Akari

To be honest, the TOTAL number of possible NPCs is still in a state of flux right now. There isn't a finalized number. And even if they were, I'd probably leave it to designer descretion to give the number out. -Akari

True enough. And actually, there are some other characters that fall into this category as well that will be joining you at points. But when we say '10 NPCs in your party', we're referring to more permanent characters. -Akari

I'm not 100% certain on this answer, but this is what I understand to be the case currently: The points at which you have the chance to recruit those characters into your party will turn out one way or the other. If you take one character you'll never be able to go back and take the other character. So if you end up forcing a character to leave you or they die you'll be down a character and not be able to replace them with someone else. Again, this is just how I understand it to be currently. I could be wrong on this, since it's a design issue, not a programming one. -Akari

It's 10 NPCs not including your character. Also, there are more than 10 possible NPCs in the game. Which 10 you have depends on a couple different factors. -Akari

The famous white-haired woman did not appear in the E3 Demo in any way, if I recall correctly. There may have been a character dressed all in white, but it wouldn't have been her, I don't think. The woman with the yellow hair was the PC in the demo, using one of the many new heads that are being made for the game. Arren Kae was a name Avellone asked me to set the female demo character to. Nothing more. -Akari

It's too early to say at this point. Plans for that sort've thing are still being ironed out. -Akari

It isn't randomized, no. As to the # of Sith Lords, it isn't one per planet, but thats all I'll say on that. As to your character appearing there... hm.... -Akari

Probably won't be any Blaster stances... there are Blaster flourishes though. -Akari

A December release date is looking more likely based on what we've been told here. Nothing official yet though, I don't think. -Akari

He's one of... well, more than one character that will occupy that spot. -Akari

The ERF/GFF/BIF/2DA/TLK formats are all the same, and save games are stored the same way, so I don't imagine it'd take too many changes to make your program work with KotOR2 when it comes out. -Akari

It was done by a Lucas Arts artist. I don't know his name off hand. -Akari

I've read a few manga series, myself. Usually I'll see an anime I enjoy and then go dig up the manga that it was based on, like Kenshin or Berserk. Since there's not a lot of anime I enjoy enough to follow up on, my list of mangas read is fairly short. But I've enjoyed them when I have read them. -Akari

We're not. -Akari

Already done. -Akari

A darker story doesn't necessarily mean more mass destruction. Sometimes it's the more personal tragedies that make the mood more somber or 'dark'. In saying that, keep in mind that I actually don't know a whole lot of the story of the game. Most of it is in the designers' heads more than in docs, and I don't have a lot of time to read story docs to begin with. Too busy coding. But I know how Avellone writes, and I do know a few details or ideas that are going to happen. -Akari

The computer doesn't cheat. I swear. In-code, it's treated exactly like the player is. It gets its 4 cards randomly from a pre-selected sidedeck of 10 cards just like you do. It draws its cards at the start of its turn from the same deck that you do. It never looks at your cards. It's just following a pretty effective algorithm for winning the game. If you're not convinced, one of these days I can document exactly how it decides if it is going to hit or stay, and then you can see if it ever violates those rules or not. I promise it won't. -Akari

It's already there, and the time it took to make the changes wasn't much. Some people liked it, so it's not hurting anything by leaving it in. -Akari

It's entirely optional, so you can just not play it if you don't want to. I never played it in the first KotOR. Nor did I ever play FF9's card game up until they forced you to win those couple rounds at a tournament. It was then that I dug up a FAQ to figure out how that thing was supposed to work. In any case, the player will alternate with the computer when it comes to going first, so it's not so unfair now. -Akari

I'm not sure what the story is on the two different ones. I think we still haven't settled on an official logo yet, so those might just be two that were tried along the way. -Akari

All right, I'll bite. I really love one on one fighting games. But that genre really lost its appeal once arcades became a thing of history. I would like to bring the genre back with an online-capable one on one fighting game. Wins and losses would be tracked and players could advance through monthly massive tournaments (not unlike Warcraft 3 and all the stat tracking that goes on with Battlenet). This is assuming that the issues of lag and ping times could be overcome, which I'm not really sure they could except in very optimal conditions since less than 50ms pings would probably be necessary to have it play right. Given the chance to take any license I wanted to do this, I'd grab most of SNK's property (The King of Fighters series, the Last Blade series, the Samurai Shodown series, etc) to use as the starting point, and then add from there. Since the game would be online by nature, there would be new characters added over time and so on. Anyway, that's the gist of what I'd like to make, without going into too much boring detail. The idea would be to bring back the competative nature of 1 on 1 fighting games that there used to be in the local arcades, and remove the old fashioned limitation of long distance. -Akari

Yeah, I wasn't too impressed when I toyed with it earlier today. I HAVE seen a better system than ALICE, but I just can't remember where it was. Someone took the ALICE concept and improved it substantially. They made it so that it could reference things from earlier in the session, and learned, and so on. I did like this though: Human: Quit ALICE: Your crude attempt to terminate me will not succeed puny human. Human: That's cute. ALICE: Your replies are cute too. Human: Thank you. ALICE: you are quite welcome.

The problem in KotOR1 was that they treated the first and last name as a single name in code. In KotOR2, I put in functional <LastName>, <FirstName>, and <FullName> tokens. I can't promise anything though, since their actual use is up to the designers, not me. -Akari

We did add a procedural texturing system that helps make those otherwise plain surfaces look a bit more varied without straining the X-Box memory. This is mostly for use with walls and floors, and I think doors. Beyond that it's mostly up to the artists to do a good job with what they have available. -Akari