SteveThaiBinh

Heavy rains may be part of it, but in the UK at least, river flooding usually has more to do with either too much concreted ground or cutting down too many trees, both of which reduce the ability of the land to soak up the excess water. Whether global warming-related or not, it's caused or at least exacerbated by human activity. I sympathise with local groups who blame weather events on global warming in order to persuade the public, but I think they're making themselves hostages to fortune. Every now and then there'll be a year without a hurricane or flood, and then their case collapses. That's not the way to persuade people of the nature of the threat.

That sounds like a serious problem. Can you remember and link to any of these posts?

It doesn't work consistently, and that's to be expected. Global warming will cause some areas to get warmer and some colder, as weather systems across the world change. The UK will likely get colder initially as the Gulf Stream is disrupted - we have an unusually temperate given our latitude. Overall, global warming is likely to cause more extreme weather of all kinds - hotter summers, colder winters. But it's a mistake to connect an individual weather event or season to global warming. The effects are subtler and long-term, though no less powerful for that. The overwhelming view of scientists working in the field is that global warming exists and is caused by human activity. There are some critics, and these have been given undue prominence by the US media desperate to appear balanced and the US government which is desperate not to jeopardise economic growth.

Think of the fuel bills. The Death Star would be useful. De-activate the weapon and change the name, of course, then you could rent it out as office space.

When you listen to someone making the case for the landings being a hoax, it does sound very convincing, but I've heard someone making the case for the Earth being flat, and he sounded equally convincing. I don't have the time or the expertise to sift through the evidence myself. However, I don't believe it was a hoax. There are too many people who could expose it quite easily, and yet they haven't. It would only take one person who worked at NASA to come out and say it was a hoax for the whole thing to collapse. It would have been an insane risk for the US government at the time of the Cold War, and most importantly, the technology for a moon landing did exist at the time. Losing astronauts' lives if the technology failed would have been bad, but not as bad as having a hoax exposed. Lastly, the US government simply isn't that good at keeping secrets. It's good at spinning events and making bad seem good, blurring the issue and so on, but not very good at telling this kind of lie.

I think it's difficult for a company like Obsidian to have an all-spam forum, because anything said there could damage the company's reputation. A forum managed by a private citizen or group of private citizens doesn't need to worry so much. If there are abusive comments on these forums about LucasArts for example, or slanderous/libellous comments, Obsidian might be legally accountable for that (I'm not sure of US law in this regard), and LucasArts might complain to Obsidian. It's quite likely that this has already happened.

If you talk to him and he refuses, you can still jedify him later. You need to gain a bit of influence first.

The natural vehicle for good story-telling is the adventure game. For the genre to realise its potential, it needs to overcome the object-puzzle conventions of the point-and-click adventure (as the Fahrenheit article said). It also needs some advances in technology - Facade is an interesting attempt but not a satisfying experience as it stands. I don't think we necessarily need shorter or simpler games in order to satisfy adult gamers, but we do need games that are divided into chapters of a manageable length, in the manner of TV dramas or soaps. That is a challenge for writers in the future. Lastly, there needs to be some clever marketing: when developers get all of the above right, they'll have a product that should sell well outside the traditional gaming market. The interactive movie has been promised but not delivered for a very long time, and I doubt we're anywhere near it yet, but the potential market for it is so large that I'm sure we'll get there some day. Are RPGs limited by their setting? It's not easy to write an interesting and non-cliched story in the fantasy genre, as shelf after shelf of my local bookshop will testify. There are some great writers and some great stories, but not so many. This is one reason why I wish there were more RPGs set in the real world, modern or historical. That wouldn't solve the problem by itself, but it might inspire the writers to produce something a bit different, at least.

You're probably right, although it shouldn't be. This thread isn't spam, provided it stays as a discussion on general moderation policy and its implementation, and doesn't spiral off into complaints about individual decisions or personal attacks. There's a chance Fionavar will close it and tell us to direct comments about moderation to himself or the Guildmaster via PM. On the other hand, general moderation policy should be a valid topic for discussion. I think the main problem we have is that we rely on the mods, mainly Fionavar, too much. I'm forever reading threads where people post "Fionavar should really close this thread", and I agree with them, but why not just stop posting in the thread and let it die? A little self-restraint from the spammers would be good. We all spam sometimes, and a little spam can make a thread funnier to read, but we shouldn't really need the mods to step in and prune/close threads with page after page of rubbish every day. I guess if a thread we like has been closed, we should just start it again, but PM the moderator to find out why the first thread was closed if this isn't clear (and it usually is). Then the starter of the second topic can put anti-derailment advice in the new thread.

We have reliable information that there was an in-house LucasArts team working on Kotor 3, though the project was cancelled. So it's likely that when Obsidian were working on TSL they fully expected it to be part two of a trilogy. Whether Kotor 3 will actually be made is a different question, of course.

It was nice watching Star Trek as a kid and listening to Scotty's accent (my family is half-Scottish). I didn't realise until today that he was Canadian. Thanks for the memories.

The latter, I think. Stories don't sell games in the way that combat does. When I see TV adverts for games, they're showing and talking about the combat. I'd like to see the role of writer separated from that of programmer. Perhaps I'm being unreasonable or unrealistic, but I don't see that the two work well together. You don't ask a Hollywood scriptwriter to operate the cameras or decorate the sets. I think game companies will become increasingly aware that in order to keep their profits up, they need to attract new gamers who aren't so interested in combat. Then they will start to invest more in stories. It's difficult to produce a great story, but it's not difficult to produce a decent story. It's a matter of paying someone competent to create one.

It's not unusual for the same game engine to be used for several games. That doesn't make them all expansion packs of the first. Kotor 2 was an entirely new game, and in fact Obsidian went out of their way to make it value-for-money and different to Kotor 1. A different story-line, nearly all new characters, a whole different feel to it. Shame they messed up the ending, but that's a different argument. It was worth a full price, and I've paid as much for worse games (Sacred :angry: ) I can't vote for any of the options above.

How do they aim the lasers?

Interesting. It certainly doesn't show the entire picture of the conflict (murdered hostages, Western or Iraqi are absent, as are those killed by Iraqi or foreign insurgents/terrorists), but it does show a side that is neglected in some media outlets. The videos of dead and wounded civiliians were very harrowing. I found the videos of supposed mistreatment of Iraqi civilians less convincing - the soldiers weren't obviously carrying out abuses, they were just being cautious and firm.

Thanks, I'd like to have a look, yes.

I don't, and I guess I never thought about it before. I've been to the Al Jazeera site several times, but never really looked for videos. I'll investigate.

If better graphics persuades the designers that they can have more realistic characters with emotions and depth, then I'm all for it. In a sense, better graphics should force the designers to up their game, as they will find it harder to get away with poorly-written and unbelievable characters and stories. I think this is what the guy is getting at in the interview.

Thanks, I'll give it a miss, then. I'm curious - where do you find these things? Do the terrorist websites tend to show more videos of American soldiers being killed, or Iraqi civilians being killed? Which do they see as more effective in recruitment, injustice or pure hatred? There's a debate going on in the UK at the moment about whether the deaths of Muslim civilians in Iraq is actually a cause of terrorist actions, or merely a justification offered by terrorists who in fact would carry out terrorist actions anyway.

I don't believe in the conspiracy theories at all - I just found the telescope explanation a little odd. I've heard that there are now more powerful telescope on Earth, such that they achieve better results through the atmosphere than Hubble does/did from space. However, the problem of having a telescope designed to observe distant objects refocus on a nearby target does make sense.

It all seems a bit fishy to me. There ought to be some telescopes built at some time capable of showing it. It would be interesting to see. Did they land on the dark side or on the Earth-facing side?

This cricket apparently uses its chirp to estimate the temperature. I use BBC Weather myself. Is the flag still on the moon? If so, shouldn't it be possible to see it with a telescope?

Thank you!!! The movie is very cute. Poor Rancor, it had no chance. :D

Is it a birdie or a crab?

I think I read somewhere that it's very difficult to get two characters interacting and touching each other in the right place. Yes, I know how that sounds, but it's late and I can't be bothered to rephrase it. I mean, look at Kotor 2 when Hanharr picks Mira up by the throat - it goes horribly wrong three times out of four. I guess a kiss would be technically difficult and take a lot of work, just for one scene (however much we'd like to have seen it )