Roleplay:
-If you complain about RP being dead, either get in game and help by roleplaying, or shut up and stop complaining about how things aren't what they used to be.

Those are wise words, Geoni!

From the perspective of a somewhat new player the level of RP has been very satisfactory to me. So far, more established players have been very kind to my character in an IC manner. Even when acting out nasty thieves, those players have been helpful to me via OOC tells to help me with my RP questions. One player kindly spent a lot of time chatting in group chat to me about ideas on RP battles and how it traditionally works on PS in the tavern one night. 

This newbie feels that there is a strong caring community of RP players on PS. From my limited experience new players quickly fall into RP as a rule. Only two player encounters went against that observation and they were bare fisted while battling rats in the sewers; so that indicates how new they
were.

Bottom line is that all players which have interacted with me IC online seem to trying their best. Can one ask for more than that from any player in any game?

- Nova

ok next year I'll bring Eyantar, hes a wine lover, since he is really really rich.

Is it possible to buy/create wine in PS? My character is a wine lover and a trip to Stonehead provided a tasty red beverage which seemed wine like; yet served in a Ale Mug. Is there a place (and not asking directions or spoilers) where one can purchase or fabricate wine? Also any wine glasses? Just a yes or no would suffice.

- Nova

Do you refer to an old ~DnD GM, or a Plane Shift GM?

A DnD GM.

It was my pleasure to have an RP encounter today above and beyond chit chat and relating game experiences. A thief type approached me asking if there would be an interest by me to RP. After agreement, the thief made an attempt at a mugging. We came up with an interesting handling of the event which seemed to work well for both of us. This approach is more easily done with one on one RP.

Firstly, any conversation that did not affect either character was ok as always.

Once in combat we took action turns. One player would give their attempted action and then both of us rolled a 1d6 to see the outcome. Winning the highest roll would mean success and ties would be open to interpretation.

Using this technique we had a stunning and bloody battle. My character was finally bested and left for dead by the thief; bound with the sash from a robe. Once the thief had departed my character shouted for help which was eventually responded to by a randomly passing character and carried to the infirmary. Healers were brought in and a recovery is expected.

This technique worked well for a more traditional storyline RP player as well as myself; who loves the dice to have an input into the story line.

My question is would other traditional planeshift RPers fine such a system playable? Such a system seemed to work well for a more traditional RPGer as myself and one more schooled in traditional planeshift RP.

- Nova

I have a small suggestion though: maybe sometimes it would be more fun to do some sort of RP fighting rather than just a plain duel or a combination of both. that way the RP can last a little longer

The above point is of interest to me too. Talking with an experienced player it was suggested that such an RP battle happens in a storyline format. Does anyone use the /roll command to try to simulate more a traditional rpg battle? Of course PvP provides such an end result; yet as mentioned in the quote it can be over much too quickly.

If this is not an excepted form in game, then could some guidelines be offered how to handle RP battles; or a pointer to where such guidelines may exist already?

- Nova

Isn't chess a mini-game already or am I missing something?

Being new to the game perhaps it is likely me that had missed it. All the better then if there is already game mechanics installed to handle the tourney.   

- Nova

It is impossible for me to speak of definite reasons; as my experience is new here. However my experience of battling with hardware requirements should indicate what is keeping many new players from joining at this stage. Granted my tech was old so this is not meant as a complaint; yet it took buying a couple year old previously enjoyed desktop to get to a comfortable gaming experience. That stage cost $200+. This allows me a reasonable gaming experience in cities and towns. The wilderness is still a dark brown mud until the next step of upgrading my graphics card with a previously enjoyed geforce 9600 or so. Probably put me back about $50. Bottom line is about $275 to get into the game. Such persistence cannot be expected from everyone that happens along to Planeshift. They will try it; if it doesn't work then move along. The potential of a true RP experience is what kept my eyes on the prize.

On the positive side, if development will now focus more on fleshing what is now there and keeping hardware demands somewhat static, then we should expect most users to have at least my present tech in the very near future.

That time line would work well with the time line which fleshing out could take.

It is my firm belief that once the present upgrade settles down that the user base will continue to rise. 

- Nova

Ad very tasteful yet you may want to put it on the left side of the screen so that blind as bats, like myself. who blow up the screen size do not loose it off the right edge of the screen. That's where it was until reading this thread.

Interesting choice of ads it offered me. Nothing about gaming yet stuff that was of interest to me; so it makes me wonder if they are ip specific as opposed to the site content. It offered me a link to MySQL's home site which was immediately clicked because it was of interest not because it felt the right thing to do. 

- Nova

Hope this is a good thread to ask for help tweeking my pslaunch. So far the game works well in cities and towns. In the wilderness areas between them it is reduced to a dark mud brown. It was suggested to me in #planeshift that it is my crappy standard issue IBM ThinkCentre graphics card. However the errors are making me hope this may not be the case.

When starting up pslaunch and then quiting quickly out of it the following errors appear in the terminal window under Fedora 13:

[booner@booner PlaneShift]$ ./pslaunch
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.syntax.loader.service.text'
ERROR: Couldn't load plugin with class 'crystalspace.syntax.loader.service.text'!
WARNING: failed to initialize plugin 'crystalspace.graphics3d.shadercompiler.xmlshader'
WARNING: failed to initialize plugin 'crystalspace.graphics3d.shadercompiler.weaver'
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.syntax.loader.service.text'
ERROR: Couldn't load plugin with class 'crystalspace.syntax.loader.service.text'!
WARNING: failed to initialize plugin 'crystalspace.graphics3d.shadercompiler.xmlshader'
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.level.loader'
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.level.loader'
WARNING: Can not load default shader vars, no iSyntaxService available
Opening GLX2D
Checking for updates to the updater: Using mirror http://planeshift.clevertech.net/Updates/ for updaterinfo.xml
ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
Creating Context
Video driver GL/X version (direct renderer)
Visual ID: 0x00000021, 24bit TrueColor
R8:G8:B8:A8,
level 0, double buffered
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.syntax.loader.service.text'
ERROR: Couldn't load plugin with class 'crystalspace.syntax.loader.service.text'!
NOTIFY: Applied: Intel DRI: Disable texture compression
NOTIFY: OpenGL renderer: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945G GEM 20091221 DEVELOPMENT  (vendor: Tungsten Graphics, Inc) version 1.4 Mesa 7.8-devel
NOTIFY: Using windowed mode at resolution 1024x768.
NOTIFY: Pixel format: Color: 24 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 AccumColor: 0 AccumAlpha: 0 MultiSamples: 0
NOTIFY: Multisample: disabled
NOTIFY: Using VBO with 64 MB of VBO memory
Default shader /shader/std_lighting.xml not available
Default shader /shader/std_lighting_portal.xml not available
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.renderloop.step.generic.type'
Failed to load plugin crystalspace.renderloop.step.generic.type; pandemonium will ensue.
WARNING: could not load plugin 'crystalspace.rendermanager.unshadowed'
No rendermanager set!
Mounting skin: /planeshift/art/pslaunch.zip
Texture Manager parsing /paws/launcher/imagelist.xml
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/top_left_1.png<
Using mirror http://planeshift.clevertech.net/Updates/ for updaterinfo.xml
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/top_right_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/bottom_left_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/bottom_right_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/left_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/right_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/top_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/paws/pawsimagedrawable.cpp:66 PreparePixmap SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Could not open image: >/paws/base/maps/leather/bottom_1.png<
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, <src/common/sound/system.cpp:36 Initialize SEVERE>
Thu Jun 24 14:03:26 2010, Failed to locate Sound renderer!
DEBUG: Initializing OpenAL sound system
DEBUG: Retrieving available devices.
DEBUG: Available OpenAL device: PulseAudio Default
DEBUG: Available OpenAL device: ALSA Default
DEBUG: Available OpenAL device: Null Output
DEBUG: Default OpenAL device: PulseAudio Default
DEBUG: No device specified
DEBUG: Falling back on default device
DEBUG: OpenAL context frequency: 44100 Hz
DEBUG: OpenAL context refresh: 21 Hz
DEBUG: OpenAL context uses asynchronous (threaded) context
DEBUG: OpenAL context should support 255 mono sources
DEBUG: OpenAL context should support 1 stereo sources
Couldn't locate resource Examine Background in the current skin!
Couldn't locate resource Examine Background in the current skin!
Using mirror http://216.6.227.163/updater/ for updaterinfo.xml
Using mirror http://216.6.227.163/updater/ for updateservers.xml
No updates needed!
Checking for updates to all files: No updates needed!
DEBUG: Closing OpenAL sound system
DEBUG: Closing OpenAL sound system

Do they look like a graphics card issue or perhaps something missing in the skins?

Any insights would be appreciated.

- Nova

[ Update : Looks like a similar questions was asked and not answered at http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=37302.0;prev_next=next . Hope better results are found here.  ]