Forum posts

I think it says something about me that my top three are the mysterious types, the top two of which are definitely the sneaky types.

Oh, and is Deadly Shadows worth playing, or will it taint my love of Thief? (I know the new one will.)

I have no such qualms about naming already named characters. If they're in this list, it's because they damn well belong there!

5. Scientists / Isaac Kleiner - Half-Life (et al.)

"I believe this will make for a notable paper, don't you?"

I suppose this one is a bit general, but then all the scientists seem to have roughly the same personality and role anywho, and that gets passed on to Izzy. Anyway.
A.I. stupidity aside, I suppose I like these guys because they usually embody the regular joe. They've been dragged into this nightmare, and all they really want is to get out of it. They're no good at fighting (as the general public probably would be), they engage in idle chatter with the people around them about their situation, they're helpful... in short, they're very relatable, without achieving it cheaply, like, say, Gordon himself does (by not saying anything at all and not doing anything but what you make him do, thereby having no personality of his own).
Dr. Kleiner developed a bit of his own character without losing the personality he inherited. Despite obviously being very smart and skilled (being able to construct teleporters and what-have-you), he has a kind of childlike quality to him. While the world around him is in a dire situation, he still pays attention to the simpler things in his life, like Lamarr. I appreciate that sort of innocence he displays.

4. Mario - Super Mario RPG

Couldn't find a good picture, and he doesn't have a quote for reasons to follow.

Like in all (?) of the titles preceeding SMRPG, Mario never says a word. Unlike the titles preceeding SMRPG, he does, however, have things to say. So he pantomimes everything. I just love the exaggerated manner in which he expresses himself and the comments he recieves because of it. When he's trying to describe someone else, his miming ability seems to reach to the point where he completely transforms into them. When he does this at one point as Bowser, it frightens away all the Toads nearby him, so it must be a very convincing performance. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any good demonstratory videos on youtube, and I certainly can't be bothered making my own right now. Sorry!

3. The G-Man - Half-Life (et al.)

"When I plucked her from Black Mesa, I acted in the face of... objections that she was a mere child, and of no practical use to anyone. I have learned to ignore such naysayers when... quelling them... was out of the question."

As Urble stated, and as everyone damn well knows, the G-Man really is a mystery. We don't know what his motives are. We don't know what his goals are. Hell, we don't understand anything about him. He could be helping us. He could be doing something far more nefarious, and if so, potentially on any possible scale. We don't even know what he's called. The only direct mention we've ever heard called him "our mutual friend". "G-Man" is just from the files, and I think perhaps a reference in the manual of Opposing Force.
He's been observing Gordon since before the Black Mesa incident was set off, he may have had direct involvement in the incident, he destroyed the facility afterwards (is Opposing Force proper-canon?), he's got his eye on Alyx for god-knows-why... Even apart from the big cliffhanger Episode 2 dropped upon us, the G-Man alone makes the whole damn series a cliffhanger. And that mystery is why we all love him.

2. Spy - Team Fortress 2

"Aww, you almosthealedme to death that time!"

Need more be said? Nevertheless. The Spy is deceptive. The Spy is cunning. The Spy is deadly. The Spy, in a word, is the best. More significantly, the Spy knows he's the best. While most of the time he remains quite professional and dry-humoured, he occasionally shows his true colours and makes it clear he takes great pleasure in his work, in particular with many mirthful and very mocking domination lines. I think that's why I like him so much. Fool someone once, you're just doing your job. Fool someone that many times, you're good, and you and your victim damn well know it.

1. Garrett - Thief: The Dark Project/The Metal Age

"I've never robbed a god before. It'll be a challenge."

Stridy already gave a pretty good description of Garrett. Above all else, he's professional. For example, he never kills, not for any particularly practical or ethical reasons, but because killing is the mark of an amateur.
One of my favourite Garrett parts is a particular Thief Gold mission called "Assassins". The mission begins as an arrow flies through the window, killing a merchant Garrett had just bought a set of thieving tools from. The arrow was meant for Garrett, who then tails the assassins. He finds out that they were sent by Ramirez, a City Warden that had been threatening Garrett over his independent status for some time. In recompense, Garrett decides to steal from him, and to maximise the insult, he steals the purse from right off of his belt in his own home[i]. [i]That is how a professional teaches a lesson.

Special mentions:

Luther - Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny[to himself] "Friends? Hmmm. I have no friends. Yes, that's it! I'll get some friends, and we'll all change into lizards and have a pint and skittles afterwards."

Luther is a great character. For much of the game, his main motivation is just to be normal. Unfortunately, he's pursued by Gladstone's guards because he's cursed with the same dark magic that his mother Scotia used to try to conquer Gladstone and the the rest of the place. That curse makes him occationally uncontrollably transform into a lizard or a huge bipedal beast.
He's often quite snarky and sarcastic (as the quote shows), but usually friendly and helpful. Well, unless you've decided to play him evilly, in which case he'll chuckle mercilessly when, say, attacking and scaring off villagers for no real reason. You also get to hear what he thinks to himself, which can be funny in situations where some things are best left unsaid. Case in point (playing evilly) (paraphrasing, I can't remember the precise wording):
"Is there a fellow named Daniel among you?"
"I am Daniel."
"I have a gift for you from your mother. [to himself] I took it off your mother's corpse."

Booyan - Rogue Legacy"Can't even hit 8 targets? Pfff, good luck with the rest of the castle."

"He's kind of an ass."

For some reason that shape has always bothered me. I'm've don't know why.

That would most certainly depend upon the complexity of the goal

Hey, I did that one! Though the man makes a good point. You could just screw around with the scientist's lines, and when they're not enough, mix and match them!

How about a small stage with stand up routines by scientists and such.

I'm not too surprised Barney is on both lists. He's a very likeable fellow. "Hey, catch me later, I'll buy you a beer!"

I'll do mine as soon I do the usual run-through-every-game-I-can-remember-looking-for-place-winners. I should really just write down a list of all the games I've played so I'm less likely to miss anything.

After a quick look back at the most recent participant list, and the posts since then, I think this list has everyone who said they were in or at least stated interest in such a way that participation was implied. Apologies for any wrongfully missed or included.

Urby
JeffMOD
DiscoStu
Penguinboy
Potatis_Invalid
Strider
NineTnine
Jessie
Tetsu0
Stojke
Rufee
Dr.Orange
Archie
TJB
Zeeba-G
Luxasz
The Mighty Atom
Captain Terror
Suture
---------------------- (Additions since last list)
Instant Mix
Malle
Trempler
2muchvideogames

Another scan tells me that the people in bold haven't yet shown anything. (Dr. Orange excepted because he's done.) Again, apologies if anyone was missed.

Top 5 Characters in Video Games
Because evidently the last one was too hard.

Protagonists, antagonists, both, neither, whoever floats your boat. Who are your five favourite characters in games — because emphasis seems to be necessary — and why?

@Stridey: It's hard to get a judge for size. About how much of the floor area does that space encompass?
Looking damn fine, by the way.

@JibbMOD: Looks deceptively spacious, which I like. A nice clean style, looks neat. (EDIT: Pun not intended, but embraced.)

There he goes again, stating opinion based on absolutely nothing as though it were fact.

I'd better get cracking on this. I've mostly been messing around with trivial details when I should be getting the progression underway.

I've learnt enough about source to do the vera basics. I made a simple map to use in my SFM project which I put on hiatus until I got better at SFM. I also made a simple TF2 map for mess-abouts. That's about it, unfortunately.

Knockoff SnC servers incoming

If that's the case (which I can't be testing right now), should we refrain from using the longjump in case it interferes with other floors?

I think Tet and I might be describing the same effect with the camera.
Questions for PB on this: Given how it looks on the 2D views, is the camera information stored and used as a set of two different points, one for the camera's location and the other for where it is looking? If so, how does Sledge cope when these points are precisely the same?

EDIT: WHOO BOY, I think I just confirmed my suspicions. Opened new map, dragged camera direction pointer onto the camera itself, tried to move 3D camera... "Something went horribly wrong" alright. EDIT2: Tried to use WASD rather than the mouse to see if the effect changed. And it did. The error messages literally didn't stop coming

I think whatever Tet and I are doing, it's resetting the camera to origin, both points, which messes things up.

Just to highlight, for Pengy's convenience:

Sledge cannot handle movement in the 3D view when the camera and its direction pointer are at the same point

I had an odd effect not long ago. Had a brush entity which I hid (via "hide selected"). After I'd closed and reopened Sledge later, I couldn't seem to unhide it. I'd had some things like this before where messing with the visgroups could get it to show again, but that didn't work in this case. It was still in the entity list, and when I hit "Go to" (which I'm pretty sure stuck me at origin), when I tried to move the 3D view, it immolated me with error messages. I ended up deleting the entity and recreated it.

tl;dr: I think hiding things and restarting Sledge can cause odd effects with the hidden objects.

Lol. I do, I played for a fair while a month or so ago. Enough to get a decent feel for the game, anyway.

What is this

practicing

you speak of?

It seems more like a guided, linear version of the Cubicles to me.

A WIP so preliminary and non-stuff showing that I'm not sure why I'm posting it. I've been working more on figuring out how my entities are set up, and I can't really show that.

I've put aside my original idea, as I couldn't think of anything to do with it. I've got something new running now, which hopefully will be as fun (or at least as interesting) as it sounds in my head...

Actually, that's seven now, I think. Which is half of them.
I'm talking multiplayer, me. I can't profess a favourite in singleplayer terms.

Jessie, if you get a kill, you're entered to win a prize!

And I should hope many kills are to follow! But that will not stop the complaininating!

bump
My mental blank seems to be perpetual, so I guess I'll just throw out Monster Hunter Tri and Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate. I really can't think of many games which have intros I've watched much, let alone enjoyed.

I think Urby might be Charlie Brooker's pseudonym.

If we're talking Half-Life weapons, it's a no contest. Tripmines and Satchels! Who doesn't love traps? Tripmines a little more so, because it's fair enough people running into your Satchels and timing the blast right, but getting a kill with Tripmines is so much more satisfying.

But I don't like counter strike. I will complain about this tournament forever including while happily competing and winning prizes

You thought wrong.

Anyone wanna show off some WIPs?

I honestly can't tell the difference in-game.

If you don't want hi-def models, you can run your own project and drive people away from entering by ruling against it. :rly:

I know, I'm certain, that there's something that I need to place in this list. It will gnaw at me until I figure out what it was.

I swear to god there's one hiding behind this mental blank I'm having, I just can't remember what it is.

I don't think that really works as a counter-argument. Doesn't really address the same issue.
Also, I think you appraise your own value a little too highly if you think anyone would want to kidnap you. Or just about anyone on the internet, for that matter.

Heh, this looks kinda cool. Is this for Half-Life 1? The graphics look a little somewhat... extravagant for goldsource.

I stuck with it for quite some time because I didn't want to have to re-setup everything in (then) Hammer. I also thought it was faster to load, which I think I still stand by. I swapped because any time gained in the loading was well misplaced when changing to the lower-resolution main menu and back is annoyingly slow.

Not sure why you'd have an email address if you're too afraid to let people know it exists anyway.

Haven't done anything on mine since

I've got the base of my floor laid out, and some of the details of that base in mind... I'm just not certain of what I'm going to fill it with.

So, uh, yeah. That.

I'm suffering a redaction reaction!

It's pretty advanced wordplay, don't worry too much if you still don't get it.

I believe it was a pune, or play on words.

Secondly, I use the compile tools provided with Hammer

https://www.youtube.com/v/4bNYaGfDblg?start=254&end=257&version=3

He's like one of those "A.I."s that just doesn't really understand anything that's said to it.

For any "target" type value, you can use a "+" or "-" prefix to specify that the target should be turned on or off, respectively. (e.g. suppose you have an entity which targets "mylight". If you tell it to target "+mylight" instead, then it will only turn the light on, never off.)
Similarly, for any Master, you can invert the master relationship (that is, you can disable the entity whenever the master <u>is</u> on) by adding a tilde (~) at the start of the master's name.
When testing your level, it's sometimes helpful to be able to trigger entities manually. To trigger an entity named "mydoor", you can simply type "fire mydoor" at the console. Similarly, if you just type "fire", you will trigger whatever entity the player is aiming at.

Spirit is more awesome than I remember.
I'mma have to reacquaint myself with everything it can do.

But... Sledge.

EDIT:

I don't mind Spirit as long as links get provided to the relevant stuff. I don't think I have it on here.

I've got the base of my floor laid out, and some of the details of that base in mind... I'm just not certain of what I'm going to fill it with.
I kept thinking destruction, y'know, rubble and such, but it really doesn't work with it. And it isn't office-y enough to have desks and such...