My Soul Went Up A Level Today.

[mindlord]

My precious... it returned to me today. Words can't describe... but the experience points I earned gave me a +1 to my patience attribute and my soul got back 20 spirit points.

 

[typs lik dis]

Words can't describe what?

 

[TrashyMG]

My precious... it returned to me today. Words can't describe... but the experience points I earned gave me a +1 to my patience attribute and my soul got back 20 spirit points.

Let me borrow your Pandora for a bit, I'll give it back after a while.. and you can farm some crazy patience and spirits points.

 

[worzyl]

My precious... it returned to me today. Words can't describe... but the experience points I earned gave me a +1 to my patience attribute and my soul got back 20 spirit points.

Let me borrow your Pandora for a bit, I'll give it back after a while.. and you can farm some crazy patience and spirits points.

No, let me instead. You'll get it back quicker as I will be wearing my +1 Bandana for defence and extra speed.

 

[Pickle]

My precious... it returned to me today. Words can't describe... but the experience points I earned gave me a +1 to my patience attribute and my soul got back 20 spirit points.

You have encountered a pickle

You invoke your precious

pickle attacks with dill juice

You take 9999 damage

pickle takes your precious

You have died

 

[darkblu]

My precious... it returned to me today. Words can't describe... but the experience points I earned gave me a +1 to my patience attribute and my soul got back 20 spirit points.

You have encountered a pickle

You invoke your precious

pickle attacks with dill juice

You take 9999 damage

pickle takes your precious

You have died

OMG, damage above 9000!

(apropos, i guess everybody here knows why 9999 was max damage in those early RPGs?)

 

[Prometheus]

Congratulations, mindlord.

Just so you know, this thread has given a +1 to my thread-reading attribute.

(apropos, i guess everybody here knows why 9999 was max damage in those early RPGs?)

I will have to admit that I actually don't, as I have always despised RPGs. Now I'm curious: Why was that?

 

[Exophase]

I will have to admit that I actually don't, as I have always despised RPGs. Now I'm curious: Why was that?

Probably a) didn't want to generate more than 4 digits in their to_decimal converters, b) fans would be confused if the real limit was a power of 2 minus 1, c) everyone else before did it that way.

 

[XxionxX]

I wish that when I exercised that I would get some kind of points for doing it. You know, kind of like how you get that LVL +1 above your characters head. That would be AWESOME! I would be totally stoked, I would look at everyone else in the gym and be like, "YAH WHAT NOW!! I GOT ANOTHER LEVEL!!" Then some gym rat with 9000 levels would walk by...

 

[wardred]

I wish that when I exercised that I would get some kind of points for doing it. You know, kind of like how you get that LVL +1 above your characters head. That would be AWESOME! I would be totally stoked, I would look at everyone else in the gym and be like, "YAH WHAT NOW!! I GOT ANOTHER LEVEL!!" Then some gym rat with 9000 levels would walk by...

There are a few "personal RPGs", generally for phones, that try to do just this. I haven't tried them, and they generally "tick" off of the GPS or accelerometer, so a stationary bike probably won't get you squat, but the running machine might, and the bicycle and / or running definitely would.

What I'd really like to see is a "fusion" of a personal RPG and those electronics that keep track of how your workout's going. The Pandora could be excellent for a "self" based one. A small spreadsheet like thing. Tues - Weight lift - 10 reps at 200lbs bench. Etc. It would be a little manual, but for people who keep track of their workouts anyway, not too bad.

With a manual entry system you could add in "experience" for anything. Got your homework done? Add some int. Get that date? Some Charisma. Actually use this RPG thing? Well...maybe lose some charisma. :-b :-( Pretty geeky, but it could be fun. Mostly I've seen this for exercises on phones or with exercise trackers/DBs.

Edit: Haven't seen how the Wii does things, but I'd love to see an RPG character based off of some of what you're doing with the Wii fit. Anything that can successfully harness the addictive qualities of video games and consistent "rewards" and apply that to a positive, rather than merely sedative lifestyle is to be encouraged. (See Penny Arcade's chore RPG comic.)

 

[darkblu]

I will have to admit that I actually don't, as I have always despised RPGs. Now I'm curious: Why was that?

Probably a) didn't want to generate more than 4 digits in their to_decimal converters, B) fans would be confused if the real limit was a power of 2 minus 1, c) everyone else before did it that way.

Close, but no cookie ; )

There were no to_decimal converters - 9999 is the maximum that a two-byte BCD can hold ; )

 

[Exophase]

There were no to_decimal converters - 9999 is the maximum that a two-byte BCD can hold ; )

You do realize that NES, where most of those RPGs probably originated, had no BCD support, right?

 

[darkblu]

There were no to_decimal converters - 9999 is the maximum that a two-byte BCD can hold ; )

You do realize that NES, where most of those RPGs probably originated, had no BCD support, right?

You're in for a surprise if you think the genre originated on the NES ; ) Anyhow, I've not played the first ones either (let alone looked at their code), so one can take that as urban folklore.

ed: That said, I did not know that detail about NES' CPU. Thanks.

 

[Exophase]

No, I don't think the genre originated on the NES, but I think the "9999" limit was made popular there. Someone can tell me if Ultima had any limits like that, but my gut feeling on the matter is "no."

Also, on the originating 8-bit platforms you could only store and operate on 0 to 99 in the accumulator, not 9999. At least on the 65xx and z80/808x platforms with BCD. If you're going to need multiple bytes to convert a temporary value you'd may as well get all the digits... point is, they probably still had "to_decimal" converters, even if they used decimal ops (it's unusual to do all math in BCD)

 

[Azuma]

I actually recently sent my Pandora to get a nub fixed. Since Sep 16th the tracking status has been at: "We attempted to deliver the package to "address" on September 16th". I assumed that means they tried to deliver it but the one receiving it wasn't there, so they took it to the post office for pickup (that's what they do in the US anyways). I was very patient about it and figured if that was the case that OPT may have needed some time to pick it up. They ARE very busy after all... but now I'm not so sure. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is but I'm beginning to feel the chances of me getting my pandora back are very low... I did put $400 dollars of insurance on it, but in my opinion my Pandora is worth at least 4 times that. So I have to ask a few questions.

1. does anyone need any specific postal workers killed for whatever reason? 2. Does anyone want any specific post offices destroyed? 3. How much does a handgun cost? Less than $400 dollars? 4. Who do the pandoras get delivered to when they are sent for repair? Whoever it is I'm going to need you to collect the names of all the people who have ever delivered mail to you. and finally, 5. Can I get a handgun and plane tickets to the U.K. for under $400.00? :lol: but seriously, do you guys think it could be lost forever? It's not so much the concept of me getting my Pandora stolen as it is someone stealing a pandora. I mean the thing itself is like holy to me. I'm sure it's fairly similar to how christians feel when someone rips a bible in half in front of them. I think I'd even go so far as to put a pandora thief into the same category as someone who rapes babies... I really hope I get a +1 to my patience attribute and my soul gets back 20 spirit points, but it isn't looking very good. Has anything like this happened to you guys? And I'm not going to kill any postal workers if I don't get it back, I swear <_<

 

[darkblu]

No, I don't think the genre originated on the NES, but I think the "9999" limit was made popular there. Someone can tell me if Ultima had any limits like that, but my gut feeling on the matter is "no."

You mean 'decimal_power - 1' type of limit? We could trace that in an emulator, at least copies of ultima should still be around. But I was thinking more of early text-based d&d RPG/dungeon crawlers.

Also, on the originating 8-bit platforms you could only store and operate on 0 to 99 in the accumulator, not 9999. At least on the 65xx and z80/808x platforms with BCD. If you're going to need multiple bytes to convert a temporary value you'd may as well get all the digits... point is, they probably still had "to_decimal" converters, even if they used decimal ops (it's unusual to do all math in BCD)

Well, unless ranges of 0..255 would be sufficient for each of your stats, you'd need to use two bytes anyway. The moment you go two bytes, you can just as well stick to 0..9999 in BCD. As re to_decimal - there's no need for one at all. You do all arithmetics in BCD, and to eventually get ASCII from that you'd just do a LSR #4 (i.e. 4x LSR); AND #f; ADD #'0' per each nibble (except the least-significant one, naturally) and voila - your 0..9999 stat in ASCII, ready for output to screen. And I don't see why doing it all in BCD would be unusual in this case - that's what BCD was for - for computations that could be carried from start to end in decimal. The moment you had to convert to/from hex, you'd just as well not use BCD at all.

 

[Exophase]

"Just as well not use BCD at all" was exactly my point. Like I said, you wouldn't do arithmetic very much because it's limited to just addition and subtraction and because there was often overhead involved, like switching to and from decimal mode. The whole thing was a waste of silicon for most of these platforms anyway, that just displayed a few decimal numbers at best and had no reason to perform BCD arithmetic internally. It's no wonder this stuff got thrown out of later processors.

 

[worzyl]

No, I don't think the genre originated on the NES, but I think the "9999" limit was made popular there. Someone can tell me if Ultima had any limits like that, but my gut feeling on the matter is "no."

You mean 'decimal_power - 1' type of limit? We could trace that in an emulator, at least copies of ultima should still be around. But I was thinking more of early text-based d&d RPG/dungeon crawlers.

Also, on the originating 8-bit platforms you could only store and operate on 0 to 99 in the accumulator, not 9999. At least on the 65xx and z80/808x platforms with BCD. If you're going to need multiple bytes to convert a temporary value you'd may as well get all the digits... point is, they probably still had "to_decimal" converters, even if they used decimal ops (it's unusual to do all math in BCD)

Well, unless ranges of 0..255 would be sufficient for each of your stats, you'd need to use two bytes anyway. The moment you go two bytes, you can just as well stick to 0..9999 in BCD. As re to_decimal - there's no need for one at all. You do all arithmetics in BCD, and to eventually get ASCII from that you'd just do a LSR #4 (i.e. 4x LSR); AND #f; ADD #'0' per each nibble (except the least-significant one, naturally) and voila - your 0..9999 stat in ASCII, ready for output to screen. And I don't see why doing it all in BCD would be unusual in this case - that's what BCD was for - for computations that could be carried from start to end in decimal. The moment you had to convert to/from hex, you'd just as well not use BCD at all.

What the?!?!? Stop all this confusion!!!

Using silence spell (and it last for 30 seconds!)

 

[Prometheus]

I actually recently sent my Pandora to get a nub fixed. Since Sep 16th the tracking status has been at: "We attempted to deliver the package to "address" on September 16th". I assumed that means they tried to deliver it but the one receiving it wasn't there, so they took it to the post office for pickup (that's what they do in the US anyways). I was very patient about it and figured if that was the case that OPT may have needed some time to pick it up. They ARE very busy after all... but now I'm not so sure. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is but I'm beginning to feel the chances of me getting my pandora back are very low... I did put $400 dollars of insurance on it, but in my opinion my Pandora is worth at least 4 times that. So I have to ask a few questions.

If you haven't already, I think that the best thing to do here is to send the crew an e-mail to check that your Pandora was received.

 

[DaMummy]

LIGHTNING BOLT!