fondue

Phaedrus' Street Crew
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    61

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by fondue

  3. Posted

    Oh, and the other thing that whole discussion reminded me of was a weapon in an old Amiga game (Starglider 2) called the Time Warp Cube. From the manual (esp the second paragraph):

     

    Quote

    Port number two is reserved for time-warp energy cubes. These amazing devices are small computers housed in a compact cube. Put as simply as is possible, the computer controls an electromagnetic chamber which has the ability to store a slice of  projected time. When the seal to the chamber is opened, or destroyed, anything within close proximity to the cube is trapped in time, and then projected backwards an arbitrary amount, say one second - which has the effect of making moving objects collide with their time-warped clones.

    This remarkable device was developed by Professor Halsen Taymar as a practical project for his PhD, and its use was subsequently banned by all members of the Free Worlds Federation after Taymar demonstrated its power by trapping the entire cast of his least favourite soap opera in a one week infinite time-warp cycle. This feat had a number of knock-on effects - Professor Taymar was given a job at the head of an advanced weapons research team on the moon of Broadway, and the plot of the soap  opera was altered by the time-warp cubes to such an extent that the lead character found out that she was actually her own grandmother. The audience ratings soared sky-high, and nobody noticed that every new episode was the same as the previous one.

    Some may argue that this was the case beforehand, anyway.

     

    Sadly, they never reveal the name of that soap opera.

  4. Posted

    Interestingly, there's actually a board game called Tragedy Looper...

    Quote

    Each "day" (turn), players and the mastermind play three face-down cards onto the characters, then reveal them to move the characters around or affect their paranoia or goodwill stats. At the end of each day (turn), if the scenario has a tragedy set for that day, it happens if the conditions are met, i.e., certain characters have certain stats or are in a certain location together (or not together) with others. As tragedies happen, players loop back in time, restarting the scenario from the beginning and trying to deduce who the culprit was and why the tragedy occurred.

     

    Apparently this came out 6 years ago. Or will come out 6 years ago. I can't be sure.

  9. Posted

    On 7/18/2017 at 3:39 PM, Jake said:

    Pretty sure that got dropped in America because of some French influence. Americans pronounce "pasta" in a more Italian way and get mocked by Brits for it despite them saying it incorrectly. We're not trying to be snooty in weird isolated ways, we just had a different mix of immigrants than you in our formative years. 

    Oh, I know - it's purely an irrational annoyance! Though it is odd how it's ONLY herbs, but not herbivore, herbaceous, Herby, etc.

    Language is weird, and I realise this more and more every day as my daughter is starting to learn to read - the English language really is such a mish-mash of different linguistic heritages. It reminds me of this passage (misappropriated to Mark Twain):

    Quote

    For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later.

    Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.

    Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

    Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.

    Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

     

  13. Posted

    On 6/19/2017 at 7:16 PM, Kyir said:

    Orange slices are also naturally formed though, and I've never heard them referred to as anything else. Furthermore, slices much more clearly describes the nature of the garlic sections, while clove does not.

    Maybe it's just a UK thing, but we call them orange segments - slices invoke an image of a much thinner slither of <whatever> created with a knife.

     

    Before a trip to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was after restaurant recommendations, and one of my friends recommended The Stinking Rose, a garlic restaurant. We didn't go (too many other places to try first!), but was wondering if any of the Thumbs had?

  16. Posted

    Great 'cast gents; Nick, you somehow end up with just the best stories - I'm not sure I should be driving whilst listening any more, as the "So I was sat on my sofa" almost made me lose it. And, oh god, the toothworm! :D

    But, to the email about reliving your life from 3 years old but being aware of all you'd done the first time around is explored rather wonderfully in "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August", which I endorse heavily. 
    From the blurb:
    "No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.

    Until now."

    Interestingly, the first time Harry is relives his life, he goes quite mad - which makes a lot of sense; imagine everything you do having an innate sense of deja-vu but you don't know why. Perhaps one for the Idle Book Club?

  19. Posted

    Really enjoyed listening to the Deus Ex chat - I played the first game a LOT when it first came out, but haven't picked up any of the sequels (though may well get Mankind Divided, as Chris is playing it exactly how I like to, and if he's finding it so rewarding, then that bodes well).

     

    However, I was struck by a couple of his comments as they made me consider the temporal expectations that games lay on us. Now, I don't know if there's a day / night cycle in this game, but assuming not, Chris says he's been playing it for about 12 hours, and was a little disappointed at things like news reports being repeated often, newspaper headlines not changing, people not fixing massive holes in their walls. Unless there are some other visual cues that time is passing much more quickly than in the real world, it's unlikely these kind of things would actually change over a 12 hour period. Go switch on a 24 hour news channel, and in half a day's time it's very likely they'll continue to be running the same stories, almost verbatim. This morning's newspapers won't have changed. And - given how many buildings appear to be having holes punched in them - it's no surprise that most people find it hard to find a builder at such short notice (they're clearly all working flat out fixing the problems caused by all those other blasted "augs"). 

     

    Gametime (the temporal flow in time) has always struck me as an interesting concept and how expectations are set and players so accepting. After all, even games like (say) Mass Effect 3 where you're flying around saving the galaxy, all happens within a couple of days (48 hours av. completion time), which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it like that.

  20. Posted

    Oh, and after deciding not to go after the monoliths, I made a discovery that changed all that.

    Each side of the monolith refers to a specific area near the monolith in that direction

    This makes the secret puzzle hunting a lot more manageable for me, so now I've started on those. Already got all the ones on the monolith by the monastery.

    Ah, I guessed this may be true - though I was a bit doubtful as

    there's NO WAY I could've missed so many in some areas :(

  21. Posted

    It is in the village next to the church. It has an orange shipping container on top. It is the bottom floor of that building.

    THANK YOU!! xx

     

    I'm a bit worried - this game has finally seeped into my dreams and I'm seeing blobs & lines everywhere I look now. Is there a cure? I was going to take my temperature to see if there was anything actually wrong with me, but instead of putting the thermometer in my mouth, I traced my finger up the side of it and was disappointed it didn't sparkle :(