Chase_Arcanum

... almost made a new sig :P

You also have to remember OTHER costume variations. Unlike some games, you can't just remove a helm. If you're a roleplayer and want your character to sometimes take off the hemlet of his battle armor (or just open the faceplate) to talk face-to-face, you've just wasted one of your 5 slots on that.

One of my characters has a masked mode, a maskless mode and a "battle damage" (smoking aura+ "smudges" +torn costume bits) that I'll jokingly switch to after a particularly bad battle. That's three "costumes" in the game, but equivalent to just one costume in a comic book theme. Add a "civilian mode" for a character and you're at four already.


Or maybe you want to do the classic 'costume modification' for a specific situation? You see them more when they're trying to sell action figures (battle armor batman, undersea batman, arctic defense batman... change batman to spiderman, superman, or ironman at your desire). A tech themed hero might realistically equip himself differently-- even if it is just superficial in-game-- when facing the elemental attacks of the Outcasts compared to the gear needed for Carnies.

(channels his best Vernon Von Grun)
Right! Nobody would expect that. It's BRILLIANT!

.... OR.... you took Provost Marchard seriously and went really REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLYdeep undercover....

Correct.

The thyroid gland is very vulnerable to radiation damage because it absorbs a great deal of iodine from the blood and radioactive iodine is a major component of fallout. If you ingest the iodine pills BEFORE (several hours to a day is usually sufficient) being exposed to radioactive fallout, you can effectively "saturate" your thyroid with non-radioactive stuff, meaning it'll absorb substantially less of the radioactive stuff.

The iodine is rather useless AFTER exposure, as the thyroid is already engorged with the radioactive stuff. Its a precautionary measure.

I just plan to make a fool out of myself with Google Translate.

Ok, well, assuming we're staying with the Lore, then.

You've established your character's place on the Rogue Isles well enough, and all that makes sense... but how does Ouroboros and Ramiel and becoming an Incarnate fit into your character?

What is your villain's interest in being an Incarnate? A quest for power? Preparing for the 'coming storm'? What does Cole's presence-- so deeply imbued with the well's power- then mean to you? Is he a possible threat? Could he deprive you of the power he seeks? Would he possibly see you as something to be eliminated? Knowing that the well can exert influence over those imbued with too much power too quickly, would you risk siding with him and being dominated by the well's power?

Right. While I'm not a fan of Tyrant, either, there are many that DO often believe that "humanity must be saved from themselves." Heck, in our own political extremes we have fringe groups that believe that "everybody else" is out to conspire against us... or just lead us to ruin through their sheer idiocy. Things would be so much better if those people just shut up and let US do what we KNOW is right. We call them names and write off their contributions as folly, because WE would do things better.

The world is a mess and I just have to rule it.*

Tyrant might actually believe that he's still protecting mankind against itself. Heck, he may believe that he must conquer the metaverse because with his immense power comes the responsibility to do just that. He's batnuts insane, sure, but for those that have gone through ANY of the Praetoria arcs, can you really say that mankind's greatest threat isn't STILL itself?

An open participatory and healthy democracy is a ridiculous mess that appears ready to fall into pure anarchy any moment. If you lose sight of the truly amazing part (that it works as well as it does), then Cole's methods seem rather attractive.



*made famous by Dr Horrible, but said by so many.

The Layar app shows some of this potential.

It essentially uses the camera and GPS to display things over top of an area--a kind of digital graffiti.

Some of the elements are useful a layer that shows links to wikipedia entries for geographic locations, or a layer that showed all the locations in your area getting stimulus funds. Some are just strange or gratuitous-- having a layer at your college campus that renders 3d models of your mascot around and above your sporting arenas, or your personal layer people can subscribe and see your digital graffiti anywhere you put it. In the future, you'll likely see the tech used for people to post restaurant reviews right at the door to the site, or a business spicing up their curb appeal with some custom layers...

Me? I want the processors to advance just a little bit more, so they can adequately determine the dimensions of the room appearing in the camera. Then, I want some devs to get ahold of the "Fatal Frame" license and make a game where your phone/pad buzzes you when "ghosts" appear, you look though the camera at your room and see spirits coming out of walls or through doorways... or crawling down the stairs 'Grudge' style... and, like fatal frame, you try to capture the spirits in a well-places slot. The first survival-horror augmented reality game!

One of the reasons the "retinal display" probably isn't there yet (aside from the whole concept being somewhat misleading) is that the device use differs. A "retina display," according to Jobs, is a screen with such a tight dpi that the human eye cannot make out individual pixels at a distance of 10-12 inches away.

For an iphone, with people holding it 12-18 inches away, that's nice. A larger pad is generally held farther away, meaning that you hit the point of "not being able to make out specific pixels" with a lower dpi at those operating distances. It becomes something of an "extra features for no discernible difference."

If you want a stylus-based one with precision, you probably hope to do some drawing on it. I suggest keeping an eye on Asus-- they're using WACOM pressure sensitivity in some of their tablet devices, and while things like the e-note only use 256 levels of sensitivity, it won't be long before someone brings the thousand-level-sensitivty-- or essentially merge a tablet PC with a Cintiq 12WX.

All my tech friends were amazed to see I just used a cheap candy-bar Tracfone while they were all gaga over their tech toys. For all I do online, it served my needs and made financial sense (a full year of that cost me less than 2 months of what I have now-- maybe less than one).


It wasn't until my work wanted me to have one (and compensated me for it) that I got it. Now, when I'm on the road and an emergency case comes down, the network ops guys can call me. I can pull over, remote into the servers, and start troubleshooting all the servers and code on my 4-inch screen... I can do it virtually anywhere... anytime... I'm always available and our client downtime is a fraction of what it once was.* I'm always just a few minutes away.... its impossible to escape...

God, I miss that tracfone.







*Mostly, though, I use it to play Angry Birds.

Don't write off the Xoom too quickly. The "portrait/landscape" debate is more about what video form factor will win the mobile war- the one that's used on HDTV's or a more specialized one that fits the portrait format.

For the reading you're talking about, it shouldn't play much of a role. It even may make the Xoom better for you. While the Xoom's widescreen format means its narrower when put in portrait mode, it is still as wide or wider than the mainstream eReaders (nook and kindle) which were designed with optimal text reading in consideration.

Studies have shown that a person's reading rate slows if a column of text is too wide. It seems to take the eye more time to track the longer line of text back and find the next line. That's one reason that, while hardcover books and trade paperbacks are larger than paperback books, they often have wider margins, resulting in columns of text that aren't THAT much larger than a paperback book. That kind of UI consideration affects the dedicated ebook reader design, but it wasn't considered for the general-purpose iPad. Instead you see optimally-formatted columns of text with a good deal of whitespace on either side (or ui elements there). The Xoom, with the widescreen shifted to portrait mode, would just have less wasted whitespace and a longer page.

It also sounds like you'll be toting this thing around a lot, and even if I were using a protective case, I'd feel a lot more comfortable with a Gorilla-Glass cover than the regular iPad's.


As for other apps.... this is another case of comparing apples to oranges. The iPad NEEDED many custom apps because up until that point, the iPhone line really had one display form factor. Apps could "scale up" but were designed with one factor in mind. The Android never had a true "standard" resolution, instead giving developers resources that made apps adjust rather well to a variety of display settings. Thus, even without using the new fragments in the UI, many Android apps looked good and worked great right out the door (and apps that DO use fragments are coming in at a faster rate than iPad ones did...)


--

Also, its kinda funny that Motorola may have hurt itself by rushing this out before the iPad2. Many reviewers compared it favorably to the iPad, but hedged that with note that they'd have to see what the iPad2 would have. Some even predicted it wouldn't stand up to the fantasy iPad that leakers were saying was coming.... you know, the dream iPad with a more advanced second camera (rather than one that's under 1 megapixel), more processor kick (the A5 still doesn't come close to a tegra2) more ram (notably left out of the presentation), stereo speakers (still mono), microUSB (nuh-uh), and better multitasking (nope).

Had the Xoom come out a bit later and been paired against the actual concrete competitor (maybe given enough time to flesh out Flash and get the SD card driver issue resolved... maybe with the cheaper wifi-only one to show better price comparison.... and maybe without all the heavily-publicized (and wrong) pricing/plan information from BestBuy) it may have appeared much better in comparison.


Not a Xoom fanboi here, just saying that the iPad2 isn't the surefire selection it may have seen a few months ago

Agreed. Though my estimate is sooner-- no more than 5 years from now is my estimate. By that time, an ipad-like device will easily have the processing capabilities of today's typical laptop.

Give the padPC a dock and it'll be used like any office PC today with a keyboard and mouse, but it can be seamlessly undocked, tucked under an arm, and carried into the company meeting or down onto the floor of a production line...

Heck, depending on how you measure things, we're already there., the UMPC, while bulkier than an iPad, IS already there. They use those mobile devices in places like production inspection lines to replace the carloads of manuals and schematics that the inspectors used to carry along. For things as large as aircraft, they even use a custom positioning system which has the UMPC's reference manuals and reporting forms already set to the relevant areas. Add a padPC's camera, and he could probably attach photos or video clips right there to enhance documentation.

Come to think of it, ruggedized "tablet" computers that have even less processing power than the iPad are used by shipping companies for tracking even today.

Yes, the iPad itself is a toy, right now, but its hardly revolutionary and many of the things that it owes its heritage to ARE very much part of "serious" work. The PDA, the smartphone, the tablet PC, the ultramobile pc.... all these precursors to the 'pad have solid niche industrial uses. The pad was just one of the few aimed at the consumer

Every mythology usually has a creation myth-- learning where you come from and why you're here is a powerful human craving-- but oftentimes in these tales the gods themselves aren't the creators or initiators of the universe/world. In these instances, they are actors within and upon the world but not the creators. Sometimes they even allude to precursors.

Eh, I've never cared about the "City of Pawns" concerns, but I've never cared for the game's metastory either. I take the attitude of a modern major title comic book writer and just ignore anything that detracts from the story I want to tell :P The speculation there was sheerly on what COULD be possible.

But... taking that a bit farther just for the fun of it, though others have already traveled this path....

In the end of Ramiel's arc, the well wasn't where you expected it to be. What caused it to disappear? Did someone get to it first? Did THAT thing be so consumed by the fast-path that it became one with the well... corrupting the well and making it "mad"?

We know that it wasn't Mender Silos... who seemed quite miffed that it wasn't there.... (and who seemed to be there first, by the way). We also know that Mender Silos is one potential future 'good' Lord Nemesis.... but that means there could be more... other.... not-so-good variants of Lord Nemesis also traveling through the timestream. One of them could have traveled back and gotten to the well first... corrupting it... and bringing about all this madness.

Yes, it is all still a Nemesis plot.

Precisely.

People seem to forget that "gods" in most mythologies are not of the he omnipotent omnisentient creators-of-the-universe judge-and-master-of-the-afterlife that some attribute to the singular form. They often had a role in the creation myth... and some may have roles in different parts of the afterlife... but that's about it.

For that matter:

-snipped from Cole's biography-
At the point in bold, Cole drew upon more of the power of the well than ever before, giving it more influence over him then ever before.

And then, moments later, the Hamidon --also a known Incarnate-- may have done the same.

What if the well effectively controls both? If the well is using cole to launch its invasion on Primal Earth, then what is it doing with the Hamidon during this time? Is Cole's assault on Primal Earth the Well's main objective? or is all this just an elaborate ruse- something to draw attention away from something else... something growing in strength beyond the sonic barriers...

Good analysis.

Somehow, the person with so little experience in a particular task force that he's interested in reading the story seems to be a poor choice for "leading" said force and setting the tactics that help make it successful. ;p

... that... and everyone waiting as I read through all the text between missions.


EDIT: Not a complaint, just a quirky observation.

My problem is that people that aren't the team leader don't see all the story. They don't get the clues... or all the dialog between tasks.... not that the team leader gets a chance to read those anyway-- he's got a mob full of people looking for the next mission star.

Future TF's should continue to move the contact interaction INTO the mission, but they should also look at giving all team members access to the full story. I've only run a few TF's (and only since the WTF's started) and each time I've had to resort to Paragonwiki afterward to understand why we were did what we did.

EDIT: and yes, this is an issue with all story arcs, but at least there, I can do it myself... alone... and read all the material it provides to the mission holder...and at my own pace

...Particularly since (it seems that) the content that is balanced to be challenging against the incarnate powers seems to be the trials & task forces.

It seems like, if you're interested in solo, story-arc-only play, there's less purpose to the additional powers, therefore less necessity in getting the highest tier of them. You'll do well against the existing content with just the entry power of each incarnate slot.... going all-very-rare all-the-way would just be incredible overkill for that kind of content.

That would be somewhat similar to current MMO trends, where the 'endgame' focuses on challenges and rewards catered to larger team coordination. Once leveling ends, so do most of the story arcs...