Microbe has sponsored Epic Forty-six: The Two Towers, and it opened today. I'm sorry for the delay in opening, but I was having some trouble with my email program and wasn't able to get the save up last night.

Enjoy, and good luck!

I have been practicing something new for quite a while now, the bruises are all healing and most of the lumps have done gone down.

A while back ago, while out shooting, I had one of those crazy stupid dangerous ideas that I get on occasion, the worst sort of thing that can happen to me, because I will, with out fail, follow through and try it just once to see if I can.

It occured to me while I was out shooting clay ducks with pistols that I was shooting objects that where moving away from me, or moving side to side. I was not shooting objects that were coming at me. Why did this bother me? I don't know. Hell, I am just plain dumb. I have come to accept that. Maybe it was that whole "can you shoot like that under pressure" sort of thing.

So, I set up the launcher at a low angle and slow fire. And stood in the line of fire of the clay ducks.

Took the first one in the chest. Right in the breastbone. I missed, something I am not used to, and did not expect to have happen. As I lay there on the ground, staring skyward, watching clay ducks fly over me, I took this golden opportunity to analyze what the hell just went wrong.

I wasn't fast enough for one. I failed to estimate just how fast I would have to draw. I drew lightning fast, when I should have drawn greased lightning fast. I am not sure how fast those clay ducks fly, but it's pretty damn fast. The sight on my .357 drags a bit on leather. Gunfighters were wise to file the damn useless things off. When you hipshoot, you never use the darn things. And the .357 is slow. When you pull the trigger, there is a space of time between the pull and the hammer falling. It's not much, but milliseconds matter it seems.

Went to the house and got out a different gun. It's a .44-40 revolver, filed down short barrel, really short hammer stroke. And a hair trigger. I have always joked that this gun will one day earn me the nickname "Toeless Joe." And it's a big enough bullet to completely pulverize the clay ducks, so I would not be pierced with shrapnel. It's a big farking gun, and it was comfortable and familiar in my hands. I might keep my S&W .357 and 500 as my wives, but the 44-40 is my mistress, and I know how to make her moan. (Gasp, am I a polygamist)

Second go round, shot 4 out of 6. Somehow managed to dodge one, the other grazed my shoulder. Hurt like hell too.

Still can't beat 4/6. But damn, this is a lot of heady fun. Gets the blood going, gets the old ticker beating, and the idea that I might catch one in the mouth keeps it interesting.

More folk should try it.

I've notice this thread under "Special Interest Group", but there are no thread and the forum is locked.

What is the purpose?

WTF got into SOE?

This CAN'T be the same SOE I dealt with in PlanetSide...



For those not in the EQ2 loop, SOE borked the entire game Friday morning. Poof. EQ2? What EQ2? No EQ2 for 24-48 hours depending upon what server you were on, some characters had rollbacks of several hours, and if you logged in an instanced zone you were borked when you got back and had to port out.

The response from SOE?

(1) Hourly updates about progress (even though 95% of them were "we are still hosed and have NO idea how long this will take").

(2) A written apology from the President of SOE today including the information that everyone gets 3 free days of play and EXP gain will be accelerated for 48 hours to make up for the 48 hours they were down.

Back in the PlanetSide SOE day (oooh, a whole 1.5 years ago), such an instance would have drawn:

(1) A statement that things were now back up and you had to expect these sorts of things in online gaming.

(2) Anyone who complained too much in the official forums would have been banned. From the forums AND the game. And their posts deleted.

So, did SOE have a Grinch-like moment and grow a heart, or did WoW looming over them force them to actually act human for a change?

I vote for WoW.

Bless competing MMORPG's, bless them each and every one!

I just stumbled across this, it's a project to recreate (and slightly enhance) MOO in Java. I know there are all manners of amateur projects floating around for recreating old games, but this guy looks extremely dedicated, and has already gotten very far.

http://www.raykerby.com/jmoo/

I would like to do an analysis of growing colonists vs letting them develop naturally. But first, I need to know the pop growth equations. Charis posted a thread over at CivFanatics that listed:

Current Growth = maxGrowth*((maxPop-currentPop)/maxPop)
Pop Increase = (Current Growth/100)*currentPop

Two questions:
1) How is maxGrowth calculated?
2) Did I get the formulas right? :rolleyes:

Two production questions:
1) Where and how is the income from trade applied to your production? Is it split evenly among planets? Split but weighted by size? Subtracted from spending costs?
2) Where are the Spending costs (ship and base maintanance, spying, security) taken out? I know the percentages add, and that this percentage is then taken off each world, but is that done before or after trade income is factored?

Thanks in advance for answers
-dathon

Hi,

I got the extended version of LotR: Return of the King last week and finally managed to actually watch it. Very nice! The cut-out scenes (48 minutes!) added a lot to the movie, more than the "extensions" to the two previous versions, IMHO. It's *really long* now, though...

Below are some purely subjective comments from me.

Warning! Spoilers!



* Saruman's fate is resolved: Nice. His speech, and the power of his words, was well done. I'm not sure if I like the flashy fireballs that followed (can't remember that something similar happened in the books), but it's fine with me that Saruman dies in Orthanc and not, as in the books, later in the Shire. But I've already spoken with some die-hard Tolkien fanatics who are very upset about that...

* Gandalf explains the story of the White Tree and the fall of Gondor: Would have been good in the original movie, as it would have prevented some confusion for people that haven't read the books (like, my wife ).

* Sam playing the tough guy, warning Gollum: "If anything happens to Frodo, you've me to answer to. ... No more Stinker. You're gone. Got it?" Hmmm...that doesn't sound like the Sam from the books to me. Too threatening, too mean.

* The Path of the Dead was much expanded, and rightly so. The army of the dead plays a very important part, so recruiting them was really worth the extra screen time. I even liked the nearly-buried-under-thousands-of-skulls scene, despite it being a bit too much Hollywood-like.

* Corsairs of Umbar: "Prepare to be boarded!" - "By you and whose army?" Nice scene, including some comic relief (Gimli making Legolas shooting a Corsair instead of a warning shot. Er...a comic relief scene based on someone being killed, even if it's a bad guy? Hm, never mind... ), and sure filling a gap in the story of the cinematic version, re: what happened to the Corsairs.

* The Witch-king of Angmar confronting Gandalf: Argh. This is the only really, really stupid scene in the movie! We hates it. The witch-king draws his flaming sword, Gandalf's staff is shattered, and he lies on the floor, helpless. The witch-king raises his sword to kill him, and...hears the horns of the Rohirrim. And then he flies away without finishing off his most dangerous enemy?!? WTF? Why have the evil ones always to be depicted as sooo stupid?!? :mad:

* Houses of healing: A scene for the fans, showing how Eowyn and Faramir get to know and love each other. Didn't have to be in the cinematic version, but makes a great extra scene in the extended one. I like it.

* Aragorn showing himself to Sauron in the Palantir: Yay! Makes a lot of sense. Explains *why* Sauron fell for the bait at Morannon, even if the challenging army was so small: The heir of Isildur carrying Anduril has appeared! Thanks Peter. Should have been in the cinematic version, IMHO.

* Frodo and Sam disguised as orcs, walking some way in company of orcs, and later tossing away the orcish armor: In the cinema, it looked like Frodo and Sam just teleported over the fields to Mount Doom, so that gap in the story is filled now. But, honestly, I find the Frodo-and-Sam part a bit boring and long-stretched, both in the movie, and even more so in the books...

* In the scene where Frodo lies bound in the Orc tower and the orcs fight for his possessions, the extended version shows an orc running off with Frodo's mithril shirt which I don't think happened in the cinematic version. Didn't look very important at first, but then...the Mouth of Sauron, Mordor's #1 diplomat, appears before the gates of Morannon, showing the coat to Aragorn et al. Yes!!! Thanks Peter! Love the Mouth, love that scene.

* Several more comic relief scenes with Gimli: I guess those who liked the other ones will like them as well, and those who think poor Gimli is mistreated in these scenes will hate them. Well, I liked the scenes overall, but thought at least some jokes should have been at the expense of Legolas. And an *elf* beating a *dwarf* in a drinking game?!? That would have been the perfect moment for Peter to let the dwarf win, after all the falling-from-horse and fearing-the-dead scenes! Ah well.

* And at last, a big "Hooray!" to Peter for *not* expanding the good-bye scenes at the end. They were long enough in the cinematic version, thank you very much!


All in all, this was the best extended version of all the three parts. I hope I'll find the time to see it again soon...

-Kylearan

After the way Infogrames/Macsoft screwed the Mac players on Civ3, I didn't think I'd ever play it again. For those who don't know, Mac players never got/never will get the expansions, either PTW, or Conquests.

However, Brad Oliver got the game up to 1.29f, and I found the DYP mod, so I'm back to actually enjoying it single-player at 1.29f+DYP. That is, when I'm not flying in Warbirds' arenas.

Anyone here remember me?

What is the AI allowed to do that a player is not?

Can they send colonists anywhere they have scouted?

I just started a Med/Hard, and immediately colonized a world 3 parsecs away without scouting it, since it was the only planet in range.

A Meklar scout jumped on the planet 3 or 4 turns later, and I didn't have a scout on the planet.

I scouted the Meklar homeword at about the same time, the AI only had 30 scouts sitting on it.

But, suprise suprise, a couple of turns later 28 Meklar colonists overrun my new colony. The Meklar homeworld was 6 parsecs from it. I spied on them for three turns, and saw no tech advances at all (I thought maybe they had hit an artifact planet, but it wasn't the case).

To make up for being so mean, MOO gave me a red artifact planet 1 parsec away my next game. Just IT9, but I won't complain. I've got a snapshot of my new binary system, SOLDARRIAN A, but looks like I can't post attachments.

http://jmsnews.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=584

http://207.234.193.168/

I don't usually start to many threads on this forum, but in this case I feel that I should. Babylon 5 was my favourite tv show, and now it looks like they are making a movie based on it (which is GREAT news). However it looks like the executives at Warner Bros want to recast the main characters. So I'm placing this call out to all B5 fans on this forum to get into letter writing mode now, while the opportunity exists to hopefully influence a decision to go with the original cast. The first link is where the original news about the recasting was broken, and the second link gives a good summary of what's happening and where to mail letters to.

Smegged