Giskard and False Accusations

[Arthmoor]

Extra NPCs are just fine by me, but you'd need to be careful not to give them overly elaborate AI schedules, and set any that wouldn't leave their cell to no low level processing.

[Dwip]

My thoughts on the subject, at the moment, run to the following: - 4 to 5 NPCs per castle, which would be anywhere from 20-30 NPCs depending on if you added some for Skingrad (thinking no because of Hassildor). - Of those, call it 3-4 would just hang out in that particular castle all day. Roughly the same amount of AI as any given chapel resident - Random chance of hang out in the inner court, outer court (where present), maybe outside if nice, eat packages, and sleep packages. Maybe an out and about in town package for kicks. I'm thinking an additional few NPCs wouldn't burden the towns too much. - The rest (1-2 per castle), would float between courts a couple times per month for a bit of added flavor. Depending on how excited it gets, travel horses and such could be fun. - At minimum, each of these characters would need a unique greeting talking about who they are, and maybe one for the town/castle in which they're living. - You'd need to add a chunk of castle for bedrooms in each castle. Probably a random tower or something. Alternately a new chunk of castle named Guest Quarters or some such. This starts to run into more of what I think Sigurd wanted to accomplish. - There's room for things like interior retextures and quests, but I think that's best left for a version 2 after a version 1 proof of concept is out the door. - Since I have my own projects to keep me busy, there's about zero chance of this getting done on my own. I'd be happy to coordinate, but would need help, to include A, plenty of character ideas and/or dialogue, B, probably some upper class clothes retextures, since the same few outfits would get boring, C, somebody to do the architectural bits, and D, somebody to take care of factions, making the actual NPCs, AI, and putting everything together, which I assume would be my job. If there's any interest in this thing, I think we should probably move it over to the Revamping thread, to avoid sending this one more OT than it already is.

[Conner]

Sounds like a pretty good initial run down, Dwip. If you build it, I'll certainly install it. If I find some time and creativity, maybe I can even proffer a few NPC ideas/names/dialogues for your courtiers, though you already know I won't be offering to help with any of the real mod work since I'd most likely be totally lost and end up taking up more of your time in training than I'd save you in the end anyway. But I'm usually good for ideas and general character creativity. :) For the others who may not realize which thread Dwip has referred to here, I suggest y'all join us in the [url=http://www.iguanadons.net/Revamping-Old-Mods-374.html]Revamping thread[/url] at your earliest convenience. We'll be glad that you did. ;)

[Orisha]

What a fucking crybaby you are! Get fucked. You don't even fucking know what you're doing, so stop acting like you do and quit fucking up the UESP. Youve also got some nerve attacking Giskard like this. The guy can mod circles around all of you. Fucking pathetic idiots.

[Vorians]

Ah, a zealot has joined us. Welcome Rpeh, it's great that you've finally read the truth. Once you've calmed down and processed what you've read, maybe you'll recognise the truth of it. If not, I guess brainwashing can't always be successfully countered. But there's no need to be abusive, we get enough of that from Giskard already. Also, thanks for bringing this thread back on topic :smile:

[Vorians]

Oh, after reading your reference to the UESP, I investigated and see you have personal issues with Samson/Arthmoor after a disagreement on a wiki page. Being insulting to someone just because you can't agree on something won't get you very far. It'll just lead to people shunning you (which is what happened to Giskard).

[Sigurð Stormhand]

[quote=Dwip]My thoughts on the subject, at the moment, run to the following: - 4 to 5 NPCs per castle, which would be anywhere from 20-30 NPCs depending on if you added some for Skingrad (thinking no because of Hassildor). - Of those, call it 3-4 would just hang out in that particular castle all day. Roughly the same amount of AI as any given chapel resident - Random chance of hang out in the inner court, outer court (where present), maybe outside if nice, eat packages, and sleep packages. Maybe an out and about in town package for kicks. I'm thinking an additional few NPCs wouldn't burden the towns too much. - The rest (1-2 per castle), would float between courts a couple times per month for a bit of added flavor. Depending on how excited it gets, travel horses and such could be fun. - At minimum, each of these characters would need a unique greeting talking about who they are, and maybe one for the town/castle in which they're living. - You'd need to add a chunk of castle for bedrooms in each castle. Probably a random tower or something. Alternately a new chunk of castle named Guest Quarters or some such. This starts to run into more of what I think Sigurd wanted to accomplish. - There's room for things like interior retextures and quests, but I think that's best left for a version 2 after a version 1 proof of concept is out the door. - Since I have my own projects to keep me busy, there's about zero chance of this getting done on my own. I'd be happy to coordinate, but would need help, to include A, plenty of character ideas and/or dialogue, B, probably some upper class clothes retextures, since the same few outfits would get boring, C, somebody to do the architectural bits, and D, somebody to take care of factions, making the actual NPCs, AI, and putting everything together, which I assume would be my job. If there's any interest in this thing, I think we should probably move it over to the Revamping thread, to avoid sending this one more OT than it already is.[/quote] That sounds like a good run down, may I suggest that you use 1-2 large towers as guest quarters, I am certainly keen to do the architechure, that and NPC faces are the only things I'm really comfortable with, actually - those I suppose I can also write dialogue. I have some ideas on this, actually, but I'm half way through cleaning my load order right now, so I'll post some pics later.

[Conner]

@[color=yellow]Rpeh[/color]: After Samson's lovely explanations of his last encounters with you at UESP, which have been preserved for your reading pleasure [url=http://www.iguanadons.net/Revamping-Old-Mods-374.html#comment-6980]here-ish[/url], I can't begin to say what a distinct pleasure this is to finally see that you've joined us here too.. and that you're also demonstrating that you're in that special class of visitors we consider Giskard's Zealots adds immensely to the opportunity. Do let us know when you decide to be civil enough to communicate with. @[color=yellow]Vorians[/color]: Stooping to personal insults and personal attacks like this is truly the mark of sheer genius, don't you think? Next thing you know, he'll be spewing foul language on top of the personal attacks just to demonstrate that his superior intellect lacks the capability of conjuring normal literary and vocabulary skills like us common mere mortals... oh, snap! Too late, he already covered that one too. :facepalm: On the positive side, you're right that he did do us a service by trying to bring us back on-topic here. :lol: @[color=yellow]Sigurd[/color]: [quote=Dwip]If there's any interest in this thing, I think we should probably move it over to the Revamping thread, to avoid sending this one more OT than it already is.[/quote] [quote=Conner]For the others who may not realize which thread Dwip has referred to here, I suggest y'all join us in the [url=http://www.iguanadons.net/Revamping-Old-Mods-374.html]Revamping thread[/url] at your earliest convenience. We'll be glad that you did. ;)[/quote] But I do like the idea of using 1-2 large towers for guest quarters. :) [quote=Dwip]I'd be happy to coordinate, but would need help, to include A, plenty of character ideas and/or dialogue, B, probably some upper class clothes retextures, since the same few outfits would get boring, C, somebody to do the architectural bits, and D, somebody to take care of factions, making the actual NPCs, AI, and putting everything together, which I assume would be my job.[/quote] If you're doing some of the NPC faces and some of the NPC dialogues and the architecture, Hanaisse is doing some more NPC faces and the upper class clothing retexures, and I've offered to try to help some with the character ideas and/or dialogue.. it sounds like Dwip just still needs further help now for the things listed under D. Though more on some of the already claimed stuff prolly wouldn't hurt any either. ;)

[Arthmoor]

Hrm. Looks like my mail server has gone to sleep for some reason. None of the stuff starting with Rpeh's oh so wonderful visit here got sent as a notification. Neither did the PMs I got on Bethsoft. That said, it hardly surprises me he'd seek to pull something like this and come here to attempt to instigate something. His past history both on and off of UESP suggests that he's an extremely vindictive person and treats newcomers to the site with nothing but contempt. Unfortunately the guy is one of their top contributors, so he's acting as a chilling effect. I certainly don't intend to bother with the place after I get around to tagging UOPS fixes, assuming he doesn't decide to go ballistic about that too. Wouldn't surprise me if he did. I doubt he'll be shunned at UESP. Regrettably, the administrators don't seem inclined to deal with the problem. Chances are he's already been shunned by the BGS forums and by Nexus too, because his attitude wouldn't have allowed for him to last long in either place. I will concede though that I should have backed off sooner, but I think the entire incident over the amulet page should serve as proof enough that the guy isn't fit to be a member there, so some good came of my stubborn streak, at least for those who will look beyond the surface.

[Arthmoor]

Well that got it. Sendmail had a cow over something and had all incoming mail since around 12am last night stuck in queue. Flushed it, and good lord, I guess it was a sign from God because 90% of it was spam caused by Rpeh having a cow of his own.

[Conner]

Rpeh spammed you?

[Arthmoor]

Rpeh tried to spam me. There's a difference. He failed, but only because Sendmail barfed over it.

[AnImpatientFan]

Sigh, Hes now saying that people were trying to kill his bandwidth by not using the mirrors. People are not using the mirrors because they are capepped at 50Kb unless you pay a fee.

[Arthmoor]

Which mirrors? At Fileplanet? I suppose I could have seen how slow they were if their site wasn't insisting on trying to plant a dozen tracking cookies on me in order to even download a file. I think anyone who's observed him over the years knows he's about to shut down the guild site and go back into hiding. He may yet prove us wrong, but he's done it 3 times before for various bogus reasons.

[Conner]

@Samson: I'll bet you'd be hard pressed to find a District Attorney in California who'd see that distinction. I think spamming is one of the only crimes that doesn't have a complimentary attempted variation on the books. @AnImpatientFan: I still don't get the issue with download bandwidth. There aren't that many providers out there who enforce bandwidth restrictions unreasonably these days. Among ISPs, it's only about half or a third of the ones who restrict bandwidth at all that would restrict upload (downloads from a site you're hosting count against you to your ISP as uploads) bandwidth. Among web hosts it may be a bit more common, but it's still rare to find one who'd concerned with smaller amounts of bandwidth. Speed caps for non-paying customers is still a quite common practice amongst file mirror sites, but even capped at 50k isn't that huge a speed restriction considering there are still plenty of sites that have limited bandwidth to have to divide evenly between multiple downloaders. @Samson: Is that what's going on? Just the next stage in his natural modus operandi then?

[Arthmoor]

Keep in mind Giskard is in the UK, so while it's [i]possible[/i] he's getting hosed by his provider over bandwidth costs, it's not [i]likely[/i] given his history with shutting down his previous websites while claiming all sorts of silly reasons for it.

[Conner]

I don't know, even here in the U.S. it's not very common for providers to play that game and, given the worldwide nature of the internet it's not like it'd be difficult to switch hosting providers if he was being hosed that way. If it's his actual ISP then I can more easily understand dealing with it rather than switching, but even then it's usually the download side of the equation that ISPs worry about and people pulling files from his website is the upload side of the equation from his ISP's perspective.

[Arthmoor]

Given all the whining I hear from British users and website operators alike, the situation is far different over there. Of course, the smart thing to do would be to get US hosting, but hey :) Unfortunately this time we can't blame France, but we can blame Europe, so that's close enough.

[Vorians]

In the UK, the wiring is crap nation-wide. British Telecom who own the phone lines are reluctant to fork out the money to upgrade properly, so the internet is very congested. This means that almost all ISPs have introduced "Fair Usage Policies" which goes something like this: "You the internet-user shall pay us £XX.XX a month for the privilege of using the internet as little as possible each month. Any attempt to make proper use of the internet connection we provide you with shall result in your connection being crippled for a minimum of one month, as punishment for foolishly believing you get what you pay for." Only a few ISPs offer truly unlimited connections, and they're much more expensive. And it doesn't help that the television companies are pushing out their internet-based channels, shoving large amounts of streaming data across the phone lines, the bastards. Plus generally you pay for "up to" an 8mb connection, but it's much slower due to the distance from the exchange you're connected to. Copper isn't fibre-optics. EDIT Grr, now it looks like I'm whining! Thanks a lot Samson for posting just before me :mad:

[Arthmoor]

Heh. Sorry. Whining was probably the wrong word :) You describe pretty much what I hear all the time though. Conditions that would make Conner's aggressive quotas and "download windows" seem like heaven. Here in the US, "unlimited usage" means exactly that - one can sit and download all the hi-res porn one wishes to and still only pay $14.95/mo for the DSL line. And believe me, plenty of US customers do exactly that and then some. The vast majority of DSL providers don't pull this "up to 8mb" crap either. If you're paying for a 3mb connection, that's what you get. Distance still figures in because DSL is copper, but they can't legally lie to you and say you're getting 8 when they can only deliver you 3. We also don't have huge numbers of people on fiber-optic lines yet. Verizon is working on it though. I'd switch if they'd just quit being stupid about me running servers on the line.

[Conner]

:lol: Well, timed Vorians. ;) I see, so the situation there is much worse than I'd understood it to be. Even so, if he's that worried about his bandwidth for his website, U.S. Hosting is a pretty cheap and easy alternative. :shrug: (We could still blame France by arguing that if they hadn't so eagerly surrendered to Hitler's troops, Hitler might've not resorted to using his blitzkrieg attack on England and thus left more money in the British coffers to utilize towards upgrading those decrepit phone lines nationwide these days.. ;)) Actually, here in the U.S. cable companies do frequently do the "up to 8mb" thing and satellite based is even worse about it and they're using smaller "up to" numbers. If it were available to me, I'd jump on DSL, but I'd take FiOS in a heartbeat even if cable and DSL were both existing options. ...the allowance of home based servers is a pain in the ass, but are they really enforcing it?

[Arthmoor]

No idea if they're actively enforcing it. I'm not willing to take the risk and find out either. It's much safer to wait until my ISP wakes up and realizes I'm not going to upgrade and get stuck paying them a crapload of money for the same thing as a normal user.

[Conner]

:nod: I can understand that, it is a it of risk. I hear you. I love it when you inquire about "business rates" only to learn that you'd be paying considerably more without any significant benefits. :mad:

[Arthmoor]

[url=http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Canceling-Wholesale-Fiber-Deal-With-DSLExtreme-108999]Oops.[/url] Looks like that's not even an option now. Verizon pulled the resale contract with the ISP in July. As much as I dislike government regulation of business, this seems like one instance where that would be justified on monopolistic practices grounds.

[Conner]

Interesting article, and the comments are pretty interesting too. It does sound to me like you'll still have the option of Verizon's FiOS, just not without Verizon's TOS and only under the plans that Verizon chooses to offer. It's a shame, but without some sort of government regulation saying that they have to share their last mile or what have you, it's a matter of "it's their ball and their field, if you want to play ball there it's got to be with them". :shrug: