Aileron

The wardrobe malfunction is causing the Halftime shows to be toned down some. They're still ridiculously over the top, but atleast they are starting to get down in length and cost.

Please state anything you think is unfair, unbalanced, or buggy with the V RPG here. For instance, my case involves an unspecified PvP match where a bug caused a spell which should have been fatal to do a measely 4 damage. (Yes, that was an actual bug, I noticed later that the loser of that match had a spell level go from 1 to 0 before the match, which is supposed to be impossible)

We understand your point. The V RPG is liable to be dominated by bot-crushers who spend hours on end taking out the same bot over and over. Worse yet is that the way I for one do it, I don't even challenge a bot unless I can waste it with one blow. Additionally, there's no team-work. The points the rest of us are trying to make is that A: the bot crushing can be balanced and B: other than the bot crushing, the V RPG has a lot of potential. For instance, I just pinned a topic for user contributed content, which is the bread and butter of all modern MMORPGs. Couldn't do that with SS RPG. Question: Should I perhaps remove the potions or make them expensive, and make the inn rest time significant? That way, the rate at which people can bot-crush will be significantly reduced. Dav, you should start by only buying a weapon, either a nano sword or a Colt Peacemaker depending on your class. Also, most starting spells such as Kata, Wizard's Fire, and Precise Shot are cheap. Every class except scientist has access to atleast one spell, and many of these are compe!@#$%^&*ive with wizard spells.

I'm sure you people eventually will want to add stuff to the SSF RPG. If you want to do it, pm me or email me the necessary stuff. Rewards for submissions will vary. Submitters of classes, alignments, or elements can request that their character be admin-changed to those things without losing exp or level. Other stuff will have other rewards. Alignment or Element: All alignments and elements give bonuses to HP, MP, Str, Def, Ints. Please keep any submissions balanced with the previous stuff. All alignments must be based upon an element of the game world. All elements must be something on the Periodic Table. If you don't know chemistry, sucks to be you. Classes: They will give bonuses to the five stats. Please select a starting level for the class, as well as prerequisite classes if the starting level is non-zero. Describe what you want the class to do, so that I can allocate appropriate inventory to it. Items: All items submitted must contain an image on the above background. Along with a basic description, you should also specify the following stats bonuses the item will offer: HP, MP, Str, Def, Int. If you are making a weapon, you probably should put in an Str bonus, while armor should have a Def bonus. Additionally, you should specify the cost in Gil, the amount of the item stocked in the stores, and classes the item are restricted to. If you want anything else, it is restricted by the core. Ores: All ores must have an item image on the background above. Each ore should have a stated cost and stock. You can also specify ore combinations. Two ores combine into one inventory item. Spells: All spells must have a .gif image on the background above. Additionally, it will have an original animated .gif image shown in battle. (The current batch does not, but I don't want to create a backlog). Stats needed are the strength of the spell, the MP cost, the price, the stock, and classes it will be restricted to. Potions: All potions must have an image on the background above. They should have a cost, stock, HP recovered, and MP recovered specified. Scenes: All scenes must be a 640 x 381 pixel .gif image that fits in with the theme. Information on the history of the game world is in the help file. If you need inspiration, pm me and I can specify some locations I'll eventually want to put in. I can tell you right now that we could use a scene version of the Alamo Base world map. (By that I mean a 3D side view...no one will be impressed with copy and paste.) For reference, you are allowed to take any zone's tileset or other images to incorporate into the scene if you are trying to portray the zone from which the images were taken. (By that I mean you can model walls after a tileset...no one will be impressed if you screenshot a zone's base and call it a 'scene') Bots: All bots require a 75 x 75 .gif image. The background used for the current batch of bots is available upon request. All bots must fit in with the theme. Bots also need all 5 stats, as well as the amount of gold dropped. Pets: Each pet requires a 75 x 75 ANIMATED .gif image. The pet with need HP, Str, Def, and Int, but not MP. It should come with a level requirement, and a cost. You have the option to have the pet buy-able, of have it evolve from a previous pet. World Map: All maps must be a 600 x 350 pixel .gif image. Additionally it must be a 25 x 25 grid. You have the option of making any square passable, imp!@#$%^&*able, medic, shop, inn, a teleporter (to another square or another map) or battle. Please specify this grid in whatever way you prefer when submitting. All maps must have one square reserved as a teleporter connecting it the greater map so your map can be accessed. The image of a parked Lancaster must be nearby (because the player supposedly flew it in). Otherwise, you can have a map connect to an existing map. This is the star map for the game world. Every big star with a teleporter icon next to it represents a landable location. Please choose a location for your map, and consult with me before making it, as for every spot there I have something in mind. For instance, the SVS colony in the southeast is going to be a 'pit stop' with services near the landing location for players to stop and take a break while deep with TW territory, while for the northmost TW/17th Parallel colony is going to be a 17th Parallel themed spaceport occupied by TW Soldiers crawling all over it.

Boiling hot? You know, it's best to change your oil BEFORE turning your car on. With my car, I don't 'change' oil...I just replace the stuff that leaks out.

The difference here is that the bot grinding is done in free time, while the SS RPG has to be done when it wants to. At least in the V RPG you aren't going to get owned if you get up in the morning and go to work without checking things. My goal with the SS RPG was to make the average wait length 8 hours so people could have a reasonable life and still play. The problem was there were still too many ways to get turns. It might be different with Core 3 though Dav. The reason I was so adamant about putting it in is that most of its new features are options regarding turns. I voted V RPG because I have a secret plot going that it is a part of.

Cheating loser mind you....

Note that the V RPG will be a state of continual expansion. When someone beats the High Twop, tougher bots will be added. Also, the V RPG is still Beta, so it is possible that it will be improved. I'll also point out that there is a link to the "World Map" on the "Others" page. Clearly it is a work in progress, and I can't ever seem to be able center the !@#$%^&* thing, but what it shows is what is possible with the V RPG, though the fact that it is perfectly possible to level while ignoring that feature is a major design flaw.

I think a lot of people wanted to see New England go down.

I'm sorry too.

One notice to anyone who wants to play. Don't spend any stats points until you are in the class you want to stay with. When classes are changed, stats are recalculated, and any stat points previously spent do not roll-over. So far it seems like a lot of people here like to abuse women (specifically the Gruntette bot)...you all should be ashamed of yourselves! I'd like to diagnose something...how are you guys going with spells? Mine seemed to work at first, but then all of a sudden they started sucking bad. Cost me a PvP duel too.

These 'recessions' affect few people other than day to day stock market traders. What happens is that some stock gets overvalued, and then some day the value of that stock corrects itself. That's what happened this time. That's what happened the last time and the time before that. The last example was when the Tech stocks 'crashed'. Before that there was a bunch of internet companies, who had websites which nobody went to, but survived because they were in the field of technology and a bunch of stock investors !@#$%^&*igned those companies more value than they were worth. Then, people realized they were not worth it, and stock values to those companies plummeted. That being said...I still don't like us trading with China. The way things are done in China is that there is always some shortcut taken, some hazard ignored, or some poor construction. That mindset seems to be in everything they do from coal mining to toy construction. The Japanese for instance tend to find ways to make products or processes more efficient, doing more with less. China however continually do less with less. I know though, companies love China for outsourcing. First off, they make products cheaper. Secondly, they suck at it, so the products break faster, causing the customer to need to by replacement products. Personally though, I like products from a first world country. Usually, they cost about 50% more but have triple the durability. And to top it off, they're still communists.

The whole lights thing is more PR than environmental in any setting. All lights run on very little energy. Even with the most energy sappy bulbs, your typical supermarket's energy consumption for lighting is 1% of the same supermarket's energy consumption for refrigeration. If Wal-Mart really cared about the environment, they'd stop all of they refrigerators and air-conditioners, so their customers would be hot in the store and buying rotten food. Walmart apparently cares more about their customers than WWAGD. (What Would Al Gore DO?) Oh, and a solar generator the size of a Wal-Mart rooftop wouldn't be big enough to do much...maybe they might power the doors. Solar power is extremely dilute, hence why no-one uses it. Look, that at!@#$%^&*ude that if you don't like something, you should force somebody else to change their way of life, is terrible. The idea behind minimum wage is that because certain people are too stupid to solve the economic problems, they just write a law and force other people to artificially increase their wages. The economic problems are related to globalization. You have some areas with low costs of living and plentiful unskilled labor, and others with high costs of living with rare unskilled labor. Before those two worlds were separated. Now, they are mixing, causing effects like outsourcing, immigration, and lowering wages for unskilled workers. When mixed, both worlds will be the same as each other, though whether everyone ends up in the 1st world or in the 3rd world is undetermined. It is the role of all governments to try to make the coin land on 1st world. Minimum wage doesn't promote that. Minimum wage decreases the value of professional and trade skills, the long term effect being more unskilled labor.

At least some good came out of this. I've been able to use this down-time to put the finishing touches on the V RPG. It's now at a status I would call 'limited functional'. The shop has a wide variety of items, each with an inventory image, so they all can be equipped provided the player meets the requirements. There is a new class system, with admittingly fewer classes than the default settings, though the new ones are more balanced based upon the actual system, rather than the one the programmer thought he had made. There is an !@#$%^&*ortment of spells. They all have the same icon, but considering the default settings are no spells and one icon, this is an improvement. If you click on the World Map screen, it will take you to something, though admittingly I haven't set up the total star map that would accurately show the setting of the game-world as well as the number of locations which will be added before the end. There are two bugs mentioned on the V RPG tech support board which the player needs to be aware of. First off, if the player has more than one spell, problems occur. When you buy a new spell, you should sell your old spells. Also, people mentioned a bug regarding the use of potions during battle. As for why its 'limited functional' and not 'completed': The help page is not up. There is a bug on the admin end of things preventing me from uploading one. The class settings, inventory screen, and spells have not been tested for balance. My prediction is one class will own, and I don't know which one. - Just so you know, the Scientist/Cyborg tree is certainly NOT the one, as the whole concept of this one is that the Scientist sucks, but the Cyborg gets access to cybernetic limbs and special spells exclusive to that class. I haven't had the time to MS Paint some cybernetic limbs yet, so those items don't exist yet, and the Cyborg has no benefits whatsoever. The shop has a basic !@#$%^&*ortment of goods, but few exclusive items. There are no ores and pets There are no in-battle graphics Overall, I'd encourage people to give it it a try with a new character when it comes back up. I'll have to create a system for the players to add content, because I'm sure each of you has your own ideas, and if I use all of them I can increase the scope of the game world very quickly.

Ummmmm............. ...yes Sorry, I followed the troubleshooting guide for installing Core 3, problem being that troubleshooting guide was written by an idiot. The primary failure was still my own for being rash and impulsive about it. My other mistake was promising to get it up and running last night, thereby setting up the rushing. I won't be back until this afternoon either. Its the first day of a new job for me.

Final Scores SS RPG December-January Round lollerskates 2750 Winners! SSCentral Gods 1466 Unclaimed tallies: 224 Clan of Uhhhhhhh 54 I'm not going to bother to do any statistical analysis of this round. In two weeks, lollerskates took over the game and stayed there for the rest of the round. A chart is just going to be a series of horizontal lines. Individual Scores: rasta420 1103 Falcoknight 746 !@#$%^&*onearth 490 HoTdOg 462 Dav 459 Static Burn 326 sound 290 The Real Picard 198 Russky 162 Smarties 79 cReEmy 63 uberlalzar 55 Moose Master 50 freakmonger 46 masscarnage 43 slicer 2 rc 1223 1 Congratulations to all of our players, and good luck to everyone in the next round. There are some problems with the new core. New round will start 8:00 PM EST Tomorrow.

I mentioned a 'huge random factor' with one turn attacks a few days ago. I was referring to these kinds of numbers, but perhaps I understated it. This was probably an actual bug-bug, something the programmer never intended with any settings. We know it was fixed in Core 2, because this never occurred in Core 2, so by the time Core 2 came out I guess they didn't think anyone would roll back to Core 1. I did look at the .php back when I was trying to modify the core, I didn't see any glaring thing in the Core 2 calculations which would go nuts with any number other than possibly non-positive ones. This bug actually suited the purpose of Colonies. (Quick money, but anyone can walk up and take it). In any case, Colonies is going away in 30 minutes, so in that time all troubles with it will be shooted. The only bug related to big numbers was a point bug discovered by Dav last round. That resulted from him selling his whole armory, and he had the biggest defense. No one had that kind of money until the third month, so with a two-month round we should be fine. What I remember about the RPG in the second round was me having undisputed ownership of rank 1, and the rest of the Gods holding slots 2, 3, 4, & 5 for about three weeks, until a bug caused everyone to get a bunch of troops, causing Samapico to get #1 and me to fall to #2 in the last week. The lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion is probably caused by transfer, as the results of this round and round 2 were the same, and the only thing common between them is transfer.

I saw mention about a similar thing out west, only it was a proposal at some sort of public school...I think it was an elementary school's restroom. I think I saw it on O'Reilly one time, which is a highly credible source. (Its highly credible because I'd bet there is a line of several million people waiting to point out any and all inaccuracies O'Reilly says, and since they didn't make a big protest out of it, I'd guess the proposal itself has actually attempted.) My gut tells me that there are far more Men who would try to cheat their way into a woman's locker room than there are men with trans gender issues. Also, this bill would also either allow minors to do this or be the predecessor of such a bill, so that goes double for the number of teenage-boys who would attempt that. And as for women with trans gender issues, they cannot use the facilities anyway due to biological construction, and will feel discriminated regardless. I'm sure there is a legal definition for male and female. The facilities should be regulated to that legal definition. A trans gender should go to the facility for which their legal definition qualifies as. I understand the problem. When these people go into a restroom, they identify their biological gender to anyone around them. Those people then may judge the person. If the person can't stand to be judged, than he or she is simply weak, and needs to toughen up. If they are ashamed they should re-evaluate their desires. I don't mean to sound cruel, but seeking sexual re!@#$%^&*ignment surgery without being prepared to deal with public embarr!@#$%^&*ment is like trying to take a five day hike in the desert without bringing any water. If they can't take the heat of going to the bathroom in front of strangers who couldn't care less of whom their leak-taking-partners are, how are they going to handle it when the bartender asks for their drivers license, or when an employer asks for a birth certificate?

I just backed up SS RPG settings to my hard drive. I suspect that Core 3 doesn't affect Core 2 just like Core 2 doesn't affect Core 1, so I probably didn't need to, though it is better to play it safe. There is also a slight chance that player's accounts are going to be messed up, but those are all going to be reset tomorrow anyway.

The new arcade is nice, but what about Army Core 3? If Core 3 doesn't get installed, I'm going to riot.

Static Burn's weapons have been fixed. On second thought, if I had to guess now, its Colonies related. Maybe the server is trying to damage your main weapons when you attack someone in Colonies. The plan is to wait until the end of the round, remove Colonies, do the reset, and see what happens.

I know its been a while since I've posted anything regarding the V RPG. Here is a list of developments: Many items now have an image in the inventory screen. World Map is now up. Its only one of several locations so far, but this one location is fully functional, other than the tile which would take you to the other locations which don't exist yet. The ridiculously powerful pet has been removed. Now, I'm also reminding everyone that it is still under development, so every stat is liable to random changes, and the whole world will be reset anyway. Tonight I'm planning on updating the classes a second time. I didn't really understand all the stats and how they functioned before. The most important thing is that when upgrading your class, unused stat points will carry over, but stats points already used will not. What that means is I can't make a grand class tree. Either I'd make the final classes powerful and the people who saved points would get too powerful, or I'd make the final classes weak, and force everyone to hold off the benefit of leveling up until late in the game. The only solution is to make the final classes weak, but most are obtainable by level 5. I'm also removing a few classes, because there are only 5 stats, and on top of that base intelligence doesn't appear to actually do anything. (Increasing intelligence increases MP, but players get the same benefit from having base 1 Int and increasing it to 2 or having base 100 int and increasing it to 101.) There is no point in having 25 classes which all do the same thing.

Actually, I forgot to mention two things about Colonies. There isn't an army size factor to attacks, and there isn't a limit to the number of attacks that can be done on a target in one day. While I'm not against getting rid of Colonies next round, if you guys want to solve Sound's problem in the meantime, one merely has to solve the word puzzle below and execute it: (Quan!@#$%^&*y measured by kilograms) (Species of Predatory Bird) (Medieval calvary soldier)

Or drink a large amount of water before you go to bed. First off, your have your terminology mixed up. "Brain" is the term referring to the physical organ inside the skull, while "Mind" is actually an abstract term to describe human thought processes. Secondly, speaking from experience, all that crap just doesn't work. There is such a thing as taking an analogy too far. Biologists, with their limited understanding of how computers work, have compared brains to computers, but that doesn't mean you can run a Microsoft PowerPoint Slide Show in your head*. That additionally does not apply to the mind, because while the brain is a physical object, the mind is an abstract en!@#$%^&*y that does not need to follow physical rules in order to function. You can't program your mind. The only thing that comes close is brainwashing, which is essentially tricking the mind. Problem is its impossible to truly trick yourself unless you have major problems. Hypnosis is actually a short-term distraction, so its impossible to deal with a long-term behavior by hypnosis. Of course, all of the above can 'work' due to the placebo effect. *I will note that if you play the same video game all day you will probably dream in the setting of that game. That might qualify as 'running a software program'. I don't know why music works, but going back to the analogy if you played music for a computer, it won't perform better, and actually if you made sure the computer actually listened to the music via microphoning the recording and saving it, it would use up processor space and make the computer perform worse. Thus I wouldn't consider playing music as "programming". But to answer your question, you want the things I've tried: Technique: Imagining my faults as garbage, and visualized the process of taking out the trash. Outcome: I'd feel 'clean' for a few hours, but my faults would still kick in at next opportunity. Technique: Using 'mind over matter' to command my body to speed up my metabolism for weight loss. Outcome: Still overweight. Don't think my metabolism actually went anywhere. Qualifier: Oddly this technique has worked when dealing with cold or warm temperatures. Technique: Discouraging negative behavior by means of mildly painful negative stimuli. Outcome: Found I was doing the behavior MORE just to experience the stimuli. Had to stop before becoming some freaky masochist. Technique: Counting to ten, or any other technique with the intention to pretend I wasn't angry. Outcome: I was still angry, it just got delayed and I'd go off on the wrong person. Technique: Overcoming fear of public speaking by visualizing the audience with their clothes off. Outcome: Thought processes quickly made run towards sexual fantasies. Made the speaking even more awkward. Moral: Be smarter than me. Stop trying this "program your mind" crap now before you actually make the attempt.

I'm beginning to agree with Picard in terms of how Colonies is working out. I wanted to make investing in a colony dangerous, so dangerous that if you didn't know what you were doing you would hurt yourself by starting the colony. As it turns out colonies are safe income. My prediction was that there was no reason a non-colony player couldn't check out the colony rankings, observe a target with a lot of greens out, suddenly build a colony, transfer just enough material to hit the target, and then extract everything. I thought that Colonies would be dominated by a group of 'shadow offenses'. To my surprise I don't see it happening. What isn't surprising is that the first attempt wasn't perfect. Now the debate is whether to attempt to fix it or abandon it. First off I think double income is too much. Secondly I think Thors should be cheaper.