Thursday, March 30, 2017

DQ1 Remake Build 2.20 Beta Test Balance Updates

I'm still working out a lot of balance and scripting bugs in Catilin, and I've made the following changes because play balance was important to me.

* Lora is a lot more squishy. Originally, I set her defense to rise about to the same heights as Sarah, which makes her nigh invincible at times, so now I've reset her defensive power to be not much more better than Mara. Keeping both in the back row and loading them up with defense boosting equipment will keep both alive for sure, but both are now around the same level scale of physical defense given they are magic class users.

* In a future update, I'll switch out weapons to use a non MP costing version of the spells equipped items will let you cast, but for now I'm retaining it for further balance testing.

* There are two bosses in the Catilin area, and I've set one to be the "easy" boss and one to be the "hard" boss. The easy boss is NOT immune to insta-death, nor most other status effects.

* Icebolt got a boost since it was a pretty weak spell. Some other spells may get some tweaks as well.

Friday, March 24, 2017

Beta testing DQ1 Remake Build 2.20 now

I currently have a lot of beta testing for Build 2.20 of DQ1 Remake I'm doing now, and while I don't have half s much unfinished content to worry about like I did before, I need to test the following:

Play Balance: Catilin, much like in the original game and DQ3, is the shopping mall of my world, and you can get some excellent gear, some of which is but a step or two down from some of the best gear in the game, so I'm going to have to make sure play balance isn't set to make things too easy or hard regardless of your equipment.

Scripting: I have a considerable amount of game events that revolve around scripts in this build, and I have to make sure none of them are broken.

Next build preparations: In the next build, I plan to make the normal route of the game beatable as well as completely unlock the bonus dungeon and true ending route, Certain IRL events have made progress slow, but I hope to get on with it because I really want to finish this sooner or later.

Optimization: Some of my maps are getting tweaks to fix speed issues, have recently tweaked Catilin to use a smaller overall map size without losing any details, plan to do the same to other maps.

Consistency: In my continuing quest to make sure WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), I'm tweaking all maps to continue to have visual consistency when changing areas.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

I just discovered there are a bunch of crazed lunatics who think drinking industrial solvents cures autism

Before I address the main topic of this post, I just want to get something about autism out of the way first.

I have it. I live with it every day, and while it's very crippling in many ways, I know there is no cure for it and it will be with me til the day I die, and I accept that.

But there is nothing that would make me think in a million years that I could cure myself by drinking bleach or gasoline. If I wanted to kill myself, those would be effective means of doing so, but they are NOT sane medicinal solutions for a developmental disorder.

For starters, bleach is an incredibly powerful chemical used for cleaning. Some forms of bleach are indeed used in medical fields like dentistry to whiten teeth, but they are not intended to be ingested orally, merely used as a passive tooth whitener. Some forms of bleach are used for food preparation, like flour whitening, but this is again a passive use of bleach and the active components of the bleaching are generally removed from the final product to make the flour safe for baking and human consumption.

Past this, there is no legitimate reason anyone should drink bleach to cure any medical problem. The bond it forms with cells is so strong it generally kills most on mere contact by destroying the cell membrane with it's sheer corrosiveness. This is which bleach is used as an external disinfectant, and generally why you aren't supposed to drink it, because it does not discriminate between microbial bacteria and viruses and healthy human cells.

So, for the deranged loons out there who think you can cleanse yourself by drinking bleach, all you are doing is killing yourselves and telling yourself the garbage that comes out of your rectal canal and urine when you do this is purging infection.

No, you aren't. You are abrading away the internals of your body, which will leads to illness, internal bleeding, and death.

As for drinking gas, that's just as bad if not worse. It also can be used to break up oil products like bleach, and is not meant to be taken internally because, like bleach, it has extremely nasty corrosive properties that will kill healthy cell material.

I write this because, to my horror, I have discovered there are insane cults devoted to this madness like the "Church of Genesis II" who peddle this crazy poison called Mineral Miracle Solution, which is essentially industrial bleach these fools are not only killing themselves with, these monsters want to give it to children to cure autism, which it can't do.

It will certainly kill those children and/or leave them greatly crippled mentally and physically though.

In short, as an admitted autisitc, these people are insane. They cannot cure autistics of any age of anything.

Except the ability to keep breathing.


Sunday, March 12, 2017

More bug testing, more fixes for DQ1 Remake Beta 2.10V2

Currently play-testing the Hauksness area, and after I get it all balanced and make sure everything up to the Lord Edward quest works, I'll release a Beta 2.10V2 to replace the first version, which is a hot mess of bugs, bad balance, and overall fail.

In the meantime, incorporated the following fixes.

* Healing spells have had their resistance modifier check removed. I had to do this or healing spells would eventually be useless due to magic defense nullifying it at a certain point.

* Several enemies in the Hauksness region had a tone down, they were OP to an insane degree. They are still hard, but now they are much more bearable.

* Several more dialogue bugs were fixed and some tileset edits were done to the Great Caravan for better realism, like being able to walk under most open air stalls.

* In the 2.20 build, I'll refine the bonus dungeon balance a little, but I kept them somewhat harder than the regions around them since they all have some OP stuff (especially for Mara).

A plea for sanity to KIA users

I write this article with a sigh on my lips and a palm to my face because I thought that people are panicking too much on KIA.

Yes, mods have been squelching certain topics, and maybe on some of them, they could ease up a tad. However, I think a few arguments against them are a bit ridiculous.

1. MUH PAGE VIEWS!

I hate this argument. I'd rather 1 person who benefits from my work read it than have 100 people who only show up to throw rotten fruit at it, and while page views might have decreased, so long as it's of benefit to someone, I don't see the point in obsessing over this unless you are an attention whore.

2. Has the core mission changed? No.

KIA is about opposing crappy journalism, gamer news pertaining to censorship, culture, and politics related to gaming as well as general watchdogging on gaming in general. None of that has changed.

When the mods don dangerhair wigs and start declaring a need for safe spaces, then I'll start to panic, but as long as they aren't doing that, I think a few people should chill.

3. Some topics really do need to die.

There was a time I could look at KIA's newest thread feed and see a ton of garbage like unfunny shitposting, reposts of earlier topics, and covering every attention whoring idiot on both sides of GamerGate.

That has dropped by a massive degree, and I for one could not be more pleased.

4. Accusations are much less effective than logic.

Instead of screaming "Fascists!"at the mods whenever they make an unpopular change, I suggest coming up with a logical set of reasons their change is objectively terrible, with evidence to back it up, and then if they still put their heads in the sand or treat you like the bad guy for being reasonable in your dissent, then start to worry. Until then, I think a few people are going at this a little half-cocked and need to calm down a little.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

The Book of Leviticus: Cliff Notes Edition

The Book of Leviticus is seen as one of the more 'boring' books in the Bible, but I just happen to be painfully autistic and love it, mostly because I find it's breakdown of the rules for the Israelites interesting.

Below is a simplified summary of the book, with some trivia explained:

(Unless otherwise specified, all offerings had to be without defect)

Burnt Offerings: Compulsory offerings where an animal was totally cooked to ashes on the altar for God alone. Only male goats/lambs or bulls were acceptable.

Grain Offerings: Semi-compulsory offerings by themselves, though sometimes required alongside other offerings. Either unleavened bread or wafers of bread, prepared with oil and salt, with a portion sprinkled with incense before burned on the altar. The priests could eat the rest. No honey or yeast could be mixed in. Newly harvested grain was sacrificed at the start of the harvest season, same general rules otherwise.

Fellowship Offerings: AKA "Peace offerings". Semi-compulsory by themselves, compulsory during certain times of the year as part of certain events. Priests could eat certain portions, but the rest was burned on the altar for God. Fat and blood had to be drained out and not eaten, so the meat had to be well done and as lean as possible.

** Thankfulness Offerings: Same as above but with a grain offering mixed in, offered as an expression of gratitude.

Sin Offerings: Offered for breaking a commandment of God's without intentional malice. Offerings ranged from young bulls to female goats, depending on the stature of the party who committed the offense.. Same general rules otherwise for fellowship offerings. The poor could offer birds like doves or fine flour as alternative sacrifices. If prepared in clay pots, they had to be broken afterwards, but bronze pots were to be rinsed and scoured.

Guilt Offerings: Unlike sin offerings, these were offered when God was specifically displeased, rather than just for sinning in general. Hefty penalty of a ram as demanded as payment. Priests could keep the hide of the animal for themselves.

Vow Offerings: Offerings made as a promise: Whatever the sacrifice was, rules mentioned above apply depending on type of offering.

Freewill Offerings: Offered for no particular reason than wanting to. Only offering where animals could be deformed or stunted and it would still be accepted.

Firstfruits Offerings: Offered at the beginning of harvest season, all first harvested plants and animals had a portion sacrificed as a wave offering. Often a drink offering of a quart of wine was poured on the altar as well.

Drink Offering: Often a supplementary offering added to other offerings, generally a quart of wine was poured on the altar.

Wave Offerings: A sacrificed item had a portion waved before the altar. These portions could be eaten by the priests unless otherwise stated by God.

No Fat or Blood Provision: The fat of herd/flock animals was forbidden to eat. Blood was forbidden because it was the animals lifeforce, and eating it was considered bloodshed by God. Essentially, meat had to be well done or not eaten at all.

Clean and Unclean Food:

Animals: Had to have a split hoof completely divided and a herbivore. Otherwise, could not be eaten.

Seafood; Had to have fins and scales.

Birds: Pigeons, quail, and doves could be eaten.

Insects: Locusts, grasshoppers, and katydids could be eaten.

Unclean animals could not be eaten or have their carcasses touched, or the one who did so would be unclean and need to be cleansed.

Purification Offerings: Offered by women due to having a child. After a waiting period, they had to offer a lamb and dove, or two doves or two pigeons if poor. One was a burnt offering, one was a sin offering.

Skin Diseases: Priests were to inspect various diseases of the flesh, and were to either isolate the affected party or pronounce them clean. Until pronounced clean, they had to live outside the camp and announce they were unclean to passerby's.

Cleansing required a burnt, grain, and guilt offering after a week of confirmed cleanliness.

Mildew: Clothes and houses with it were to be isolated, cleaned, and reused after a certain period, unless it kept coming back, in which case the articles were destroyed.

Cleansing required two birds. One killed, their blood mixed in a pot of fresh water, then it was sprinkled over the live bird which was set free after the mildewed item was cleaned.

Unclean discharges: Sexual fluids or bleeding wounds. Same rules of skin diseases, cleansing required two birds, one for sin, one as a burnt offering.

Day of Atonement: All day ritual where multiple animals for sin and burnt offering were sacrificed, with a goat led outside the camp to carry away all sin of the people. Where the term "scapegoat" is derived.

Unlawful sexual relations; Incest, adultery, or sleeping with a woman having her period. Homosexuality and bestiality were also forbidden, with these two carrying an instant death penalty, all others had various penalties, generally revolving around exile from the other people.

Various laws: People had to leave grain for the poor and show respect to the disabled and elderly, among other various laws like prohibitions against practicing magic, not getting tattoos, not encouraging prostitution, using honest weights and measures, as well as showing hospitality to foreigners.

Rules for priests: Had to marry virgins, could not marry a divorced woman. All members of the priesthood had to be without physical infirmity or they could not be priests, though they could still eat the offering portions. Ordinary priests could make themselves unclean to attend to dying or ill family members, but the high priest could not even do that.

Sabbaths: On the seventh day of the week, no regular work could be done.

Passover: Began at midnight on first month of Jewish calendar. For seven days people had to eat bread without yeast. A burnt offering had to be prepared as well and no work could be done on the first and seventh days.

Feast of Weeks: Seven weeks and fifty days after Firstfruits were sacrificed, this began. No work was done on this day, two loaves of bread and seven male lambs were sacrficed, along with a young bull and two rams. A mix of burnt, grain, sin, and fellowship offerings were made on this day.

Feast of Trumpets: On the first say of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar no regular work was done on a day commemorated with trumpet blasts. A burnt offering was made on this day to God.

Feast of Tabernacles: Began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, lasted eight days.No regular work was done on days one and eight. Multiple types of all offering were required to be made each day. Also, all Israelites had to live in tents like they did before the Promised land was theirs as a reminder of their former status during this time.

Oil and Bread Before The Altar: Oil for the lamps had to be changed out regularly for the altar lights, made of pressed olives. Bread was to be set on the altar table regularly for each Sabbath as a burnt grain offering.

Blasphemy: A capital offense, punishable by stoning.

Sabbath Year: On the seventh year after initial sowing of the fields, the seventh year they were to lie fallow.

Year of Jubilee; Every forty-nine years. On the fiftieth year, it was not only a Sabbath year, this meant all Israelites could reclaim any property they had leased out (family property could not be permanently sold) and be freed from any bondage by debt. Houses could be redeemed one year after their sale in this time, while lands was always to be redeemed.

Rewards and Punishments for Obedience and Disobedience: God promised blessings for obeying him and curses for disobeying him.

Redemption of the Lord's property: If any property was set aside for God by a vow, it would be given a special value and it would be added to until the Year of Jubilee, when it was tallied up. No thing consecrated to God could be switched out in this interval, it would only be added to the existing vow, and could not be redeemed back from God later.

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Buld 2.10V2 and Build 2.20 progress of DQ1 Remake

I've finally gotten up to the Hauksness area for testing, and I've already fixed some more issues

* Game balance has been further tweaked and polished. Lora gains levels slightly faster than everyone else, but I'm leaving this alone, since she can be recruited at a point where she'll need it.

* Fixed odd scripting bug where a 'New Game+ tag would be added to save files, turned out to be a control switch issue, I have no NG+ features built in or planned for.

* Several more remnants of the old dialogue system were removed. The game was effectively unwinnable past defeating the dragon guarding the princess, this has been fixed and Build 2.10V2 will be released when I'm done with the Hauksness region, will supplant my previous 2.10 build.

* New art for the dragon's portrait has been added.

* Noticed a very rare crash bug that occurs when changing through multiple different types of windows while changing scenes in quick succession. I haven't been able to duplicate it enough to the point it's worrisome, so unless it keeps cropping up, I consider it a low priority bug for now.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Top five dumbest people in the Bible

A friend of mine who read my previous post about Bible humor pointed out that the Bible was amazingly honest about a lot of stupid people in the Bible, and even though the Bible is a mostly human document with some quotes from God, it's still quite impressive for the level of unvarnished human stupidity it covers without trying to whitewash it.

And since some of the mind boggling idiocy is funny in hindsight, I'd like to to cover the top five dumbest people in the Bible.


5. Nabal, the guy who decided to piss off David for no good reason.

This guy seemed rather appropriate to start off with, because his very name means someone who is a fool, and while his stupidity is rather brief, it's still astoundingly dumb.

During David's days wandering around as a mercenary and blade for hire, he found some really rich dude named Nabal with a ton of livestock who was currently doing a lot of harvest work, and David generously offered to provide security for his farm animals as well as farm hands in exchange for room and board for himself and his men.

David did not have a reputation for cheating on these agreements nor was he the type to force himself on people, so Nabal could have either said "thanks, but no thanks" or made the legitimate point David was basically a fugitive at the time and that he didn't want to be seen as aiding and abetting and that he wanted David and his men to leave.

Nabal did neither. Instead, he basically went out of his way to call David a worthless POS, accused him of horrible things, and was extremely nasty about wanting David and friends to get out and stay out.

This was incredibly stupid since David had a pretty decent force of armed men at this point with an impressive military reputation, and while David was the kind of guy who would have accepted a polite refusal, Nabal's refusal to be anything less than a complete and utter dick pissed off David enough he told his guys to sharpen their knives so they could be put in Nabal's face.

Enter Abigail, Nabal's wife, who realized how much of a dumbass her husband was, and as David was marching his forces to Nabal's fields, she sent herself as a messenger with a generous peace offering and told David her husband was a rude, drunk, stupid lout, she apologized for him being such a dick, and basically begged him to not go off half cocked because she was married to an idiot.

David had the good sense to back down and accept this, even thanking her for getting him to calm down, and later, as Nabal's hangover from his latest alcohol binge wore off, he basically had a heart attack after his wife informed him he barely avoided having a huge group of pissed off mercenaries turning him into a human pincushion.

He died soon after, and Abigail, who had essentially had to marry the guy because of family and not out of love, decided to hook up with David.

The moral in this one is that Nabal was Exhibit A for God's description of the kind of moron who does utterly dumb things out of arrogance and drunkeness that he generally allows bad things to happen, especially when, as I pointed out, he could have avoided all that by exercising an iota of common sense.

4. Uzziah (also called Amaziah), the otherwise good king who made God mad in the dumbest way possible.

The Bible is pretty harsh even on the good people who screw up horribly, and Uzziah was one of the people who otherwise did a lot of good things, but one stunning moment of arrogant stupidity on his part pretty much pissed all that away.

Uzziah was, for most of his reign, considered a good king by biblical standards, and essentially called a devout servant of God. Unfortunately, in his later years, he let all the praise the Lord gave him for this get to his head and did something that was basically the equivalent of cooking bacon while naked.

He tried to take on the role of high priest in the temple of the Lord.

For those who didn't read Exodus and Leviticus, he was not of the Levite clan, whom God had set aside to be his priests, so strike one for being a moron. Second, God made it quite clear on multiple occasions if anyone other than a priest approached his altar to do as the priests did, death was the consequence, so Uzziah was damned lucky God didn't just kill him on the spot, something he should have known already, so strike two.

Strike three was him essentially doubling down on his stupidity when the priests tried to tell him to leave and quit trying to do their jobs before God visited payback for his defiance on him, and instead of heeding their warnings, he starting cursing them out.

For his increasingly idiotic insistence he could do what he wanted, God struck him down on the spot with crippling leprosy, and since no one with disease was to be in the temple of the Lord, the priests wasted no time in drop kicking Uzziah out of the temple as fast as they could.

Keep in mind prior to this he had been doing God's commands faithfully for decades, and then he decided to toss it all away one day simply because he let that go to his head, and his punishment was to lay in bed the rest of days, permanently unclean and unable to stand before the altar of the Lord and crippled with agonizing pain because he refused to follow instructions not to do something God himself had made clear for hundreds of years was the most stupid thing you could ever do.

3. Ahab, the king God considered the absolute worst, the one who could have changed his ways, but didn't.

I had a hard time choosing the third most stupid person in the Bible, but after some thought, I'd have to go with Ahab, who, while not the dumbest guy in the Bible, especially since he had some moments of pulling his head out of his butt and doing the right thing, ultimately wound up still deserving this spot.

Ahab was one of the kings of Israel after the split of Judah and Israel, and Ahab's biggest mistake, right off the bat, was marrying a woman named Jezebel.

Jezebel was such a nasty harridan she's now an actual word for every woman who acts just like her in modern day, which should give everyone a clue she was bad news. She was the daughter of the king of Sidon and Ahab married her as part of a political alliance. Unfortunately, due to fact Ahab was totally spineless, he let her get away with whatever she wanted, which included inporting tons of pagan priests and idols, persecuting the prophets of God just to please her, and basically doubling down on pissing off God time and again to the point God decided to punish all of Israel with a total denial of rain for three years until He was acknowledged as the only deity with any legitimacy.

Around the time of the showdown on Mount Carmel, where God proved yes, he is GOD, and Baal was little more than a powerless statue, Ahab should've rolled back his prophet persecution pogrom, right?

Nope. Because Jezebel was pissed that the priests of Baal were executed for being false prophets (even though they had been proven so beyond all doubt), Ahab basically let her continue to persecute the prophets of the Lord, with Elijah, the guy who proved God was the only true god, at the top of the shit list.

Despite this, Ahab was not a total idiot. He did have some moments of common sense and trusting on God instead of stone statues and carved tree trunks, but he still continued to piss off God by basically rolling over and playing dead for Jezebel's God hating wishes and running Israel into the ground by not putting a stop to the rampant paganism.

This eventually came to a head when Ahab wanted the lands of a guy named Naboth, Naboth said 'sorry, not selling my family land", Ahab went home butthurt, and then he was stupid enough to follow a plan Jezebel cooked up to frame Naboth for trumped up BS, kill him for it, then take his lands.

Before we go on, we need to explain a few things here. Way back when the Promised Land was taken by the Israelites, every family got their own portion of the land they could pass down the family line, and according to the laws of God, the land could not be permanently sold or transferred, and one could refuse to lease out their land if they chose, as Ahab wanted it as a permanent possession and the law of God did not allow him to do that.

After this, Elijah showed back up again as Ahab and Jezebel were surveying the lands they got over Naboth's dead body, and God was so cheesed off he had Elijah tell Ahab his family lines would be utterly destroyed, his blood would be licked up by the dogs, and that Jezebel would not have a decent burial, instead, dogs would eat her corpse, which was the biblical equivalent of God teabagging your dignity even in death.

Ahab had one of his rare moments of realizing what a stupendous jackass he had been, completely humbled himself before God, and proved so willing to say he was sorry that God granted him a bit of a mercy, saying he was still gonna wipe out Ahab's family, but only after Ahab croaked.

Up until Ahab's death, he mostly tried to do the right thing, but his penchant for being a dumbass reared it's ugly head one last time when it came time for a battle with the Arameans (i.e. - modern day Syria). He and the king of Judah Jehoshaphat teamed up for this battle and decided to get some advice from the prophets of God, who all said they'd win.

Ahab and Jehoshaphat were a bit skeptical of this, so they called in a prophet Ahab didn't usually like because he always delivered bad yet accurate prophecy, and he said the battle would be a rout and Ahab had the guy put in prison, planning to let him out after he came back from the battle just to prove he wasn't going to be defeated, even though the prophet who told him the actual truth said Ahab was not gonna come back alive.

Sure enough, despite a brief ruse where Ahab disguised himself as a common soldier, he got shot by an arrow and bled out in his chariot, and sure enough, dogs licked up his blood afterward.

Jezebel met her fate not long after, just as was prophesied, and sure enough, the same guy who had Jezebel thrown from her bedroom window to impact on the bricks went and slaughtered as many of Ahab's family as he could, and a few decades later, Ahab's family line ceased to be.

The moral in this story is that Ahab was considered one of the worst kings ever because despite his occasional moments of decency, he let himself make the dumbest decisions ever despite proof those decisions were stupid, and for that reason, he is the third dumbest person in the Bible.

2. Jeroboam, the guy who was given ten of the twelve tribes of Israel by God, and decided to screw God over anyway.

Jeroboam is an interesting guy. He's a great example of getting a windfall he never expected, then going out of one's way to spit in the face of the guy who gave it to him.

He used to be a low level pencil pusher for King Solomon, and around the time Solomon started falling away from God and racking up a lot of resentment from the Almighty, a prophet named Ahijah pulled Jeroboam aside on his lunch break one day and said he had a message from God.

Ahijah then tore ten pieces out of twelve from a new cloak, handed them to Jeroboam, and told him God was so pissed off with Solomon defying him he was going to take ten of the twelve tribes away from Solomon's family line to punish him.

Soon after Jeroboam had to go run and hide in Egypt until Solomon kicked the bucket to avoid a hit that was put out on him, and around the time Solomon's son Rehoboam was to be ordained as king, even Jeroboam showed up along with the people, who made a request that Rehoboam be less of a dick than his old man was in the end and they'd stay loyal.

After Rehoboam shot himself in the foot to the point he should have died from shock and blood loss, Jeroboam took advantage of this, walked out with ten of the tribes, and the kingdom split, with Jeroboam running Israel, while the remaining tribes established Judah.

It was at this point Jeroboam decided to go full retard. Since Judah had the temple of the Lord, he was worried everyone making regular pilgrimages there would make everyone in Israel defect from him, so he established altars to idols as a substitute.

Needless to say, God was infuriated this guy chose to grab the bottle of stupid pills and upend the whole thing, so a prophet was sent to call Jeroboam out.

Jeroboam pointed a finger in the direction of the prophet for the guards to kill the guy.

And that's when the hand he used withered into uselessness and the pagan altars split open like busted watermelons.

Jeroboam had the good sense to realize "okay, God ain't kidding", so he did the necessary groveling to get his hand back to normal and let the prophet leave without harm.

Then he went right back to doing what he did to piss off God and kept going until sometime later when his son fell ill, so he sent his wife in disguise to see the prophet Ahijah again to ask if the son of Jeroboam would be alright.

Ahijah immediately saw through the disguise courtesy of the Lord, and Jeroboam got the message via his wife God was MAD, and because Jeroboam had to be an idiot who betrayed his Lord and literal benefactor, his own son would die, and the rest of his family line would be wiped out, and just to rub salt in the wound, the only member of his family Israel would mourn over was his son, because unlike his father or his other family members, he was the only person who God thought had any good in him.

Sure enough, Jeroboam Jr. died, Jeroboam himself followed soon after, and several stupid kings later, his family line was indeed wiped out.

The moral to this monument to stupidity was that he was basically handed a free lunch, then went out of his way to screw over the guy who gave to him, knowing well in advance this was a really stupid idea.

Basically, don't be that guy.

1. The Dumbest Moron in the Bible, the One and Only Rehoboam, son of Solomon, the guy who knew he'd lose everything if he decided to be stupid and did it anyway despite knowing it was pants on head retarded.

And here we are, the stupidest man in the Bible, the son of the ironically smartest mortal in the Bible, and as we'll see, the brains were NOT hereditary.

Anyway, before we go into Rehoboam proving to the world why he's a gold medalist in the Darwin Awards, we need a little background first.

His dad was Solomon, the guy who asked God for wisdom, got it, then promptly quit relying on it and living like some indolent pimp with a hoarding fetish, picking up tons of foreign wives and letting them shit up his kingdom with idolatry, buying himself all sorts of expensive crap and working people to death on ridiculous construction projects, and generally just being a rich jackass.

God was not pleased with this, to the point he had the prophet Ahijah tell the second dumbest man in the Bible he'd get most of Solomon's kingdom later to make Solomon pay for being an idiot. And, even though Solomon put out a failed hit on the guy who was going to screw over his descendants, he knew he had screwed up epically, to the point the book of Ecclesiastes is one long admission by Solomon he had been a total idiot.

Once Solomon died, all the crap he had pulled had ground down the loyalty of the Israelites, and most of them were ready to tell his son to go screw himself unless things got better.

And so, with Jeroboam himself as mentioned above present, they presented Rehoboam an ultimatum:

Either be less of a dick than Solomon was or most of us walk out of here and leave you holding the bag.

Showing that maybe he had inherited an iota of wisdom from dear old dad, he asked them to give him three days to think over his response.

He first asked all the smart people in his court how to answer, and their answer was the obvious one: Give the people what they want, it's in your best interest.

Then he asked all the rich snobs who didn't have to work a day in their lives and didn't care how many people worked to death to make them comfortable how to answer, and their response was to tell the people he was gonna be an even bigger jackass and if the people didn't like it, he was gonna make them regret crossing him even more than they ever regretted serving under Solomon.

His answer to the people was the one that was peak retard, and before we continue, we need reflect on a few things.

He knew his people were ready to revolt. He knew someone was promised to take most of his people away if he answered poorly, and he knew God himself had said this very day would come and that God was bent on punishing him and anyone else in Solomon's family line if they didn't do what was smart.

He knew all this, and he still chose to tell the people he was going to be the biggest jackass on the planet.

As mentioned in the section about Jeroboam, we all know how that turned out, and Rehoboam still didn't really get a clue through the rest of his reign over a mere shadow of the people he used to rule over.

In summation, he's the biggest idiot in the Bible because he knew without question being a fool would cost him, was given an extremely easy way to avoid the worst, and the advice he was given that was good only a brain-damaged moron would reject.

Unfortunately, Rehoboam just happened to be that mentally defective.

And given the sheer magnitude and sheer avoidability of his titanic folly, he earns the award of dumbest person in the Bible.

And if anyone else is in any way capable of wisdom, do yourself a favor, never be this stupid, if only to avoid paying a price as obscenely high as this fool did.

Looks like I need to release Buld 2.10 V2 after all

I discovered some major, gamebreaking crashes in the Cave To Rimuldar, remnants of my old dialogue system were to blame, and since this is plot critical, I will be releasing a bugfix version for this.

A few other changes will be in this, another major bugfix and a change to getting Lora in your party.

* I discovered, thanks to an oversight when implementing the battle rows code, I made all Club and spear type weapons unusable if your character was in the front row. Since there are few club or spear weapons, I did not notice this until I equipped an Iron Spear and noticed Roto and Sarah could not attack at all, though they could user magic/special attacks. This oversight has been corrected.

* Lora will join the party at Level 13. I have redone all the game balance so it's ideal to be a certain levels, and believe this should be reasonable for her to join at. I tried to assign a variable condition to the Hero's current level so she'd join at the same level, but the game always kept adding +1 level to her level count when she joined.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Just some amusing observations about the Bible

There are a few things in the Bible that I have to admit have always amused me because when I sat down and did a little thinking about them, some of the things that occurred to me struck me as funny.

1. That scene in Acts where Herod is speaking to the crowds, they all proclaim his voice is like that of god instead of man, and then it's reported that since he didn't give glory to God, he was eaten by the worms and died.

I have to wonder, does this mean a bunch of worms consumed him from the inside out, or did they literally pop out of the ground like in Dune and eat him alive? Either way, it's a blackly comical image if you ask me.

2. In Leviticus, if you made a grain offering, you were supposed to offer cakes or wafers made of fine flour, or crushed heads of new grain if it was an offering of the firstfruits.

I did a little research, and I realized that technically, corn harvested when the seeds are dry count as a grain product, and popcorn would be about the same size as the wafers of grain specified, and since grain offerings were supposed to be prepared with oil and salt, it would have been acceptable to offer a bowl of popcorn as a grain offering. Even corn itself offered as a firstfruit offering would be acceptable, as you can harvest dried corn and offer the seeds dried and crushed like you would heads of wheat.

3. In another moment of black comedy from Leviticus, Aaron's sons Nadab and Elihu screw up, offer fire not consecrated to God to his altar, get immolated for it. Sin offerings are made in restitution for this, and Moses later chews out Aaron for not eating the portion of the sin offering alloted to the priests.

Aaron's response amounts to "My sons got burnt up, you want me to eat meat that was sacrificed to atone for their screw-up like I'm supposed to be happy they died?"

Moses' reaction was basically "Yeah, you got a point there."

Even more interesting, Aaron was correct in that he was not compelled to eat his portion if he didn't want to. As defined by God, it was a privilege granted the priests, not an explicit order that they had to do on pain of death.

It was also a nice loophole around the whole prohibition on the high priest (which Aaron was) not letting himself become unkempt and letting himself go if a close relative died. Since he couldn't do that, he settled for denying himself some free barbecue to show he was in mourning, and since there was no rule saying he had to eat his portion of the sin offering (it could either be burned up or another priest could eat it), it kept the rules from being broken while letting Aaron show he was in mourning at the same time.

4. Around the time King David was being chased out of his own kingdom by his rebellious son Absalom, he got two sets of advice on how to deal with his dad before he could strike back.

The smart chancellor Ahithophel knew David had a long history as a guerrilla fighter and had almost been killed by Saul more than once because David couldn't withstand sustained pursuit, so he advised to get a strong force of soldiers they could drum up ASAP and take him out immediately.

However, a guy who pretended to defect from David suggested something really dumb: Wait till you have a massive army, then crush your dad with overwhelming might to prove you're the mightiest in the land.

The latter advice was really dumb because it gave David time to gather his own forces and prepare for that sort of crap, and when Ahithophel saw this advice was swallowed by Absalom hook, line, and sinker, he hung himself because he realized this was gonna go so wrong there was no way he wasn't gonna get executed once David won.

5. Also, the elements of Absalom's rebellion are also funny in a really dark way if you think about it.

First, he establishes his claim as king in Hebron, the same town David did before the last elements of Saul's family got killed and the rest of Israel decided to accept David as king.

He then further decides to rub salt in the wound by taking all the ladies in David's court and sleeping with them, in public, as a metaphorical and even in some ways literal, "fuck you dad".

This wound up imploding after Absalom wound up pushing daises, but it's still hilarious how he went out of his way to spite his own father, especially when you remember earlier on David outright forgave Absalom for cold blooded murder of his brother Amon (who raped their sister Tamar).

6. And, as if the comedy in David's messed up family isn't hilarious enough, it gets even more comically stupid in the case of the succession crisis between Solomon and his brother Adonijah.

Around the time David was dying, he made it pretty clear Solomon was getting the throne. However, Adonijah, being older, assumed since he was the older brother it was gonna go to him by default, and so tried to seize the crown anyway, prompting David to speed up Solomon's coronation from his deathbed, and when Adonijah heard this, he basically peed himself in fear when Solomon found him in the temple of the Lord clutching the horns of the altar like Linus does his security blanket.

Solomon was actually pretty nice about it and told him to just go back home and he'd let the whole thing slide.

Before I go on, this was pretty merciful, since royal succession crises can end in rivers of blood, so you'd think Adonijah would be grateful he was let off so easily and keep his mouth shut.

Nope. He instead attempted a backdoor into gaining power again, by asking Solomon's mom give him a woman who basically served as David's bedwarmer in his old age (she slept in the same bed to keep him warm since he found it hard to stay warm by himself) to be his wife, which was essentially, had it gone through, been Solomon's mom all but saying Adonijah still had a legit claim to the throne.

When Solomon heard this, he decided he had been an idiot to be so merciful to his older brother, and he basically declared Adonijah had earned the right to see what his entrails looked like in broad daylight.

7. And for my last mention of hilarious stupidity in the Bible, let's cover Joab, the bloodthirsty yet competent CINC of Israel's armies under David.

Joab had two brothers, Abishai and Asahel, and all three served David with distinction, but of them all, Joab lived the longest, and we'll get to why in a moment.

Joab was essentially David's right hand man after David became king in Hebron after Saul died, and while engaged in a civil war with one of Saul's remaining family members, David wanted the war to end in as little bloodshed as possible, since Saul has been anointed by God and had been murdered, and David had made a promise to Saul's son Johnathan he would show as much mercy to Saul's family as he could. Another reason was that Saul's former right hand man Abner was propping up the Saul loyalists, and since Abner had been David's former boss once, David really wanted to win Abner over to him as well.

Joab didn't care, and after a brief parley/exhibition match between the two sides ended in some bloodshed, Asahel chased after Abner, who had similar feelings of "can't we just end this peacefully?", Asahel refused to stop chasing him after multiple attempts by Abner to get him to cease pursuit failed, and so Abner had to kill him in self defense.

Later, Abner briefly convinced Joab and Abishai to let it go because of that, and they did, temporarily, but Joab later decided to screw up Abner eventually being willing to defect over to David and had him killed in cold blood because he wanted Abner to pay for Asahel's death, even though it had been self defense and it had been war, that's how that sort of thing works.

David was pissed at Joab for this, but since the death of Abner had been of tactical benefit by crippling the Saul remnants, not to mention Joab was deemed scarier if he defected to the enemy, David let him off then with a strong condemnation, though he went out of his way to apologize for Abner's murder, even giving him a state funeral in the process.

However, Joab still remained as David's top general, and to give Joab credit, he was an effective guy at the job, and when David decided to off Uriah so he could have his wife, Joab reluctantly but loyally followed David's orders to basically set Uriah up to be killed.

Later, Joab's murder streak got bigger around the time Absalom rebelled, and while Joab joined David, David put a guy called Amasa in Joab's place as top general, and Joab didn't like that, and Amasa wound up getting shanked later. But before that, despite David's explicit order to capture, not kill Absalom, Joab found the kid caught in a tree by his hair and had him killed on the spot anyway.

Again, to be fair to Joab, he did make a good point to David later to quit insulting the guys who fought for him during the rebellion by spending more time mourning Absalom than honoring their sacrifice, and even Joab had the good sense to realize that when David later called a census of the fighting men of Israel (instead of relying on the Lord to bring victory) that it was really dumb idea, but David ignored this and God made him pay for it later.

Joab's karma finally caught up with him around the time of Solomon-Adonijah succession crisis, because as part of David's deathbed orders to his son, he wanted Joab to be made to pay for all the murders he had tallied up. And, when Joab stupidly backed Adonijah for the throne, he gave Solomon the perfect excuse to have Joab killed right in front of the altar of God, where like Solomon's older brother he was clutching onto the altar's horns like a coward, hoping no one would kill him in a holy place.

The dark irony in this is that the price for murder was one's life in exchange for those who killed another, so by slaying Joab in front of God's altar, it was essentially a guilt offering to atone for Joab's murders, so Joab's little plan was a failure before it even started.

It bears mentioning that despite all of Joab's military accomplishments, he never made it into the ranks of the Thirty, which was basically David's version of a special ops team of badasses, while even Abishai made the list, as did Uriah, who David had arranged to have killed (it was mentioned prior to this Uriah was an honorable soldier of David's who refused to be derelict in his duty even on orders from the king because he had an obligation to his military duties, which was part of the reason David had him arranged to die), yet Joab never made the list.

As additional salt in Joab's wounds, even his ARMORBEARERS made the ranks of the Thirty, one of them being of Ammonite descent, a tribe God had had a longstanding hatred of for screwing over his chosen people, but Joab himself was never considered one of them.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Stiil working on DQ1 Remake Beta 2.20

Other crap has delved into my time working on DQ1 Remake further, but I have gotten some more progress done.

* A lot more crash bugs involving the spit and pencil version of the old dialogue system removed.

* Enabled a few bonus dungeons I hadn't completely in earlier builds, like the Tower of Kol. Don't go in unless you have the Final Key (you'll need it to get far past the entrance anyway), or you WILL get slaughtered, it has enemies you will be way out of your league to fight when you first can go in.

* Made a lot less enemies capable of spamming status spells. They'll still do it, just not to the point it's like they are trolling you. And speaking of spells, giving Mara a mild boost, since an earlier tweak for balance seems to made Mara a bit TOO weak as a mage, which is ironic, as she was essentially an "I win" button in earlier builds, so I'm gonna even her out to be a tad stronger than at present.

* Found the new item limit is great for balance, since it's not half as easy to fill your inventory with healing items and spam them anymore.

* Everything up to gates of Rimuldar is tested, still ironing out balance issues from that point at present.

Gamergate 2 is on, and I want no part of it

 This will not be a long post, but I just want to make clear, as someone who was involved in the first go-round of Gamergate, I want no part...