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Messages - NancyGold

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136
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: June 10, 2020, 10:45:39 pm »
But you agree to work for them but still refuse to follow their standards. I do not understand this part. Writing code for them is couple of magnitude more important than language of comments. I would understand opposite, write comments but refuse to work with them.
I had to work somewhere. And the language is actually very important in maintaining social coherence, and crystallize the nation. Without the language and the culture built on top of it, the Russian nation will melt down and evaporate like ice under the summer sun. In fact I think language is the most important factor holding the Russian nation together. It is hard for people to grasp the importance of their language, since it is always there, taken for granted. Language is not like these Gulag guards, yet it serves the same purpose - keeping Russians locked in. If we consider the theory of our Universe's structure being self-similar, then the language+culture pair would be very similar to the force of gravity. It is decentralized, having no distinct center, beside the center of mass, and yet it self-organizes the agents affected by it. And in fact the language and the culture are the functions of gravity (they are obviously shaped by the spatial locality).

So if one wants to destroy Russia or to get out of its control, that individual will have to speak a different language. And fortunately Russia is not (yet) a blackhole, so it is possible.

I understand hating current government or previous one, but hating every thing? You probably hate it more than I even I could find more reason to do it.
Government is just the function of its citizens and their culture (if we apply the above gravity metaphor). I don't hate the Russian government. I don't really have any hate anymore. Hating Russia is like hating the gravity force expressed by some space body - an exercise in futility. Without that cultural cementing force it would have been very easy to overthrow the Moscow government. To start a revolution in Russia one needs just one thing: cut off the gas and oil from Moscow. To do that you need just a few thousand troops. Then suddenly all the profits will remain in the regions, and Moscow will have no money to support any army. And in fact no way to keep people enslaved (riot police usually comes from distant regions, since people wont be beating their relatives into submission). But no, Russians will cope with everything, being dirt poor in the richest country on Earth. And if you start talking with Russians about revolution, they will only report you to security agencies. That is like a law of physics.

And if you really want insult Russia you should become Polish citizen as this is only country that really occupy Moscow (if you include Napoleon then Poles did it two times as they where with him too).
I will likely try getting into Britain or Ireland. Since I speak English and England has many opportunities in the IT sector. I doubt Poland needs any programmers. Then again, I'm completely ignorant about the economy of Poland. But I know for sure the last thing Poland and Poles want is the Russian gas pipeline being blown up by revolutionaries. Ukraine wants it even less, since the major part of the Ukrainian budget income comes from the gas transfer revenue. From the economical standpoint, Ukraine is the integral part of modern Russia (culturally it is too a Russian satellite). Yet it wants to maintain the relative independence to get that revenue. If Russians annex Ukraine, all the EU money will go to Moscow. TLDR: if I manage get a refugee status in Poland, and then write on the Internet something like "Freedom for Siberia! Now is the time to take down that motherf&&king pipe", there is a high chance Poland will extradite me to Russia the next day.

137
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: June 10, 2020, 05:48:58 pm »
That's quite a hardcore yes, but why are you telling us this? It won't help you much if you're in such trouble.

I hope your game goes well, it shows promise.
Just explaining why the project will likely never gets released.
Maybe somebody could continue its development or reuse some ideas for other XCOM clones.
Since I will likely get around 10 years in prison and unlikely to get out alive.
But I guess it always happens to indie projects led by a single person.

138
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: June 10, 2020, 02:17:10 pm »
First complaining about Putin posters is bit pointless, even if they agree with you this would not change fact that Putin is President-For-Life.

Second going openly against "history propaganda officer" is again pointless, what you or other grain form this? If you want fight they propaganda then expect they will fight against you too. If you do not like results you should not do it or not do it openly and if you did that 40 years ago you would be already in gulag.
Beside what nation do not teach "facts" about is history? Even west can criminalize some historical opinions if they fall too far from main one.
And btw I think USSR is responsible for WW2 (without they "help" Poland would fight far longer that it did).

Third refusing to use Russian in comments is stupid, I understand other Poles that refuse to use Russian or German during Partitions of Poland, but this?
Someone take your books and force you to learn new language? If you are fine to work for military contractor then you should be fine to write comments in Russian. Simply if you work for someone you should follow they demands, if you do not think your employer is moral you should not work for him at all.
There were not many other jobs in the city of Serpukhov, which traditionally produced equipment for the Soviet submarines. And the company I worked for has spun-off from the Ratep military factory. In fact all jobs in Russia are either in the military or in the gas/oil sector. I've also worked at the mass spam company, but since IT got weaponized, their services were used not for ads, but for the blatant propaganda spam.

Had I not bribed some officials to escape, I would have already got 10 or more years in jail or a nuthouse (they believe it is insanity when a citizen of Russia refuses to speak Russian out of the spite). There are several crime cases against me in Russia, which issued international arrest warrant on my head. That is how I got into Ukraine, and one of the reasons I've changed my name to distance myself from other Russians. Obviously Russians find it insulting, when somebody refuses to carry a Russian name.

WW2 started when USSR began the military buildup proceeding on their plan to conquer Europe. Additionally helping the destruction of Weimar Germany. I.e. long before the actual war. And WW2 is just a follow up to the WW1, which too began not without a Russian help. Without WW1 there would have never been Hitler, who was literally created by that war, or the USSR, too the product of WW1. So everything can be tracked back to the Tsar Nicholas, or more precisely to the slavish population of Russian serfs (крепостные крестьяне), who failed to get their freedom and were used as a cannon fodder in a nonsensical war used to entertain the elites playing "The Great Game", as they called it.

My Russian compatriots love blaming others, but they get angry when somebody points at them. It is easy to accuse say Stalin of building the Gulag system and executing millions, but we have to admit it was not Stalin who wrote all these millions of false reports (bribes and reports, usually anonymous, were used to get rid off people standing in the way), and it was not Stalin who did actual executions and guarded the concentration camps. It were the common people, these same serfs, who under the Tsar Nicholas did the WW1. In fact, Russians gained freedom of movement only in 1974. Before that they were attached to the kolhkhoz and factory as a property, and were completely okay with it. Compare to African-Americans, who did multiple revolts against the slavery and mistreatment.

So yeah. I don't want to be a part of Russia and I don't want to speak Russian. They can jail me. They can kill me. But I will still refuse to accept their BS. I refuse to live in the parody of a society they build.

139
Offtopic / Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« on: June 09, 2020, 11:57:11 am »
Ok. The C&C remaster has come out. Obviously no Dune 2000, but EA has lost the rights to IP. And Dune is unfortunately dead now.


140
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: June 09, 2020, 11:40:39 am »
You seem to have some skills that they might be interested in.  All things considered I doubt it matters much whether one is a traitor or not, but it matters a great deal if those around him believe he is a traitor.  Countries will take in even hated enemies if they have a use for them.  Just look at the former Nazi German V-2 rocket program people.  Both the Soviet Union and the United States grabbed as many of these people as they could to work on their ballistic missile and space rocketry programs.  Those former Germans had a big hand in putting the first satellites and people in space and even on the moon.

V-2 rocket gave enormous strategic advantage and combined nicely with the nuclear payload. No wonder both sides raced to recreate and improve it. In fact, both Russian and US space programs began as part of ICBM development. While I am, well, not a rockets scientist and don't really have even a BSc degree in any field. I haven't even completed the elementary school. Otherwise I would have just applied for a work visa and left Russia, and left it without much fuzz.

Back in Russia I wanted to get a degree in biology, but got expelled from the evening school after complaining that all walls there have posters with Putin, his ruling party propaganda, and that they don't teach anything beside history. The school had like 3 hours of history for 1 hour of STEM. That left me no other option but to go into conflict. That would be like America having the currently ruling president portrait in each classroom for 20 years in a row! As well as various agitation material. The government funded evening school also had a mandatory Russian Orthodox Church education, where clerics from the local temple lectured people about the government being the extension of God's will. Disregarding the kids belonging to different denominations or being non-religious.

Russian history education is not something you have to research and interpret for yourself. No. To pass the exams you must rote memorize the "facts" they tell you. If you question these facts, you will get in trouble. I.e. teacher states "WW2 started because of X", but you say "no, WW2 started because of Y." Now in response you will likely hear something like "leave the classroom now." Obviously Russian history tries to downplay the USSR role helping Hitler to raise into power and starting the war. And if you refuse to play their game, then you're a troublemaker.

Then I got fired from the job after refusing to write C++ code comments and documentation in the Russian language. I haven't seen any reason to use Russian, since all programmers know English anyway, and it would even be convenient for the company to avoid locking itself into hiring only the speakers of some single language. But the company was a Russian military contractor and they had to follow the government rules, including the conformance to the government standards, which stated even the source code comments language. While I feel that the single world's language must be the English language. But such stance obviously gets one into trouble with the local authorities. Especially since Russian elites believes that English language, as the international language, is harmful to the Russian culture, the nation and their personal security.

Common Russians are also very defensive about their language and culture. Some Russians believe the international language should be their Russian language. They feel resentment losing the cultural war to English, even if English is much simpler than Russian, and its less synthetic nature allows stating scientific and contractual details more clearly. The loss to English was inevitable. And in the end all that matters is that we have a good common language, that has a large body of information available in it. That can't be said about Esperanto or about Russian. Of course English is not perfect, but nothing is perfect - everything has trade offs. And sticking to the national language the government places itself and its citizens at a heavy disadvantage. Since today the local knowledge of English is the part of mandatory infrastructure, just like the roads and the internet cable. It has to be there if the government wants to attract or produce skilled people. The government has to process documents in English.

Anyway, currently I'm implementing various minor details, like the rotating crown overlay sprite for leader units. Dunno if that metaphor is good enough. Usually the on site activity requires to eliminate the opposing leaders, while preserving your own leaders. Losing all leaders is a game over. Losing the single leaders means the loss of gold, which is evenly divided among all leaders. That gold is not dropped to avoid giving winning player the enormous advantage. Such mechanics solves numerous problems: one being the boring "hunt that last alien part", since the player has to kill only that bandit leader, and there is absolutely no reward to waste time on grinding all the guarding mobs. As a side effect introduces the concept of "lives" - each leader is a basically a single life. A squad can have several leaders, but must have at least one. In fact, any unit can be promoted into leader with the upfront payment and the daily upkeep. Non-leader units don't have daily upkeep, but paid per battle (similarly to these old Mindscape Warhammer games). So player is incentivized to use as little units as possible, while having several leaders for a backup.



All that is a bit tricky, since it is not immediately obvious how to balance such a system. How much leader promotion should cost? Etc... And I will probably disable the ability to turn animals into leaders. It is a bit strange when a squad of knights is being led by a bat. But then again, a pack of wolves indeed has a leader. Then I also want allow players to start without initial cities, like in King's Bounty and Lords of Magic. That could be useful for a few less epic scenarios. So the upkeep for leaders should not be enormous, or it can even be proportional to the kingdoms income. I.e. the officer is some rich kingdom would obviously demand higher profit share, especially when life threatening risks are involved. Now a small rogue party will have smaller expectations. Same way currently the max loan temple gives to player is bound to players income. That is also the end game mechanics, since temple is one of the last structures city builds, and loans allow for exponential growth. Cities have no banks, but in the old times priests did banking, so it should be fine. Or not?

141
Offtopic / Re: What about humans invading aliens?
« on: June 08, 2020, 05:54:18 pm »
There was 3d animated series about similar concept. And it also had the concept of using the whole planets as space travel vessels. Guess with star's energy you can indeed send a planet flying. But will need a lot of time to accelerate and decelerated without breaking apart. Imagine Solar system getting an alien planet with aliens having plan to use the Sun's energy to continue their travel. Unfortunately the Sun will get extinguished in process...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Raiders
Quote
Shadow Raiders is set in a five-planet star system known as the Cluster. The four inhabited planets are in a constant state of war, always raiding one another for resources unique to each planet. However, when an alien named Tekla comes from another solar system, she brings a warning: the Beast Planet is coming. Now Graveheart, a humble miner of Planet Rock, must convince the leaders of Fire, Rock, Bone, and Ice to put aside their differences and stand together against the Beast, their new common enemy.

The story begins as Tekla's homeworld of Planet Tek is consumed by the Beast Planet. She and her robotic companion, Voxx, escape to the Cluster through a Beast jump portal to warn them of the impending danger. Tekla is pursued by Beast drones and crash-lands on Planet Ice, where she is rescued by Graveheart. The drones subsequently attack and slaughter the combined forces of Rock and Ice in the area, leaving only Tekla

A large part of the series mythology in the second season is the World Engines, a propulsion system built into the planets of the Cluster (and presumably many other worlds, since two different planets in different solar systems have them) by an ancient alien race. Using five mountain-sized energy thrusters which emerge from the planet's surface, the World Engines can propel a planet through space at great speeds. A combination of an atmospheric shield and artificial gravity generators keep the sudden shift in orbit and lack of a star from killing everyone on the surface. The Prison Planet has a variation known as Teleport Engines, which teleport the world to different locations in space instantly. The same artificial gravity and atmospheric shielding technology is used to protect the inhabitants. Each set of engines is located at the core of its world and can be reached using Telepods, small platforms on the surface of each world. The Telepods send the user to the core of the planet where they can use the computer to move the planet. The Telepods can also be used to move people from one planet to another.

142
Offtopic / Re: Footage of real XCom ufo interception.
« on: June 07, 2020, 09:46:48 pm »
Meh, Singularity is overstimated. Singularity ignores the fact it is impossible to simply iterate on a technology. Technologies can become mature, or stop advancement because the next step requires a material discovery, or even a paradigm change.

Self replicating robots, especially ones produced with the advancement in genetics engineering, will produce exponential growth. On galaxy scales. Surpassing previous industrial and computing revolutions. Or maybe humanity lives its last days. Since modern technologies are very dangerous, and could be used to wipe out everyone, when used by stupid people for minor gains. I.e. even minor scale terraforming can potentially lead to large scale destruction. For example, USSR managed to wipe out whole sea from the face of Earth as part of its terraforming project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea once a beautiful and rich region is now a desert.

A several decades ago computers were very big, expensive, inconvenient, available only to big universities and large corporation. These computers cost several millions of USD. Computing time had to bee booked.

Now everyone has in his pocket a smartphone, which is more powerful than any of these computers.

Even more, such smartphone offers far more value and has a far more diverse set of applications, than these older computers.

Literally today's people are millionaires in some sense, and have access to something, even billionaires of the past had no way of getting.

Now imagine you can own a personal star. There are a lot of stars in the observable universe. Enough for everyone.

Or take computers graphics for example. In a few decades it evolved from simple few polygon scenes to photo-realistic scenes. Latest advances in AI allow real-time graphics like following

143
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: June 07, 2020, 02:31:01 pm »
As of now, I'm fixing a lot of bugs and usability issues. Like when a non-humanoid, like griffin, tries to open door, player gets warned that only humanoids can open doors. Non humanoids will have to bash them out. It is unlikely I will be able to finish the game in the remaining time or that it will matter at all.

It seems I got only a few month in Ukraine, since the Kyiv court has upheld the migration service decision to deport me back to Russia. Now it is the higher appeal court, which no doubt will agree with the lower court decision. Ukraine believes that I had no right to protest against Russia and that I must speak Russian language and defend myself in the Russian court. Ukraine still has these old soviet fascist officers in there, and they openly scolded me for being a traitor, telling nonsense about "nobody likes traitors". I haven't pledged any loyalty to anyone, haven't signed any contract and Russia didn't gave me anything of value to me, therefore I'm not a traitor and have no obligation to be loyal.

If I'm lucky I can probably escape further into EU, but neo-Nazis are preparing something like a power grab in Europe (similar to Trump's one), while Russia helps them by training the terrorists. A cabal of dictators from the older elites already seized power at several EU countries. There is a even that Mussolini's granddaughter among them. Soon Europe will get concentration camps for all undesirables, and these will likely turn into death camps. States can change very quickly, if one recalls the pre-fundamentalist Iran or the Weimar Germany.

Trump's administration is already puzzled about what to do with the interned immigrants, and it is impossible to return millions of people all back to their countries of origin. If Trump wont back out, these camps will be turned into death camps. So applying today for a political asylum in US is a really bad idea, since you can get gassed together with the rest of Latinos. Of course US has these cute protests, but they are unlikely to change anything, since people are insecure, full of resentment and violence. America is not the country of freedom anymore.

I can try applying at China, but it is totalitarian and never approves any asylums, even to its own agents, like Snowden, referencing them to Russia instead.

Today there is nowhere to run. Maybe the best I can do, is trying to hop back over the Russian border and do some sabotage there? But what can I do strategically important there? At best I can only manage to blow up the gas pipeline. That will result in a few millions USD in damages to the Russian government, to the people who have many billions USD. Is there a way one can do billions in damages to Russia? Do something that will matter in the end?

144
Offtopic / Re: Footage of real XCom ufo interception.
« on: June 04, 2020, 01:44:08 am »
There was once an eccentric guy, who believed that aliens have advanced socialist system, and will help USSR in building communism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Posadas
Quote
Beginning in 1968, Posadas also became known for his theories concerning UFOs. If anything like UFOs existed, they could demonstrate the existence of agents able to master a very sophisticated technology, something that would be compatible with what in this planet was advocated by socialism. If UFOs existed, they could be allied in addressing some of the major problems in the earth.
In his pamphlet Les Soucoupes Volantes, le processus de la matiere et de l'energie, la science et le socialisme (Flying Saucers, the process of matter and energy, science and socialism), Posadas pleaded that "We must call upon beings from other planets when they come to intervene, to collaborate with the inhabitants of the Earth to overcome misery. We must launch a call on them to use their resources to help us.”

Real life Cult of Sirius?

The XCOM cult is apparently based of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery

Surprisingly people are inclined to imagine aliens being just advanced humans. While for advanced lifeform stuff like social organization would be a matter of the past, just like humans as animals have long surpassed the single cell life form. So the real life aliens will likely have no definite physical form, and will be manipulating large scale space structures, maybe even galaxy sized, just like you manipulate items on your desk. Aliens will unlikely notice us humans, just like we don't notice every single quark or even bacterial colony on Earth.

The same way you are unlikely to waste your time on sharing your achievements with early bacteria colony, the aliens will just step over you. In fact, there is no way they can share knowledge with bacteria. And I'm sure human technological singularity is already near us, as soon as we gain complete control over genome, there will be technological explosion, long before we will be capable of interstellar travel. It will either destroy or completely transform human society into the form losing any connection with our origin. Stuff like self-replicating robots also lead to technological explosions. Suddenly we are able to manipulate large scale structures.

So XCOM or War of the Worlds scenario is a naive childish fantasy, just like the silly Warhammer, Master of Orion or Starcraft scenario. The Thing or The Blob is a bit more realistic, given that some small part of the alien organism has seeded the Earth to create some super-structure or being some larger experiment.


145
I doubt you can legally distribute OpenXCOM on the app store, since it requires files from the original game.
Maybe you can cooperate with GOG to support IOS?
Or their licenses are PC only?
Because I'm sure modern phones are capable of running any old DOS and Windows software by the magic of modern emulation.
It all comes down to maintenance issues.

146
Offtopic / Re: What about humans invading aliens?
« on: June 02, 2020, 12:45:20 pm »
Heh, even that old multiplayer open source game netrek had planetary bombardment.  It only had 4 races, 3 that were alien and 1 human although technically the federation isn't all human.

The game looks like realtime Master of Orion. Probably was the inspiration for the game.


147
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: June 01, 2020, 07:49:52 pm »
I do not think that additional crystals should be locked in any way, you can use them for any other use, but when you reload you do not have them any more.
That can be useful in multiplayer, but you will still have unlimited number of saves, and it will be just the usual save scumming.
Checkpoint offers a huge advantage. In XCOM it could mean preventing your whole squad being wiped out by a single grenade.
That usually happens only once in a mission, and due to bad planning on the players side, like putting all units together without any cover.


148
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: May 31, 2020, 10:51:43 pm »
Maybe I do not say this clearly, you do not transfer any resources, you "spend" your old resources when you go back in time, each time you return you have less of them.
You mean that instead of immediately spending say a tomb raider like save crystal immediately, the save crystal gets locked, and spent on load, but player could instead unlock it and set a new check point, so save crystals would serve more like checkpointed lives in arcade games? What would happen if player exists the game? The locked crystal will be turned into actual save game?

That would be an interesting idea to allow saves in say Mario games, but requiring spending a life.

For those who don't know, a few old console games implemented save scumming prevention method, making saves a resource. Tomb Raider is the most know example https://www.wikiraider.com/index.php/Save_Crystal

Although I don't remember them being used as actual "lives", just a way to set a checkpoint.

The practice was apparently abandoned, since game designers believe it annoys players greatly.
So modern game design instead focuses on avoiding explicit saves at all.

Anyway, at PJ forums there is a person making a tactics game:
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26879

His game has a rather uncommon projection, instead of the usual isometry. Such projection stills allows for a 3d world, but with d-pad controls, where pressing up-arrow would move cursor upward. It is also a bit easier to render, than isometry. Especially if you're doing only simple maps, like that dev. You can also get away with only a single sprite direction (at least for movement). Sprites are easier to draw too. But it has a drawback: that squashed side gets less detail. If there is say a passage inside cliff, it will be harder to notice. Here I have remade his map in my engine for comparison:


149
Offtopic / Re: What about humans invading aliens?
« on: May 31, 2020, 10:01:36 pm »
Microprose actually published such game.
It was called Master of Orion.
Although ivaders there just did planetary bombardments.
Aliens in XCOM are these "steampunk" aliens from H.G. Wells.

150
Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game
« on: May 30, 2020, 03:07:32 am »
If save is not free thing, then my exploit will not work, but how you will handle "load"? We have save 10 turns before, one wining player do not want to go back but losing player do not want.
If we go time  travel spell way then could we lose resources in past too? Some thing like that:
You start with X+Y of some resource you need.
To save game you spend X, You left with Y.
Couple of turns pass. You grain Z resources.
You load game spending Y+Z
Save is modified and remove Y from your resources. Continue game.
Couple of turns pass. You grain Z resources.
You can't load game because you have only Z.
Given that backstory for save/load is the Oracle's prophecy, no transfer of resources backwards in time will be possible.
I.e. player just gains the knowledge of the future.
On the battlescape the load is the actual time travel, but it moves in time only the caster, who actually spends reagents to both set the anchor, and to return back to said anchor.

Alternative is making time-travel anchors differ in power of what they can bring back from the future. That way players can be allowed to bring back items from the future, without breaking the current balance too much. I guess one can implement moving even the whole chunks of the game world between saves with such power-based anchors.

Next one can think about integrating that with some story elements, requiring to actually perform time travel. When some temporal state in the past requires an item from the future to unlock the game progress. But that is a completely different story, requiring different level of balancing to be non-boring.

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