Duelyst Forums

Get to know each other

#1

Recently, a couple of forum members created an off topic discussion in PM about their real life. I decided that since we’re such a nice community, it’s really interesting to know what kinds of people are taking part in its activities.

Probably, this is not the first one of such discussions, but nevermind.

I suppose, general guidelines may be:

  1. Country
  2. Age
  3. Job\education
  4. Hobbies
  5. Anything you consider relevant.

I understand that some of you may hesitate to provide irl info about yourselves due to different reasons. That’s perfectly understandable, but still it would be nice to know you better.

It’s probably fair to start with myself.

Well, I’m 29, I have a small beard, and I’m a university teacher. Mathematician. Scientist. Research engineer. I’m also a professional animator (not the kind that makes animated movies, the one that works with children). In case someone still doesn’t know I’m from Russia.

I’m really fond of games. Party games, computer games, board games - anything that has rules to abuse. Mostly I like being clever and innovative, finding new strategies or ways to play each particular game, so you may say I’m a typical Johnny.

Also I do like fantasy books.

I’m a complicated person IRL, being simultaneosly cheerful and sarcastic most of the time, but somehow lots of people (students included) like me, even if I feel out of place IRL sometimes.

My favourite videogame genre is tactical RPG, namely Valkyrye Chronicles, Shining Force series, Langrisser series, etc.

What about you, guys?

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Tell me about yourselves
#2

Hello! My name is Tuan ***** and i’m a 13 year old boy born and still living in county cork in Ireland. I currently go to a public school as i prefer the Ethos there to private schools, but i do plan to go to a private school in later years. for hobbies i just play Tcg as well as Ccg, i kinda lost interest in other games. I learned of Duelyst after watching a certain poketuber play this game (i still enjoyed pokemon at this time) It was love at first sight, sadly it was in Closed Beta so i instantly downloaded the game once i heard it went into open beta.

Btw my birthday is on the same day as duelyst’s full release, woop! woop!

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#3

Hi my name is Arx and I’m an overused jokester.

Actually, I’m a South African maths/comp sci student/freelance artist/occasional tutor and educational technologist. I’d share my real name, but there’s really no point since on many levels Arx is equally my real name.

Typically I spend my time on painting, reading, playing Duelyst or Dark Souls, and watching anime every now and then. I also occasionally indulge in the mindless violence that is Warframe, or the sordid pit of introspection that is fantasy authorship (I like to think I’m quite good; but, well, my pride hides in your shadows and can’t see where it’s going, so statistically speaking it’s likely to fall).

I claim either in jest or in total, deadly seriousness that Lilithe is my wife. Which of these is the case can only be decided atop a mountain of my wraithling brethren’s corpses.

This was originally three lines long, so I should add to my accoutrements that I am a god among men when it comes to waffling and writing filler.

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#4

I’m from the UK and 24 years old. Got a degree in business economics from university.

Enjoy playing a variety of games and find it hard to stay playing just 1 game for a few hours. So usually I play maybe 3/4 different games when I have time to play. Lately been playing Motorsport Manager, GTA (for racing), Beat Cop, Streets of Rogue and Esports Club along side Duelyst. I also enjoy anime, finding music as I listen to a variety of genres, listening to podcasts, wrestling, as well as other stuff. Been thinking about streaming, but I don’t know if I could give a commentary/talk to myself while playing games. Might be a goal to do for 2018. Thats pretty much it.

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#5

My dog is named after said character.

Congrats! Sorry about the chess game timing out. :sweat_smile:

…great, now we have another thing in common…:rofl:

Well…thanks? I guess? :thinking: :yum:
I promise you that I am only me…and I have been told I am actually too nice…

I’ll reserve this spot for later…

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Tell me about yourselves
#6

if you don’t plug your unfinished FaQ there will be murder!

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#7

Cool incentive.

Okay.

Born in Belgium, I studied astrophysics at university in the Netherlands.

I got a job as game designer (Age of Wonders 3) and I have enjoyed games since a very young age.
Programmed my first roguelike when I was 11 after learning myself some Basic from the helpfunction included in the standard PC software package.

Well, I am married and have a daughter (she’s 2 and absolutely awesome).

As for hobbies aside from gaming I really like deep spiritual or philosophical discussions, meditating and I love to be in nature (mountains are a special favorite).

I recently found out that I am an empath, which explains a crazy amount of stuff that’s been going on in my life (it’s been a WILD ride, not getting into that now).

A book I massively love and which just ‘fits’ me as a person is ‘The Illuminatus! Trilogy’ and I’m kinda missing the mathematics and science lately, would love to tackle/chew on some problem sometime.

Guess that should do :slight_smile:

Edit: not giving my name since even my first name is so unique that googling it will lead directly to me.

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#8

Wow! I liked the series and this game in particular! It’s an honour to meet you, sir!

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#9

Hi everyone, my name is Jude, and I am from the U.S.! I love to draw in my spare time (when not playing Duelyst), and I have an older twin. We are both high school seniors, and today we were both accepted to the University of Chicago (which, while not necessarily our first choice, means a lot to us).

I really want to try out animation and create a comic at some point, and I’m also really fond of cats and bats.

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#10

WAIT! I thought you were a C R A N E

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#11

I’m the old timer here, 50 years old.
But, still a kid at heart.
I’m an electrical engineer and enjoy solving “puzzles” of the the trade.
Love strategic games, but Duelyst is the only video game I play.
My wife & I love playing darts on the weekends into the wee hours in my “underground lounge”. Also have pool table, air hockey, 2 pinball machines, thumping sound system. 4 TV’s hung on the wall and the bar. Neon lights & lasers for the real crazy nights.
Live in New York & Love to travel. been to Bali, Singapore, Canada, Caribbean , & all over the USA.
Murphyslaw101

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#12

I live in the United States, specifically up in Alaska, born and raised. I went to the University of Alaska Anchorage and graduated with a major in Social Work, minoring in Psychology. I’ve had a few jobs since graduating about a year and a half ago, but I am currently working as a Career Transition Specialist for the Job Corps center here in Alaska (that means I help former students get jobs).

I have a lot of other nerdy interests, pretty standard stuff I suppose. I’ve played a lot of League of Legends and enjoy other games I can play cooperatively with my friends, as well as solid single player titles like Elder Scrolls and (recently) hollow knight. I am also a competitive Tekken player, though I have yet to been able to afford to go to Evo yet. I also have a passion for games like DnD, MtG, and just recently X-wing. I enjoy making custom concepts a lot, and have been working on my own card game for a little over a year or two now.

I am fairly active within my local gaming community, I was the table top manager for the largest anime/gaming convention in Alaska this year (Senshi-Con) and will continue to manage for them; I also currently run a small Pokémon group (Alaska Pokémon League) which is currently trying to grow a VGC scene, as there currently is none in Alaska. Also I guess I’m going to be a father in a few months, much earlier than I was expecting, but that’s life for you.

Aaaaand that’s me. Work in progress but I’m pretty satisfied with where I’ve ended up so far.

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#13

I am the man with no name. Zapp Brannigan, at your service!

Seriously though, my name is Bolin. Apparently that’s also the name of @isbee 's dog, as well as Sokka’s less funny replacement. I don’t know how to feel about that. I’m currently doing undergraduate studies in evolutionary biology and biophysics.

My hobbies include fish keeping, as well as a few games, though most of my free time is dedicated to juggling homework, keeping fit, and a neuroscience lab position. In terms of games, I believe that any game can be made more fun when played with friends. Get a couple of people together, and I’ll even enjoy Mario’s Time Machine! As for fish keeping, I mainly kept saltwater fish. I’m not brave enough to try hard corals, though.

The Video game genera I’m into right now are hard, reaction-based games, particularly Touhou. They are great for unwinding after a day of multitasking.

I’m a sucker for books about some people growing up in “Western” society, and returning to / rediscovering their cultural roots, such as The Back of the Turtle, The Kite Runner, and The Hero’s Walk.

I’m also vegetarian, because I hate plants with their stupid free sunlight food and sugary cell walls.

Things that keep me up at night: If all humans would die/leave earth, then all traces of human society would disappear in around 100 million years. How do we know that there wasn’t a human-level civilization on earth 100 million years ago of older.

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#14

Good question. How can we know?

Well, I can’t really believe that it would only take 100 M years for all traces of an intelligent civilization to disappear. Even the dinosaurs that we have come to known through the existence of fossils have lasted through much longer period. If we assume the civilization(s) in question are equal to or greater to humans in terms of intelligence and assuming they have had a sufficient amount of time to exist, it is hard to believe that such a civilization with man-made materials such as plastic, extremely radioactive materials, and treated metal can simply decompose back into the earth.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that what you have said is true and given enough time, all traces of human civilization will disappear. There can still exist very valid speculation that life in certain areas of the galaxy as well as Planet Earth in the infinite amount of time that it has existed has occurred. We merely must determine the conditions for life and then examine locations that might contain such conditions. Regardless of whether life has existed in the past or in the present in such areas, if the conditions for life as we know it are met it can most definitely be said that some life once existed or will exist if the conditions for it are kept constant.

It would be difficult to say however if intelligent life existed seeing as how traces of it compared to non-sentient life are only distinguished based on the existence of civilization although what exactly can be found about intelligent civilization compared to the type of civilization found in say a lion’s pride without physical traces remains to be seen.

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#15

Hey Murphy’s law :slight_smile: I still remember a game where your name was very fitting, I had the absolute worst draw possible with my deck, or close to it :slight_smile:

What pinball machines do you have? I love playing them irl. Would be so awesome to actually have one to play on. I might have played yours. I played a lot of them.

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#16

100 million years is a generous estimate. Most plastics, metals, and radioactive waste is lost on the time scale of a few hundred or thousand years. Even glass will break down in a few million years. Satillites have only a few years in their lifespans. The manmade objects on the moon, however, might last longer than 100 million years. Space junk can last even longer, but that’s really difficult to find. If human activity was to influence the evolution of certain species in such a large way that there is a significant and rapid change in the fossil record that does no correlate with volcanic activity, algae blooms, or the other candidates for mass extinction/ fast speciation, I suppose industrialized civilization could be suspected. As for human fossils, it’s very hit or miss. I suppose brain folds can be determined by looking at the interior of the skull, but like you said, it’s neigh impossible to predict much from just that.

As for alien life, I’m not even sure how to define life anymore. Between discoveries such as new bases (not ATCGU) being inserted into DNA, bacteria-like, giant viruses, of the even stranger possibility of non-carbon (heck, even maybe even non-molecular) mechanisms for replication and taking advantage of entropy, even simple alien life is hard to fathom, much less alien intelligence.

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#17

Well then that’s really the question that has to be answered, how do we define life and do we only maintain a focus on life that is intelligent or life in general, but first what is life? What are the required mechanisms for life because at the moment we know of so many species that can survive in such extreme conditions. We have the micro-organisms known as water bears who can exist in space for extended periods of time without any external support and we also have bacteria living in either sulfur pits or in the deep deep sea where no sunlight can penetrate. What are the minimum conditions for life regardless of whether it is intelligent?

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#18

The thing that makes me question life the most are giant viruses. These are viruses, which are classically NOT defined as life, that can replicate with no need to take over other cells. It’s basically a life form, by all other definitions of the word, with no cell that has more in common with non-living things (other viruses) than living things (bacteria, humans, etc.).

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#19

life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

I don’t think it is difficult to accept these Giant Viruses as life under its current definition if it can replicate itself at the very least.

Looking at the conversation so far, I think it is safe to say that life is a form of negentrophy, that is the opposite of entropy because of the fact that all the processes of life are in constant attempt to maintain disequilibrium with its environment. For example while the true environmental temperature of the Earth is probably -1 million F, the temperature of human beings is about 98 F. Do you agree with that?

If you do then it should be safe to say that Giant Viruses are also Life in which case the question now turns to what are the minimum conditions for life to occur?

Ah, but I think this is a dead-end question. Regardless of the conditions, they exist somewhere somehow. And if very basic life can occur and be sustained relatively indefinitely then the emergence of intelligence life will follow as it has on Planet Earth even if that life never makes it out of its primordial soup.

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#20

Ehhh… Not really. The sum of reactions used by organisms all result in higher entropy and lower free energy. Even though reactions involved in day-to-day functions in the body may lower entropy, they are only allowed to occur because energy is put into them by other reactions (digestion, ATP from food). In the end, entropy always increases, but some reactions that decrease entropy locally can be paired with reactions that increase entropy globally to seemingly have negative entropy, while in reality increasing entropy overall.

As for giant viruses being life, I don’t think I have the knowledge to say, but it would be hella cool if they are. It’s just so freaking alien!

P.s. We haven’t seen this level of thread derailment since the meme thread first got corrupted!

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