SteveThaiBinh

I think I know this game. Can I play it too?

Librarians!

Yes, I think the independence question is valid, and I want to read about all this much more carefully before I decide for sure which side I'm on. They do mention on their website (they seem to be called Poyry Energy Consulting now - name changes not necessarily inspiring confidence, but moving on...) and they say that their parent company was involved in building a nuclear reactor in Finland, but that doesn't mean that this particular report wasn't affected by the commissioner's own agenda. I hope that now the government has been told to go back and do its public consultation properly, we get a full and frank debate and not just Tony Blair sulking because the judges all hate him.

BG1 is much improved with BGTutu, as others have said, but it's not just the engine - the BG1NPC pack adds a lot of banters and romances of the kind that many enjoyed in BG2. I can't imagine playing BG1 without it, now - it would be too quiet. It's especially rewarding if you keep Imoen around, as she has a lot to say. I also recommend the Finch mod, also for Tutu. Librarians are cool!

Yes, it is, and that reflects the primary concern of the organisation that commissioned it, but it does cover the issue of how supply is to be maintained without nuclear but still reducing carbon emissions, and that surely is the whole point. No-one would be talking about nuclear at all if reducing CO2 were not the major issue. Give people a choice between a windmill in the back yard or a nuclear power station, or energy rationing, I wonder what they will choose when it comes to the crunch. It could well be nuclear, but it's hard to predict until we get to that point. I don't think the report is starting from a conclusion that nuclear power is unnecessary, they're starting from the premise that nuclear power is undesirable, and investigating whether a non-nuclear approach is feasible. This doesn't invalidate the report at all. Reasons why nuclear power is a less desirable option than others can be found elsewhere, and this report is not unduly limited in scope, it's merely focused on answering a specific question. I do see the attraction of nuclear power - it seems to be the only power source that potentially allows us to continue to consume more and more, whereas every other source seems to have an implied maximum output. It does have significant problems, though, of economics, security and safety above all, and the poor management, accidents and waste can't be dismissed lightly. Above all, I think there's a lack of imagination about how well the economy can be regeared to be energy efficient. I don't remember them predicting a fall in demand in the summary at least, just a slowdown in the rate of increase to the point where improvements in technology could meet the increase.

Hmmm.... I have to say that when you look at how EA treated Origin's other major game series, Ultima, you wonder how respectful they'll be of Wing Commander. I never really played the games - my main exposure was finding a Kilrathi ship in a field in Ultima VII - but as I recall it was very much focused on space combat missions, not a trading game like Elite at all.

Are we calling him the Black Prince now? When did that happen? Doesn't bode well, as the original Black Prince massacred thousands. I imagine he was willing to go to war when he signed up. The question was always whether sending him into combat, being such a celebrity and therefore a target, put him and his fellows in too much risk, i.e. they'd have to spend so much effort protecting him that they wouldn't be able to do the job they were there to do. I hope someone competent has made an objective assessment and decided that he'll do more good than harm. I hope the Royal Family hasn't just insisted that their boy should get what he wants regardless of the consequences.

Nuclear is only necessary if you assume that demand for energy will continue to increase as it has done in the past. A combination of energy-efficiency technology and simply allowing the price of energy to rise could slow the rise in demand to the point where renewables and gas can meet that demand. I'm aware that some of the strongest advocates of renewables believe that consumer-capitalism isn't sustainable as we start to tackle global warming seriously, but I'm wary of that. I suspect that if governments ban nuclear power and impose limits to carbon emissions, the market will provide solutions in the form of alternative technologies and energy efficiency, and do so quite successfully. In any case, I'm no economist, but looking through the WWF report on energy policy, their figures do seem to add up without nuclear power. I'd be interested in seeing what others make of it. WWF Report Summary (this is the bit I read)

Yes, the game sort of hints that you should try the Peninsula District and the prison first. It's a bit easier, although there are still two or three tough battles there, and I think you come out of that with at least one +1 weapon.

I think sleep paralysis would scare me more than anything I've experienced. It sounds pretty horrific, especially the first time. I remember reading one of the Kay Scarpetta books in which she describes being in a sensory deprivation tank. That caused a nightmare or two. As for moves/TV, Sapphire and Steel: people trapped in photographs and burned alive by children without faces... :fear:

The fact that I haven't beaten Fallout 1 is putting me off even starting Fallout 2, even though many people here say it's better. I just can't get up the enthusiasm to play Fallout again, especially since a bug got me last time. I suppose three years from now when the world is drowning in Oblivion clones I'll be glad I still have the Fallouts. For all these RPGs I've never finished, I don't think I have a single adventure game I've failed to complete.

A counter-argument against a massive UK investment in nuclear power runs something like this: Yes, when you ask tough questions of the renewable energy sources (wind, tidal and so on), the numbers don't add up terribly well. But they don't add up for nuclear power either. As others have pointed out, unless your economic calculations include how to dispose of hazardous nuclear waste and how to decommission nuclear plants once they become obsolete, and how to pay for these things, it's very hard to make an informed decision as to which is better. I seem to recall seeing a comparison of the amount of public money invested in developing nuclear and renewable energies, which showed that even in recent years nuclear gets much higher public funding. So if we reverse that, aren't renewables likely to become more viable rather quickly? Sadly, we may be too late for this. Finally there's the problem of the British Nuclear Industry itself, an industry so steeped in incompetence and broken promises that I wouldn't trust it to run a village fete. If we were going to go down the nuclear path, we'd need to get someone else in to do it, possibly the Finns or the Japanese. A few days ago, a judge told the government that its decision to opt for nuclear power had been premature and it was told to go away and carry out a proper public consultation. It seems that the country was going nuclear just because someone sat on Tony Blair's sofa and gave him a good sales pitch. That's not how we ought to be running a country. I used to be militantly against nuclear power, but I'm not any more. I concede that we might have fatally underinvested in renewables and might need one more generation of nuclear power plants to give us breathing space to get the renewable technology right. But the nuclear industry has to answer the same tough questions it poses to renewables before it'll get my support.

I'd definitely add my voice to those calling for low-magic (or no magic) CRPGs and CRPGs set in other historical periods. Ancient Greece or Rome haven't been particularly well exploited for RPGs, and those are settings that are already within the public consciousness. What about Renaissance Genoa? What about Mamluk Egypt? I still enjoy Tolkienesque fantasy, and it's hard to be overly critical of a setting that's produced so many good games (if for no other reason than that so many games have used it.) I'd like to see more variety, though, with more games in the modern world (with or without the VtM:B horror twist), and more in settings that are new and unexpected.

RPGs I haven't finished? This has been bothering me a bit. I think that three years ago I could have counted the games I'd bought in my life and not finished on the fingers of one hand, but it's increasing a lot at the moment. Games that I think I got more than halfway through, but never finished: Arx Fatalis (I was hoping for something bigger and more epic. When it became clear that this one dungeon was pretty much it, I lost interest.) Temple of Elemental Evil (The temple was just dull, and put that together with the bugs...) Divine Divinity Fallout (A stupid bug, can't remember exactly what it was, but I arrived at some town for the first time and they were all convinced I'd been there before and screwed something up, and so attacked me) Lionheart Sacred ( :mad: ) Fable: The Lost Chapters Quite a lot of user-created NWN modules (sometimes bugs become apparent, sometimes they just lose steam) That said, this list is still dwarfed by the list of RPGs I have completed. And I think it's nice that there are still a few 'classics' that I've never played, like Fallout 2, Icewind Dale and so on. I know they're there for emergencies. Poor Xan. I've played his romance path in the BG1NPC pack, and it's pretty entertaining. They've brought out a BG2 mod for him, presumably continuing the romance. I'm sure I'll get round to it eventually. It really is, though you might wait until just before part three in the series comes out. The ending definitely leaves you wanting more.

They're making a sequel to that? It was awful! Did it make lots of money, then? I can't say the 'jokes' in this trailer inspire much confidence either.

So PNJ is also with SEGA, eh? Interesting. Do you think it was all along? SEGA must have liked the early work on PNJ a lot, for them to have signed a second game with the same developer. And that means it's SEGA that's keeping any announcement on PNJ from being made. Of course, they only announced the Aliens game after a mix-up on their website.

A. To be more specific, I'll draw the Sword of Infinite in one hand whilst juggling the three crystal spheres of Okirok in the other and treading water in the ocean of my own tears, then swim towards Duke Crockshaw crying "I'm Zink, not Jink! Or am I?" and stabbing the sword in his general direction as Roskwell distracts him by shouting "Why aren't you using your gravity pulverizor?" He'll never see me coming.

It's so much less fun when they can see you. The new board is watching us watch each other, encouraging us to rate each other and form groups within groups, but to what end?

Oh, that assistant. I think I must have clicked on it once when I first joined and marked it mentally as 'not interesting or useful', because I can't remember what it used to do. Now it's in a little window offering to link me to the moderating team, lest I forget who they are. How nice!

It needs a bit of tweaking, certainly, but I'm glad they've kept the overall colour scheme and look of the boards. Shame there's no new forum for the two forthcoming games. Is the calendar shared or personal? And what's the assistant, Deraldin?

As for the Warrens:

Yes. No. Yes.

I look forward to purchasing free-range aspirin. The genetic engineering and general scientific interference takes place at the embryo stage before the chicken is a living being, so I don't think there's much for animal welfare activists to be concerned about. This is really good news, albeit for the future rather than for the present, but I think it's another reason why developing countries are right to devote part of their wealth to hi-tech industries and research; just as India was able to manufacture generic anti-retroviral drugs, so the developing world will be able to access this technology and circumvent the Western patent-holders, and more power to them.

I love how you have the exact same thread at rpgcodex, but with three exclamation marks in the title to our one. And I've never heard of Twilight Princess, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

My current LCD has rather pale, washed out colours too, sometimes, but there were other LCD monitors in the shop that were much better in this regard (and correspondingly more expensive) - I just wanted the largest screen I could get for my money. I remember gaming magazines saying in the past that LCD monitors aren't fast enough for graphically-demanding games, but I've never noticed it to be a problem with NWN2 or Oblivion. Maybe the technology has improved enough for this not to be much of an issue any more. It's been so long since I've done any gaming on a CRT monitor, I can't say what they're like these days.