Empire of the Iguanadons

Alright. It got mentioned in passing last night that I may implement user accounts. Well I've now done that. As of right now, user accounts exist on this site. Hopefully everything is in place and working ok. You might notice though I have not supplied a self-registration link just yet. That's partly because I need time to shake down the profile system and to shake down access levels to the site to make sure everything is kosher.

The following breakdown now exists:

Anonymous Posters

Anonymous posters are able to submit comments to existing blog, gallery, and download entries ( when those finally get that ). They cannot do anything else. This ends the practice of picking bogus names to either be silly or to attempt to impersonate a legitimate user. All posts made anonymously will simply be tagged as such. Anonymous posts are subject to spam control by the Akismet filter. Chances are if you're anonymous, and your post is flagged as spam, I'll be treating it as such from now on.

Regular Members

Regular members are one step above anonymous posters. They are able to create an account, post to existing blog entries, choose an icon, set a homepage URL, and create a signature. Regular member comments are still subject to Akismet spam control. Most ordinary users who post occasionally will end up in this category once registered. This is also where spam bots who defeat the measures I'm going to use to filter registrations end up, so they'll still have severe difficult spamming even if they manage to get in.

Privileged Members

Yes, elitism abounds, even here. Privileged members will have all of the same abilities as regular members. However, these members will also be able to post comments without interference from the Akismet filters, and down the road they will be privy to blog entries, downloads, and gallery entries that are not visible to the public at large. Admission into this group will not come lightly. You need to be a family member, good friend, or a solid regular member I can trust not to turn into a spammer. I shouldn't need to point out who's likely to get this. It's also not something that will happen automatically, I need to manually intervene to allow this. You can feel free to ask, but don't expect it unless I've gotten to know you. And for the record, elitism isn't politically correct. But you already know how I feel about PC'ness :)

Contributing Members

Contributing members will have all of the abilities of the previous groups. The one obvious addition is that these people, when/if they should ever be designated, will be allowed to contribute blog entries, downloads, and gallery images of their own. They will be limited to being able to edit or delete content they submit, and if I can work it out, they'll also be in charge of determining if comments posted to their entries are considered spam. Don't expect to see too many folks getting access at this level though since it's not likely to actually get used here. It's more for the software development side of things right now.

Administrators

Officers in the Imperial Guard. Or, simply put, people who have complete access to all portions of the site. There's a very VERY slim chance of that ever being conferred on anyone but myself here. In fact, your odds of winning the Powerball lottery *AND* your state's own lottery on the same day with the same set of numbers are probably better. :)

So with that in mind, those of you who got emails already, if you could poke around and see what's what and make sure your stuff works. If you're going to set icons, keep in mind that those will be restricted to 40x40 in size, and the code will forcefully set that when you submit it. So pick something that's not going to be mangled by the process and we'll all be happier for it.

One other thing to note. I have of course included permissions support on the user accounts which can and will be further developed should my laziness result in people doing shit I don't want them doing. I reserve sole discretion on what that may be, so just use common sense if you have any.

Also be aware there will be bugs. The process of transitioning all the old data may have left some places with missing information. Please report those as you find them.

And opportunity knocks, the window is open for suggestions. I suggest if you plan to submit one, you be as detailed as possible and get it in before I lose interest in working on this code again.
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"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

I'm quickly seeing this, Samson. Seems like every armor item I wear (eyeglasses are armor? and a baseball cap??) suffers damage almost as rapidly as I do in a fight, but it's much harder and more expensive to repair than to heal.While I usually at least try to play without cheats once through before I start trying to play games in "god mode", would you mind terribly sharing the link to the cheat mod you'd found? The repair thing (and inventory capacity) are really already becoming rather tedious in an otherwise really good game (so far, at least). I don't think I'd agree that they went too far in complexity with this one as it's fairly true to the previous episodes in the franchise, but they could've gone a bit easier on repair and weight limits (or perhaps just weight of given items).

Thanks for the tip, I'm trying to work on small arms, sneak, repair, & medicine, but it seems like barter, speech, lockpick, explosives, & science are relatively important too. I'm not sure how much, if at all, big guns, energy weapons, & unarmed might be worth in this one, they were useful skills towards endgame in Fallout: Tactics.. Melee weapons, on the other hand, seem to be rather useful to have skills in at the very beginning of the game (hard to believe they'd still be vital further in), but not enough to really merit spending points on.

Well. Having been able to buff up my energy weapon skills a bit more and having found something useful as an energy weapon, I'm thinking it very likely to be useful from here on out. Not so much early on since you aren't going to find a lot of them at early levels.

I'd say right now the best skills to pick are small guns, sneak, lockpick, and science. Yes. There are an amazingly large number of locked doors and containers that will keep you out well into the game. Equally so for locked computer terminals. It's reached a level of irritation for me. And damn Bethesda for nerfing the "automatic attempt" mode that got me through so many locks in Oblivion. At least the lockpicking mini-game in Fallout isn't impossible to play. I wouldn't waste any time developing melee skills at all. Guns are power.

I finished the game. I'm solidly disappointed in Bethesda. There's just so little to do compared to Oblivion.

But I'm doing another character. My first was small arms, repair and medicine and then locks near the end - Samson already said what I think about the new lock mini-game. This one will be melee, sneak and medicine and probably speech in a level or two (only level two currently). The karma system drives me nuts, but mostly only because of the sound every time you lose karma, which is every time you steal something. There's an addon that gets rid of the sound though.

So far I'm using a few addons. I actually think the weight limit they give you is ridiculous. Army ruckpacks don't weigh as much as a level 1 character can carry. But I do use a 70% slower item degradation mod, a slight speed increase mod, a VATS re-balance mod (makes medium weapons more realistically accurate instead of completely full of fail), a mod that makes dialog frames taller so more fits in them (there are several of these but they don't go in like ESPs so I just picked one that only changed that instead of fifty other things like the rest) and a 3rd person camera centering mod (this one is very helpful for melee!).

I'm going to try to do all the side-quests and such this time as I just plowed through the main story on the first one. Still though, very disappointed on the whole.

I found a site with a lot of mods, so I've got a few in place now too, including the one for 70% less repairs, the weight one, and the speed one too. It's truely amazing how many are out so soon after release.
So far I have pretty much only been doing side quests, though the main story quest is progressing gradually too. With the couple of annoyances out of the way, I'm really enjoying the game (when I have time for it).