masonjason
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The wood-like patterns on that background are a bit hyper and random-looking. Are they mosaic tiles?

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Eighty people came to the bazaar.

joker5
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I suspect so... but it's a nice background nonetheless.

~joker5

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DiMono
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A while ago, I posted somewhere that I thought it would be neat if the floor tiles could have cracks and such in them, for more variation, and someone from Caravel said "don't worry, it's in 1.7" or something. I think it's just a demo of that idea that you're seeing there.

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

joker5
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Yeah, I know. They said that tiles will have a lot more variety now, so it'll look nicer all over.

~joker5

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Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

Mattcrampy
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Just so you know -

I'm not responsible for the image replacement. Caravel don't mind you speculating, so the rather abrupt wording of the replacement is most likely not any of the Caravel team. I'm frankly at a loss.

Anyway, I'll go in and replace that rogue image replacement and change my password.

Matt, thoroughly spooked

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

joker5
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That's not cool; we have a cracker on the loose. I'm wondering who removed the image. I have the original if you want it.

By the way, that picture said "Projects". I know there are more but I don't know more than that. Care to elaborate?

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5383
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joker5 wrote:
By the way, that picture said "Projects". I know there are more but I don't know more than that. Care to elaborate?

We've got a really nice income tax program - it saved me $450 on my return this year.

We're also working on a spyware removal program. It obviously needs some work, as you're still here.

Last but not least, we're the team behind the upcoming Doom 3.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Mattcrampy
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The image that's up is mine. Erik's got the site logs on, so we'll ensure this doesn't happen again.

As for 'projects', well, we're secretly plotting to take over the world.

On an factual note, it's just standard text. We don't have any other projects on the horizon, but it has that nice, bland corporate feel, don't you think?

Matt

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

joker5
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Yes it does. But it's also got that DROD font, so we know they at least took the time to visit DROD.net, and possibly download DROD.

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
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Any breakthroughs on the Image Thief?

I've saved the picture if you want it.

Maybe it's someone who you visited who has a computer. If you logged on to the forum and forgot to delete the cookie...

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
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Uh oh. Now I'm in trouble; I've been warned.

Task Summary:
Send hired thugs over to Joker's house
Original Comment:
Joker knows too much there, so maybe we should send some burly men over and rough him up a little.

While we're at it, we should send someone over to Matt C.'s house as well. And maybe Matt S. as well, because I've always thought he smelled a little funny.

I'm wondering who posted this. Was it Mr. Rimer or was it our friend Erik? Or is the harmless-looking Schiklore behind it all?

I'm not sure wether to be proud that I'm mentioned on the SF site or to run in fear.

On the upside I'll finally be able to test the new targeting software I installed for the automated turrets.

And I've got something of a reward for dedicated readers; we really do have a new task.

Draw your own conclusions, folks. I know everyone knows JTRH is NEAR-official but now we know they've got graphics for the title screen. This is a good sign.

Running in fear now.

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

The_Red_Hawk
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Heh, heh. That's really funny.

Kudos to whoever wrote that!




...no offence, Joker.

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Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

joker5
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None taken.

I'm not sure wether to take this semi-seriously. Possilby someone in the Caravel team is annoyed. Should I keep snooping or should I drop it?

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

sims5000
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 117
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I'd keep snooping, but I'm not you, so don't

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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joker5 wrote:
I'm not sure wether to take this semi-seriously. Possilby someone in the Caravel team is annoyed. Should I keep snooping or should I drop it?

Joker, I think some of our guys are annoyed, but not in a large way, and this little joke is just blowing off some steam. The irritation probably comes into play because you are making inaccurate announcements, but we don't want to take time to set the record straight. Personally, I'm not bothered by you reporting on stuff, but it just seems a little silly. If you want to keep going with the forum updates, it's no problem. And please don't feel bad about the "hired thugs" joke. I'm not holding anything against you.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
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Ok, thank you.

And I'm wondering what I misinterpreted...

Maybe I should put a disclaimer on: No information guaranteed.

As it stands though, I have information about the background of this picture.

Separate bitmaps for style graphics.
Original Comment:
Have for each style, the following bitmaps:
StyleXRoad.jpg
StyleXDirt.jpg
StyleXGrass.jpg
StyleXAlt.jpg

...where X is the style#, i.e. "Style2Grass.jpg". These would replace road.jpg, dirt.jpg, grass.jpg, and sand.jpg. Road, dirt, and grass will always look something like their namesake in each style. Alt (alternate) is intended as a pattern that might look radically different from one style to the next. Mosaic will look like a human-constructed kind of floor.

So, it seems our dear friend Matt did let slip what could be a beta for an authentic bitmap.

Kudos to you, Matt!

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

eytanz
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joker5 wrote:
Ok, thank you.

And I'm wondering what I misinterpreted...

Well, based on my experiences as a member of various development projects over the years, I think the greatest risk is taking the fact that there's a bug report about feature X as indicating that feature X actually makes it in to the final project.

The fact that there's a bug report about feature X means that there's a problem with feature X. If the bug report is still open, then maybe the bug isn't being fixed - either because it can't be fixed, or because it was decided not to fix it. Either way that means that there's a good chance that the feature will actually not make it to the final project.

The other problem is that things may be put into the code, got to work right, then cut out for various reasons. For instance, at one point when I developed EyAngband, I spent a couple of weeks working on some new item abilities, but when I saw them in the game I decided that they don't match the atmosphere I was trying to create, so I cut them out. Since Erik said several times that the feature list for 1.7 isn't yet decided on, it may well be the case that there will be features that are coded, but once they are put into play Erik and the team will decide that the idea was better in theory than in practice and remove the feature.

So, what you misinterpret may not be so much what the contents of the sourceforge posts are, but rather you may be misinterpreting their overall significance as indicator's of the nature of the project.

Or then again, maybe not.

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I got my avatar back! Yay!

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
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Hey, Eyangband is pretty cool! I'm addicted now!

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

The_Red_Hawk
Level: Smitemaster
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Well, joker, I like the way you report stuff like this, even if it isn't true. It's better to see it on the forum than on sourceforge.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 607
Registered: 11-25-2003
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Hey! I'm drawing logical conclusions! And all the bugs that I report are minor! They're easily fixed and all but one of them have already been so!

>.<

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
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Since I'm not a member of the Caravel team, no matter how many people I've accidentally convinced of that, I obviously cannot speak for anyone who actually is on the team. However, from my own game-making experience, I can offer perhaps some insight to the situation:

When I interviewed Bill Roper, he said the one thing he would tell future programmers is to not be afraid to cut features that seemed cool, but just don't work. Hence, some items that might even be 100% certified in the game today might end up getting cut in three months anyway, so I wouldn't put too much stock in anything on the SF pages anyway.

Next, while the atmosphere of the game and forums are very relaxed, I can tell you from first-hand experience that the development of games is a very involved, surprisingly tense experience, and snoops are not appreciated. Disinformation is exposed specifically to throw snoops off track, for the same reason as some people don't like the idea of anyone-edit on their holds:

If something's supposed to be secret, you don't want people finding out about it before it's time for them to. The Caravel team are going to great lengths to obfuscate the contents of 1.7, and now you're doing everything you can to dig up the dirt and post it to the world. I know I'd be displeased if I were on the team.

My personal advice and preference is that you leave well enough alone, and learn the value of patience, lest you find out that the reason Erik's not holding anything against you is because he's winding up with it.

[Edited by DiMono on 02-26-2004 at 02:24 AM GMT]

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ErikH2000
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There's some insight in what you've written, but I'll say it again... Joker is fine in my book, and hasn't done anything wrong. If we were terribly concerned with secrecy, we'd have all our SF tasks taken some place private.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
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Thank you both for your insight and defense, respectively.

I don't want to start a holy war here, so please don't take my posts too seriously.

We've already seen that both fake bugs(puppies and ketchup) and warnings/funny tasks(hired thugs) can be posted; and we know that the tracker(the most private place) has been obscured. What Caravel posts on the bug boards is accessable to everyone. I'm just making it a little easier to get to.

This is the demi-official "spying" thread. Anyone who comes here expects to read, well, spy stuff(none of which is really official). Mainly reports, rumors, and suspicions(maybe a few conspiracy theories to spice things up). We've had the dev team post here, we've had the bigshots and senior members post here, we've had newbies post here, and we've had middle-class-denizens post here(me being one of them).

Here, I don't really spy so much as look at public bug reports. It may be assumed that the ancient Weasel-Fu technique of hiding important stuff in chaff may work, but really I doubt Caravel is really thinks that alone will deter 100% of all interested parties.

If Caravel doesn't like what I'm doing they can politely ask me to leave and I will. If they decide they don't think a polite request to me isn't enough then they'll simply cloud things up more on SF, or, in an extreme case, develope an alternate comms system to assign tasks and bugfixes.

Of course I'm not pushing my luck and pestering Erik every 5 seconds w/email and PMs about what's going to be in 1.7 and what isn't.

Personally if I was developing a project, I think anyone who snoops hard enough is going to find the information sooner or later, so it may as well be sooner. Instead of bothering with security I'd rather continue developing the (not-quite) secret project.

No real point in having the perfect vault if you spent all your money making it, is there?

Besides, it's not like I'm popping up in topics all and sundry and shouting "PUPPIES AND KETCHUP CONFIRMED FOR 1.7 FOR SURE!"

</vaguely-defensive weasel-ethics ramble>

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

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The hired thugs task was me just being silly.

One of the reasons why everyone else is keeping quiet (and I really should) is that, as Mr. Roper said, we reserve the right to cut features and fiddle around.

The other thing is that Caravel (the coders in particular) are really proud of what they've achieved so far, and they'll be even prouder once they're done. You can take it from us that we'll be so forthcoming you'll be sick of it - but we don't want to start telling everybody how cool we are when we can't prove it. So we're trying (in my case, failing) to keep it quiet and sit back in smug satisfaction.

All will be revealed in time, and then we'll have a big party and everyone gets cocktales and we'll have a conga line and everything. But if we start telling you everything now, we'll be all out of surprises. So we'll wait until then, mmkay?

P.S. on the Great Image Heist - I've worked out what's happened... nothing to worry about.

Matt

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
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Oh, no worries. We KNOW you're cool... you ARE working on 1.7's JtRH. And it's fairly obvious the bug reports are catching at MOST 1 in 3 elements that are gunna be in the final version. So you'll have plenty surprises, and lots to be forthcoming about.

I'm a minor so I'll have to pass on the coctails, But conga sounds nice.

What DID happen with the Great Image Heist?

~joker5



____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

jdyer
Level: Smiter
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eytanz wrote:
For instance, at one point when I developed EyAngband

Whoa, I didn't realize you worked on that. Any other DRODders with some projects they've worked on before we might not know about?

joker5
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Not any major projects...

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

Mattcrampy
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The only thing I've worked on before DROD you'd only know if you were Australian and had an awesome memory for current affairs programs, or specialised in gifted education.

And it's not often you see those two cross, let me assure you.

Matt

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

joker5
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 607
Registered: 11-25-2003
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It's BACK!

That's right! Spying on Caravel is being brought back from the corpsed!

Anyway, small update: Embedded hold styles are in. Other than that nothing new. I think they've found a new place to post bugs.

Darnit, of all the rotten luck.

~joker5

____________________________
Criminals, like other people, dislike being shot. ~FBI study on guns

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

"Two words: Beam Waffle!" -me

Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2388
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Wait, embedded hold styles? Heck, I'm on the team and I don't know what you mean.

More importantly, where did you get this information? Because, as you know, we've found a new place.

Matt

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?