vyst posted:

What is it with Mods claiming they are in Mensa, first Franco then Derek? Sheesh

Septic Tank Gulag posted:

As the atmosphere sours, some will retreat to defensible "green zones" behind fences/barriers with armed checkpoints leading in to them. These zones will be large and clustered around key buildings like a large metropolitan hospital or research institute. The benefit of the hospital is that it provides accommodation and treated air handling to the bedside for the residents. It also has the ability to provide In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) services with carefully stored gametes (genetic diversity).

This is not a self contained biodome/biosphere concept. It's an extensive area of several city blocks that interact with the environment and concentrate what is needed from the atmosphere and scrub the interior air to keep it breathable.

As the surrounding population is excluded and carefully selected "survivor colonists" are brought into the "green zone" the need for electricity in suburbia will drop off due to the thinning of the herd through asphyxiation. This will result in a reconfiguration of the grid to direct the (now) surplus electricity from wind/solar/hydro/geo into the "green zone".

The "survivor colonists" (breeding stock) and support staff of military/agrarian/admin will be supplied with treated air through fully atmospherically controlled, hermetically sealed buildings. Foragers and outside technicians will be able to breathe through the use of portable systems such as back carry tanks or portable atmospheric gas concentrators.

The new Population Control Measures come into play:

*Each couple gets one normally conceived child and one IVF (sperm bank) child (insemination or embryo);
*Once you've had the IVF child you go into the lottery for only one more natural child or opt for IVF;
*Inadvertent deaths of a male spouse mean you get an extra child by their sperm insemination if it is recoverable otherwise another IVF child voucher;
*Inadvertent death of a female spouse mean you get an extra voucher (natural or IVF) for you and your next partner;
*Rights to a child voucher are non-transferable so if you don't conceive naturally or artificially within two years the default vouchers get added to the birthright lottery that everyone is eligible to enter.
*Female same sex couples can mix and match between them;
*Male same sex couples can bestow their child voucher on a surrogate where the surrogate has no parental rights;
*Population shortfalls result in additional vouchers being added to the birthright lotteries;
*Restrictions on abortion would be more strict if the fetus is female rather than male to encourage a population skew towards females.
*With plenty of power now available the inside of multi story buildings will be repurposed as extensive "grow houses" (minimal atmospheric treatment) and livestock housing (enhanced atmosphere).

Existing water flows from reservoirs will gradually be replaced by well understood and time tested water gathering from green roofs and water treatment of effluent will be fed through the "grow houses" and livestock.

Everything expected to be needed for the next 1,000 years will be gleaned from the city/suburbs/countryside and stored in nearby "green zone" warehousing (no atmospheric treatment).

With directed research and animal breeding efforts we could develop "dumb animals" that could survive (hopefully thrive) in an atmosphere that we wouldn't find comfortable. These sheep/goats/cattle/horses/llamas/whatever are what I refer to as "biological accumulators".

This is a Permaculture concept where you use these animals to do the hard work of accumulating the energy from the sun (grass) in the form of protein and fat (with other nutrients thrown in) and these are periodically brought into the "green zone" during the muster.

Demolition of (by then vacated) housing near the green zone into open pasture could allow large areas of grazing. This could begin with simply fencing off a suburb and allowing access to front/back yards by removing a few fences. Over time a demolition crew would work on repurposing the "pasture suburbs" into a mix of grass and nut/oil trees (further biological accumulators).

For these sorts of thought experiments I look to the layout of my own city in Adelaide, South Australia. We have wide parklands around the city centre where all the administrative infrastructure of the state is based. These could become the initial pastures and if cleared of key trees/vegetation would provide clear defensive lines of fire.

This area includes the city council and state parliament as well as the Governor of the state. There are lots of accommodation areas both general residential and hotels as well as convention centre and several hospitals. Central Markets, Police headquarters, State Library, Art Gallery, many, many universities and lots of research facilities. Military administration is adjacent to the parklands. Basically all the infrastructure you might need for quite a large society that has undergone significant contraction.

You can see a map of sorts on the city council website here ==> http://www.adelaideparklands.com.au/explore-map/

Obviously borders of various areas would likely follow pre-existing streets and precincts. There is even the likely possibility (in the context of this scenario) of pockets of "green zone" in different parts of the Adelaide Plains with transport links being preserved between them. As an example we have recently electrified most of our trains and the train terminus (used intentionally for the Walking Dead reference) is in the City of Adelaide proper right in the "green zone". There is going to be a rail extension to our major Southern Area hospital with major north/south arterial road developments along South Road. Also electric tram lines from the "green zone" to the beach area of Glenelg which can be used as a beach port because of the jetty.

My expectation (again in the context of this scenario) is that there would be a staged withdrawal into the defensible area of the city and then consolidation of ecosystem services in the "green zone". After the general contraction of the population in the wider Adelaide Plains and a period of stability and reconfiguration of infrastructure electric/water/medical/food/logistics/etc there would be a staged expansion to incorporate useful surrounding features of the landscape and facilities such as developing satellite "green zones" as dormitory suburbs and service facilities like ports and other hospitals.

In this collapse scenario people outside the "green zone" become cheap/disposable; much cheaper than equipment. And they self organise. You just have to keep them alive at a subsistence level and they'll work for basic ecosystems services (food/air) just to keep alive. The foragers I envisage may not even have to be that smart so the forays out in the "red zone" could be entirely without atmospheric assistance.

vyst posted:

What is it with Mods claiming they are in Mensa, first Franco then Derek? Sheesh

boviscopophobic posted:

Have they ever explained why Star Marine doesn't allow higher player counts, given that it's not burdened by the networking requirements of the PU?

ryde posted:

Ok with the serialized variables thing, are they talking about marshalling data or are they using some other definition of serialization? Because if they're treating marshaling data as a big feature, how are they not getting huge wtfs from anyone with a programming background?

ryde posted:

Ok with the serialized variables thing, are they talking about marshalling data or are they using some other definition of serialization? Because if they're treating marshaling data as a big feature, how are they not getting huge wtfs from anyone with a programming background?

Amazing Zimmo posted:

https://twitter.com/banditloaf/status/876211677850607616


So CRobberts shows up for a funeral in wing commander 3. I wonder if he'll make a showing for star citizen's funeral or will he be too busy shopping for countries without extradition treaties.

AbstractNapper posted:

Honestly, I think they are trying (or implementing) alternatives to their existing serialization (which if I recall correctly I read that it was using a bloated xml representation of objects -- but I may remember incorrectly).

AP posted:

ryde posted:

Ok with the serialized variables thing, are they talking about marshalling data or are they using some other definition of serialization? Because if they're treating marshaling data as a big feature, how are they not getting huge wtfs from anyone with a programming background?

Beet Wagon posted:

soccer dog owns. We'll put "kickin rad beach soccer" on Kayak's list of things to learn, right below "How to trust the vacuum robot" lol

Cheez posted:

I think he meant himself?? Unless that's some sort of doppelganger

Cheez posted:

I think he meant himself?? Unless that's some sort of doppelganger

Scruffyhawk posted:

Anyone remember Thermidor? They're back with a new Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/222154173/thermidor-jrpg-by-hyperdevbox-japan

Looks like ol' Ron has raised about 900 dollars out of 150 grand in the last 3 days or so. Maybe they'll hit it big this time around!

Recommended reading if you're not up on the Thermidor saga: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3793353&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

boviscopophobic posted:

Have they ever explained why Star Marine doesn't allow higher player counts, given that it's not burdened by the networking requirements of the PU?

I mean, aside from the issue that nobody would ever be able to get a match started if they further increased the player count.

boviscopophobic posted:

Have they ever explained why Star Marine doesn't allow higher player counts, given that it's not burdened by the networking requirements of the PU?

I mean, aside from the issue that nobody would ever be able to get a match started if they further increased the player count.

Regrettable posted:

Ben was a child when that game came out.

fuctifino posted:

More taxxe

ZenMaster posted:

my 2 month check in to let everyone know i am alive


and out

Scruffyhawk posted:

Anyone remember Thermidor? They're back with a new Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/222154173/thermidor-jrpg-by-hyperdevbox-japan

Looks like ol' Ron has raised about 900 dollars out of 150 grand in the last 3 days or so. Maybe they'll hit it big this time around!

Recommended reading if you're not up on the Thermidor saga: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3793353&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Nuclearmonkee posted:

Mensa is an opt in club for insufferable people that costs money. I could understand it maybe in the age before the internet when it was a little more difficult to find fellow autists to do autist things with but now a days it's just an rear end in a top hat calling card lol

They are also exactly the kind of people I imagine would look at the prospect of moderating this retarded place and go "yes, I would like to do that"

AP posted:

Can someone explain what happened here? There's a gold comedy thread but not keen to read 27 pages without a summary first.

AP posted:

Can someone explain what happened here? There's a gold comedy thread but not keen to read 27 pages without a summary first.

peter gabriel posted:

Press F to chop off head

AbstractNapper posted:

Honestly, I think they are trying (or implementing) alternatives to their existing serialization (which if I recall correctly I read that it was using a bloated xml representation of objects -- but I may remember incorrectly).
That said, they should be getting huge wtfs from anyone with programming background not only because they are now dealing with serialization, 5 or 6 years in the project's development, but also because of their really sloppy use of programming terminology in general (eg refactoring, rebuilding) and what they advertise of doing as contrasted to what they are actually doing (eg two days of work to merge with Lumberyard done Vs maybe getting a few license files from Lumberyard and claiming they are now working with Lumberyard, because historically Lumberyard forked from CryEngine 3.6 as well).

They should be getting huge wtfs from anyone who is triggered by microtransactions, pay-to-win mechanics, and sleazy marketing tactics (referral competition, selling of jpgs, fake "playable" demos that no-one else gets to actually play even though the development is supposed to be open) them still working on implementing a cut down version of that playable demo build -- delayed two weeks each passing week etc ...

I think not enough people care anymore, and certainly less people want to get involved in a slap fight with the retarded crowd of shills and Crobbler worshippers.

atxsperg posted:

Cryengine is stuck together with some of the most malformed XML I have ever ran across. its like a someone was told xml was cool and then went and stuck it into the framework without actually understanding how xml is supposed to be used.
Which makes sense since half of the toolchain was written by interns out of university, and no i am not kidding. you should see their maxscripts, they are truly a thing of horror.

atxsperg posted:

I dont think croberts knows anything about development.

BTW half of the time the cryengine tools are so lovely you have to go in and hand jam the XML, and most of the monkeys doing so forget to actually close brackets and tend to misspell poo poo. or open the XML doc in loving word and save it with microsoft garbage littered all over.