and was asking if we knew him. His body had been found in the woods opposite where I live under "suspicious" circumstances (that's a bit of a gay cruising spot too). Sadly it turned out he'd actually committed suicide.

I live in a quiet-ish and pleasant part of South East London. I do like it here, but even in the three years I've been here, it seems to be getting worse. Just last week a 15 year old boy was killed by a gang with knives, in West Norwood, about 2 miles from where I live. I don't feel unsafe here, but I do wonder sometimes if I should continue to live here. But I guess there is danger whereever you go, you never can predict these things, and if you decided to fear what's outside, then you'd never do anything with your life.

[beowuuf]

O.O

[raixel]

Jeesus H. Christ Gambit.

I grew up in the bad part of a city in the US that had a higher crime rate per capita then South Central LA, and I never experienced that much cop-in-apt stuff.
Although when i was in high school my downstairs neighbor got a bunch of bullets flying through his apt as he sat there watching TV.
And we used to play a game on the weekends called 'shots' where when you heard a shot, you took a shot of rum. Automatic fire counted as 3. We'd get plowed.

[Trantor]

Pretty scary Gambit. Luckily, I live in a rather quiet area of Berlin (read: Old Peoplesville). The most "exciting" thing in regard to police action are evaciations of houses because yet another bomb from World War II that didn't explode was found. I know that Berlin was bombed to bits, but it's still kind of scary how many duds still lie around here. Authorities estimate a few hundred potentially dangerous bombs remain in Berlin.

[Gambit37]

Interesting reactions! I didn't really think it was very unusual!

[Bit]

Yeah, absolutely normal - at least here in my area. We just had the fourth robbery in three weeks in my job two days ago.
I also visited the police station to report another thing. But - you always got the feeling that you are the bad one, because you broke the most important law: don't disturb!
And - nonsmoking laws are much more important nowadays.
And instead of lowering taxes like promised, they grab more and more.
All that technical progress is just blinding us - they suck - and they will never stop.

[raixel]

Where you live, bit? Yeah, they blocked all smoking in all public buildings (includin bars and clubs) up to 25 ft in front of the door (but no one pays attention to that part, except for like hospitals.) here. It really blows. Although even tho I smoke, i do like being able to go out to a club and not get asphyxiated.
But still, I hate the whole "nanny state" thing. Seriously. Like putting warning labels on coffee 'warning, hot!" WTF? i saw one on a bottle of lemon scent dishsoap that said "Not a food. Do not place in mouth or attempt to eat." I know american public schools suck, but c'mon!