I've decided to try my hand at making some Big RR maps and I gotta say that I am totally stuck. I don't have much of an image editing background aside from basic cropping/resizing/color shifting of photos in Photoshop. I have been messing around today with the Paint.net program as well as an old copy of Paint Shop Pro 9.0. In the Paint.net program I wasn't able to figure out how to overlay a grid, nor how to 'snap' my lines to said grid. In PSP I was able to figure that out now I have other issues. Whenever two of my lines end on the same point, the result is a blocky stump at the end rather than a rounded/smooth node. I also can't figure out the tool for making various kinds of curved lines at all. I remember drawing curved lines in Photoshop a long time ago and it seemed much easier. In PSP I can't figure it out at all and end up getting random elliptical shapes, often going in directions that I don't want. It's all a huge mess, and I'm just playing around with solid color lines. I have no idea how to make the terrain a texture of some sort, or how to make it appear beveled / 3D. I thought that making maps would be a piece of cake but it's proving more annoying that I anticipated... and making more complicated stuff like the steps in Yuurepoer maps? Yeah right. I wouldn't even know how to begin with something like that.

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The Church was and is cancerous. It didn't grow in an organic matter at all. It grew like a tumor. Like a virus. It is strictly hierarchical and compartmentalized as well.

wtf... what if I told you that atheism grew like a virus?

USSR wanted to create a "peaceful" country without a religion and murdured 63 000 000 of own people during Lenin and Stalin's reign. What a beautiful irreligious utopia.

In China in years 1949 - 1976 around 38 000 000 people have been killed due to opposing god-less communist vision of a country by Mao Zedong. What a nice irreligious country as well.

More info about atheist rulers trying to get rid of religious people in their countries
North Korea (Kim Il Sung) - 3 000 000
Cambodia (Pol Pot) - 2 400 000 (30% of the country's population)
France (Maximilian Robespierre's "Reign of Terror") - 300 000

Somehow the most brutal regimes didn't have any church, Skunk.

Atheism doesn't have leaders, nor does it have concentrated bases of power. Also, the vast majority of the deaths incurred via the examples of Communism mentioned are more to do with Communism itself and the effects of Communism rather than an attempt at creating an atheist society. In other words, the deaths didn't really have much (if anything) to do with the goal of pushing atheism on the people. It was coincidental. Religions HAVE killed millions of people directly, and still continue to do so. Religions eclipse and outlast regimes.

Also, I don't agree that atheism has grown like a virus. The majority of the world is still religious in one way or another, and the rise in atheism over recent years is primarily due to scientific advancement and the advancement of philosophical thought. Even 100 years ago atheists were fairly rare. These days people (on the whole) are more educated than ever and with a greater understanding of the universe we live in comes a natural lessening of dogmatic beliefs. 

That was pretty obvious yeah 

'Your momma so fat, when she died, she turned into a Red Bull factory' 

I do not agree with your saying that the Abrahamic traditions in particular are full of nonsense btw. They make a lot more sense than the vast majority of other religions. But for some reason people take the first literally, while the other religions/mythologies are interpreted in a symbolic way.

I do not believe in the overwhelming role of the church. It's a manmade institution, supported by millions of people in past and present. It grew in an organic manner, through the ages, it's not a set-up of a few power hungry, mischievous men who want to keep people in place by threatening with hell and eternal torment.
Hell is a notion that goes way back, far further than the origins of the church. It's not a christian invention. You can say that it snowballed out of control as people became ever more pious (and maybe also wanted to shelter their own salvation from fellow christians who were not leading a very 'christian' life).
The church authorities have actually always repressed extreme religious views and chilliastic/apocalyptic movements. They have been given crap about eradicating 'heresies', but in all honesty, 99% of these sects and movements were complete WHÄCK.

Genetical engineering of the first humans I also don't believe in. If that were true humans would pop up out of absolutely nothing and nowhere. Instead they arrive in evolution REALLY late, and when they do, it's in the form of a multitude of forms that go from complete ape to slightly less ape to barely human, to somewhat smart human, to us.
Also, if we didn't evolve naturally, then why did every other species on earth? Or do you think life as a whole was genetically engineered? If that were so, how do you explain current evolution taking place, and why would it take millions of years to go from no-brain-bacteria's to single-brain-cell bacteria's? Surely that could have gone a LOT faster if it was indeed engineered.

edit: the picture below is my sig, it's not related to this post 

I didn't say that the Abrahamic traditions are more full of nonsense than anything else. I just used them as an example because they are by far the most common religions in areas that people reading this thread would recognize / be familiar with. That said, those religious texts are indeed full of nonsense that is so obviously untrue that people would have to be amazingly naïve to believe it. They are also more 'modern' than most other religions. The Abrahamic traditions are absolutely full of symbolism but the passages are taught as literal fact in most places of worship rather than allegories, which leads to a number of problems... and even if a church did teach these things as allegorical, would the onus then be on the religious leader to explain the mysteries in a no-bullshit way to everyone, or would they dole out a little bit of info at a time to people who they deem worthy and capable of understanding? It's really no different than the Egyptian mystery schools, or even high-level Freemasonry of today. (I myself am a Mason.)

And yes, notions of an 'underworld' do pre-date the modern Western idea of what Hell entails, but they are very different with the more modern notion of Hell being far worse. The idea of Hell is just yet another thing that was stolen from previous belief systems.

The Church was and is cancerous. It didn't grow in an organic matter at all. It grew like a tumor. Like a virus. It is strictly hierarchical and compartmentalized as well.

While I do believe in microevolution, I do not believe in macroevolution. We just simply don't have enough fossil evidence to prove the idea. Obviously a tray of bacteria is going to evolve if you subject the bacteria to various environmental factors. However, the bacteria are still going to remain bacteria even if they were in some sort of laboratory test setting for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. I can't know that for sure, but the idea of something becoming an entirely different species just seems crazy to me. They aren't going to change into a different kind of lifeform no matter what stimuli we provide. There quite simply isn't enough proof in terms of a "missing link" between modern humans and our supposed ancient ancestors. Archaeologists have been proven to be frauds and liars many times. The theories surrounding our so-called ancestors are just that - theories. I have read the studies and findings and I've yet to come across anything convincing. For a creature such as modern human beings to become so intelligent and aware in such a relatively short period of time (geologically speaking) just doesn't make sense to me. As far as every other species on earth goes, I have no idea. I don't think that life began on this planet (or anywhere else, for that matter) with a random event, of life springing forth from no life in the primordial soup. I believe that life and our universe's laws and mechanisms were created by a higher power because that is what makes the most sense to me. I believe that human beings were likely genetically engineered primary due to two factors:

1. Our advanced intellects compared to basically every other creature, giving us the ability to go from basically living in squalor knowledge level to going to space and global live streaming in the matter of a few thousand years, which is hardly any time at all from a geological or evolutionary time frame. To any person living even 1,000 years ago, the shit that we humans can do today would look supernatural.

2. The ubiquitous nature of accounts / stories of ancient civilizations all over the world (totally unconnected) all talking about 'sky people' who bestowed upon them great knowledge and technology. The stories are so strikingly similar that I cannot help but believe that we got a jump start from a race of beings more advanced than us. I've read about all of these different accounts and I don't see how ancient peoples who lived without much (if any) knowledge of each other could invent such fanciful, far-out tales that are so similar.

The earliest recorded history of mankind goes back (depending on which sources you believe to be accurate) at most maybe 12,000 years, with many sources claiming that 6,000-7,000 years being more accurate, but personally I believe that stuff like the Yonaguni ruins and many other examples shows that humans have been around for quite some time. Anyway... Let's look at the mainstream figure of 6,000 years, which is the most commonly-cited figure in the West. Assuming that humans bred a new generation every 20 years, that's only 1,200 generations (approximately, of course) between us living today and those living back in the times of our most ancient recorded history. That's a pretty small number, even if many of us have little to no knowledge of our ancestors going back more than 4-5 generations. What I am getting at is that humans have developed far more rapidly than any other species on the planet that we know of, and I think that rapid growth has to do with outside stimuli.

I played some TUS Mole games earlier today and I gotta say that it doesn't change my opinion. The game is still highly dependent upon crate luck, and the never-ending girder spam and using girders as aiming tools is just plain annoying. I think that using girders to help you aim your mole shots should be, at minimum, ridiculed and at best it should be straight-up against the rules.

Also, I've noticed that in various Mole schemes there is a lot of inconsistency (as mentioned previously) and the cluster bombs in particular are stupidly OP. In fact, I just finished a game a few minutes ago in which it was even until the guy got 3 clusters in a crate and then proceeded to kill 3 of my worms on 3 subsequent turns, leaving me at a huge disadvantage that I eventually couldn't overcome due to the fact that even though I had turn advantage, the guy got wayyyyy more crates than me and had a bunch of noob weapons like super sheep, homing pigeon, etc. I couldn't hide high, I couldn't hide low. I couldn't girder block because all the guy had to do was get favorable wind and he could chute to me. There was nothing that I could do at all aside from just avoid the inevitable for a couple of turns.

I mentioned in the chat how the scheme is a joke and that there's so much luck involved and he basically proceeded to tell me that it was my fault for losing because I left my worms in spots that could be 1-shotted by clusters. Yeah, that makes sense. The only places where the cluster COULDN'T one shot a worm made them sitting ducks for a number of other weapons. I also couldn't move every single worm into a position in which they weren't likely to get killed by clusters. Also, I noticed that whoever starts girder-f@#!ing the other person first by trapping their worms gets a huge advantage because you essentially HAVE TO waste a turn torching or mole-ing your way out at one point or another. Meanwhile, they're picking up crates and positioning and can sometimes just girder-f@#! you again, which resets the whole stupid debacle.

There definitely is a strategy to it, that I can't deny. However, it's a really annoying, stupid, and highly luck-informed strategy. Skilled / long distance shot-making doesn't really exist in mole and it's basically played just as I said before, only I totally underestimated the amount of girder spamming and using girders as lame and infinite aiming tools. 
 

I'm late to this party and lots of great points have already been made. I have university degrees in Philosophy and Religious Studies (and others) and I've spent a great deal of time studying various religions, mythologies, metaphysical concepts, etc.

It's all too much to get into right now but I guess I'll just make a couple of points:

- I am not religious myself but I do believe that there must be some sort of a higher power out there. As far as what that higher power is, I have no clue. It just doesn't make sense that everything simply exists and that there's no cause for it. To me it only makes rational sense that there must be one overruling supreme power. It could be external from us, or we could be a part of it. I choose to believe the latter.

- All religions are full of bunk but also have nuggets of truth and wisdom. The Abrahamic traditions in particular are so full of nonsense that I do not understand how/why anyone in this day and age would choose to be a believer.

- I do not believe in an eternal heaven or hell. The very notion of hell as we understand it today was largely shaped by non-canonical works of fiction (although sometimes reputedly 'divinely inspired') and have taken root in mainstream consciousness. Milton's "Paradise Lost" is probably the best example of this, although there's plenty of others. I personally believe that the notion of Hell was molded and reinforced by the church to cower people into obedience and blind belief. If you really think about it, does it make any sense at all for a human to be sentenced to an ETERNITY of misery/suffering because of what they did in their lifespan? No matter how depraved that person was, eternal damnation is just plain cruel.

- I believe that various elements within organized religion have access to information and revelations that are hidden from the public. The Vatican and its mysterious library / catacombs is a perfect example of this. I am also sure that at very high levels all of these various 'competing' religions are actually most likely in cahoots with each other. I believe that these elements actively suppress true knowledge of self.

- I believe that there is far more to life than what we experience day in and day out via our mundane realities consisting of work and pleasure. I absolutely believe that certain elements of the occult are real, such as astral projection, remote viewing, etc. I think that our brains are capable of so much more than we yet understand because I have on multiple occasions witnessed and/or experienced events that can only be explained via ESP, psychic abilities, etc.

- I believe that the true history of mankind is probably known to some on the planet and it is nothing like we are taught. I believe that humankind has probably been around for a very long time and that we have probably had advanced civilizations in the distant past. Maybe not 'advanced' in the same way that we understand that term today, but advanced nonetheless. I also believe that it's highly possible that human beings did not evolve on this planet and are actually the result of genetic engineering by some sort of extraterrestrial or possibly even extradimensional entities. The ancient Indian Vedas talk about flying ships, energy weapons, huge explosions, and all kinds of shit.. and they were written thousands of years before the Abrahamic traditions even began. There's also numerous mysteries about the origin of mankind, such as the Elohim/Annunaki/Pyramids/etc. It's a huge topic so I don't get into it but I am convinced that we aren't here on accident.


- I believe that no life begins randomly. To think that random cosmic dust produced by the big bang (a theory that sounds more and more ridiculous the more I learn about it) can coalesce in such a way that eventually planets form and through random chance somehow amino acids develop and somehow in this primordial stew, everything comes together perfectly to form life where no life existed before... it's all just too ridiculous to believe. Life begets life. Life can't just spring into being out of nowhere. That's utterly absurd.


- I believe that given the size of our known universe that the chance of extraterrestrial life existing is quite high, which undermines virtually all religions.


At the end of the day, I have no answers and I often find myself in a state of existential panic because while I get stressed out about bills and creeping age and all sorts of other things, I still have no idea why or how I am here, or what will happen after I die. My intuition leads me to believe something along the lines of what Toxic said... I believe that we are all a kind of energy and that energy never dies, but rather it changes forms and flows in different ways. I fear death, but I also kinda don't at the same time because I want to learn some answers. I think that what's scarier than dying is the thought that after we die we are reborn with no memory of our previous experiences. That to me sounds like hell.

Quote from: skunk3 on July 11, 2018, 10:21 AM

The fact that starting spawns and random crate luck determine who is going to win to such a large degree turns a lot of people off

Quote from: skunk3 on July 11, 2018, 10:21 AM

I didn't contradict myself

because random spawns in Intermediate totally don't turn anyone off

Did you miss the "and?"

I said starting spawns AND random crate luck determine who is going to win to a large degree. When it comes to a game like this, more than one chance-based gameplay element is multiplicative rather than additive when it comes to how luck-based a scheme is. Besides, if spawns are random in both Mole and Intermediate, why would the Mole player have a reason to complain since that is what they are used to already? I get that random spawns can be potentially way more dangerous in Intermediate than they are in Mole, but still...

I don't consider that a contradiction. Besides, I think that Intermediate should have manual placement, at least for TUS or any sort of cups/tourneys/etc. You do get some Select Worms to use but if you don't get to go first, that can be a major disadvantage. Intermediate was just mentioned for an example because it's probably the most commonly-played scheme in the history of Worms.

I can't be bothered to cut and paste a bunch of individual quotes, so I will just respond to you (Magnus) in order of what you stated.

First of all, since I don't know you and you don't know me, I should first inform you that I've been playing W:A since day one. That's nearly 20 years, so if I say that I can look at a scheme 'on paper' and understand how it works, I mean that. I am supremely confident that I have played far more schemes than you and logged literally thousands more hours of game time than you. I am not saying this to prove any other point than that you're not talking to an ignorant person here. You seem to be taking this topic personally.

The "efficiency" of the strategy one uses is important in ALL schemes, not just Mole. Being efficient and strategic is the name of the game, so to speak.

A lot of top-level Intermediate players (or just good players in general) wouldn't have much of an interest in seriously competing in Mole because of the luck factor. The fact that starting spawns and random crate luck determine who is going to win to such a large degree turns a lot of people off, and it's precisely why Mole is in the league that it is in. If Mole is truly the most tactical/strategic scheme there is then whoever excels at Mole should dominate in other schemes as well... but do they? Nope. You can try to mince words and talk about different 'kinds' of strategy and whatnot, but in the end it's all just Worms, and pretty much everyone here knows Worms inside and out. An elite-level Intermediate player could play TUS Mole matches and fare much better than an 'elite'-level Mole player playing Intermediate matches. This is because while there is a little bit of luck involved in Intermediate, it's not nearly as much as in Mole. The Intermediate player could win or lose based upon said luck, whereas the Mole player engaging in a match of Intermediate wouldn't have that same degree of luck to act as a W/L buffer.

I didn't contradict myself. I understand how Mole is played and what general strategies are best to use in the scheme, but it all goes back to the crate luck factor. To say that I don't have the slightest idea of how the strategy in Mole works is just plain absurd, not to mention utterly untrue. Yes, I'm aware that the TUS Mole scheme is different than the HB Mole scheme but I still understand the scheme and the so-called strategy behind it. (Hoard crates, make tunnels, girder block, try to hold down the high ground, etc.) You have compared it to Chess a couple of times which I think is ridiculous because in Chess your pieces don't start in random places and they also don't get the ability to do unpredictable things. (Crates.) Worms in general is a highly strategic game, IMO even more strategic than Chess as Chess is deterministic. That said, there's nothing about Mole gameplay that elevates it above any other scheme in this game in terms of required strategic competency. NOTHING.

Two players of relatively equal skill level playing Mole? Whoever gets the best random spawn spots and the most/best crate luck wins. Period. If you are able to routinely beat people who have a much larger inventory than you, that indicates to me that you're playing noobs, or at the very least players who aren't near your general skill level. This isn't surprising given the fact that tons of noobs play Mole. *shrug* (And I'm not talking about HB Mole, either.) As I have said many times already - Mole does require some degree of skill and strategy to be good at it, but ultimately it is down to RNG. You can deny this all you want but I know it's true based upon extensive experience with the game, and others agree as well. You can call us all ignorant if you want but ironically you would be saying that to people who very likely have far more experience with the game than you, and the particulars of one specific scheme are trivial.

One can easily force a worm to drown in Mole, TUS or not. Even if they can stay above water you can still dominate the high ground and spam girders, launch moles and wait for a good opening to attack. It's not genius-level tactics we're talking about here.

As far as the mole digging backwards, I thought that maybe there was a key or key combination that one can press/hold to manually change the dig direction. I already knew about it reversing after colliding with terrain. Also, I never claimed to know more than anyone else about this scheme. I only claimed my own opinion, which is backed by objectivity and lots of experience. In fact, I said that I was wrong earlier in the thread and that I didn't know about the particulars of the TUS Mole scheme compared to the HB scheme. I then learned the particular differences and while the TUS Mole scheme is definitely more competitive than the HB Mole scheme, I stand by my objection to Zalo's opinion that (TUS) Mole is the most strategic/tactical scheme in the game, because it simply isn't.

How can I not prove my point that random luck plays a huge factor in the scheme? It's self-evident. BLATANTLY SELF-EVIDENT, even! I've already explained this, and if you cannot understand how and why random spawns and random crates aren't a big deal, then why should I bother?

As far as that old match goes... Yeah, there's a couple of errors but overall I didn't do anything irredeemably bad. I tried, but not like... laser-focus tried. The reason why I didn't really give a shit about the game was because I considered Mole a joke of a scheme. I knew even back then about dropping items standing on the edge of something going straight down but I thought that I had enough of a ledge for it to not drop but rather go down the incline and kill that last worm. It was a dumb misread that cost me the game, but I am sure that the thought that crossed my mind was probably something along the lines of: "thank god, I can go back to playing other shit now instead of being stuck in more mole matches!"

Anyway, I guess the tl;dr version of my entire piece goes like this:

1. There is nothing about (TUS) Mole that makes it more tactical/strategic than all other schemes

2. Random luck factors in a lot more than you seem to acknowledge, especially when the two competing players are fairly evenly matched.