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Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

wesnoth.org

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Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#151
post #150
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place. What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial. Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The m…

To take this logic to it's extreme: Would you have signed up for a job in Nazi Germany that required clearance? If not, it's all down to value judgements and your personal evaluation of the current power structures. Personally, I would feel guilty if I did anything that empowered the Trump regime.

First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics.

Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children. What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Children are literally the absolute concept of innocence, and a baby is beyond culpability!

That is... unless you're advocating some form of weird let babies starve, because of the crimes of their parents?! Which is effectively along the lines of suggesting ethnic cleansing???

Any form of ideological stance which is this extreme, is realistically actually inline with fascism, for it puts politics before people.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#152
post #139
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward, even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.

even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place. What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial. Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The m…

> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.

Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc. In that case if you consider some of the jobs to be morally bankrupt, you consider all of them to potentially be morally bankrupt. You could go through all the hassle then turn it down, or leave during a probationary period when you discover the details, but that is a significant wasted time risk to take.

> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.

Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them right now nor would I have at all at numerous points over recent years. And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related.

> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?

For some, it has become true. That time is now or before.

As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal, I entirely understand people not thinking that they've got the nerve for that. Especially given that the first thing a bad administration does to someone raising concerns is to sack and blacklist them in a way that will affect future employment opportunities.

> such as helping to feed poor children

The “but think of the children” argument cuts both ways: many governments have, directly or indirectly, done and continue to do, terrible things to children. It may not be possible in the short/medium term to do anything truly useful about that (you go try tell the current administration over there to refund the good works that have been gutted recently and see how seriously they take you!) and dealing with the crap until things stear back towards the good is too much for some.

Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#153
post #151
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take this logic to it's extreme: Would you have signed up for a job in Nazi Germany that required clearance? If not, it's all down to value judgements and your personal evaluation of the current power structures. Personally, I would feel guilty if I did anything that empowered the Trump regime.

First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics. Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children . What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Chi…

> First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate.

True. Though to be frank, before typing my longer response I did consider just telling you the same about the “but forget everything else and think of the children” line of reasoning.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#154
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place. What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial. Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The m…

> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting. Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc. In that case if you consider some of the jobs to be morally bankrupt, you consider all of them to potentially be morally bankrupt.…

> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.

Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc.

I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point? It certainly doesn't counter or answer the point I raise.

> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.

Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them

Well I do blame them. And I specifically excluded the military. As I mentioned, the government is a vast and immense entity. Further, my response was to someone saying that to get a clearance would be morally bankrupt. I provided examples as to why that may not be the case. What you are doing, is painting all government as bad, because a specific team is in play right now.

This is literally what is wrong with the US currently. 90% of the issues are due to team politics on both sides. Politics before people. Politics before sensibility. Politics, instead of examining the moral and ethical considerations of each action one takes.

> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?

As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal,

You do not have to fight corruption to take a job feeding babies. Or the large amount of good that the government does. You can simply take and do that job. That's my point here. You're doing what the poster upstream did, painting the entire body of the US government as a single entity.

It's OK to say "I don't think this part of government is ethical, I won't work for that part of government", but to say that any government job is morally repugnant is disgusting.

> such as helping to feed poor children

The “but think of the children” argument

It's not a "think of the children" argument in any traditionally way. That argument is typically defined by taking rights away from someone, to "protect kids". This is simply feeding the poor, and babies. No comparison.

Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.

The government is not bad. A tiny part (the current administration) is the problem.

To give context, you'd need a string of "one team" government for decades to turn the course of the entire government. Programs enacted by both US teams are currently in play. Some programs are decades old, and supported by both parties.

Anyone who thinks that a certain team gets into power, and then "all government bad" is not thinking clearly. What you need to do, is look at what each department and each program does. Determine if they are good. It absolutely does not matter which administration passed it, or when. All that matters is "is this thing good?".

The government should be viewed as series of literally tens of thousands of companies. Each has its own task, provides specific services, and so on. To paint them all bad is nutty.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#155
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Minetest Heads up: they recently changed name to Luanti to get away from the "it's Minecraft but worse" perception. They also un-bundled the built-in game and are trying to be a game engine these days. I recommend looking into Age of Mending. It's still in alpha, but if it's ever finished it'll give Minecraft a good run for its money, especially among the builder-minded players.

Luanti had an annoying habit of regenerating terrain while I was still walking on it. In my book it is very much still "minecraft but worse." I was on a very weak ARM device though.

Regenerating? Luanti doesn't ever regenerate terrain. Do you mean generating the first time? Or loading? I've had it happen that I run into the edge of the mapblock and can't walk into the next one because it's loading or still generating. Maybe give it another chance, because I can't picture the behavior you're describing.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#156
post #151
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take this logic to it's extreme: Would you have signed up for a job in Nazi Germany that required clearance? If not, it's all down to value judgements and your personal evaluation of the current power structures. Personally, I would feel guilty if I did anything that empowered the Trump regime.

First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics. Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children . What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Chi…

First, I purposefully avoided drawing direct comparisons to the Nazis, I only used the extreme end of the logic to illustrate my point, that it's a spectrum and value judgement, not an absolute.

Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.

Along those lines, who said anything about crimes of parents?

Let me be more concrete: Would you feed children on camera so the propaganda apparatus can film a movie about a concentration camp titled "The Führer gifts a City to the Jews"? [0]

Everything you do can and will be instrumentalized by the regime. The innocents, too, are just a medium for their machinations.

There is a treshold at which even nominally good acts become morally reprehensible because they serve to sustain a harmful system. The only question is which system do you consider harmful enough to pass that treshold?

You're presenting your moral line as if it's objectively correct. I’m pointing out it's a judgment call with no easy absolutes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_(1944_film)

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#157

Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this? (Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")

Surprised Teeworlds hasn't been mentioned yet (https://teeworlds.com/)

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#158
post #88
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but people don't like that because everyonce in a while a unit misses completely and then it will be targeted and die the next turn.

No risk, no gain

At the more difficult levels it is really easy to get to a point where your strategy relies on a high probability event (a healer landing just one hit on a low HP unit) and then losing because it went against you. Which is frustrating, even if completely expected.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#159
post #66

Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this? (Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: Like Dwarf Fortress but post-apocalyptic survival horror. Endless Sky: top-down space shooter inspired by Escape Velocity SuperTux: inspired by Super Mario SuperTuxKart: inspired by Mario Kart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...

If you like Endless Sky you may also like Naev, which is very, very similar.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#160
post #64
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I personally found this to be a big part of the tactical and strategic challenge. It reminded me a lot of Pokemon where you have a similar challenge, of slotting "exposure to fighting" into a limited action and HP budget. Edit: Now that I think about it, most turn-based games have this mechanic. It's almost an idiomatic balance/design decision in gaming. Compare to Dota where support heroes have acquired more an…

Dota/League does this because each hero is controlled by a human, and humans don't like playing low-impact, low-wealth, low-exp supports.

20 year Dota player here. I always play support and I’m ok with low wealth/ low xp. High impact tho!

Only thing I’m good at carrying is wards.

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