szindrom

Just finished the SH/Ironman campaign.. I was meticulously recording each mission and intermission into separate clips until about 50-60 clips and then I got sloppy and got the recordings all over the place, and didn't bother finishing all the missions, let a bunch of UFOs go at several points. In fact when the game finished the aliens had 7 colonies. In retrospect the game felt a lot easier, although there were several blunders along the way... Also encountered a weird bug in the final mission, I had 5 units stunned on the 2nd level, but when I carried them onto the exit, the 3rd level started with aquanauts disappearing, with the exception of their icon displaying in the "equipped" slots of those other aquanauts that were carrying then. ... However I got another idea which is probably pretty easy to try out: Record a gameplay from a dreadnought with e.g. aquatoids, then try to complete the mission with the minimum number of turns. I'm guessing though it's just gonna end being a bunch of aquanauts maxed out with DPLs.. Still it could be interesting to see the fastest completion (in turns) of a dreadnought. What do you think? ^_^

To be specific it was supposed to be a "raid" on just the 1st floor of the colony, the idea was to grab some launchers and other items of value. In the first raid (AKA failure) the primary goal was to capture a live Tasoth (Which was successful - although otherwise the mission was a sloppy blunder, strangely though the live alien being captured did not turn up on the score screen.. So I thought that when I used the sonic rifle to "stun" the Tasoth (already hit once with thermal shock launcher) it must have received a fatal wound and then succumbed on the Triton floor, but when I looked at the research screen on the base the research was available) The second raid was mostly about getting money to make stuff, I was pretty much running short on cash (Like, to make more ion armours, produce oscillators.. Which I didn't have the money for) I think the difficulty of the 2nd floor is rather variable; Simply destroying the synomium device is possible (If you're lucky) without even encountering a single alien nor having Mag. Ion Armour, as church-like 2nd floor of the synomium facility is recognizable, and you can drop sonic pulsers to the zero floor using the elevators by making a hole on the 1st floor walls. But then you might want to capture some certain live aliens (and/or make money), which would require descending on the 0-floor. This is all writing - And I don't feel too good about making excuses for playing poorly. Ironman is hard, I might not have the required abilities to finish the game in that style. I kind of feel like I can analyze the failure well, but that doesn't mean a better performance would follow after a succesful analysis.. Certainly I'm not an expert on TFTD currently ^_^ The reasons behind these are rather straightforward: I failed to keep an entire team of aquanauts alive, and was down to a handful. Ironman gamepla is rather unforgiving.... So basically it was the 1st mission for 80% Of the aquanauts present. Anyway before the game ended I had uploaded pretty much every step of the campaign, but now that it failed I thought that there's no reason to keep most of the boring clips.. and so well.. I think that's a good idea - and I did not think about that - if/when I try again, I definitely want to do at least one mission like that to see how it goes. Though currently I don't know how to do a voice over, I think googling will yield the means ^_^

Alright I removed the additional parameters. Is it just me or do you come accross as nagging a lot? ^_^ Yeah it's my first time playing X-COM via an ironman mode - although in this case it was self-enforced and I think I'm just not very good at it. Well I've not played TFTD all that much in the first place, but there are definitely strategical and tactical elements I'm mishandling. And I think you're also right about this audio thing, I think so myself too. It's also my personality.. I was reflecting upon this campaign and wondering what went wrong and how to improve.. First of all I noticed that I have a tendency to get almost schizophrenic while playing, and I think the mechanism is the same that's associated with negative stereotype threat i.e. Working Memory getting overloaded, in this case with a combination of a too high self-awareness and immersing oneself to the game. Basically I'm not systematically keeping track of what I'm doing this turn, what I'm doing next... What are the important parts, and at the same time I tend to get dragged by thoughts like "That sounded pretty bad", "I think I'm not really engaging in my commentary", "Wonder if this quietness and lack of confident edge comes accross as the equivalent of low social rank?"... And in addition I noticed having a pattern of low emotional affect, essentially being rather indifferent towards losing aquanauts and what not. This is though a bit different from actual schizophreny for schizophrenics only exhibit an outward appearance of low emotional affect. But I think there's some kind of a connection. Well I think you can see what I mean just by reading how I'm explaining this, I get into these very conceptual perspectives that are quite distant from the immediate subject matter, and it's a similar pattern that occurs in the process. I think to myself that if I'm actually going to do this videos I should try to avoid just wasting everyone's time by being boring and distant and unengaged, but then I wouldn't want to seem pretentious and like I was trying really hard to the point that it's not at all authentic anymore. Also I should try spend the time more effectively and try to increase intensity of the experience for the observer. The problem with that is that for the observer it's easier to just follow what happens and you don't need to think quite as much to keep track of things. So I think in that respect I might actually hit a barrier simply due to lack of sufficient fluid intelligence, as in order to maintain intensity or an enjoyable pace in the presentation I'd need to do all that thinking a lot faster. On the positive side though as I have this problem of getting disorganized, I also think that it's possible to fix this problem, as in for disorganization is in itself rather inefficient towards time expenditure. So by succesfully maintaining a more organized routine of thought patterns it might be possible. But then on the other hand my very basic character is rather contemplative and I tend sink into different kinds of thoughts quite a lot. It's also possible that my basic character is such that it makes it impossible to create an enjoyable video. OpenXcom and the ironman feature was already brought up NeptunesNookGames on page 1 of this thread and well it's a good suggestion, I should probably try that. The only issue I have with it is that I watched this youtube video on openXcom and it had this zoomed out graphics setting.. And I got the feeling that it was kind ruining the mood of the game, even though it was more practical from the sense of utilizing a larger area of the screen. The menuoptions in the video also were a bit of a put-off... But then I didn't/don't really want to criticize the project for it seems like an awesome project, I wish I could do something like that even, and probably takes a lot of work and besides it probably divides people, what exactly is that you appreciate in X-COM TFTD.. At least for me it's more about the thematics and mood than it's about the tactical complexity of the game.. Although strategically it's also has a fairly incredible depth, given how the strategical grand campaign is entwined with the tactical progress of the game, so you've to solve non-linear over time optimization problems with co-dependent factors... Or plain terms;laboratory helps you to use superior weapons earlier and possibly increase ratio of income increase per misson versus losses, increased number of barracudas/bases/sonars allows you to encounter aliens more often and potentially increase amount of money gained, SWS systems allow increasing the lifespan of aquanauts... So what's best can be very difficult to solve (at least I clearly can't solve for the correct path with confidence), which often occurs in these types of problems. I suppose though that if I'd memorize/internalize the research tree that would make things a lot clearer, but I'm not sure I like that style of play in TFTD for I like the intuitive side of playing TFTD quite a lot, but I don't know, maybe that thought is not any good, I do get kind of technical too at times. I'm not sure if that point makes sense.

Alright I changed them to http, I didn't even notice anything and am not sure if it makes any difference, or what difference it makes, but if there's a reason then why not ^_^ In anycase the Campaign came to a halt due to a devastating result and instead uploading all the videos I'm just gonna upload a couple of them, the biggest failures at least ^_^ So I omitted uploading the missions in between. Lost Triton #2 Clip 15 Colony Raid Horrible Blundering. Clip 23 Colony Raid II. Devastating Failure, End of the Game. Clip 25 I think the videos are probably rather boring to watch and I seriously need to work on all aspects of making these things. Also cleaned up the channel and deleted all the other clips, since I don't think any sense person would watch them anyway. Maybe the remaining 5 videos are slightly more interesting than most of them were/are. I think I want to try this again though...Apparently audio went mysteriously off-sync, I think that's due to CamStudio somehow changing the video rate to capture frames every 50 milliseconds from 40 milliseconds.. Overall I think my problem in this Ironman style Campaign is that I get distracted and disorganized very easily, and make sloppy moves quickly and the quality of gameplay varies from turn to turn considerably, and while it's possible to survive with kind of style of playing when saving the game, Ironman style isn't that forgiving. I should check out OpenXcom like suggested too, but I'm mostly with this version so I don't know.. ^_^

I continued this campaign further and uploaded new videos as they came up. Some pretty severe mistakes have already occurred, like having to skip a site when triton was ill-equipped to deal with at night time, and in general there's been considerable losses on aquanauts. Additionally there were 2 recording mistakes, I accidentally overwrote clip number 10 with clip number 11, so the uploaded videos are actually missing one piece and the second mistake clip 12 didn't record the commentary for I actually forgot to turn the microphone on ^_^ And while it probably doesn't make any sense to actually all of them, I think I'll continue uploading the videos so that it contains the whole campaign, but then proceed to post/name only some of the video files.. Like there's 13 videos now and so out them all I think the only ones that might be somewhat enjoyable (but actually probably are not) are the following two: Aliens attack Vladivostok (10) Lobsterman Battleship (13) (Don't get hopes up with this one ^_^) ( Vladivostok is actually clip11 but the error occurred, CamStudio didn't even prompt for the overwrite)

Thanks for taking interest in the videos even though they're not of high enough quality to be presentable. The twitch concept seems good though, especially for the possibility of interactivity.. It is really akward to talk yourself when just recording something, but if it's more like a conversation then it might far less akward. But then still having XP is my fault, I don't have a license for windows 7 and the idea of buying it to use OBS or other streaming software seems a bit weird.. But then I suppose if I'd get new hardware altogether then it might be convenient to get a new OS. There does indeed seem to be a problem with the commentary volume, gotta try and figure out a solution to that problem too.. ^_^

Alright I managed to upload a couple of videos, but I've to tell you, these videos are probably rather boring due to personality. I'm not a very interesting dude, and so well if you don't have anything better to do then maybe they might be.. Well they are not enjoyable. Anyway, the first video got audio off-sync and so it's pretty horrible, I'm not sure if the other two videos are any better but at least the audio seems to ok.... ...In the meanwhile my channel also has 2 videos of one of my cats they're more interesting maybe. ^_^ So here's a couple videos ^_^ Clip 01 - Deleted these videos Clip 02 - Deleted these videos Clip 03 - Deleted these videos Kept a couple of clips

Yeah you maybe right about that, the whole issue seems a bit complicated to research properly. Though even in the link you posted guy named "Beretta" is saying quote: "Only an NTFS partition can handle files in excess of 4GB, and only OpenDML compliant .avi codecs can create files larger than 2GB. HuffYUV being an OpenDML codec I believe (I haven't researched it, but I've created .avi's of 5GB.) If you want more info, try a google search on "OpenDML"." After doing just as this Beretta dude is suggesting it appears that it's both true and false; AVI files used to be limited to 2GB but are not limited anymore. This link here is referring to OpenDML as "AVI 2.0" from which I get the impression that older AVI containers are limited to 2GB and these newer ones are not. So basically the impression that there's only type of AVI container is in itself incorrect, rather these older and newer AVI containers. https://www.custcenter.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/469/~/file-size-limits-and-information-on-opendml-files Here's also a quote from Wikipedia's page on AVI files: "Most AVI files also use the file format extensions developed by the Matrox OpenDML group in February 1996. These files are supported by Microsoft, and are unofficially called "AVI 2.0"." So it appears to be the case that CamStudio for some reason is not using this AVI 2.0 thing, however there's also the possibility that I'm not using a codec that OpenDML compliant, so maybe it's possible that with a different codec it would still work. But considering that CamStudio hasn't addressed this issue, it's probably the software... In either case it's not an FAT32 issue either ^_^

I'm not saving it on NTFS.. err FAT32 I mean ^_^ and the sizelimit information came from CamStudio Help Forum. If you'd like to check this thread out: http://camstudio.org...copy-audio-file All of the webpages I've opened so far have claimed there to be a 2 gigabyte filesize limit. Definitely it's not about FAT32, but it's still possible it's not exactly the AVI format that's causing the limitation, although many people are claiming that to be the case, it could be specific to CamStudio possibly. I don't have a reliable answer to this puzzle. By coincidence I just downloaded the h264 codec and I think the 2GB filesize problem can be avoided using that, it seems compress 40 times more effectively than the CamStudio standard codec with the current settings. But that's not a direct comparison since the settings could make a difference. I actually just did look up the twitch TV FAQ or guide for starting and also found the OBS software which is apparently completely free like you said, but the unfortunate part is that for some unknown reason I have windows XP. OBS only supports newer versions of windows. Switching to Win7 would make sense, but I don't think I'm going to do that to get the streaming software to work. I'm not going to buy windows 7 (I'm not sure if it's even available for sale), and I don't like the license agreements in Windows10. But then I suppose I can't delude myself thinking I can keep using XP forever ^_^ Maybe I should upgrade all the hardware, this computer is from like 2008 or so.. I think you're probably right about streaming and audience, might be better just to do conventional youtube videos - whether or not anyone finds them interesting.. ^_^

I tried recording a couple of game sessions, I have no idea how to do streams.. But the program I'm using is CamStudio, and it defaults to storing videos in AVI format. So the 1st session I tried to do the file didn't work, you got this error "failed to save audio file" so I looked up what's going on there's a filesize limit of 2GB for AVI files, did another session, which turned out ok, except that sound quality was horrible you got static in the background and I'm not sure why that is, but I changed some settings, upped the audio quality to 44khz and reduced mic volume, muted aux and line in from control panel.. And then did this 3rd session. But his time I had already done a couple of videos, had to stop recording and start a new video to avoid hitting the 2GB mark, but what happened was that I Was 1.6GB and then suddenly the size doubled to 3.3 GB and so the video file didn't work.. So I abandonded the session although it was going alright. So now I've to figure out a better way of recording this stuff than CamStudio. Do you have any suggestion? I'm gonna try and look this stuff up from google. There's this other software called bandicam but that allows only like 10 minute videos. I wonder if you could do something like an automatic clipping of the recording session into smaller files ( I don't even understand why it's not the standard mode for CamStudio, if every +2GB recording fails automatically. I guess they didn't bother with it ). So.. Unfortunately the sessions so far went to waste. And I don't actually have a webcam to make the video more personal.. Maybe I should get that too. I don't know. Live streaming would be cool though, like twitch.tv, gotta look into how that works.. But I think it involves some kind of $cost$. Any suggestion? ^_^

Oh the crash bug point is pretty important I didn't think about that.. And actually I did just notice Neptunenook's pinned thread right after making this post (Too bad I didn't notice it before posting), and already watched the first video, and probably gonna watch more eventually, so yeah, he seems to be doing similar stuff already ^_^

I recently got this idea of trying to finish TFTD without saving the game on superhuman difficulty.. I'm not sure why I'm talking about "finishing" it, rather just "playing". So the basic idea is that you can't load the game in order to play some part of the game again, but of course unless you plan to leave the game running 24/7 you'll have to save when exiting sessions and load when starting a new session. That though does not mean that if you make a mistake then it would be alright to quit the game without saving and then continue from the previous save. So far it has been a lot of fun. Just the 3rd mission I was playing went totally haywire in the very start of the mission when retrieving a downed cruiser. Two gill men equippied with sonic pistols were located north east from the triton so they could shoot directly at the craftdoors. I tried to extract some units and one of the aquanauts was using a hydrojet cannon... And when I set him to autoshoot at the gill men he actually shot at the triton with phosphorous rounds. So one of the gillmen shot 3 aquanauts as they were exiting the triton.. Managed to take those gillmen out with GCs and throwing some magna-blast grenades.. Only to find out that after ending the turn from south-west direction a gillman would approach to throw a sonic pulser, but one aquanaut on guard reacted to the throw and shot the gillman, but died after the pulser went off. So I was down to 2 aquanauts, and used them to recover items from some of the dead gillmen (There were total 5 dead gillmen in the process, the description doesn't include everything), but once I was retrieving artifacts from the 4th gillman corpse the aquanaut got shot by some unit. So down to 1 aquanaut. I had to abort the mission with a negative rating, but selling the artifacts made 400.000 and so allowed recruiting 10 fresh new aquanauts. So what would normally be a nobrainer with save/load turned out to be complete disaster. And it was also a lot more fun. Or that's what I think anyway. ^_^ I was thinking that if I manage to record this somehow could try and upload a video sequence on youtube with gameplay. Not that the gameplay itself would be something special, but why not. And so with post I'm actually suggesting TFTD without saving, and maybe streaming or something? Anyone up to doing that? Could be interesting ^_^

I think your comments are good as any. In fact in retrospect I slightly regret writing this post, I was having a slight problem of disinhibition which was worsened by being in a hurry. Perhaps melodramatic and expressive style doesn't fit my writing well. I suppose I had some rational points and maybe I should've stuck with those.. I don't know. It's not that bad. I guess I most regret using bodily term in conjunction with Freud, without having an explicit reason to do so, rather it was an association that lit up. Besides I suppose it's good to show some modesty every now and then. In Terror from the Deep the mind of the aquanauts is one of the opponents and a major theme in the game. I suppose the word 'terror' in the name game had very different connotations back in 1995, and I recall myself primarily associating it with the same meaning as horror in those days. In TFTD the word is used with ambiguity, given the alien activities and names of live aliens within the game, some descriptions and graphics of races or USOs are very explicit and horrendous. For examples I can think of the tentaculat by it's very appearance and the zombie animation, bio-drone, hunter USO. I think the graphics in TFTD are surprisingly good, the artwork in ufopedia supports the overall mood of the game. Compare to X-Com Apocalypse, that was a huge disappointment for me. I think it was going for a 'horror in plain sight/daylight' kind of thing, and with the Play-Dough look of the aliens it seriously didn't work out. Higher resolution doesn't mean better. The overall mood is more important than exactness, I think it's similar in art in general, technique is a tool. The way people rationalize and explain away the gaps in their knowledge with at least considerable skill and readiness has to do with the ocean theme. For an example in the recent Iron Sky movie the dark side of the moon is filled. Pink Floyd made a song about the darkside of the moon. The basic idea is that the moon shows same face towards earth all the time, so the dark side of the moon is another one of these inviting mysteries. Is the dark side of the moon somehow different? Perhaps you could make guesses like 'maybe there's more craters from meteor impacts when the trajectories towards the bright side are more likely covered by earth' which would my personal way of becoming creative via explanation of unknown. But then it's not really actually unknown, there's a pretty normal contextual framework where the moon is placed - There's no particular reason to expect the moon('s darkside) to be any different from any other celestial object, moons of the jupiter etc. So it's not an actual blank. What was there before the big bang, would be a pretty huge blankness, but that's maybe different. Cognitive dissonance has quite a bit to do with this. I think it causes dissonance when there's some piece of information in the mind that is completely unexplained, it has to be associated with somethnig, placed within some kind of framework. And if you don't know what lies in the deepest depths of the ocean, then it increases your readiness to accept new information about the depths due to a lack of cognitive dissonance. Any new even fictitious story is more plausible when it explains something that's unknown. Then the explanations regarding the unknown are attached to the context of other information. That's basically what happened in TFTD too. I think 'epic' is the correct word to describe the story of a collision by an alien starship with earth, causing the extinction of dinosaurs and leaving a huge crater. In a way it includes another mystery - What happened to the dinosaurs? I think it's an interesting way of setting up a game that there's this background logic or framework based on which things in the game work and they're not told to the player. And I don't mean like the actual coding, although it's similar, but rather that the abstract player environment/interface doesn't give the player perfect information. Like not telling the player how the guns work. What are the chance to hit formulas. Some people would like to have those formulas, and I think most of the time I might be one of those people. For an example the M.C. Strength of the aquanauts is not given to the player for free. But that in turn can make the game more interesting, especially before you find out the exact mechanics - that there is a strength value. There being an abstract system and getting a hint of it is enticing and also it can be frightening in a horror game. For an example I think horror movies in which the viewer is told exactly what is going on; is given a general broad scientific explanation of what's happening; usually are not scary at all nor even good. Meanwhile a horror movie in which you get an impression that there's a method to the madness kind of gets you on your toes to try and figure out what it is. Actually I have to get ready to go to bed now and am going to stop writing here. I'm not sure what I'm writing about exactly, I suppose it's a defensive follow up on the initial post, or something like that and I suppose I wanted to make some more salient points... Alright, good night / bye for now ^_^

White-foamed lining of a constant stream of waves surrounds the giant floating mind like an electrical storm of cognition ontop the cerebral cortex. Within the mind - there is another mind. Primal subconsciousness. Underneath the crystalline foaming wavestorm there awaits a dark, cold and blue abyss. The ocean and it's depths represents the unknown; mystique and mystery; a veiled canvas. It evokes the creativity of an individual to fill those depths with legends, to explain and to rationalize, to fill in the gaps; paint the canvas. Underneath the ocean layer there lie spawns of creation, focal points of intuition, wormholes from the objective to the intuitive. Descending the oceans' abyss through wormholes into the subconsciousness one finds oneself within pulsating virile pockets of life, primal urges, the mellow redness of the alien colonies. Back in the womb. There you'll encounter primal horror, freudian anal perversion, otherwise known as the tentaculat - utterly disgusting in the very least. * * * What I think is great about TFTD is that the oceans veil the methodical system of the alien activities and initially their activities are a mystery to the player. This activity evokes creativity and intuition. You'll have to make decisions without using precise sharp objective models, intuitively. I think the depths of the ocean theme is what evoked the creativity of the designers too. Explaining the gulf of Mexico..? The sunkens ships, volcanic seafloor, oildrilling facilities, undersea pyramids, even the ruins of atlantis. It's also interesting to make a parallelism between the mind and the ocean, subconsciousness in a rather freudian sense, and the depths of the ocean. With the "resolver" the intuitive models become concrete and tangible. They're revealed to the player. It's also interesting to think that prefix for subconsciousness is the same for the submarines, are the vechiles entering the creations of intuition or visiting the ocean floor? I think it's the intuitive part of the game that's actually fun(ner). I think the end of the game can be explained by the project running out of money. The end is pretty boring. But it can also be explained by the source of creation for the developers being extinguished; Once the mystery is resolved, there's not much encaptivating that remains. The actual solution is boring, knowning only of a mystery is engaging. The ocean in TFTD I think is like 'the goose that lays golden eggs' in a similar sense as Laura Palmer is to David Lynch. * * * Alright I have to get going, but I'll post this 'artsy' (or perhaps slightly manic?) text and am interested in hearing your opinions. Here's some actual questions: Do you think that the mysterious ocean as 'a muse of creation' for the developers has enabled some of the gamecontent? Is it plausible that the ocean for the developers is also unconsciously a metaphor for the unconsciousness? What about comparing the environment of the alien colonies lying underneath the cool and blue ocean (rational cognition) to instinctive, intuitive and emotional? What do you think about how the technical and the biological entwine in TFTD? There's the autopsies, lobstermen etc..? Alright seriously gotta get going, bye!

Just today finished TFTD on hardest difficulty, I remember playing the game as a kid with my brothers in 90s and actually finishing it now was rather nostalgic. It took a lot of save games though, I think that's the primary fault of the game, it's up to the player to self-regulate saving games, which takes part of either the challenge or the fun out of the game. It's not a real challenge if you just decide not to save games, it doesn't feel like it, since you're self-handicapping, and on the other hand, knowing that you can save the game changes the way you can play it. So in other words I actually think the game would more fun if you couldn't save the game at all at the hardest difficulty. Interestingly though the game remains rather interesting despite the ability to save. I think TFTD is one of the best games I've played overall, though I've not played a lot of games. Thematically TFTD is I think ingenious can't think of anything that would come close. Though there are flaws too, quite a bit of them even. But it's possible that this feeling is nostalgic carry over, and if I played TFTD for the first time now, maybe I wouldn't find it so fanciful. To be honest though before today I hadn't read up on TFTD From any source that included spoilers, but I ran into this problem that one of my bases got attacked by a dreadnought recurringly, with 1-3 days interval. After having defended the base for Nth time I googled to see if there was a solution to this presumed bug. I'm pretty sure it's a bug since it was aquatoids with calcinites everytime. Also the recurring attack made the game a bit easier, since it was like 4 million cash per attack from selling the wares which in a month is 60 million, but then I didn't really need the money that point anyway to finish the game. But the actual point here is that I didn't know that you'd get the final thing from certain research and while stumbling on the wiki to find a solution to the bug recurring dreadnought, I of course ran into the buglist and therefore found out the key to the solution to finishing the game, and well after that the game was pretty much over. Though I suppose I could've given up the base in question. In the process I found that there was a couple of things I hadn't discovered in the game (and actually still haven't, but now have knowledge of them) The final mission was pretty interesting though, I was in a hurry to leave in a couple hours and rushed to finish the game. I didn't have the correct (nor enough) equipment on my aquanauts, lost 2 out of the sent 7 member team (Total I actually had 39 aquanauts, but most of them mere on duty base defenders) on the way to bottom floor, and in hte bottom floor I ran out of ammunition (and didn't bother running all the way back to the earlier opponents to get more) so I ended up advancing with - now - 4 aquanauts equippied with 1 empty DPL, 1 thermal tazer, 5 sonic pulsers and that's it. Ended up losing 1 of the aquanauts to those disgusting squibbly mobs, then eventually ran into some lobs that meleed 2 out of the 4 man team, but I also managed to taze them ( they had paniced and dropped guns) picked up 1 shock launcher, and 4 rounds to DPL, with now - last aquanaut - proceeding to finish the game with those 4 shots. It was pretty exciting to think I'd have start the final mission all over again if that last guy couldn't make it - and note that I didn't know how much longer there was to the mission, which made it kind of desperate. Now I kind of feel like trying to finish TFTD without saving the game on SH, but I don't think I can do it (It's highly unlikely), but I think that would make the game more fun than it is with saving. Though of course now that it's finished in the first place, it's not that much fun anyway. I think TFTD is a classic. ^_^