CrazyEyes

disingenuous Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. I know what he meant. He could have explained himself without making a comparison to the devestating emotional trauma of rape, much less in a condescending tone. We're all better than that, I hope. I never made an argument like that and I really can't explain myself more simply than I already have. Go back and quote where I say "losses need to be material to be considered real." I think you'll find that all I say is "potential profit is not the same as loss" and "I don't want to argue about things like hurt feelings when we could be debating with facts." I don't understand how everyone continues to think i'm arguing anything other than the words I've written in my posts.

I might... play... a bit. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I fail hilariously. But sometimes, it works. And yes, I managed to return those Kerbals safely home. I had to use all the delta-v from my emergency escape stage and have my Kerbals get out and freaking push. But the important thing is I got them home. Do you guys use any mods? In the interest of full disclosure, most of my interplanetary maneuvers are done with MechJeb. I also have KW Rocketry to add additional "near-stock" parts (and extra stuff like fairings) and Ferram Areospace Research to provide a more realistic areodynamic model.

I was only trying to distinguish the difference between potential profit and loss in terms of what I considered an accurate model of pirating from a large publisher. I also figured I'd give my personal thoughts on piracy while I was writing a massive wall of text anyway. They weren't really meant to be related. I even gave them seperate sections. Reading back, people appear to have taken my personal feelings and experiences as an argument in defense of piracy, even though I never said it was right or justified, and somehow thought that by arguing that potential profit wasn't the same as loss I was saying that game developers aren't hurt by piracy. In my next post I tried to clarify that I was only talking about monetary loss since that was not subjective and something that could be debated with facts. I stated that I didn't think piracy was morally right. You quoted me trying to explain that a developer's feelings on piracy are subjective and not something that most of us have the experience to discuss and made a comparison to rape. I'm a little confused as to how it all went wrong myself.

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.42304132917745263,0.47740794431541594,47.54840529258029

Well I've said there's no way to justify acting outside the law. I'm not arguing for piracy on the grounds that there is no monetary loss, I'm just pointing out that there often isn't. It's true that all companies are different - especially indie developers, who are most likely to suffer from a lack of sales. This means they may have less or no money to put back into the development of the game. This is the main reason I don't like to pirate from indie developers. Obviously I acknowledge that there are plenty of people with no qualms about this. I admit, I tend to think of piracy more in terms of happening to completed games that have been published by larger companies. That's probably what my earlier model of pirating a game is biased towards. In this case the game simply lacks additional sales when pirates play the game for free. The only way this would cause a monetary loss is if piracy were so rampant that it actually caused the game to be unprofitable - the actual cause of which can be tricky to pin down. Just in case anybody thinks I'm still arguing for piracy, here's a way piracy harms game developers while not causing any monetary loss. If a game is profitable, publishers want to invest more in that game. If it is less profitable they may choose a safer investment for their money. A team of developers might come up with a fun, original game and sucessfully develop and release it. Because the product is new and unknown, people are going to be more hesitant to lay down their money. Lots of people will pirate it: because they can, because they can't afford it, because they want to try it first, whatever the reason. All that piracy is causing the game to be (or appear to be) less profiatble, all because the pirates had the option to play the game for free instead of taking a chance with their money. When a game publisher looks at that lack of profit they'll know they could be getting more value for their money with something else. After all, why fund an indie game that might fail when you could just pour money into another Call of Duty? You don't have to waste money developing a new game engine. It has an existing fanbase which is both massive and dedicated. Much of its profit comes from console sales, which are much harder to pirate. Best of all? The game's selling point is the multiplayer, which flat out will not work with a pirated copy. Even if pirates do steal the game they can't get the full enjoyment out of it unless they pay. When a publisher sees a game being pirated they see a risk of loss. This causes them to take less chances on games that don't have some sort of guarenteed profit involved. Creative and original ideas get scrapped in favor of making the same game as last year. That's how piracy hurts game developers without ever costing them a cent.

I'm not saying there's no loss. I'm saying it doesn't cost them money. I'm just trying to be clear about potential profit versus loss because it seems like people were having confusion. People casually refer to pirated games as "lost" sales but that's not technically correct since the act of pirating a game doesn't cost money or undo a completed transaction, it just represents one that never took place. I figured if we're going to have a discussion it's important to make sure we're all using the right terms to mean the same thing. But the original from which that copy is produced does cost a company money. There are also incidental costs if the developer allowed automatic updates (It cost TIS quite a bit of money), as well as file hosting (it cost -- and costs -- TIS quite a bit of money). If, under these conditions, a copy is made, and a company has to pay for that copy (even if it's at a much lower price than the sale of the copy would have gained), then there is a bit of a problem, isn't there? Then we're actually taking something away from a developer, rather than simply making a copy of a non-corporeal good. Not that all games or pirates are the same, nor are all mediums identical to games. If this prevents the creator from being compensated for their work and making a profit (if the investment is successful), there's a problem. The original copy from which a pirated version is produced does cost a company money to develop, yes. And you're right about piracy directly causing loss in the case of TIS and Project Zomboid. But ordinarily the cost of reproducing, distributing or updating a pirated copy of a game isn't paid by the developers. I talked about it a bit. Also - and correct me if I'm wrong - but it seems the file hosting costs of TIS are also unusual for a game developer. They continually release test builds on the forums which are several hundred megabytes each (the latest build was 232 MB zipped). Ordinarilly you'd buy one copy of a completed game - covering the costs of transferring the game to your computer - and then maybe download a tiny patch in a few months. Every time TIS releases a forum build a ton of people download the entire game again. Since they're not buying the game a second (or fourth) time, this can result in significant loss on the part of the developer. I'm just not sure what it has to do with piracy.

This. I don't know why the people in ths thread, who otherwise seem intelligent and reasonable, are comparing Saints Row IV to apples or being yelled at. I think we can all understand the concept of a download without using a crutch. If not, I tried to outline the process of piracy in terms of digital distribution as best I could in my post - if that model seems flawed I'd love to discuss it. But in terms of money - and money alone - piracy doesn't cost the devlopers a cent. I'd prefer to stick to this concrete idea of profit as money rather than the abstract ideas of "loss" like a programmer's feelings being hurt or feeling undercompensated for his work. We can't know that piracy does hurt a game developer's feelings any more than we can know it doesn't. It's not a topic any of us are equipped to debate and it's so subjective we could argue about it forever. In short, if what consitutes loss to the developer is not for me to decide then it's not for any of us to decide. Also, let's please try and stop talking about why people shouldn't pirate or what would make them stop. The answer is nothing. People pirate because they want to and because they can. Piracy isn't always the crutch of the poor gamer (although sometimes it is). The reasons individuals pirate are dependant on the individual and there's no reaon to try and assert one viewpoint over another. We're not going to convince anybody in this topic to change their minds by arguing back and forth about who is more wrong. I didn't give my thoughts on piracy to defend myself, only to explain why I pirate. I don't check that list of Accessibility or whatever before I pirate a game. There's no moral high ground to claim - "the honor system" doesn't justify acting outside the law. Am I wrong to pirate? Yep. Are others wrong to do it? Yep. Will they (or I) stop because of a post on the internet saying why my reasons for doing it are wrong? Nope. Classic logical fallacy - the slippery slope argument. If I do A, then A leads to B and B leads to C and C leads to D so A leads to D. Nobody can predict the future or what my actions will cause others to do. It's not debatable. The only thing my piracy directly leads to is the game developers not selling me a copy of the game. Whether or not thier feelings are hurt by my act of piracy they have not incurred any monetary loss because of it. If you're not convinced it's a fallacy, there is this: "potential profit" and "potential loss" are essentially the same thing when it comes to the effects of piracy because neither of them can be measured. As to piracy directly contributing to a lack of sales? Sure, I can see that. My individual tendency to pirate doesn't cause this alone but the burden of ten million pirates might. Then again, a game might have failed simply because it was bad. Unless a publisher straight up says a game didn't make money due to an insane amount of piracy then we're only speculating when we see that a game wasn't profitable and say it was because of pirates. I'll leave it at here for now, some friends want to play video games - that I legally acquired with United States currency, no less!

Good read! Here we go. *gaaaaaaasp* Piracy and potential profit versus loss. *gaaaaaaaaasp* My personal thoughts on piracy! *gaaaaaaaaaaaasp*.... *wheeze...* Whew. Okay. If anybody actually reads all of that you get a cookie. Bottom line is, there's no arguing that piracy harms game development. Pirates do not subtract money from publishers when they steal games but obviously if the pirates paid for their copies the publishers would benefit more. Arguing about the reasons an individual chooses to pirate a game - from poverty to apathy - are subjective and could be argued in circles forever. The only debate is how much piracy hurts game development, in what way (besides not having extra money), and what positive effect, if any (like word of mouth) piracy might have on a game. I'm, uh.... that was a lot of words. I'm gonna go to bed now.

I got curious so I googled Kristopher Kaliebe a bit. All the addresses I could find for him 1 and the medical association he works for 2 (box on left) put him close to New Orleans - about 100 miles from where the shooting in this article took place. Now, Slaughter is a tiny town, so it may not have a lot of medical professionals there. But are there really no child psychologists closter than 100 miles away or was it just that none of them would say video games are like shooting a gun?

Nah, guys. It's easy math. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So if you're playing a game at 60FPS, that's 60,000 words per second or 3.6 million words per minute. That means that in the first ten minutes, Call of Duty has more emotional weight than Wikipedia's entire list of longest novels.1 Way more possibility for emotional damage there. In all seriousness, I don't think violent video games have any more of a negative impact on a person than a violent movie or book would. I simply think that if that person is already mentally unstable, or otherwise doesn't understand the boundaries between what happens in the media and what happens in real life, then you are asking for trouble if you allow them access to violent media of any kind.. Incidentally, the game may only portray the violence as occurring to or because of the character, but it is you the player that the game is trying to immerse in this role. Many games feature silent protagonists so that the player can project as many of their own features onto that character as they want. In terms of getting you as a person enganged in the violence I'd say video games do at least as much as writing or reading agression. Of course, all of us here manage to play violent video games without commiting any murders. So do hundreds of millions of people around the world. A handful do commit crimes, even violent ones. They're a monirity in the extreme, but that doesn't matter to people who want an easy answer for why a man shot up a school. They don't want to hear that, well, there are crazy fuckers everywhere and this shit just happens sometimes. They want to blame something they can fight against. It's understandable. What you end up with, of course, are idiots perpetuating idiocy. We all know the usual accusations against our precious "murder simulators." The sad thing is that people might listen if the accusers were ever informed about the subject they were attacking. My favorite? The parts of the interview where that psychologist claims that shooting at a target in a video game is like practicing shooting a gun... someone has obviously never fired a gun before.

Maybe the NPCs are hiding. Same thing that happened to the dinosaurs, you know.

Try kitten knives instead, I hear they were all the rage for a while.

Ohmygosh! You stab humans with kitchen knives too?

No way the average person could set that up. You need special... everything. And even then it doesn't always work.

Solar panels would be incredibly rare, especially in a small rainy city like Muldraugh. It might be feasible for a single survivor to get lucky and stumble across a solar panel. Let's assume this random person also has the skill to install it without breaking it or electrocuting themselves. At best, they could power their fridge during the 8-10 hours a day the sun is shining on their house. I don't think the average person would consider it worth their effort to learn electircal engineering on the off chance they happen across a working panel and can install it. More feasible to me is that a few houses might have solar panels pre-installed on the roof, making them desirable and contested safehouses for their ability to chill food after the power is out.

You seem to have this idea that your average kitchen knife can effectively stab a human 100 times. I say you'd get maybe 10 stabs in the torso before your knife bent or broke or got stuck or otherwise failed you. I have based this number on my vast wealth of personal experience stabbing humans in the torso with average kitchen knives. One thing that helps is to not always think as degradation as the item being broken - maybe you stabbed the eye socket too hard and your knife got stuck, or your crowbar got tangled up in the ribcage somehow. Degradation is just a numeric value to represent the idea that your item will eventually break or otherwise be lost to you.

I'm more with Epic and Enigma - duct tape would serve a better role as its own item. You could craft it with a multitude of things, including soft clothes to make the kind of armor you're talking about. Assuming you layered it on as thick as you can (say, a whole roll for each major item of clothing) it would provide some protection aginst bites and scrates. It wouldn't make reliable armor by itself, though.

It doesn't seem that worthwile considering it would be a tiny, tiny container and therefore not much use for weight reduction. But if it's easy to code, well, why not? You could keep nails or ammo in them, maybe.

I'd love to see indoor and rooftop farming implemented. Not being a farmer myself I can't say if this is a viable solution for growing food long-term. Still, I want this. Here's a thought, though. Right now farming is the only thing tying us to the ground - if we can make rooftop gardens, do you think people with just start building "survival huts" on legs with no first story and never leaving?

Three, I'd be more comfortable with. Just double the amount of resources and don't make it available until carpentry level 3 or 4. Then they almost deserve a neigh-impenetrable wall. Never again will they be subject to the nightmare-inducing whinny of ZomboHorse. On topic, I don't think we need to get detailed enough in-game to differentiate between closed frames and open frames. One frame per section of wall, open or not, with the walls automagically becoming linked on completion would be fine with me.

This is the closest thing I found after five minutes on Google. http://www.ancientfaces.com/person/thelma-j-kortman/28089712 As to whether it's a good safehouse.... eh. It's nice and close to (read: in) town for loot runs. That might come back and bite you ( ) if a horde moves through the area and there's nowhere for you to run. Seems like a trade to me - security for convienence. It might be worth it but just be prepared to see a lot of zombies around.

I don't think it's boring. No more boring than just watering your crops to survive, anyway. Think about it. If it takes max skill, then anyone who can do this has already invested a lot of time in the game. They probably have a wooden wall up and just want to build cement behind it to be utterly safe. Investing more time to make that happen isn't a chore at this point, it's something to do besides doodling and waiting to get hungry. It gives the player a project to work towards after a farm is set up and they're self-sustainable, and incentive to leave the area and loot once in a while after this happens. Also, while one person could maybe only manage three sections of wall in a day, two people can manage six and so on. This gives you incentive to work together and provides security for large groups. If you have a stong wall some lone bandit with a sledgehammer can't come at night and take all your beans. That's where I really see concrete shinng - the building material of choice for a team or community that wants or needs that extra security. I know realism shouldn't stand in the way of our Fun, but we also have to be careful that we don't let the Fun spoil the realism. Realistically, working with a lot of cement by yourself would be a slow, grueling, miserable task. That's not much Fun but I don't think you'll find anyone (with experience) that will tell you that someone making a concrete wall by themselves would have an easy time. Working with more than one person would alleviate this significantly - as it does in real life - and working with your friends on a project is a lot of Fun. Plus, seeing a nigh-indestructable wall surrounding your base is a lot more satisfying if you and your friends had to work hard to get it and not just slap it down in a day. Or at least I think so.

I deleted about four paragraphs of text because I think I finally understand you. First, Rathlord isn't talking about the weight of a bag of concrete versus a bag of cement, he's talking about the weight of the finished walls. I said before a 4'x8'x6" slab would weigh over 200 pounds. 240-250, probably. That means a ten-foot wall of concrete would weigh about 600 pounds. Enough to cover one side of a house (say 40 feet, no extra length for a garden) would weigh more than a ton (or 1,088 kilos). Unless you're making a wall out of nothing but tree trunks I think you'll find that a wooden wall is considerably lighter. If the concrete weren't resting on a firm base and properly constructed it would split apart under its own weight (it is, suprisingly, very brittle) as the ground below it sank down unevenly - or worse, it would topple over and destroy or kill anything it lands on. Second, while the process of building a concrete wall should be straightforward and simple in the game (like in my suggestion so many people seem to like ) the difficulty should be balanced by an incredibly high resource requirement such as needing to mix several bags of cement and a few containers of water for every single section and possibly a need for one or more survivors to help you. In game, the process is simple but the resource requirmenets are not, making this a straightforward, easy-to-learn mechanic that can still be restricted to endgame status by requring a huge manpower investment (and therefore probably a large group) in terms of not only construction but going out and scavenging what you need for your group to even consider this a posibility. Also, as an aside, I could totally build a wall with a hammer and a few nails. That's generally how it's done.

Lothar, I'm afriad I have to disagree with you there. Working with wood - and I am a carpenter more or less by trade - is far far far far easier than working with cement. I don't want to make a long argument, especially if your English is not very good. But consider this: I have built plenty of walls out of wood. Most of them went reasonably quickly and didn't crumple like paper when I was done. I've also built things out of cement. I've seen that go wrong more often. As I mentioned in one of my posts, I've seen an improperly constructed frame burst open at the bottom and dump wet cement all over our working area. I've seen a slab, poured without real knowledge of what to do, split completley down the middle in the first week. I've seen a wall where the cement wasn't worked in properly around the rebar while being poured end up full of holes when the frame came off. The point is, not only is working with wood easier and faster, but there's also a lot less that can go wrong if you mess up. With lumber, if you nail a board in the wrong place you just pry it off and try again. With concrete your mistakes are permanent and costly. Not the same thing. Not the same at all.

Not to mention if you found a hammer and got your Carpentry skill high enough you could build stars and a walkway around the fence, allowing you to jump or sheetrope down if things get too bad. I personally think it's a great safehouse. It's remote, provides easy access to the warehouse and logging company without requiring you to go through town, there's a forest right outside for all your construction needs and best of all, the land is already walled in with fences the zombies can't see through. The main drawback is that the house comes with very few storage containers. If fortification is your playstyle, this saves you dozens of planks and nails and gives you better protection than your transparent makeshift walls would. If you can't find a hammer to make another exit it may become a deathtrap as TinnedEpic says. Once you find one, however, you may find it advantageous to move to this spot rather than construct a wall around your own building from scratch.