teh Forum

... NEW AVATAR!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! Now nobody can stop me!!!!!!

... I too can be a thorn in the side of the average citizen. Take that average citizens!!




Look, he's reading my post.

Nice avatar, litterally!

you have been a thorn in my side for far too long avatar...

parade you around as the fallen idol for pathetic ideals... i need to play i cant remember how that went anymore.

I think it goes:

You have been a thorn in my side for far too long Avatar. Your two worlds will be crushed, Britannia first, then Earth. I shall parade you before their conquered peoples as the fallen idol of a pathetic ideal. I banish you to the world of Pagan. No one here knows of the, Avatar.

doodleoodledoodleoodledoodleoodledoodledoo....... (Avatar falling to the water.)

doo, doo, doo, doo, doodledoodeldoodledoodleoodle. di di di di. (Harp/Piano/String arrangement fading in)

Or something like that anyway.

Good memory...

Like the phonetic string sound!

... we need a monkifier type device that took text like that, or wicky wicky type things, and turned them into actual sounds. We could have a bank of instruments, drums, and sounds like scratches and such. I imagine it would be fairly complicated unless we had a specific set of words that worked though. We could have a panel like the emoticon panel that was full of words associated with the sounds. You could string together a beat, click on the musicate button, then it renders a low bitrate mp3. [TEE HEE HEE] Perhaps it could accept four channels of text or something too, so you could have a beat with scratches, or an actual polyphonic tune. Who's going to make this fine piece of internet software? I'll make sounds for it. wicky wicky boom swicky ficky

... a tracker, but word based.

I'm sure we'll get on that right after the super sid playing customizable web page and the new arcade box setup.

... and don't forget D0NK3Y, our intergalactic trading game, based on the classic M.U.L.E.

hahahhahahah hhahahah hha hha hah hah

Look at all the great MonkeySoft vaporware on the horizon. What a corporation we are!

... Welcome to the Monkey Lair corporate network. From here you can access information on all of the latest, never-to-be-released products from Monkey Lair. From games to translation and encryption software, we offer it all. In theory.

... I am very nearly finished with Ultima VIII. Once I'm done, I'm going to finally play the VII series. They are just so big though compared with 8 or 9 that it is going to take me ten years to beat them. Plus I have the expanded versions, which means they'll take even longer. One good thing though is that I have Exult, which is a Windows engine to play them on. (Similar to those Doom ports.) It adds a lot of cool functionality besides just making them run in modern OSes too. I'd highly recommend picking it up. Search for Exult. Then get the Ultima 7 games (expanded if possible.) The exult site also has enhanced OGG files for the music. Nice. The U VIIs on the Ultima Collection Disc have the expansions.

I think i have the ultima collection somewhere, i dont know if I can find the time for ultima 7 though.

Remember that scott guy from school, who would have thought he'd be an ultima player?

... I would have. I used to go over to Eric McDontRememberHowToSpellIt's house all the time when we were little, so I saw him once in a while over there. He was actually shorter, a little chubby, wore glasses. and had the large white Laser Tag rifle. I think he was a D&D type but I'm not sure. If I had only met him in high school, I would have been quite surprised when he handed us the U7 disks. Yeah, I wouldn't actually expect you to go all the way through that series. I've started on it about 15-20 times and the farthest I've ever gotten was maybe a quarter of the way through the first part, and never got to any of the expansion quests. I put about 20-30 hours into that particular attempt too. I'm eventually going to make myself do it though, just because they are so amazing. How many other games would provide that many hours? Anyway, you ARE REQUIRED to eventually complete number VIII. (For obvious reasons which I will list anyway.) Nostalgia, Nostalgia, (Tee Hee) the J. Donaldson account factor, the phoenix script factor, the XDCC factor, the KeyRing Factor TM, the speech pack factor, the O'Reilly (sp?) Factor, and the 14.4KBps factor. Oh, and don't forget the "Cheater, ha, haha, hahahaha." factor. (Your favorite sound clip ever.) It actually doesn't take a super long time to beat it if you use the spell book in the cheat file. I don't use any other cheats, just that spell book. (I know where all the magic weapons and armor are now, so I don't cheat to get those anymore.) I've spent some serious time exploring Tenebrae and its outlying areas. It will run quite quickly on your Vectra too. I can also tell you how to do anything at all. I bought a second copy of System Shock 1 for $1.99 the other day, so I'll send you a copy of it. But since I have two licenses, and am only using one, yours will be legal [TEE HEE HEE]

...refresh my memory, whats the phonenix script factor?

The nostalgia and or nostalgia... thats funny. O'reilly factor, really funny.

So of course nostalgia was the board that we posted it to, but what was that other board that wasnt quite as cool that you had a million credits on, that you would let me leach off?

Napalm Death? what was that? Was that it? What was paradigms board called? Was that nostalgia? What was the board with the little K-Rad guy?

Got to copy those brain cells into new ones before its all lost.

... here we go. We got it off of IRC, so that's why I brought up XDCC and Phoenix, as those were our staple scripts. Napalm Death was in fact the board you were thinking of. (Brain cell integrity normal, beep.) Paradigm's board was first called Virtual Realities, before it became the Aftermath. (I think there was one name in between, but I don't remember for sure.) Then there was Waves of Warez with RipWave. What an incredible dork he was. Remember big Darion? I think he was the one that supplied the Aftermath, (before his dad burned all his tape backups.) The K-Rad guy was just a member of Nostalgia, (I think Starman actually tossed him off after my incident with him,) but he was StormTrooper or something stupid like that. I thought you might like the O'Reilly Factor tossed in there Ahh, those were fun days.

Phoenix IRC Script... of course. noted, and Re-copied.

Other than that, I think I had everything else. Oh those early days, we were kings among men. We knew an internet that is almost forgotten now. Archie, ftp trading, gopher, muds the original mmorpg (well thats mainly just me on this one) ircii, tia the slip emulator, the avantages of ppp over slip, free t3 shell acounts, i wish i could relive all that again.

Id also like to relive the 80's but instead of 4-14, id like to try 14-24!

I think muds are pretty cool, they just aren't my style. I've never been into text only adventures. I'm sure I'm missing out on that, but for text only I like old fashioned books. For interactive adventures I prefer seeing what's going on. There are plenty of arguments against that reasoning, but I think it's pretty sound. And agreed on the 80's thing. I was thinking that the whole hair thing would suck about that, but then again, you wouldn't notice. (No point of reference.)

The three toothed grin has really grown on me it's rather anime like.

I rather like the green 3 toothed smiley also. He is on the other forum I frequent as well. So I edited this as soon as I set it up to be the ": D" code and be up on top.

I wish I could join in on this fun. Maybe if I was class of 95 I could be 1337.

... soon you can. I'm still planning to set up a dialup BBS. Though it will be expensive to use from Japan It will have door games, message board, and an abandonware section that has all the best games of the BBS era. McNevin wants me to make a Telnet BBS, but it just wouldn't be authentic. I'm also trying to think of something to add to it, so that people can't live without it and have to call it no matter how much it costs or how long it takes to get things. Maybe I'll sell mail-order brides, or traffic certain items from the message section, or something [TEE HEE HEE] Well, maybe not, but it will be cool. I think I will go lamer style on it, and have it on my main phone line, and only on at night. It will create higher demand for my excellent content. People will call from half way around the world to play my special edition of Lemonade Stand. Which I will call Lemonade Stand Wars!!!!! You will be able to rob and kill other lemonade vendors or StandOps as they may be reffered to as. There will be Lemonade Espionage TM the stealing of lemonade secrets. Like how much sugar is added, and how much opium is added to keep people coming back. There will be some kind of random number generator, so if you are robbing a stand's supplies, you will press a key and it will stop and tell you how much you got. There will be a few factors in this, but it will basically act like a couple of dice or something like that. You will also be able to hire people to go work at other stands and steal things for you, or kill one of the operators, or merely use scare tactics or protection fees etc. You will also have to manage resources, where you are getting the resources (there will be multiple suppliers for each resource,) then depending on who is the biggest customer or what kind of working relationship you have with the supplier, you will get varying discounts or taxes. There will also be government subsidized supplies, for those just starting out, who can't deal with a heavily influenced supplier. But there will be didadvantages to this, so you will eventually have to work your way into the Lemonade Ring. It will have to be turn based, so when you log on, you can take one turn consisting of 3-5 (or so,) actions like buy lemons, extort opium from a supplier under your protection, and drive a car into someone's stand. There will be consequences for rash actions though. If you hire someone to do it, they could be in jail the next time you log on. If they are valuable to you, you will have to bail them out. If not, you can let them rot and maybe someone else will use them.

I'm acutally just making this up as I go along, but it's actually starting to look like a decently planned game. Anyone up for helping me create this Text Game Monstrosity? This could be really cool. Perhaps I will make a Telnet BBS, because then this thing could get really popular. I can't imagine this being that difficult. It could probably be made in a scripting language. If motherfucking Rixlor would get back in here I'm sure he could whip up the code in Python or something. I'll design the content, I'll take creative input from any of the Monkeys. This can't end up as MonkeyVaporWare. I will make this happen if I have to kill all of you and run down your lemonade stands. Now who the frig is going to help me?

Maybe I'll try and make a prototype in Basic or something. McNevin and Choki, do you want to attempt this with me. We are usually the only ones actually willing to take on a task like this, while everyone else flakes the frig out. If I could get into contact with Seth, I think he'd help. The only reason we never got anywhere on D0NK3Y is that we needed a coder. Seth wouldn't have a problem coding something like this. Anyway, anyone who wants to help, start posting ideas. (Practical ones that can be easily done with text, a random number gen, and something like basic or a script language.)

LEMONADE STAND WARS WILL RISE!!!!!!! And then we will make it playable over the internet. (Still turn based though.) You wouldn't want to not log on for a day and have all your stands smashed and all your opium used up. Someone else has to take a turn before you can take another one. Or something like that. Or maybe you can mark yourself as away, so you are only minimally effected by certain things.

I think I need to find a copy of the Lemonade Stand door game, so I can do some research. I need to know how taking turns worked. I've only played a single player BASIC version before on the C64. I also need to think about how all the hiring works. This may have to be massively multiplayer, so that this can work properly. Unless say you hire someone, (who is just a non player character.) You can use him until he is caught, killed, or used up in some way. You hire a lacky for $20 (that could be quite a bit in LSW dollars, or we could scale the money to a more realistic value.) You can take one turn by sending him to destroy one competitor stand. That's your turn. Then the number generator is used a couple of times to determine the damage, whether he is caught, etc. There would have to be a chance that an officer of the law was walking down the street. (Say a 7% chance.) If an operator was at the stand at the time, there needs to be a percentage of damage to the operator, (but no instant death from one stand trashing I'd say.) Or you can choose between an attack on the StandOp TM or on the stand itself. Then the next time the Op logs on and takes a turn he could launch a counter attack on you, your hired guy, or your stand. But this probably wouldn't be something that would happen super often as you still need to use turns for building up supplies, selling lemonade, etc. I think maybe a player should get one turn for supply-related business, one turn for stand operations, one turn for hiring (only one hired goon at a time, and maybe 4 remote stand operators whose revenues are loosly based on what your main stand gets as long as the remote stands are properly supplied.) If you choose to launch an attack on a stand, you either have to do it yourself (risky but maybe in the early phases you'd want to do that, or you can hire a goon,) but that eliminates your other business turns for the round. I think if the number gen system was weighted, so it depends slightly on how powerful your competitors are, (so someone just starting has less of a chance to damage your stand,) it would be a lot more balanced. Your player could have stats like in an RPG or MUD. Your stand could have a damage metric, so that you can make repairs with one of your turns or something if it isn't completely destroyed. There could be four choices of how to attack the stand based on how much money you want to spend. You could a.) kick the stand causing a small damage percentage for free. b.) hit it with a bat, which costs money for the bat. c.) drive a car into it, which you have a car (or maybe a low rider bannana seat bike or something instead.) d.) Call in an airstrike, which you would have to be a Lemonade superpower to do. Yes, I think the car should definitely be swapped for the bike. We have to keep most of this on a Lemonade stand level with a few more comical exceptions like the airstrike or opiate additives. More ideas will be posted later. I don't think this project is out of our scope. We could actually manage this one I think.

... I after reading my posts there are a few ideas that I like. (I pay little attention when I'm actually posting. I then have to read my post )

I like the stats for player, hires, and stand. Hit points so to speak.
I like the multiple choice idea for the attacks, so maybe it could be applied to other things too. You could get higher revenues if you use one of four grades of sugar, lemons, water, and enhancing additives. Spend more money to make more money, but you have to make that money in the first place before you can use the higher options. That would make this thing a lot simpler.

I think you should also be able to ally with one other player if both of you agree to it. I think there should be a player limit at first, because It could take forever to wait for everyone to cycle through before you can take another turn. Maybe if a player leaves, he can save his stats. That way it could maybe be switched over from turn based or something I don't know. This will take some discussion. RTS or TB????

Who a supplier favors will be based on how much someone has procured from them. There will be a set number, but there should be quite several for each resource. Maybe 4 or 8, so there is competition to use a particular supplier, but also a competition to get supplies cheaper between the people that use that particular vendor. Perhaps you can get bonuses by hiring out your goon for a turn or two to the supplier. You don't even need to know what for, he's just not usable by you for a while, you get discounts, then you get you goon back and your price goes up again a little bit. Like a goon loan for a discount.

... how hard it would be to take an existing mud, or something similar and adapt parts of it to this game. I'm going to start designing the interface. There will be a bunch of hot keys and menus, but most data should remain on the screen. I'm thinking you should be able to have up to 16 stands (and it should take a very long time to accumulate that number, especially when people might attack you etc.) One NPC to run each one with results loosely based on your main stand. That way you don't have to pay super close attention to each one unless they get damaged, or are short on supplies. You can be notified when one is running low. Then ship more supplies. Each player gets a storage facility. It must be upgraded every couple of stands that you open. This costs some cash. Each upgrade can hold enough for two stands, for say one virtual week or something like that.) Filling it up is another matter. I'd like a bunch of freedom, but I don't think it would be balanced enough, so a limited amount of choices, units, etc. should solve that. (Like only being able to run 16 stands at a time. That should be fairly frantic even though you only need to fully operate one. You can access your different stands by pressing a key that takes you to the "Stand Management Page." Then you type the number of the stand. Then you have choices like send sugar. If you send sugar, it will ask which grade. You choose 1 through 4 for the grade. Then it asks how much. Then it sends it. You also will have a "Mixture Management Page," in which you can edit your recipe, how much you charge per glass etc. This is partly what will gain you customers and keep them coming to you. The other factor is of course weather. This will have to be changed per day, and weighted over the week, so only rarely will there be an instant change in weather. (Less frustration that way and people will play more.) The more violence that happens at your stands, the less people will want to come back, so it pays to stay civil and not piss off other players. But if you're well supplied and feeling cheeky, you can launch an attack. That will not only damage their stand, but also their business (slightly, this effect should be limited.) I think introducing the additives into the lemonade will be a really fun factor in this. There can be four grades of opiate additive with varying effectiveness and price. This will not only allow you to hook customers, but charge more, because they will pay more (to a degree anyway.)

If you were a successful lemonade stand proprietor could you open up more stores? A LS chain? an empire? That could be when the game ended - when you eliminated all the competition and had a LS monopoly capable of jacking the prices at will and crushing any upstart competition with your legion of LS thugs on a whim.

... was my basic idea. I thought it should be limited to some degree though to keep the programming and interface simple. I think if you had 16 maxed out stands, a hired goon, and a bunch of cash, you could start eliminating other people. And if there were enough people, this could go on for quite a while until someone makes enough smart moves and wipes everyone out. The way I thought the espionage could work, is that you could hire a goon, (you can only have one, so this would be a trade off,) and you can put him back in circulation to be hired out. (You could only have one of these at any given time.) Then when someone else hires him, he can give you all the data on the stand he's working at. Basically, stats, purchases, sales. Then you can strategically buy different supplies, or something. Otherwise, if you keep your goon, you can have him do physical damage. Either way, there would have to be a semi-random number for whether he gets caught.