Messages

21

General / I Am Now Ness

« on: September 05, 2004, 01:07:43 PM »

You're screwed. Our campus had a crappy wireless connection for a long time and every time it would rain or snow (constantly) my connection would shoot up into the 3000's. On lucky days, I got 300 continuously.

They upgraded and now I get around 100 standard with it shooting up to 300 on bad days. I'm at Penn State's main campus for this semester, so I'm getting crazy like 21 pings all the time. It's great.

Anyway, there's really no way around it unless there's an artificial bandwidth limitation or something being placed on it, and then you can complain to ITS, but it probably won't get anywhere.

22

Off Topic / Explain Your Name

« on: April 28, 2004, 11:33:46 PM »

Oh boy...  

Way back when AOL was first catching on, I started as CecilDK (Cecil Dark Knight) from FF4. I joined an online gaming club when FF7 came out (hehe, those were popular back then, maybe you remember Avalanche, the RPGA, or the Best RPG Ever = BRPGE boards?) and changed it to CloudSFC (Cloud Soldier First Class).

Then, OMG, AOL expanded to 16 characters per screen name and I became Sage Gaspar (from pretty much every game by the Crono team). If you've seen a Sage Gaspar on the Internet ever, chances are it's me. I published editorials on the major gaming sites and took up a position as a reviews staffer at Games Are Fun (Chrono Cross, Irritating Stick, Mario Bros, Mario 2) for a little while. I was also featured on The Way In and RPGamer as a moron, a fact which I'm infinitely proud of.

At some point I decided to try out different gaming handles, hence was born Scarlet Phoenix (nothing special), then TK-421 (the grunt stormie in A New Hope that isn't at his post), NSMonkey for a little while, The Blode, and finally ::phew:: Sydney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities, one of my favorite books of all time).

I've also been known as Enciel Ilyamorte (a poor conglomeration of French, roughly "In heaven there is death") and Etotheipi (e to the i pi). And yes, I'm a math major, hehe.

Beat y'all, eh?  

23

General / Big Unannounced System

« on: April 28, 2004, 10:15:13 PM »

OMG n00b comm left engine idling olo!!11!!!

24

General / The Beta 4 Comment Thread

« on: April 28, 2004, 03:00:06 PM »

Well, also, we would've caught stuff on Veil and Eclipse if we were allowed to PT classic NS, but we were restricted to CO. And honestly, you can't really test much in a few scarce hours right before it comes out (and you can't really push out code changes in that much time without some testing unless you like living dangerously).

But anyway, much love for the Flay. Despite the fact a lot of us have coughed up some money, it's still a free mod and I've gotten much more for my 20 than most $40+ games. Also, I got to take screenies of me getting killed by various personalities who have made themselves scarce

25

Off Topic / Fanta Shokata

« on: April 27, 2004, 09:48:51 PM »

Lorks on the Brain

26

General / Big Unannounced System

« on: April 27, 2004, 08:10:00 PM »

Maybe a short, yellow dropBUS...?

27

General / Maps Request

« on: April 22, 2004, 08:05:03 AM »

I guess arabstreets isn't an official map anymore then...? I always thought it was pretty fun, hehe.

28

Off Topic / Ns Song Parody Thread!

« on: April 17, 2004, 09:48:24 AM »

It went Gorge in the corner on the ground
Was protected by some skulks who never were around
But it grew up short and it grew up fat
With its moronic teammates spamming voicechat

Well it went to Aux Gen at minute 18
And I blew the Gorge away, took its head off clean
I saw an RT and I first started shootin'
The comm said, "Oh em gee, you better keep movin'... on. Keep movin' on."

Last donce with Gorgie man
One more time to please the clan
I heard some skulks creepin' in
And I'm tired of this map again

Well I ignored what the comm told me
"If you want to live, don't shoot that RT"
Tired of screwin' up, tired of getting killed
Tired of my team, tired of this build
Oh my my, oh hell yes
I'll just camp this open res
Buy me a shottie, please Mr. Comm
Give me a big gun or I won't stay long

Last donce for Gorgie man
One more time to please the clan
I heard some skulks creepin' in
And I'm tired of this map again

There's lerks up on the rafters there
I said, "F4, this is going nowhere"
Looking down from the ready room
Game end will be coming soon
Oh my my, oh hell yes, you should've capped that empty res
It was too full to rejoin when they kicked me off
I spammed on their forums and went off in a huff

Last donce for Gorgie man
One more time to please the clan
I heard some skulks creepin' in
And I'm tired of this map again

** Mary Jane's Last Dance, ya uncultured swine ;-P

29

General / What Shall We Name The Server?

« on: April 15, 2004, 11:05:37 PM »

I vote for Arctic Warfare Penguins. In the interest of generativity, however:

Special Antarctic Service: The Penguin has been Planted

30

General / Random Pictures

« on: April 15, 2004, 11:30:35 AM »

I think it's pretty clear that the OC is hovaring. Very different from hovering.

31

General / Parasiting Eggs

« on: April 14, 2004, 02:08:47 PM »

By the way, just to be clear, are we OK on stuff like leaping hives for MCs to point there, or is that a no-no as well?

32

General / Parasiting Eggs

« on: April 12, 2004, 07:15:57 AM »

Parasiting aliens... eh. I understand the rule about it and agree with it to stop lamers, but if it happens once in a while (especially by accident, which can happen for those of us with poor aim, lag, or you're trying to figure out that annoying redded-out-weapon bug), I don't think there's a big need for OMGWTFBBQHAXBAN.

Actually, I can see a couple viable uses for parasite, especially if there's someone/something on the team that it's really important to protect or wants to be a rallying point. But again, not unless the team agrees and especially the person, hehe.

As far as pistoling teammates, it shouldn't happen, period. Or knifing. Or biting.  

I would also like to say to please bear in mind that people have critical lag spikes sometimes. There's been one or two times that I've ran up to chomp on something, had a lag spike without realizing it, and suddenly everything speeds up and gets back to normal and it turns out I chomped on some guy to kill him. To him, it looks like I TKed out of the middle of nowhere; to me, it was an accident.

33

General / For Plaguebearer

« on: April 07, 2004, 05:26:09 AM »

The question that Saltz is posing, though, is not whether it's better to have people go gorge to drop RTs or not, but what amount is the most beneficial.  

For example, on TLM if it's a full game, we have 8 aliens.  If each drops a node, assuming that no gorges get gunned down (a bad assumption), that's 8*25 = 200 res.  If I remember my lifeform costs correctly, that's 4 fades, 6 lerks, more chambers than you'll ever need, both other hives and 2 onos, or some combination of the above.

Another disadvantage of capping lots o' RTs at the beginning is that the "no gorges get gunned down" assumption is just plain wrong, and the more RTs you get, the more likely that you lose them before they break even in res production, meaning that you've gained negative res and wasted time.

Of course, it's not that simple.  You can't just trade res between players, so you can't say 2 RTs = 5 chambers like I was proposing above without some caveats.

The point is that there is some sort of ballpark optimal number of RTs to drop which will allow you to get the all-important fade and Hive 2 the quickest, and drop chambers along the way.  The question is what it is.

34

General / Is There A Point To Armor3?

« on: March 16, 2004, 05:53:12 PM »

Well, it can't hurt, and you can't just look at it entirely in terms of one type of damage.  There are all sorts of combinations of bites, attacks, and swipes possible, and you may get a couple repairs in between.  Especially by the time you're thinking about Armor III, there's very little chance that you're going to just be confronted by one type of alien at a time.

35

General / Best Avatar Awards

« on: March 15, 2004, 12:47:35 AM »

No Lunar fans on the board?  

Hehe, I'm wondering if anyone can get mine.  I'll give ya a hint, it's from the second game in my second-favorite PS/2 RPG trilogy (currently).

And it's not Suikoden, which is the best trilogy evar.  Although the fourth one is looking a little sketchy right now, hehe.  Supposed to take place like a millenium before the original and it's set almost entirely on the ocean (maybe the castle is a boat?).  Of course, that means no resolution to Harmonia or the five current main characters, and for the first time there is no save-transfer continuity.  I miss Viktor and Flik  <_<

Of course, I got my hands full with Fatal Frame 2, Ratchet and Clank 2, etc right now.  Great games, I highly suggest picking 'em up.

36

General / Respect The Comm!

« on: March 15, 2004, 12:41:10 AM »

First thing, let me preface this by saying that while I might not be one of the most visible players on the server, I had a reserve slot over the summer (which I'm hoping to get back at some point, <cough>can't see reserve forum</cough> ;-P). I have much love for it and all the admins on it, and especially LB.  Part of what makes it a great place is the zero-tolerance rule for people who try to ruin the game for everyone else.  However, I would encourage a little tolerance on some of the issues.

1) As far as delay of game goes, I don't really see a problem with an extra thirty seconds or a minute at the end of a game that's in the bag.  I have much respect for people who jump in the comm chair and manage to lead their team to victory, and I'd like to encourage those people to stay around.  If someone wants to build a couple siege turrets just as a final precaution at the end, I say they should be allowed.  Actually, the extra DPS probably makes the final hive-killing more efficient, since marines tend to mill around and focus on aliens too much on the last hive, whereas the sieges have no such tendency.

2) There can be a little laxness every once in a while on the "stupidity" rules, especially on an FF server.  I know I've been threatened with a ban after accidentally para'ing an Onos.  There was a guy at the beginning of the game who had been running around like a chicken with his head cut off para'ing everyone, and it was getting a little tiresome, but mistakes do happen and allowances should be made for them.  Also, people (non-admins) were clamoring for a ban or a kick at the end of a game where the comm spammed stupid, yet funny things before jumping out.  Now I understand, there is a rule against res-wasting, but come on.

3) I'd like to encourage everyone to be a little more n00b-friendly.  When 2.0 launched, we had MonsE, Flayra, other mappers, etc playing on the server, but it seemed like even then, people were a little more friendly to the random newbies that wandered on.  As the server has been around longer and established a no-nonsense reputation, the level of gameplay has risen along with it.  Hell, I feel like a complete n00b sometimes compared to the players on there.  But bear in mind that one of the founding ideals behind the server was to create a haven for all NS players, from the least to the most skilled, and I think we've lost a little bit of that as we've developed into a full-fledged community.

On the whole, Lunixmonster (and FSD when it's around) is still the best NS server out there IMO, hands down, and I will continue playing on it by LB's rules no matter what gets initiated.  These are just a couple suggestions for improvement.  Mostly, I think it would help to take some things a little lighter (of course not the profanity or abuse rules), because what it all comes down to in the end is having fun.

37

General / Neverwinter Nights

« on: March 02, 2004, 10:17:44 PM »

You can play with anyone with any other expansion, as long as everyone's patched up and you're not playing a module built with the new expansions' toolsets.  So you can play any module built prior to SoU, the only difference will be that everyone else will have access to prestige classes and such that you won't.  Of course, the caveat is that you'll be hard pressed to find a newer module built without at least SoU, if not HotU, but there are decent older modules.  I can't imagine wanting to play through the original scenario, though, hehe.

One other option for everyone are PWs, which are sort of like Medium-MORPGs.  The problem with that is that nearly every one of them require both expansions at this point.

38

Off Topic / Things You Miss About Aol

« on: February 03, 2004, 12:10:37 PM »

Hehe, I picked up AOL when it was just starting to pick up like 7 or 8 years ago.  There used to be all these RPG clubs that would have wars and spy on each other's meetings and crap.  Ya, it was nerdy, hehe.

I'd have to say what I miss most are the regs on the RPGA and Best RPG Evar boards... ::sniff::

39

General / Neverwinter Nights

« on: January 29, 2004, 04:38:17 PM »

Also, I dunno if you guys are into this stuff, but there's a pretty nice permanent world set up called Exaria.  If you go to exaria.net, there's a whole slew of subraces, special mods, etc.  It's pretty heavy on the RP and takes a long time to level though, so if you're not into it it's probably not worth getting into.

40

General / Neverwinter Nights

« on: January 29, 2004, 03:48:50 PM »

I'm sorta the new guy here, although I was a reg a couple months back (TK-421 in game), but I have HotU and I'd play through the campaigns or some mods if you got a bunch of guys together.  I'll do anything, although I prefer Ranger or Rogue.  I'm a D&D newb, so I don't have the skills to figure out much besides pure combat, hehe.