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wmarkham
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icon Re: CaravelNet goes standalone (+2)  
ErikH2000 wrote:

I want to issue everyone a DROD Visa and be done with it.

-Erik

Sure, but the conversion rate from greckles is so hard to predict. Hopefully, we can pay off our bills in rank points. :)
06-16-2005 at 04:03 AM
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StuartK
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ErikH2000 wrote:
StuartK wrote:
In the UK at least, Switch merged with/was subsumed by Maestro recently. I don't know the difference between Maestro and Maestro Euro. If it means 'Maestro cards in Europe' I wouldn't be able to use my debit card.
I'm not sure if it means that or not.
I've been unable to find out anything about a card called 'Maestro Euro' though I've not tried particularly hard. There's a 'Euro card' but I think that's something else entirely. When the time comes I'll just give it a go and see what happens.

BTW, if you Maestro card has a MasterCard logo on it, it should go fine on Plimus.
Nope, just the Maestro logo. Never twigged before now that Maestro and Mastercard were linked...

Anyway, I've got a credit card too, though I tend to avoid using it if possible.
I want to issue everyone a DROD Visa and be done with it.
There's always barter. How many months of Caravelnet do I get for one cow, delivered to your door? :D
06-16-2005 at 06:02 AM
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gamer_extreme_101
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StuartK wrote:
There's always barter. How many months of Caravelnet do I get for one cow, delivered to your door? :D
Well, Jack, I can give you three rank points for that cow there. And they aren't just any rank points either...they are magical rank points! :)

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06-16-2005 at 06:10 AM
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leroy00
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This is an excellent development. Thanks Erik! If I had some mod points handy, I would be showering you with them right now. Just one question: Does "cash" include cash equivalents, like Traveller's Cheques or, uh, Traveller's Cheques?

-leroy

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06-16-2005 at 10:04 AM
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ErikH2000
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leroy00 wrote:
Just one question: Does "cash" include cash equivalents, like Traveller's Cheques or, uh, Traveller's Cheques?
Well, the new processor takes personal checks. Are traveller's checks in the same form as a personal check--where you write in an amount and it is drawn from a bank account somewhere? If so, I imagine they'd be fine for this. I've never used them and don't know much about them.

-Erik

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06-16-2005 at 05:09 PM
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StuartK
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote
Well, Jack, I can give you three rank points for that cow there. And they aren't just any rank points either...they are magical rank points! :)
Damn, I've been tricked.

*throws rank points away*

[Last edited by StuartK at 06-21-2005 01:34 AM]
06-17-2005 at 05:47 AM
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asmussen
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icon Re: CaravelNet goes standalone (+1)  
StuartK wrote:
gamer_extreme_101 wrote
Well, Jack, I can give you three rank points for that cow there. And they aren't just any rank points either...they are magical rank points! :)
Damn, I've been tricked.

*throws rank points away*

And in the morning, when StuartK woke up, there was a giant rankstalk growing outside of his bedroom window!

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06-17-2005 at 10:35 PM
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Oneiromancer
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"Rankstalk" is the name of my new rock band.

Game on,

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06-17-2005 at 10:38 PM
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StuartK
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asmussen wrote:
And in the morning, when StuartK woke up, there was a giant rankstalk growing outside of his bedroom window!
I'm gonna be disappointed if I climb this thing, and find a rankchicken at the top.

[Last edited by StuartK at 06-21-2005 01:34 AM]
06-18-2005 at 03:06 PM
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Mattcrampy
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Which lays little blue rank points.

It was inevitable, wasn't it?

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06-18-2005 at 04:44 PM
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mrimer
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Rank points don't grow on trees!

They grow on stalks

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06-19-2005 at 09:35 PM
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gamer_extreme_101
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Heh...Forum fairy tales. :)

There once was a young boy named Stuart. He loved DROD, but his family was unable to pay for anything over the internet, and he needed to find a way to get a CaravelNet subscription for his recently acquired DROD 2.0.

"Stuart," his mother said, "I talk to Erik H, and he said he would be willing to barter for the subscription. Take this cow to Erik and try to get him to trade it for a subscription for CaravelNet. He should be waiting for you."

"Are you serious! That's excellent news!" Stuart replied. He then went out back, found the cow, tied a rope around it's neck, and started leading it to Erik's house. He imagined all of the scores he could upload. 'Surely, I must have a few top 10 scores to impress people with,' he thought.

However, just a couple of blocks away from Erik's house, he met Patrick, a normally friendly forum-goer, but who was clever and cunning when hungry. As soon as he saw the cow, his thoughts turned to food.

"Wow... that's a nice looking cow you have there," Patrick told Stuart. "Looks to me like a couple of steak dinners with cheese appetizers and milk for a beverage. Perfect idea for tonight!"

"It's for Erik. I'm getting a CaravelNet subscription for it" Stuart replied politely.

"Well, I was on my way to the store, but now that I've seen this cow, I think that this could be much better. How'd you like a couple of rank points for it?"

Rank points were Stuart's weakness, and as soon as he heard the prospect of free ones, he became interested.

"How many?"

"Well, since this is such a fine looking wholestein, I'll give you three rank points that I believe to be magical. I'd try them out myslef, but I don't think the points are Linux compatible!" Patrick replied.

"Deal!" Stuart said, enthusiastically. With that, the trade was made. It wasn't until Patrick was out of sight when he realised that the cow was supposed to give him a CaravelNet subscription.

"Frig!" Stuart exclaimed. "Well, I'd better head back home and tell my parents about it" he decided. Besides, if they were magical rank points, perhaps they would be better than a CaravelNet subscription?

When he got home, his parents looked confused.

"Son, Erik said that he would activate the account as soon as you gave him the cow. Why isn't it working yet? Another server problem?"

"Erm, no mother," Stuart said, "I traded the cow for some magical rank points instead.

"You did what? How much more of a dolt can you be?" his mother screamed. "I'm taking those rank points and conviscating them until you learn the unimportance of them!"

"But mother!" Stuart whined.

"No, son. You have to learn a lesson" she firmly said. "Anyways, it's night now, so you'd better go to bed"

"Very well" And so he quietly went off to bed.

Once his parents were all asleep, Stuart snuck down to his basement and made his way to a hidden drawer.

"My parent's should really think about finding a new place to hide things," he snickered to himself. With the rank points in hand, he took them to his computer and deposited them in his rank point container.

'Mission accomplished,' he thought, and then proceeded to return to bed.

***

When morning came, Stuart was up at 6:30, ready to check the forums. Strangely, he saw a weird link on the top of the forum entitled "Convert Rank Points to Magical Rank Points".

'Wow. Never saw that before. Schik really is a leet forum God' he thought. 'Perhaps the points that Patrick gave me are a new experimental breed. Well, let's test them out'

As he clicked the link, he suddenly saw the computer monitor open up, and he was being sucked through it quicker than ever imaginable. The walls were filled with falling green text, and he could see a small light straight ahead.

"Amazing. Either I somehow died, or I'm watching a C-Rated versiojn of The Matrix"

However, the light continued to grow, and before he knew it, he had landed on the ground.

"Whoa... Schik must have programmed in a 'B' science fiction movie for people with these points!"

As he took a look around, he became both amazed and confused. The grass(?) was white, and a house in the background looked to be completly blue with only subtle white text on it.

"Blue screens of death" Stuart observed, and now became intrigued. As he moved closer, the house became larger. So large, in fact, that Stuart could no longer see the roof of it by looking directly up. He was, however, able to read the writing on the house.

"Warning: Permission into this building can only be granted to those with proper CaravelNet administrative access. You have been warned. Hey! This must be Mike Rimer's house! Maybe DROD 3.0 is in there!"

Luckily for him, the door was slightly ajar, and he was able to make his way inside. The house was extremly clean, and he could hear the sound of someone typing on the keyboard, except amplified fifty times what it is normally.

"If this was implemented in, then the whole editor would have to be restructured, followed by an upgrade of Visual Studio, which then leads to..." the voice rambled on.

"It's Mike Rimer! It has to be! I have to go find him and check out screenshots to post on the forum!"

He started to run to an image which appeared to look like a door that was slightly ajar. When he saw the crack, he ran towards it full force.

Mike was smart though, as his wall was covered with wallpaper that looked like doors partially open in order to stay hidden. The one Stuart ran at wasn't the real door, unfortunately, and he ended up with a small headache after the incident.

"Phooey. That Mike's a clever one, he is. Is there any Tylenol around here?"

Knowing of Mike's plan, he then stuck his hand on the wall and continued to walk around it until he found the real door. Lo and behold, it was the 'door' right next to the one he rammed into.

"Damn the luck, I tell you. Anyways, time to get a screenshot."

When he made it through, he was shocked. Mike was approximatly 80 feet tall, and he knew that Mike could easily program him into a life of horribleness. There was one way to go, and that was to steal the hard drive from his computer and take it back to his dimension. The computer (Which happened to be normal size) was sitting on the ground with the cover off (To prevent sporatic rebooting, of course), and a screwdriver was happily sitting right next to it. His chance was there.

As Mike continued to churn out code, Stuart snuck around behind him and hid behind the computer. With the screwdriver in his hand, he started to take all but one screw off, waiting for Mike to save before taking the last out and unplugging it from the computer.

After a couple of minutes, Mike stopped.

"Compiling.....done! Excellent. This calls for a celebration." And he went off toward the kitchen, Stuart could hear Mike talking to himself.

"Door A4 is bedroom... G5 is outside.... aha! 6C is kitchen" he said, and disappeared.

With that chance, Stuart undid the last screw, set the screwdriver down, and unplugged the hard drive.

"I did it! I have DROD 3.0!" He excaimed, quietly.

However, in his temporary joy, he knocked the screwdriver off of the edge, causing a large *BANG* when it hit the floor.

"Someone is in the code room!" Mike yelled. "Freeze, miscreant!"

With the hard drive in his hand, he then booted it out of the room. When he hit the main hallway, Mike had spotted him.

"Get back here! That's code you have in your hands! Return it at once!"

Stuart had other plans. He started scanning the room for door "G5", as that was his ticket to freedom.

"FB....FF....G3...G5! Freedom!" he yelled, and bolted it through the crack. He quickly looked back to see if Mike was following him, but saw nothing. As he ran back to where he first hit this dimension, he saw a computer logged into the forums. When he got there, he saw a different link at the top.

"Convert Magical Rank Points to Rank Points...this must be my way out!"

Once he clicked, the screen opened up, sucked him in, and spit him out in front of his computer, hard drive still in hand.

"I'm alive...and I still have it! Time to load this baby up...."

A doorbell stopped him in his tracks, and being a polite person, he stopped what he was doing to answer it. When he opened the door up, he saw two very muscular men wearing sunglasses at his door.

"Hello. A person named...uh...Mike Rimer has requested the service of a couple of thugs. You Stuart Knapton?" Thug 'A' questioned.

"Umm...I think you have the wrong place" Stuart replied, nervous.

"When will you stop doing that?" Thug 'B' rebuked. "We're not a telegram service, we're hired thugs. Now, let's get this hard drive and get our pay, okay?"

"Very well" Thug 'A' replied. He grabbed Stuart by the shirt and pulled him forward. "Listen, buddy, you should know that stealing hard drives from people is wrong. As far as you remember, you were never in a different dimension, you have never seen Mike Rimer, nor do you know anything about DROD 3.0. Got it?"

"Sure...just release me!" Stuart cried out.

Thug 'B' had grabbed the hard drive by now, and they both left quietly.

And Stuart, without a CaravelNet subscription or the DROD 3.0 code, was forced to play DROD offline. Maybe the next time he gets a cow, he'll be able to control his rank point obsession.


And the moral of the story is... Magical rank points are bad, hired thugs exist in every dimension, and Mike Rimer is a genius. :D

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06-20-2005 at 12:32 AM
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StuartK
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Haha :D Thankyou, I think :unsure

You forgot the epilogue. Those interdimensional thugs would have another visit on their agenda for the day, to the real villain of the piece - the guy who's been handing out illicitly acquired magical rank points for his own personal gain, and without a thought for the consequences. If ever a guy deserved a Hollywood style comeuppance, it's this one for sure.

In this case our heroes, thugs #1 and #2 would be ravenous after a hard day of... thuggery. With two nice steak dinners cooking, and thugs being as they are, I'd say Gamer Extreme probably won't be getting much of a chance to share today.

;) Yeah, creative writing isn't my forte *shrug*

[Last edited by StuartK at 06-21-2005 01:34 AM]
06-20-2005 at 11:38 PM
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gamer_extreme_101
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Now all we need is create a 90 minute script and get Hollywood to turn this into a movie. If they do, I think my character should be played by Robert DeNiro or Nicholas Cage, and there should be a car chase scene as I grab the cow, and I would be driving a 1969 Sting Ray Corvette is Night Black. :?

And actually, most fairy tales don't have epilogues, but if they did, it would involve the off-topic police arresting us, and throwing us in off-topic prison, where a topic about Garfield comics turns into a discussion about naval lint. Of course, hired thugs *would* be involved in that as well, I'm sure.

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06-21-2005 at 01:34 AM
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Krishh
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This does raise one question to me actually: couldn't Caravelnet be worth more than JtRH? It was one of my main draws for the package.

20$ JtRH:

2 more styles: They might be very good, both the graphics (based on the screenshots) and the music (based on Eriks other work), but
a) only cosmetic changes.
b) replaceable already by styles like Sanctum 2 and Flaming Peligroso in the demo. (Ok, so this is not that easy, but I did get an almost working sanctum 2 as my style2, just mucking with the bitmaps folder and drod.ini, and the game's open source, menaing someone with enough dedication and knowledge of code could easily make a build suporting this.) The music can be replaced again by any files you want through drod.ini.

22 very good dungeon levels with a great storyline and spoken dialogue.

12$ Caravelnet

Seems to me that Caravelnet could be worth more than the original package, especially with a steady stream of Smitemasters Selection holds. I realise this is because of the unfortunate case of DROD being open source, a decision you undoubtedly did regret at some point in the making of JtRH, requiring you to make the demo fully functional, but now it seems that by splitting the package, you are removing one of the main draws of the full version from it.

Well that's just my opinion, and not like it matters anyway,because I'm not buying the game. ( I was ready to buy it, had the money and all, but Latvia is in Europe, and I'm not ready to pay a minimum of 35+ dollars for a 20 dollar game. (45+ with a wire transfer actually, more than twice the price of the game))
06-29-2005 at 10:29 AM
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eytanz
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Krishh wrote I realise this is because of the unfortunate case of DROD being open source, a decision you undoubtedly did regret at some point in the making of JtRH,

You know, this is sort of an interesting question. I have no idea how Erik feels, but it seems to me like DROD being open source is anything but unfortunate. It definitely complicates stuff a lot, and forced some design decisions that perhaps otherwise would be avoidable. But in additional to the eventual benefits you describe, if my understanding of DROD history is correct, I'm pretty sure that JtRH itself would never have been made had DROD not been open-source. The entire JtRH programming team - Mike, Adam, Schik and Gerry - were people who rose out of the fan community specifically because they became interested in coding DROD through its open source nature.

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06-29-2005 at 12:22 PM
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Oneiromancer
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Krishh wrote:
Well that's just my opinion, and not like it matters anyway,because I'm not buying the game. ( I was ready to buy it, had the money and all, but Latvia is in Europe, and I'm not ready to pay a minimum of 35+ dollars for a 20 dollar game. (45+ with a wire transfer actually, more than twice the price of the game))
You know...there's this game called Demise, a very "old-school" type RPG, which never sold much at all but does have a Polish distributor. There were some issues at some point with the patches and whatnot...but now that DROD is being distributed from Twilight Games, it might make sense for us to look into finding a European distributor. Especially if translations were done.

Game on,

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06-29-2005 at 03:50 PM
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I am so glad not to have to go through any of the stuff mentioned here
Quebecers are the most frequent users of debit cards per capita in the world

purchasing the game will still include the first year subscription right?
07-03-2005 at 03:05 AM
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ErikH2000
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Swann, sorry, the game doesn't come with the one-year membership anymore. As of today, July 2nd, CaravelNet membership is standalone. So it's necessary to shell out another twelve bucks for the online features, if you don't already have it. Anyone who buys DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold now gets a one-month "trial" membership.

I'm adding a 1-year CaravelNet membership to the Prize Pile pretty quick.

-Erik

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[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 07-03-2005 03:24 AM]
07-03-2005 at 03:24 AM
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jamie
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For those who want Caravelnet but don't have credit cards, couldn't you simply post cash, placed in a card, direct to Erik (for example)

Yeah, maybe a bit risky, but it's only $12

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07-03-2005 at 03:48 PM
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ErikH2000
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jamie wrote:
For those who want Caravelnet but don't have credit cards, couldn't you simply post cash, placed in a card, direct to Erik (for example)
Yeah, I wouldn't recommend sending cash if other ways worked, but if someone wants to, then e-mail me and we'll set it up. Note that in this case the fat wads o' money don't get sent directly to me, but to our backup payment processor.

-Erik

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07-03-2005 at 05:13 PM
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