Grrl Power #469 – SWAT-o-gram?
Maybe Sydney is misreading the situation and those guys are the SWAT themed strippers The Council ordered.
That attic mostly contains the cantrip equivalent of artifacts. Frames for paintings that never get dusty, a rain cloak that never gets wet (because water passes straight through it.) A necklace that glows when detect magic is cast on it. That’s it, that’s the only effect it has. Probably an Enchanting 101 project. A map that updates landmarks and mission waypoints as they’re discovered. Actually that’s super useful, but not especially rare, since the protagonist of every video game in the last 20 years has one*.
*Back in my day we had to map out everything manually on graph paper and weeee liked it. Ok, we didn’t especially, but we didn’t know any better. I had a college RA who mapped out – get this – Daggerfall. Elder Scrolls 2. The pre-pre-prequel of Skyrim. He must have just mapped out the towns and major points of interest, because Daggerfall’s world covered over 62,000 square miles. For comparison’s sake, WoW is only 80 square miles (though I suspect that’s just the base game and not any of the expansions.) The fact those pictures don’t actually show map details for Daggerfall makes me think you didn’t hop on a horse and physically travel overland, though I never played it myself. Kind of looks like you walk 50 feet from a dungeon or town and a fast travel world map shows up.
The point is most games didn’t include an auto map feature back in the day, so the parchment equivalent of a GPS isn’t exciting enough for Ingsol to lock away in a secure vault.
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I believe the cleansing is at hand. Woo, foreshadowing.
They could also be from the “Maybe we can use this” villains in shadow, they look like they could be magical.
Vehemence is first on the page and he was the first villain to appear though, maybe they were conveniently arranged in chronological order for us. Would make some sense considering Deus is the last one in the page, and he is apparently the one playing the long game.
Yes, but we have met the wampy-duo in panel five: they are in the council chamber already!!!
First villein to appear was “found you” when Max nuked the tank at the press con. V was the first to fight so if that is what you meant then you are right.
Personally I think it’s the mummy. this council is made up of all manner of classic mythical beings so it makes sense the mummy in panel 4 would be the boss for this chapter.
This could also be a cameo for the “wampy-duo” like the foreshadowing cameo of the demon in panel 3.
besides the two of them are looking to benefit from manipulating the team not tearing down the vale as it were.
It couldn’t be the mummy. If you remember, Dave translated what he said to: So I am supposed to be dead.
It is one of the Supers that Maxima when she was in Afghanistan, and one of the two people that can go toe to toe with Maxima. The one that she said was dead, as far as she knew.
Wait, i thought the maybe we can use this duo was Opan and Vector?
That’s what we thought at the time, but the haircuts don’t quite match either Opal or Vector, but they more match the wampy-duo behind Baldy in the Peanut Gallery, specially the female
Compare the centre panel here, with the couple in the final panel here. Note the balcony background in the former, along with the pointy teeth. Then consider that the latter are sitting in the vampire delegates box, in the gallery.
What differences there are can be attributed to artistic drift, given the passage of time between that conceptualisation and the present realisation. However even those differences are considerably less than between the initial couple compared to Opal and Vector.
Not to mention the fact that O & V were pawns of Vehemence. Who already has his own panel, on the masterminds’ scheming page.
Now that Sydney is carrying stickers panel 6 is much funnier.
Heh.
Yet still the most sinister of the lot.
Actually, he’s on the right hand side, not the left. =OP
She looks more like a drow, so may be ambidextrous.
Incidentally, if talking handedness, you should use the surgeons’ convention of using the patient’s left,* which means that she is on the left. ;-)
* If the anesthetist (at the patient’s head) says ‘we need to chop off the left arm’, from his perspective he is referring to the patient’s right arm (using normal conventions). So to avoid removing the wrong limb, or operating on the wrong organ, surgical staff get into the habit of always orienting things relative to the patient’s left and right.
“You need to cut more to the left” therefore is neither to the surgeon’s left nor the speaker’s.
If I referring to some part of the person’s(?) body, I could see how that would have some merit. However, I meant the right hand side of the page. Since he/she is on the right hand side of the page, he/she cannot be the most sinister (which comes from the Latin word meaning “left”).
Hence my winking smiley. :-)
I think you’re right, look at the knights helmet on the guy in the back. Both images show religious themes.
Wait… Nm, I seemed to think the guy had a priest collar for a minute there…
Yea, the cross is only practical in a structure, as part of a firing position, for a ranged weapon. Allowing a vertical firing arc. Whereas in a helmet it would be unnecessary. You only need a horizontal slit in the visor. A vertical one, between the eyes, adds nothing to the field of view. Implying that it has either aesthetic or symbolic significance. As it lowers the helm’s protective capacity, the latter seems more viable.
Unless the occupant has some kind of spit or tongue attack. Given that he is the only one not prominently carrying a gun that is a possibility.
Wasn’t quite sure if it did have a vertical slit, or if it was just due to the lighting angle, but yeah, you can see the vertical slit if you look real close
Have actually seen helmets like that, not sure if on real suits of armour or just on movie armour
Question is: is it a full helmet or simply a face mask? Have seen those as well (again, not sure if on real armour or, in this case, game armour)
Is that the top of the helm seen peeking over the top or does he have grey hair?
“Unless the occupant has some kind of spit or tongue attack.”
Or unusual eyes, in number and/or place :)
To normal humans the vertical split is not only useless but dangerous, since it weaken the helmet. A good hit in the center and the knight will end with the four angles right into his skull.
The cross in crusader helmets was a common motif, but the vertical part was just decoration, not a slit.
https://www.swordsandarmor.com/images/H910902_Crusader_Helm.JPG
Yup, the latter would be the symbolic significance I was referring to. Plus contrast your link with the guy in question. His slits look identical in both axis. as opposed to ornamental in the vertical.
I guess the reason he is not wearing glasses, if you are right, is because he does not want to be called ‘eight eyes’.
“Plus contrast your link with the guy in question”
I did, that why I said “the vertical part was just decoration, not a slit”.
Why did the priest cross the road?
He felt it needed to be blessed.
Why did the warrior join him later?
Because it was knight time.
Why can’t the game be at hand while the cleansing is afoot?
I tawd I paw what yaw did dere.
No, no, you could actually walk or ride between the towns in Daggerfall. In fact, doing so occasionally revealed secrets that you’d never find otherwise. I played for four or five years and never finished the game. It really is that massive.
That’s bonkers considering the computing power at the time.
Daggerfall was completely nucking FUTZ as a game. Not necessarily in a “this game is AWESOME” kind of way (although it was fairly fun), but in the “OMG, where am I, what am I doing, how the HECK do I get out of this dungeon, ye gods I’m 12 countries away from where I need to be right now, wait what was the plot again?” kind of way. It was HEUG in every way.
It was also early 3D, and there were jokes that it was possible to literally fall into a bottomless pit of programming errors (walk into the wrong point on a wal the wrong way, or pass over the wrong point on the floor, or fall into the wrong pool of water the wrong way, and you could actually fall through the intersection between 3D objects and “fall into the void” as they called it: passing outside the map and just falling endlessly. Occasionally, if you were in a dungeon, you could fall that way and end up in a different part of the dungeon, which did not help with trying to figure out how to get back out. I learned (after many many hours, days, weeks of getting hopelessly lost) to cast a recall spell at the entrance of any dungeon I was going into, so I could just teleport myself back to the entrance once I was done inside… or once I got so lost that I gave up trying to finish whatever I thought I was doing.
I never did finish the game. I never could figure out how. It was soooooo complex and hugantunormous. The later Elder Scrolls games were more reasonable.
Maybe if you tried wandering less randomly?
That is literally true. It was a bug with the way the dungeons (except for the ones related to the main plot) were procedurally generated as a series of pre-built sections “stitched together”. Sometimes you could fall through the gap between sections ‘into the void’; even after ten patches, they were never able to fix this. In the last official patch, Bethesda just enabled the cheats (one of which is “teleport back to dungeon entrance”) and left them enabled so that you could at least get out of the dungeon again.
Over the course of all the patches, they fixed all the game-breaking bugs except for that one, but there were a few more subtle ones that never got fixed. For example, let’s say you went inside the “Green Griffon Inn”. You could ask someone where the Green Griffon Inn was, and instead of saying “you’re standing in it!”, they would tell you something like “Umm… it’s far off to the northeast, I think.” So wait, let me get this straight… you’re STANDING in the Green Griffon Inn, but you don’t know where the Green Griffon Inn is? How drunk are you? What are they serving for alcohol in this place? Will you share?
Most of the rest of the bugs were in the random quest system. One time, I was in one of the Mages’ Guilds, and a mage that we’ll call Steve needed me to return a shirt he had borrowed from another mage that we’ll call George. It was the easiest quest I ever received… because George was within arm’s reach of Steve. Literally in the same room, standing right next to each other.
Another time, I took a random quest from a merchant that I shall call Peter. He had been insulted by another merchant (that I shall ALSO call Peter), and wanted me to duel him to the death. I looked everywhere, only to find out that there was only one merchant named Peter in the entire game. Yes, that’s right… apparently he was schizophrenic, because he had somehow insulted himself, and wanted me to kill him. Which makes it rather difficult to collect your payment for the quest.
And then there was the random treasure generator, which sometimes created magic items that you could not possibly create using the magic item creator. One time, I found the “Loincloth of Flame Jet” (so you say there’s a burning sensation when you urinate?). And you remember how it tracked an item’s condition? Another time I found the “Loincloth of the Orc Lord (Slightly Used)”. I decided to leave it there, and not touch it. ;-)
You’re right; Daggerfall’s big problem was that the developers got over-ambitious. It was far too easy to start taking random quests, and forget what you were supposed to be doing. However, for people on a limited budget, like Yorp, Bethesda has re-released it as freeware, so anybody can download it and play it with the help of DOSBox.
The spell creation system was sort of broke, too. I found out fairly quickly that a given spell didn’t stack with itself but only so long as the spell was identical.
For example, you make a spell that provides +20 defense which lasts say 10 minutes per caster rank. Make another spell just like it but lasts 11 minutes per caster rank – voila, +40 defense. Do the same thing but at 12 minutes – et voila, +60 defense. Turned out that making a spell last longer was *much* cheaper than making it give better defense.
You can guess how I abused that – had a friend watching me play, I was fighting vampires and just wailing away at them, chipping them down slowly, and the vampires couldn’t hit me. My friend asked what level I was, and I was like 10th or so. He was like, “you suck.”
Lots of things in the elder scrolls games have been exploitable. Like – I can’t remember if it was in Oblivion or Morrowind – but Int? potions I think.
Temporary Int potions made you smarter, which let you craft better Int potions – which made you smarter.
Can’t remember if it stacked, but it meant you could craft ultra powerful potions, by making increasingly better Int potions.
And the real exploit was that the ingredients could be bought infinitely from merchants… And the value of potions was derived from their strength. So after a little while you could by out the stock of every merchant in the game, just from making potions… And craft other rediculously powerful potions (strength and duration) besides.
Oblivion, I think. Another exploit in Oblivion was to create a set of armor with “Chameleon 20%” on at least five of the pieces. The Chameleon enchantments would stack, resulting in Chameleon 100%… the enemies literally could not see you, allowing you to kill them at your leisure.
Against melee fighters, just jump on a rock and snipe them with a bow or spells. The game engine was not able to cope with that; they’d just mill around the base of the rock and never be able to hit you. (Archers or mages could still hit you, though.)
Then again, that’s because they had to switch back to a script; originally they intended to give NPCs the appearance of using AI (non-scripted). But while they were testing it, they gave one NPC a hoe with instructions to rake the yard, and gave another one a rake with instructions to hoe.
The solution the AI came up with? The one with the hoe killed the one with the rake, took the rake and started raking the leaves like it was supposed to. They were never able to fix it (or it would be too time-consuming to fix, I’m not sure) so they switched back to running scripts.
I recall making highly specialised powerful lightweight magical items (such as rings) for specific purposes. The most notable of which was flight. At the time I played it on an X-box, and could fly so fast that it felt like it took longer to load the next zone than it did to cross it! I can’t say I had a stopwatch going, but it did make long distance flights feel very stop-go stop-go.
That ‘bottomless pit of eternal falling’ is still around in modern games
In DCUO, there is, allegedly, a spot in the WatchTower where you can fall out into space and fly around
And EQ2 has those pits scattered around Norrath, after a period of falling you get automagically transported back, sometimes it happens so quickly the only reason you know it happened is because you get the message saying the game detected you had fallen through the map and transported you to safety
The key to understanding it is to realize the location of non-major locations on the world map and the layout of non-story dungeons were randomly generated. It also meant there was little rhyme or reason to the layout of story dungeons, further increasing the likelihood of getting lost.
It really was a great game though. I spent months just stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down in one capitol city and traveling to the next to do it again. I did not do this in the city of Daggerfall though… having King Lysandus’ ghost chasing me around as I went burglering the shops was more trouble than it was worth.
Decades ago I played a space game whose name I do not recall. It ran on an Apple 2 and fit on a floppy disk. And still managed to have several hundred star systems. Someone once told me that the programmers of the day had to use smart tricks with fractals and other very clever programming in order to fit so much content onto a floppy. I don’t know if that is correct or not, but seeing as any game today takes at least one if not several CDs to hold the game, it is a stark difference.
My favourite example is a free game, C-Evo. I think of it as being Civilisation 2.5. Being significantly better than Civ 2, but not having various features in Civ 3. Size wise it is a modest 3,524k and runs before you can blink.
One notable feature that I like is the AIs get no more information or capabilities than a human player. So they do not automatically know where your cities or troops are, for example. Which means they have to scout terrain, just the same as human players do. Thus tactics like deploying scout-killers can yield good tactical returns.
Combine this with there being a range of AIs that you can pick (and a bunch provided by third parties) and you can set up a game to give precisely the degree of challenge you want. The top AIs provide a good challenge.
Returning to the size issues, there is one surprising feature. It automatically stores the entire game you play. No save files required. Any time you realise you have made a mistake or are curious how things could have turned out by doing something different, you can simply go back to any earlier point in the game. Just pick the turn you want, and resume play from that point.
To replicate that in Civilisation you would need to force it to save the game every turn, and allocate the space to save hundreds of big files.
Even though I have every version of Civilisation, I still return to playing that game periodically. It is nice to have an AI that does not cheat, yet still makes a fun opponent.
I failed to point out that each player is a separate AI. So you can pick whatever mix you want. For example a couple of human players, a pair of powerful AIs, one or two weak ones (for anyone to exploit) and make the rest average AIs.
There is no ‘environmental’ AI as the game does not support barbarians. As they have no mechanism to win the game themselves, the writer felt that they had no motive, or purpose, of their own. So refused to put them in the game just to be punch bags for players. Rightly enough. Although more modern Civs do handle it better than the earlier ones.
Might it have been Frontier: Elite II?
Great game, would always get the auto-pilot as could never land manually (either in the station or planet side), the scoop was nice as well (for free loot from the pirates :P) but grew to hate “Hall of the Mountain King” with a passion that exists to this day!
The space combat was wonderful: twisting and turning, hoping to get behind them, something didn’t encounter again until SWG :(
Which Batman game does she have in mind?
Probably Batman: Arkham Asylum
Well this isn’t good…
Sydney, did you unlock the Explosive Gel upgrade yet? Because I don’t think your gargoyle hopping is gonna be up to scratch.
WAIT.
WAIT.
Am I the only one who notices that there is something written in orange near Sidney’s head? Visible in panel 4 ad 5. Right next to the PPO.
This could be huge, as far as I know it’s the first time the Truesight has revealed something about her own orbs…
Oh wait.
No I’m stupid, it’s the headband from Decollete. Aw…
Yes, but there are symbols around every magic item in the room. Another function of the Comm ball identifying the properties of the magic involved, perhaps? Too bad it seems to be in a language unfamiliar to me…
Remember the headband Decollete gave her is magically “non headache inducing”
And “non slip”, if I recall correctly.
Daggerfall wasn’t simply massive. it was also procedurally generated.
The headband has a Aura and it looks more wordy then “Stay put!” for some reason.
I guess it is time for the codephrase that is not a birds genitals…
Yea, I can make out symbols for “act impulsively”, “verbosity” and “be cheeky” in addition to “stay put”.
How the hell can you see that? I can barley make out the magic symbols on the patreon page.
*hangs head*
I was being naughty. I can make out roughly four groupings of symbols, but no more than that. Note the broad hint, as to what they are for, from the author.
*points paw two threads above*
DaveB has provided the instrument of their salvation. In the room with Sydney is a magic rolling pin. As we all know from every cartoon ever such an item can be used by a female to take out any opponent with just a single blow to the head (chirping birdies optional). If this is an attack, Sydney can use this with her light hook to take out the entire group before they even knew what was going on. *
* This item can be beaten in combat only by similarly wielded frying pan.
Dang! Had noticed that rolling pin, but kept forgetting to mention it :(
Looks a bit big to be a rolling pin. IMHO, more likely a scroll.
But, I could be wrong.
Now I’m reminded of that scene in Who Killed Roger Rabbit? (Paraphrased:)
Director: “Cut! Cut, cut, cut, cut! Roger, what are these? Twinkling stars? The script says, rabbit gets hit on head, sees birds, not stars!”
He liked to ad lib.
Minor detail but it was the other way around. I remember the director picking a bird mid air and asking the “what are these”, then smashing it against the floor. The poor birdie walked away stunned.
Were there even littler birdies circling him/her? =OP
How do you sex a cartoon bird?
Ask Roger and Jessica Rabbit.
Uh, yes?
https://youtu.be/VVTBx8H4QDg?t=205
Or I’m missing something?
I meant the little bird that got slammed down, not Roger (who was a “him”).
OMG, how silly, your comment (with Yorp’s on top) is in fact crystal!
Maybe I need to tune the electroshocks down…
Why do birds suddenly appear, ev’ry time Sydney is near?
Just like us, they long to be close to her.
Why do birds suddenly appear, ev’ry time a tree is near?
Just like me, they long to be, close to yew.
Hereby nominated for poetry of the day award.
Hopefully Syd has the forethought and ability to ping Max and tell her whats coming and get orders. Othrwize this chould get messy.. What am i saying Even odds that Syd Power dives the swat guys with fly/shild.
sooo this looks like a case of mind control the swat team to make archon look bad, sydney’s probably going to pop out to ask what they’re up to, get shot at, and use the lighthook to take care of them before phoning maxima
So one of the sigils has been sabotaged, and now three armored minions plus a boss of some kind are marching on the Council. All of them appear magically enhanced. If Sydney’s illusion-form doesn’t project as far as the council room then she can always use it to create an amazing distraction (plus all the shooting would alert everyone).
If Sydney beats the boss does she get to claim any items he drops?
Daggerfall was the first Elder Scrolls game I played. Outside of towns, dungeons, and other sites of interest, the terrain was randomly generated as you got close enough to see it, and re-generated every time you went far enough away for it to drop out of RAM (or entered a building). Also, given the size of the map and the relative sizes of those sites of interest, it was possible to walk from one end of a large, densely-packed country to the other without bumbling into a single one. The fast-travel map wasn’t automatic, you could certainly walk around in the wilderness having random encounters if you wanted, but if you ever wanted to actually get anywhere, fast travel was pretty much your only bet.
All I ever needed out of graphics in a game, I got in Angband. =OP
So, can Sydney remember that she has a communicator and get a message to Max? And can she word it in a way that isn’t dismissed as more nonesense rambling?
If Sydney believes the comms may be compromised, she could use her code word.
“Colonel, I am just checking in to say I am really admiring these vermilion tapestries out here in the hall. Lots and lots of vermilion tapestries.”
Tune into
tomorr…um, a few days from now, same Halo website, same Halo time.Halo, halo, is anybody receiving me?
If I never ceived you in the first place, how can I receive you?
You enter into the state of ceiving on the first word you hear. After which, any further words uplift you to the state of receiving me.
So anything less would be unceivilized?
Unless you failed to hear me twice, in which case you would be reunceivilized.
Good thing you didn’t try to write that in Old Norse or it might be r(un)eceived,
I see you have repeatedly changed from being a tool-using person to a cheeky monkey. Have you become reuncivilised? If that happened on a wide scale, it could be runeous!
I’m guessing she’s about to destroy those SWAT guys.
Or she’s to late and they’re about to bust in.
I hope not! If they are building security, she would be up on a murder charge. Cops need to determine the intent of suspicious characters, rather than leap without thinking. That would be foolish in her current situation.
I don’t mean literally destroy them and seeing a bunch of heavily armed/heavily shielded people going towards a room where there’s a peaceful meeting happening doesn’t really seem like something that’s supposed to be happening. Can someone tell me how to find my posts and responses without scrolling through all of the posts?
Gotcha. And in that spirit, so do I. :-D
Regarding finding posts, the easiest way is to use your browser’s ‘find’ option. This is distinct from the main ‘search’ ability that you use to look for things on the internet. Rather it looks for a string of characters just on the page presently displayed. Although it does not matter if most of it is out of sight, and needs to be scrolled to see, which is usually the case with comments pages.
How you access it probably varies from browser to browser. On Google Chrome, for example, you either call it up with control+F or via clicking on the options gadget, in the top right hand corner, and selecting ‘find’. Then just type in your user name, in the box that appears. You can then use the up and down arrows, on that, to jump to each occurrence of (in your case) “SDuke”.
Do note though that this only works on the currently selected page. So you must be sure to check each page of the comments separately (bearing in mind that one comic page usually has several comments pages). Fortunately it only takes a moment to repeat the process on each page. Plus it has the useful side-effect of finding if anyone else has mentioned you, such as quoting one of your posts.
Finally it is also useful if you want to know if someone has already mentioned a particular topic. Provided there is a key word, associated with it, you can check using this. So for this page, if you wonder if anyone has spotted the covered-up magic mirror, you just search for “magic mirror” or maybe “evil queen” or “snow white”.
Daggerfall nothing. Someone actually mapped out Telengard — I don’t remember how far down, but that’s millions of rooms (map squares) per floor. Telengard is one of the first examples of procedural generation not used for randomness.
Might have been mentioned already, but in case it hasn’t: tiny typo in the 5th panel 3rd bubble “… their origin, OF if these are…”
I think that was meant to be an “or”.
Also yeah, I missed her having that mode too o.o
I have one question on the current situation. Did someone in the council chamber just open a suspiciously labeled can of soda?
Good call!
Wait, Harem hasn’t snuck in, has she? That has been her favourite drink so, she has drunk it on, what, two separate occasions where something ‘bad’ has happened?
Ultima Underworld is 24 years old game (1992) and it has automapping. As does Doom (1993).
It would be nice if life came with automapping.
We are not far off it. In due course some societies will chip babies, when they are born, with most of the functionality that smartphones have, and more. Such as automapping.
Sydney might as well stay where she’s at….
And let the others pass!
“A situation that would prevent you from using your powers.” https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
Still, what kind of incompetent villain would attack a gathering of supernatural beings with four mooks in suits? Sydney can stop these guys in their tracks just by bubbling up and dropping in front of them in the hall. I wonder if that glowing skeletal structure is reinforcement or a puppet-master control spell.
Two kinds:
(1) The kind that doesn’t know the Council is in session and is not expecting to find mass resistance;
(2) The kind that is not incompetent, and has the power to take the entire Council out with just four mooks in suits.
(3) The kind that has more mooks somewhere coming through other entrances and/or (temporary?) allies in the Council.
Come to think of it, Azilus looks like he wouldn’t mind taking over Ingsol’s spot should the latter become a casualty of the coming attack. Especially if he could spin Ingsol’s demise as the risk the Council faces if it continues to collaborate with ARCHON.
And if Ingsol isn’t a casualty, then he can act surprised yet still try to make that point.
The kind that is going to say something like “If I press this button…”.
(4) The kind with a political agenda which would be furthered even by an unsuccessful attack.
This is definitely a ‘avoid detection’ or ‘bubble-up before attracting attention’ situation.
And it is best not to assume that the shield will protect her against guns which have an aura. They may well have been enchanted with a ‘forcefield penetrating’ enchantment. Deadly versus Maxima, Dabbler and Halo.
Panel 1, I’m pretty sure we’re missing a couple orbs in that tight orbit. The speech bubble isn’t big enough to completely cover two orbs. (The last panel of the previous comic showed hints of all seven, if you look closely enough.)
I hope we’re not witnessing a coup d’etat in progress. (Or maybe I should hope for that, as some action.)
I think it is just possible, if they are in the same formation as the blue and green orbs, in that same frame.
Yeah, noticed a few ‘missing’ orbs in a couple panels, but yeah, while the other panels are easy to pass off as them behind her head or the speech bubble panel one should have all seven balls out
Why do I feel like Phil Farrand?
It is always worth doing an orb count, especially when action is going on. Sometimes it explains the otherwise inexplicable. It is worth noting though that it is vanishingly rare for them not to be in the right place. Be that overhead, or in hand, as the case may be.
THank you Sydney, you actually did a relatively wise decision there.
Some of us had faith in her.
*wags tail loyally*
Yup, Team Sydney for the Begorrah :D
Just try dealing with No Man’s Sky. Not only is there no MAP, there’s no COMPASS. You have an indicator that points at things of interest, including your ship, but it has no referent to planetary north, so you have NO way of actually orienting yourself. It makes finding stuff the first time trivially easy, but finding them AGAIN halfway to impossible. The best thing you can do is make a relative map of where things are in relation to other things you CAN see…but that doesn’t always work because you can get out of range of those things and they no longer appear on your semi-not-a-minimap.
They also included a feature to set a waypoint mark on a structure using your scanner goggles, but there’s a bug in the code that keeps the waypoint ON that structure. At random, it’ll stop marking what you marked and move the mark to some other totally unrelated structure. Then a further iteration of the bug marks ALL structures in a given region EXCEPT the one you actually marked, which you now can no longer find except by executing a search pattern, which is more like a Drunkard’s Walk because you have no way of telling if you are actually quartering an area or simply moving in circles. (See “lack of compass”, above.)
If you don’t care whether you find things again or not, the game is okay. But if you want to find that wonderful trading post where you could sell your mats, you’re SOL. You have to track it down again by searching for it, and that can take a ridiculous amount of time. I’ve found it easier to locate a signal scanner, search for beacons, then travel to the beacon to search for alien intelligences, THEN travel to the alien intelligence, which is usually an outpost or trading post where you can sell your mats. But even then the chances of finding the same base you found before is small, since you probably registered your finding the base in the first place, and beacons only show you stuff you HAVEN’T registered as discovered.
*(sigh)*
And now the guys at Hello Games have gone into hiding or something.
One perk about being poor is that when I can eventually afford to play it, the bugs will have been stomped on.
*patiently swishes tail, in a northerly direction*
You can always play No Guy’s Sky instead.
Heh, cool. Thanks.
I think I will hold out for No Dog’s Sky.
One worrying point. Their guns have an aura!
Why, that’s aura-ble!
Nw, lets HOPE that she remembers she has a comm and can use it to tell Max about the procession of uninvited guests….
This reminds me in the second of the three films about Smaug when that ring was put on one could not only be invisible, it had a handy language translator function so you could understand the spider-speak.
Yorp October 24, 2016 at 1:16 pm | # | Reply One worrying point. Their guns have an aura!
Maybe the manitous in their guns…spirits that like the Force inhabit everything from rocks to typewriters to robots.
If those are midichlorians, then it implies that Lucas is in on the coup.
And Max’s decisions/orders to bring Halo here have now been redeemed.
Combination Forcefield+ Lighthook should be enough to deal with these guys.
Must be the catering service.
If death is on the menu….
…. hit them on their heads with a rock.
My way is not very sporting.
Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
“a rain cloak that never gets wet (because water passes straight through it.)”
Um, wouldn’t that make it useless?
Why do you think it is in the ‘trivial and useless items locker’?
But it is pawey if the water gets transported from the impact point (on one side of the wearer) to exit the cloak on the opposite side, without touching either the cloak or the user.
*sniff sniff*
Woof woof!
*wags tail welcomingly*
Just noticed something: the two mooks on our right in the last panel have machine guns (can’t tell what kind, so ‘machine gun’ is generic enough for what we can see, but can see enough to know they are not SG1 guns), but the mook on our left looks like either a grenade slash bean-bag launcher or a bazooka, which means they have come prepared to smash down the door if needs be!!!
They are also visible in the prior panel too. Which implies they have some kind of supernatural power. Unless the aura vision provides a ghost image, of any solid objects, to help contextualise any auras.
Fairly sure it would be a ghost image, like you had in the original “Total Recall”, when you had the x-ray wall and saw the skeleton doggy (or was that in “Running Man”? it was one of Arnie’s movies anyway)
In “Total Recall” at least that happened. Gosht image are common in several “see through” technologies X-Rays included, it just mean that the material is “traslucid” (as different to “opaque”) to whatever you are using to see.
The use for X-rays is to show physical objects though. With denser ones showing up brighter than flimsy objects. Dogs, guns and humans are all physical, so you would expect to see them all.
But would something designed to ‘detect magic’ also be able to detect hidden physical objects?
As an example a thermal scanner (a.k.a. infravision) would not pick up any objects which are at room temperature. Yet those which are either warmer or colder, than the background, will stand out. Because that is what it is designed to detect.
Was just explaining how or why you would see a ‘shadowy mass’ around the skeleton
I’m seeing a lot of people commenting about Sydney seeing magic in the guns… Maybe I’m seeing this wrong, but it looks more like the magic is in the armor, or perhaps in their actual skeletal structure? Either way, none look like they extend to the guns :/
Also, from the aura-vision panel… it looks like the big guy at the back is carrying something large in his right hand. First thing that comes to mind is perhaps a minigun?
All that said… c’mon Sydney! Use your training! I am very curious to see what course of action she will choose to take.
Bear in mind that the guns are on the other side of a solid object. If the power only shows auras (be they magical, super powers or other) then normal guns should not be visible.
However if other objects are visible too, then a new sign will be needed! On the other side of that wall.
Should I say what my move would be, were I in this situation with Sydney’s resources, or would that make things problematic for DaveB?
Not at all. We all guess, all of the time. Sometimes we get it right. Mostly (given the number of varying guesses we collectively make) we get it wrong. So even when folks call it correctly, it can be lost in the clutter.
Once in a while something can act as a spoiler though. Oddly enough one example can be seen in the sign link I made in the previous thread. The gag about oversized heroes on the bathroom sign. Which can be disappointing, for Dave, if he was anticipating surprising folks. Or for fellow readers.
Hence, if I am concerned that might happen, with a plot twist I think up, or if I suspect that I have spotted such a twist, I do sometimes stay silent. Dave can pull a lot of radical, totally unexpected twists though. So usually the most I will do is enclose my guess in spoiler tags, so that other readers can choose whether or not to take the risk.
[spoiler]Text_to_be_hidden_goes_here[/spoiler]
For just suggesting a sensible course of action, for Sydney to take though, it would not be necessary.
Umm DaveB i don’t know if you have been told or not but in panel 5 the last bubble it reads
“I wonder if that’s a clue about their organ, of if these things are just the swiss army knives of artifacts.”
I think you either forgot to delete the OF. ^^ here, that or it was supposed to be “OR if these things…”
sorry i don’t wanna be the grammar nazi it just threw me off is all and I didn’t read the first page of comments so i don’t know if you were told yet.
Wow, I was expecting “something” but this is great. In several ways :)
Question: Is it standard procedure to gather the Twilight Council when something like a damaged Viel sigil is not working? If so, does that mean this third party is responsible? Is this a trap!!?!?!
The tone of the meeting was that they were there to discuss the implications of Archon going public, and the council teaming up with them, to conduct joint operations. Which would have been organised following the press conference three days ago.
Whilst the meeting was delayed for the mages’ report, when the announcement of the damaged seal was made, the gallery delegates were all taken by surprise. Indicating they were only expecting the former matters.
Not that this precludes a coup mind. In fact a pre-scheduled meeting would be easier to plan for, than second guessing when, or if, an emergency meeting will be called.
However, as to your first, I imagine that something that serious would have necessitated an emergency meeting, had there not already been one planned. As the various factions will need to warn all their own members, and they need to jointly decide their overall response to such a crisis.
I suppose but if there is a third party, they have no reason to know when the council is meeting for certain affairs. Damaging a sigil and then, when an emergency meeting is called, you attack makes more sense than a radicalised group of “Revealers” not wanting to hide anymore and only damaging ONE sigil. A coup would make sense if they want to overthrow the council, but we won’t know for sure.
As for the meeting, I was under the impression that the meeting was for the broken sigil. Talking about archon going public was only mentioned when the bald vampire spoke up. Originally Ingsol wanted to talk about the damaged sigil. So it makes more sense to be a trap after the Third Party damaged the sigil on the viel system.
Conceded. When the meeting proper started, panels 1 & 2 indicated that the reason the meeting had been called was due to the critical situation arising.
Various issues to do with Archon’s involvement with the Council had been raised prior to that, hence such sticking in my mind. But those were before the meeting formally commenced. In which case the theory of inflicting the damage, in order to get the Council to convene, is highly credible.
Possibly the damaged sigil was for no other purpose than to do this. In which case we have no clues as to their motive. Alternatively, like a good chess player, the move had two purposes. The overt one, which threatens to reveal the Veil. Plus the covert one of gathering the mainly pro-Veil Council all in one place.
On the other paw, given how extreme the council’s punishments can be for threatening the Veil, doing that just as a ploy to gather the Council would imply that the ulterior motive is of great importance, to those involved. A coup would fit that well. As would an attempt to cleanse the Earth of the supernatural.
I think we can rule out financial, and similar lesser motives though. Such an action could have waited until a routine meeting. Not unless the culprit had great confidence that their involvement would not be found out. Or that the Council would not remain in a fit state to punish the transgressor. Which, again, would point to one of the above schemes instead. Or something equally dastardly, that has yet to spring to mind.
Smart thing: activate comms, call Max, tell her a bunch of guys in tac armour and carrying auto weapons are approaching the council chamber, also, they look funny in her aura mode. Get instructions.
Sadly, I doubt that is what Sydney will do, because that isn’t funny. I love Sydney to death, but she does need to use her brain more, because we know she has one, but she doesn’t use it enough (could be said of many people, especially in fiction).
Honestly, if people weren’t bloody idiots in most fiction, half the story would never happen. Hell, half the movies out there wouldn’t get much past the opening credits. :p
Sydney defied expectations for this page. So don’t write her off too quickly.
Not that she will necessarily follow your (very sensible) script mind. However I doubt she will do something dumb.
Impulsive is another matter. But I think she will have logic behind her actions. Even if she may act before she has thought them through in depth.
A subtle distinction, between the two mind, but if a basic plan is sound, barring one thing overlooked, it is possible to improvise a work-around. Whereas a plain stupid idea will just make everything irredeemably worse.
People are stupid. Individuals may achieve intelligent action, but people, as a whole, are stupid. Sydney has shown a vast ability to “use her brain.” Unfortunately, like many very intelligent individuals, she isn’t always very wise.
The helmet-heads are about 20′ from the door. My guess would be she’s got about 5 seconds to use the advantage of surprise before the possible bad guys open the door and do bad things. Make that 10 seconds if they pause at the door to adjust their armor so that it doesn’t chafe during battle.
It doesn’t seem to me like she’s got time for a detailed interchange with Max, and she probably has to assume that even a whispered one would be overheard. Texting is probably too slow for those timeframes, unless she has an “oh crap” button on the com. Which I’m guessing there should be but the military guys here can comment. She probably also doesn’t have time for an in depth plan.
If I were her, I’d hit the “oh crap” button and try for a distraction to see how they react. Might slow them down for a few seconds. Or else she could just scoop them all up with the lighthook with the expectation that she could apologize later if they were expected and honored guests. After all, her cred with the council is already kinda shot, so tentacaling the guest of honor can’t hurt her reputation that badly. Put that way, she might even make a friend. I wonder if the lighthook has an invisible mode. That would be an awesome distraction. Take that however you want. But I ramble…
Sensibly argued.
Raising her shield could negate the risk of being overheard mind. Lots of folks are suggesting that Sydney should call this in, and that is good protocol. Plus if they do react aggressively, to overhearing her, that confirms them as being hostile. Without exposing Archon to any risk of political fall-out.
I see that Dave B. is a Dead Space fan …. love the Artifact there … hope it doesn’t drive everyone crazy.
https://deadspace3devteamedition.com/
All hail the marker!!!
This can’t be good. Hopefully, resolving this problem will make up for irritating everyone earlier.
*claws crossed*
Make me prouder Sydney!
::activates telepresence orb::
“Umm, hello.. is this thing on?
“Look, I know you kicked me out and I’m really not trying to offend but..
“There’s a bunch of guys in riot gear and carrying guns heading your way.
“Thought you might like to know.
“Okay, Lady, I love you, buh bye!”
::deactivates telepresence orb::
Is Mindy about then?
So that’s what she looked like before she met Mork?