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David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>
>>Ugly :-(. And DeusEx 1 was brilliant IMHO...
>
>
> Pfui.
>
> First of all, the plot covered _every_ trite conspiracy theory cliche.

Ok, I agree with that one. I almost exploded with laughter when I first
stumbled upon "the grays".

> Sheesh. I'm a fan of light plots, as you know, but if there's one way to
> really make a heavy plot work, it's not having the player wince as he's
> endlessly subjected to the equivalent of being told to march across the
> <place> to drop the <magic item> into the <destructive force> to beat the
> <evil magic dude>.

Well, I consider DeusEx an FPS. And for a FPS it's quite a decen RPG ;-).

> Secondly, the protagonist is hoplessly inept at nearly everything for most
> of the game. Fortunately, to offset that, the "more than one way to do it"
> translates into the same ways in every level; you can always rush in and
> shoot everyone, you can always hack the security system and open the
> doors, there is always an air duct leading from the outside to the inside,
> there's always a blue Post-it note with the password under a desk
> somewhere. The promise wasn't delivered on; a genuinely "more than one
> way" situation - which we see sometimes in roguelikes - provides tools,
> but doesn't have a tightly plotted way to use each tool.

But still it's an achievement compared to the traditional FPS.
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"The name of GenRogue, has become a warning against excessively
complex design." -- RGRD FAQ
 
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David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>
>>Add in Ghost In The Shell -- a must see. And Avalon.
>
>
> Serial Experiments Lain, for something recognisably cyberpunky without the
> usual Gibsonian drivel.

Ah, very true ;-). Although in this case I would say "It's grossly
overrated - and everyone's seen it, because it's grossly
overrated" and "First of all, the plot covered _every_ trite conspiracy
theory cliche." ;-D

> [And, heh-heh, Bubblegum Crisis - I'll recommend classic, and you can
> recommend 2040...]

I liked the drawing style of 2040 better. And hadn't much possibilities
to watch 2032...
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Kornel just won't release the code because his compiler is a jealous
mistress and doesn't want any of Kornel's code ever being touched by
another woman. 😉" -- Twisted One
 
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Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>David Damerell wrote:
>>Secondly, the protagonist is hoplessly inept at nearly everything for most
>>of the game. Fortunately, to offset that, the "more than one way to do it"
>>translates into the same ways in every level; you can always rush in and
>>shoot everyone, you can always hack the security system and open the
>>doors, there is always an air duct leading from the outside to the inside,
>>there's always a blue Post-it note with the password under a desk
>>somewhere. The promise wasn't delivered on; a genuinely "more than one
>>way" situation - which we see sometimes in roguelikes - provides tools,
>>but doesn't have a tightly plotted way to use each tool.
>But still it's an achievement compared to the traditional FPS.

Well, no.

I'd rather have something simple done well than something that's ambitious
but messed up.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Gloucesterday, May.
 
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Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>David Damerell wrote:
>>Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>>>Aaah, and how about "Akira"? ;-)
>>It's grossly overrated - and everyone's seen it, because it's grossly
>>overrated. 🙂
>Why do you think so? I enjoyed it...

I enjoyed it too. I think it's a good film, albeit somewhat damaged by the
attempt to cram more content from the manga than will fit into the movie;
it's that that gave it the meaningless incidents, the excessive numbers of
shifts of theme, the tedious expository interludes, and the incoherent
ending. But, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it, and it's technically
impressive.

However, its reputation is often that of the best anime film ever, a true
classic, flawless in its perfection. This is nonsense; all else aside,
Miyazaki could make a better film armed only with a pencil and a flipbook.
Hence I say it's grossly overrated.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Gloucesterday, May.
 
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In article <d6555h$7mr$1@inews.gazeta.pl>, "Zillameth" <zill@jimp.neostrada.pl> wrote:
>destruction. For instance, a Big Bad Corporation of some kind could
>acccidentally introduce a mutagen (or a set of mutagens) which rapidly
>speeds up forest growth. It could also influence some animals, making them

Did you ever read an older scifi novel about the guy inadvertently
planting a type of grass that ends up growing over everything? I don't
remember the exact name or author though, and terms like scifi novel
grass are too generic to get accurate hits on google.

Alan
 
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David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in
news:Vvz*rAIOq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:
> Quoting Auric__ <not.my.real@email.address>:
>>Superman(tm)!" And a 3-minute fight scene (in the park, against the
>>Smiths) that was mostly computer-generated and should have taken less
>>than 30 seconds.
> The only reason it wasn't worse was that Keanu Reeves is so incredibly
> wooden you can't tell him from a CGI Reeves very easily.

I could. CGI Reeves is more expressive.
 
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"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote in message
news😛ine.LNX.4.60-041.0505161341440.3810@unix42.andrew.cmu.edu...
>
> On Sun, 15 May 2005, Twisted One wrote:
> >
> > Nolithius wrote:
> >> I'd like to do something like in Liberal Crime Squad, where there is
> >> bodypart damage and really gory descriptions (You hit the Security
Guard's
> >> head and totally BLOW IT APART.) har har, priceless.
> >
> > Where's the goriness there? I'd expect *at least* a description of the
color
> > of the skull fragments stuck to the wall behind the dead guard by brain
> > matter. :)
>
> One of the defining aspects of (good) cyberpunk literature, IMHO, and
> speaking only of English-language literature --- I don't know how it
> might have mutated in other languages --- is the cleverness of the
> descriptions. It's not so much /gore/ as /metaphor/ and /detail/. For
> example,
>
> >> You hit the Security Guard's head and totally BLOW IT APART.
>
> might become
>
> You squeeze the trigger. There is a noise like a fat lady stepping
> on a frog, and suddenly the security guard's head is plastered
> over a square meter of wall.
>
> or
>
> With a pop, some kind of spidery crimson rune appears on the guard's
> forehead. Before you can look closer, he collapses in a heap and the
> rune starts a slow drip onto the 3/16-gauge polyester weave.[1]
[...]

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Seriously, though, I like that style you present. As I said earlier, though,
the "totally BLOW IT APART" bit is the way it was done in a satirical game,
I intend to make it more interesting-- much in the way you suggest.

I would greatly be interested in more of these if you can come up with them,
as well as any sources not mentioned where such style of prose could be
found. In this case it doesn't have to be cyberpunk necessarily, the content
can be adapted.

Thanks a lot for your input. This is definitely the feel I want to achieve.

--Nolithius
 
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Martin Read wrote:
> Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl> wrote:
>>David Damerell wrote:
>>>Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Aaah, and how about "Akira"? ;-)
>>>
>>>It's grossly overrated - and everyone's seen it, because it's grossly
>>>overrated. 🙂
>>
>>Why do you think so? I enjoyed it...
>
> I *enjoyed* Akira, but I agree that it's grossly overrated. There are
> armies of wannabe fanboys out there who've seen Akira, Dragonball Z, and
> Urotsukidoji and on this basis proclaim Akira to be TEH BEST THNIG
> EVAH!!!!11!!!one, which it patently isn't.

Of course not, the best is Berserk ;-).
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Kornel just won't release the code because his compiler is a jealous
mistress and doesn't want any of Kornel's code ever being touched by
another woman. 😉" -- Twisted One
 
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Dnia Tue, 17 May 2005 03:42:11 GMT,
Nolithius napisal(a):

> I would greatly be interested in more of these if you can come up with them,
> as well as any sources not mentioned where such style of prose could be
> found.

Try the books of Raymond Chandler. It's definitely not cyberpunk, but the
style matches :)

--
Radomir @**@_ Bee! The quest for the Real World:
`The Sheep' ('') 3 Try #1: cd /..
Dopieralski .vvVvVVVVVvVVVvv.
 
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Dnia Mon, 16 May 2005 15:36:18 -0700,
Auric__ napisal(a):

> On 16 May 2005 14:04:07 +0100 (BST), David Damerell
><damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>Quoting Auric__ <not.my.real@email.address>:

>>Pfft - speaking as a fanboy, the last thing I want is more of that Gonzo
>>[1] plasticy psuedo-real CGI; what I want is stuff like FLCL where no one
>>frame is distinguishable from cel animation...

> FLCL=Fooly Cooly?

Furi Kuri, as far as romanji goes. Yes, it's a title of anime series.

--
Radomir @**@_ Bee! The quest for the Real World:
`The Sheep' ('') 3 Try #1: cd /..
Dopieralski .vvVvVVVVVvVVVvv.
 
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Nolithius wrote:
> "Lucas Ackerman" <glitch@gweep.net> wrote in message
> news:1116098574.855753.58900@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>To be honest, in the worst kind of way, cyberpunk is so cliche nowadays
>>that it's become a sad parody of itself. It's a very longtime interest
>>of mine, so I'm probably among it's strongest critics. I think hard
>>science fiction in general offers a much broader palette than cyberpunk
>>alone, but it does have its place.
>
> [...]
>
> I'm not even going to touch that with a 10-foot pole.
>
> But thanks for your reccomendations, nonetheless 😉
>
>

I think the recommendation of Altered Carbon is a very good one.

Also, I think you're looking for "sources of inspiration" here, rather
than "A list of sources from which to copy all content", if you see what
I mean. A cyberpunk game can be focused on a few aspects of what is
considered "cyberpunk", even if it draws inspiration from multiple sources.
 
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"Elethiomel" <kkkk@lllllll.mmmm> wrote in message
news:4289886c$1@news.broadpark.no...
[...]
> Also, I think you're looking for "sources of inspiration" here, rather
> than "A list of sources from which to copy all content", if you see what
> I mean. A cyberpunk game can be focused on a few aspects of what is
> considered "cyberpunk", even if it draws inspiration from multiple
sources.


Really? I was just going to compile all literature I found out there as well
as the kitchen sink and make a Roguelike out of it, with no concern for
coherence and immersion *cough*Nethack*cough*.

I honestly don't know where you got the idea I was looking for "A list of
sources from which to copy all content", as you so graciously put it 😉.
Cynicism aside, what I am doing is literally research on the topics of 1)
Interesting ideas for details, 2) What is appealing to others about the
Cyberpunk genre, and 3) Any ideas that may have been previously discussed
(or are currently in your mind) regarding the implementation of 1. and 2. in
a Roguelike :)

In other words, I took it for granted (and it seems everyone understood up
to now 😉 that by "sources" people would gather "sources [for
inspiration/research]" rather than "sources [from which to copy all
content]".

Thanks for making the clarification explicit, however.

--Nolithius
 
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Quoting The Sheep <sheep@sheep.prv.pl>:
> Auric__ napisal(a):
>><damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>>Pfft - speaking as a fanboy, the last thing I want is more of that Gonzo
>>>[1] plasticy psuedo-real CGI; what I want is stuff like FLCL where no one
>>>frame is distinguishable from cel animation...
>>FLCL=Fooly Cooly?
>Furi Kuri, as far as romanji goes.

Ah, Gainax have explicitly said it's meant to be "Fooly Cooly". Given how
badly that comes back into English, I'll stick to calling it FLCL.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Leicesterday, May.
 
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On Tue, 17 May 2005, The Sheep wrote:
>
> Nolithius napisal(a):
>> I would greatly be interested in more of these if you can come up with them,
>> as well as any sources not mentioned where such style of prose could be
>> found.
>
> Try the books of Raymond Chandler. It's definitely not cyberpunk, but the
> style matches :)

Heh. :) If you couldn't already tell from my inability to get away from
/Snow Crash/ in my other post in this thread, I'm thinking mostly of Neal
Stephenson's prose here.[1]

http://www.ereader.com/product/book/excerpt/12128
http://www.shsmedia.com/snowcrash.html

One of the things I most associate with this brand of cleverness is
verbing.

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=41021
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ajo/disseminate/Verbing250193.png

(But actually I just went to check the incidence of verbing in Gibson's
/Idoru/ versus Sterling's /Heavy Weather/ versus Stephenson's /The
Diamond Age/, and didn't find any in three pages of each, except for
a lone "grepping" in Sterling, but that hardly counts). So it feels a
lot more prevalent than it actually is. Probably because verbing weirds
language just enough for me to notice it.)
So you'll end up with futuristic, image-packed verbs. Suppose your
hero crashes his car. The oncoming concrete doesn't just smash into the
vehicle, it /flyswatters/ into it. An intense glare /lasers/ into the
glarer's target (whoever it is). And so on. Obviously a tool to be
used with caution!

Anyway, enough about verbing. You want to read more clever stuff,
and by guys who get paid to write it well, well, you know where to
find it.

-Arthur

[1] Although it just occurred to me that the second description owes
a bit to the end of Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man," which isn't
cyberpunk, but I'm not sure why not. Too many middle-aged people in
starring roles, perhaps. :) Crichton's early work (The Terminal Man,
Rising Sun, The Andromeda Strain) is worth checking out if you have
the time for it.

[2] "Calvin & Hobbes" verbing cartoon screenshotted from
http://www.pnl.gov/bayesian/strom/pdfs/Strom2002_PNNL-SA-32216_On_Being_Understood-Clarity_&_Jargon.pdf
 
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Nolithius wrote:
> "Elethiomel" <kkkk@lllllll.mmmm> wrote in message
> news:4289886c$1@news.broadpark.no...
> [...]
>
>>Also, I think you're looking for "sources of inspiration" here, rather
>>than "A list of sources from which to copy all content", if you see what
>>I mean. A cyberpunk game can be focused on a few aspects of what is
>>considered "cyberpunk", even if it draws inspiration from multiple
>> sources.
>
>
> Really? I was just going to compile all literature I found out there as well
> as the kitchen sink and make a Roguelike out of it, with no concern for
> coherence and immersion *cough*Nethack*cough*.

hehe


> I honestly don't know where you got the idea I was looking for "A list of
> sources from which to copy all content", as you so graciously put it 😉.
> Cynicism aside, what I am doing is literally research on the topics of 1)
> Interesting ideas for details, 2) What is appealing to others about the
> Cyberpunk genre, and 3) Any ideas that may have been previously discussed
> (or are currently in your mind) regarding the implementation of 1. and 2. in
> a Roguelike :)

I didn't. I had the impression the poster you replied to did, but in
retrospect I see that he did not.


> In other words, I took it for granted (and it seems everyone understood up
> to now 😉 that by "sources" people would gather "sources [for
> inspiration/research]" rather than "sources [from which to copy all
> content]".

As you can see, I did not take that for granted. I guess I have a habit
of underistmating people. For that, I apologise.

> Thanks for making the clarification explicit, however.
You are very welcome 😛


Anyway, I would also recommend reading Altered Carbon's followup books
/Broken Angels/ and /Woken Furies/.

Richard Morgan's sleeve changing coupled with /Snow Crash/'s fractured
America, and a bit of Fallout style... mmmm.
 
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Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:

> Bah. What do you consider "hard SF" "these days," then? I'm no
> connoisseur of sci-fi, but in my naivete I thought Michael Crichton
> and David Brin were considered "hard," and they're far from
> cyberpunk these days. (Bring on the flames! 😉

I like Michael Crichton a lot, but wouldn't really consider his work
to be "hard SF". That's his greatest strength, actually. He takes SF
concepts and makes them mainstream and understandable to the layman.


--
SoulEaterRL... Coming soon!

http://www.freewebs.com/timsrl/index.htm

--
 
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On 2005-05-18, Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
> Greg Egan's pretty much the perfect "hard SF AKA cyberpunk" writer.
> Alastair Reynolds is a good modern hard SF writer whose novels would
> have been called cyberpunk 10 years ago (compare them to Bruce
> Sterling's <Involution Ocean>, <The Artificial Kid>, or <Schismatrix>
> and tell me there's any difference). In the soft SF but still cyberpunk

So you're saying cyberpunk means pretty much the exploration of
(possibly unexpected) uses and consequences of modern and future
technologies? This seems to include a pretty wide chunk of all science
fiction literature.

I've associated cyberpunk with settings that are not that distant from
the present time, very often deal with technological dehumanization with
evil corporate entities being a common example, features some sort of
street culture, like you said, and tends to be some kind of noir
detective story. The last point is probably the issue I have with the
idea that most modern SF is cyberpunk. The "hard boiled" stories are a
subset which I associate with core cyberpunk works.

The stuff I think as most definitive cyberpunk is Gibson's Sprawl
trilogy, Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired, Georg Alec Effinger's When
Gravity Fails and Blade Runner. All of them are pretty much in the hard
boiled detective style. Bruce Sterling's Artificial Kid and Schismatrix
(haven't read Involution Ocean) are a bit different. I've considered
them and Alastair Reynold's books as more of a space opera (hopefully
this isn't considered a derogatory term) SF than cyberpunk. They have
cyberpunk elements, true, but the street culture angle is mostly absent
in them.

Greg Egan's first novel, Quarantine, has many cyberpunk trappings, but I
think calling Egan's Diaspora, Teranesia or Schild's Ladder cyberpunk is
a pretty big stretch.

A hard SF author who I don't think is doing anything like cyberpunk is
Stephen Baxter. Megacorporations are absent in Baxter's works and
virtual reality is an anathema to Baxter's obsession with real space
exploration. The cyberpunk street culture is entirely foreign to
Baxter's perspective which is mostly looking at where the entire human
species is going to end up. Body transformation exists, but seems to be
based on dropping humans on some planet and leaving them to evolve for a
few million years as often as in genetic splicing. The viewpoint is
again in big picture evolution, instead of cyberpunk's short term
effects.

Both Greg Egan's and Stephen Baxter's SF works often deal with strange
natural phenomena or (possible) alien contact. Both are common themes in
SF, the former particularly in hard SF, but I don't see them much
related to cyberpunk. I think cyberpunk is something mostly concerned
with how technology affects humans in the short term. SF which is
interested in weird cosmological or quantum physical stuff for its own
sake or SF which looks thousands of years into the future of humanity,
where clever references to present-day cultural and corporate trends no
longer make sense, isn't cyberpunk any more. I think it may also be more
interesting SF.

One reason I don't particularly like cyberpunk is its preoccupation with
street thugs. Traditional SF deals with scientific understanding of the
universe, which is among the higher aspirations humans can have. Street
crime, on the other hand, is pretty low. Too often cyberpunk literature
seems to be asking how low can people go, and there is already plenty of
literature that does that. Hard SF that asks how high can people go is
much more rare and also more challenging to write.

--
Risto Saarelma
 
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SZDev - Slash wrote:
>>>FreeTrade Zones: After several decades of wrangling about
>>> jurisdiction, controlled substances and items, and laws
>>> that disagreed about what transactions were illegal, the
>>> problem sort of solved itself, in the form of FreeTrade
>>> Zones -- areas where *NOTHING* is illegal. FreeTrade
>>> zones grow up where governments are weak, overextended,
>>> or crippled by jurisdictional or diplomatic problems;
>>> some permanent FTZ boat communities now exist in
>>> international waters, and land-based FTZs exist in
>>> areas where the governments are nonexistent, powerless,
>>> or can be bribed to look the other way.
>>
>>IOW, colombia, mexico, nicaragua, and any cruise ship already in
>>existence? :)
>
> Ignorant...

Eh? The bribability of latin american governments and their looking the
other way while drug lords and such do as they please is well-documented
and notorious. Cruise ships when in international waters are in no
jurisdiction but their own, and generally do as they please. Some fairly
smelly dealings sometimes go on -- not to mention thefts, the occasional
murder, and a heck of a lot of dumping of waste that ought to be
illegal, but in international waters who's going to prosecute?

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
 
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Risto Saarelma wrote:
> Both Greg Egan's and Stephen Baxter's SF works often deal with strange
> natural phenomena or (possible) alien contact. Both are common themes in
> SF, the former particularly in hard SF, but I don't see them much
> related to cyberpunk. I think cyberpunk is something mostly concerned
> with how technology affects humans in the short term. SF which is
> interested in weird cosmological or quantum physical stuff for its own
> sake or SF which looks thousands of years into the future of humanity,
> where clever references to present-day cultural and corporate trends no
> longer make sense, isn't cyberpunk any more. I think it may also be more
> interesting SF.

This thread has certainly become interesting! I think one of Baxter's
works comes close to cyberpunkish, however -- The Light of Other Days
(coauthored, mind you). It has a huge corporation and technologies that
transform people, some of them involving interfacing with the human
brain. Admittedly, no serious VR stuff, the one big corporation isn't
especially amoral (that by the way is the trait cyberpunk -- and
real-world -- megacorps tend to have in common -- amorality; they may
keep their fiduciary responsibility but there's no social responsibility
there, or concern for individual wellbeing, only for how to get ever
more dollars by hook or by crook...), and there's little in the way of
street-grit aspects. (The underground networks for people who want to
maintain privacy in the future of ubiquitous but democratic surveillance
comes to mind, though.)

Funnily enough, the recent movie I, Robot seems to have some of those
themes too -- the big corporation seems to be significantly amoral,
there's been a major wrecking of the environment, technology involving
computers is spinning out of control ... but no VR, and little
street-grit again. (Ironically, the corporation has the same name as a
real-world company that makes computer modems.)

Kudos on being Egan-aware, by the way.

(Ken MacLeod? Cyberpunk? You have to be kidding. Cyberpunk tends to
involve extreme right-libertarian capitalism as a theme -- embraced by
the bad guys and accepted as unchangeable by the good guys. Ken's stuff
tends to involve extreme left-libertarian socialism as a theme. Usually,
if there's a capitalist culture involved, it's depicted as not a very
desirable place to live -- generally a free market anarchy with
everything and everyone having their price, a great place if you're rich
and don't mind being blasted by incessant spam and a terrible place if
you're poor.)

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
 
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R. Dan Henry wrote:
> Insane AIs with eccentric behavior, not just "take over the world"
> stuff

Starfish has an AI like this. Because of how it was constructed and
trained, it has equated simple and elegant with superior, and when a
dangerous threat of eco-collapse emerges from the discovery of an
organism that, if it escapes from its current confinement, will cut the
food chain off at its knees replacing plankton with inedible forms of
life, because it's a simple and elegant form of very primitive life the
AI sabotages efforts to contain it. By standards of human motivations
this is clearly insane, but the AI doesn't have any ambition; it just
follows its programming, which has implied to it to prefer simple
systems over complex ones. And the current ecology, and human beings,
are clearly rather complex...

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
 
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Twisted One ha escrito:
> SZDev - Slash wrote:
> >>>FreeTrade Zones: After several decades of wrangling about
> >>> jurisdiction, controlled substances and items, and laws
> >>> that disagreed about what transactions were illegal, the
> >>> problem sort of solved itself, in the form of FreeTrade
> >>> Zones -- areas where *NOTHING* is illegal. FreeTrade
> >>> zones grow up where governments are weak, overextended,
> >>> or crippled by jurisdictional or diplomatic problems;
> >>> some permanent FTZ boat communities now exist in
> >>> international waters, and land-based FTZs exist in
> >>> areas where the governments are nonexistent, powerless,
> >>> or can be bribed to look the other way.
> >>
> >>IOW, colombia, mexico, nicaragua, and any cruise ship already in
> >>existence? :)
> >
> > Ignorant...
>
> Eh? The bribability of latin american governments and their looking
the
> other way while drug lords and such do as they please is
well-documented
> and notorious.

well-documented as in what source?

notorious to who? to outsiders informed by manipulated media???

Latin America countries are not freetrade zones. The governments dont
"look the other way" to please the drug lords... there is a constant
campaign against them with concrete results, at least regarding dead
count 🙁

> --
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
> Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
> "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
> One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

--
Slash
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Dnia 17 May 2005 23:46:17 GMT,
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes napisal(a):

> R Dan Henry <danhenry@inreach.com>
> wrote on Sun, 15 May 2005 11:39:16 -0700:

> When you get done with that, you might have some idea what cyberpunk's
> about.

I hate to interrupt your lecture on what cyberpunk is in literature and
movies according to your opinion, but please stop for a while and think
what `cyberpunk roguelike' might mean.

It's definitely very hard to put that 'punk' feel into a game with almost
no plot, survival-oriented, with main content being combat.

I'd say that when we hear 'cyberpunk roguelike', most of us just thinks
about a roguelike game, similar to those existing already, but set in
a setting similar to those found in cyberpunk novels and movies.

Incidentally, lots of sf share similar world -- as `cyberpunk' is not
(only) about setting. But it's most easily recognized as `the setting
that is often used in cyberpunk'.

--
Radomir @**@_ Bee! The quest for the Real World:
`The Sheep' ('') 3 Try #1: cd /..
Dopieralski .vvVvVVVVVvVVVvv.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Twisted One ha escrito:
> SZDev - Slash wrote:
> > Latin America countries are not freetrade zones. The governments
dont
> > "look the other way" to please the drug lords... there is a
constant
> > campaign against them with concrete results, at least regarding
dead
> > count 🙁
>
> Funny that the drugs don't stop flowing out of them then, isn't it?

No it isn't funny... It is just that the problem is too big for the
will of the governments to be enough to finish it...

However, I recognize that twisted information can lead people into
false knowledge, and there's no way my words can go against the image
you have been shaped with for all of these years 😉.

>
> --
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
> Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
> "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
> One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

--
Slash
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
> R Dan Henry <danhenry@inreach.com>
> wrote on Sun, 15 May 2005 11:39:16 -0700:
>
> This is false, a base insult that was created by the New Wave and
> "literary" SF wankers to attack a literary movement they didn't like or
> control.

Dude; he claimed to summarize ideas here presented, and did
so accurately. If you disagree with those ideas, it's not his
fault. So try to stay level-headed about it, okay?


>>Part 1: Ideas (largely the work of Ray Dillinger)
>
> [snip]
>
> Most of those ideas are stupid, the kind of garbage Gibson wrote.
> Gibson was taking a lot of drugs and trying to be weird and cool (often
> failing at one or the other or both), but he was never very sensible.
>

Uh, just a note, but Gibson is one of the "seminal artists" most
frequently credited with defining the genre of cyberpunk. Your
own opinions aside, if 90% of the people who write about something
agree, and it's a matter of opinion, I'd say they're right. I'd
also guess that if someone says they want cyberpunkish ideas that
they're subscribing to a mainstream view of what cyberpunk is.

As a literary form, Cyberpunk was, as far as I could see, an
exploration of identity, in a world where technology is
increasingly invasive and increasingly people are defined by
their access to technology. Someone sticking a wetware stick
in their head and instantly knowing, say, martial arts, is
not just a plot device; it's a question about whether this is
the same person as before the stick went into the socket, and
whether the discipline, practice, and training of people who
study martial arts, which this character misses, is merely a
means to an end to be dispensed with, or has value in and of
itself in making someone a better person.

Someone with extensive genetic mods and cyberstuff, whose
emotions are partly ruled by computer-controlled drug injectors,
isn't so much a "power" character as a question to the audience
about what "human" means to us anyway. And the AI's and
software-simulated people take it even further; Are they real?
Are they people? Is it meaningful to identify with them, or to
relate emotionally to them?

And the megacorp characters and the tragically flawed protagonists
are a comparison, or contrast; we put another, more accepted kind
of dehumanization next to the altered people and the AI's, and
we're asking the audience, "which of these is meaningfully a
real person?"

So... to me the core of cyberpunk was always about invasive
technologies and the questions of *identity* they raise. Most
other SF was about other questions.

Bear
 
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