Evenstar

Sounds like the game needs to be pulled from the shelves (at least until it is adequately patched.) Maybe that would get their (LA's) attention. I have been waiting (as many if not all of us have) for the 2nd (or 1.5th) patch to be released before I even consider buying the game. At this point, I'm just saying "forget it." I've already wasted waaaay too much time day-after-day checking to see if it has been released. This fiasco is not OE's fault, IMHO. Reason being: why include all the additional "cut" content for those determined individuals to find? They wanted us to know that parts of the game were not included. That's the only possible reason. They knew that someone would eventually find it and tell everyone else. It's basically their passive way of stating, "hey, we planned to do some really cool stuff, but LA wouldn't let us." And the "bugginess" issue is simply lack of a proper time frame in which to get the software finished. Being a new company, OE didn't have the luxury of saying, "we need more time." And seeing other games that LA has published lately (past 3-4 years), I don't think they would have cared even if OE had that luxury. LA is banking on the name "Star Wars" to sell their software for them, and it did. And it will continue to do so as long as the consumer allows it to (which will probably be for a long time.) This consumer, however, is paying attention to the customer reviews. And with that... thanks to all who have posted here regarding bugs, low quality music (totally uncalled for,) and other issues that have ultimately saved me some money. Well, needless to say, I'm glad that I haven't spent ~$50 on software that doesn't "cut the mustard." (What does that mean, anyway?) I made the mistake of buying a Windows ME upgrade, so I've been burned before, too. It doesn't feel good at all. The pain will eventually subside. It's just a shame that coasters are getting sooo expensive these days! I honestly think that OE is desperately hoping this situation will just go away. For those of you who actually purchased the game, don't let that happen! Continue to hound OE and LA until the game is fixed!!! They owe you that much (either that or a complete refund!) If they never do, never buy another piece of software from them again. It's a pretty simple philosophy. You (the collective "you") need to use your power as a consumer to fight that stance. I am! Thankfully, all I lost was time, not money. And finally... the lack of developer support in the past 2.5 months is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. Not one word has been uttered in response to the patch that would be out in "a couple of days". They gave a reason as to "why" the additional content wasn't in the first patch, but since then the silence has been deafening. OE. If you're possibly worried about losing further contracts from LA by speaking out on this, I think you should be more worried about losing all respect and future customers on future games by NOT speaking out on this. end of rant... you can kill my account now, I won't be needing it anymore.

Absolutely! Sorry, didn't even see that forum. Perhaps a moderator could move this over there.

For those that are interested and haven't heard, the successor to Falcon 4 will be out tomorrow, June 28th. Check it out at http://www.lead-pursuit.com/ An interview with the VP of Lead Pursuit can be found at sim-news.com. Or, download a zipped movie. Apparently, a lot of the major bugs of Falcon 4 have been fixed in this version. Lead Pursuit has hired several of the major modders of Falcon 4 to work on the new project. Anyhow, check it out if you're interested. It may be old news, but it's the first I'd heard of it.

That depends on your definition of 'years'. "

A few observations: * Obi Wan doesn't age well at all (between Ep.3 and Ep. 4) * Was Padme still pregnant ? * Would have been nice to have seen more than a * Jar Jar :D Overall, it was a decent film. It could have been much better if someone other than Lucas had directed it. That, IMO, was the saving grace of ESB and ROTJ, but it's his baby.... Will probably watch it again before it leaves the theatres for good.

This is a 3D problem that I am trying to solve. I have a scenario where I need to be able to travel in a direction (v) while maintaining a line of sight with a point in 3D space (u). However, one restriction is that the line of sight must be confined to a fixed viewing area. For instance, the camera traveling in the v direction is restricted so that it can only tilt up/down 45 degrees and turn left/right 50 degrees. If the point in 3D space is too far behind the camera, then the camera will no longer be able to point in the precise direction of the point, but it would point in the general direction of the point. I've been tackling this problem for some time now, and conceptually, it is very easy to understand. The most confusing aspect to me is how to accurately calculate the angles for the yaw and pitch. What I've done so far.... To determine the values for the camera's direction vector, I am taking the known yaw and pitch angles (my current heading) and calculating the x, y, z coordinates onto a unit sphere. v.x = cos(alpha) * cos(beta); v.y = sin(beta); v.z = sin(alpha) * cos(beta); This produces my direction vector in an already normalized form. I then take the point in space that I'm looking at and subtract my current position to create the vector, u, to the point in 3D space. I am not normalizing this vector. Once I've created these two vectors, I attempt to get the yaw and pitch angles between them. To do this, I create a new vector, w, by subtracting u from v (so w = v - u). I then normalize that vector. I know that the yaw angle will be the asin of the y component of the w vector. yaw = asin(w.y) That yaw value can then be plugged in to my sphere equation to give pitch. Of course, I'll have to account for situations where cos(yaw) equals 0. pitch = acos(w.x / cos(yaw)) However, the results that I'm seeing don't match what I am expecting to see. As an example... in some cases, a yaw angle of 82 might be calculated when I'm actually expecting 98. I know that this is due to the fact that my C compiler returns asin values in the range -PI/2 to PI/2, however I don't know how to deal with it. Incidentally, I'm not as concerned with verifying whether or not the camera can actually position itself to view the point. That will be relatively easy. I included that in the description to help indicate *why* I need to know the exact values of the pitch and yaw. Also, the roll angle at this point is 0, but I can't guarantee that it will always be so. Does anyone have any experience with this type of problem? If so, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Judging from the e-mail address of the tech support, it is apparent that LA outsources their support through Absolute Quality (www.aqinc.com). Not saying that that is necessarily a bad thing. Apparently quite a few companies go through them to provide multi-lingual support, so they must be fairly reputable. Most likely the only support questions they can answer are the ones that LA has provided them with.

I haven't actually purchased, installed, or otherwise played KotOR2 simply because I don't have the time. That said, the above agreement may not be what you agreed to, but since it hadn't changed (other than LUCASARTS was just LEC) from 1999 to 2003, I assume it is still basically the same. Anyway, the underlined portion says it all. Personally, I think that it's getting to the point that we as consumers need to start reading the fine print. If we don't like what we read, then we shouldn't purchase the product. What I don't understand is why stores do not allow the returning of opened software. In order to read most license agreements, there is no other way to read it other than opening the box. Usually, the outside of the box states that we can return the software if we don't agree to the license agreement. Because most software stores do not allow the returning of opened merchandise, I think that it's time that we start forcing store owners to open the box so that we can actually read the license agreement ahead of time (pre-purchase). Statements like the one underlined above should send out red flags. It basically says that LA isn't responsible for any updates or the quality of their product. Bugs or no bugs, the state of the software is technically not their responsibility. I don't personally agree with it, but everyone who installed this software did acknowledge that they read and understood the agreement. That's LA's loophole. I think it stinks, but it is what it is. Incidentally, I got burned by LA's "X-Wing Alliance" many years ago. Since then, I always try to read reviews of any software packages (games or not) before I buy them. I say "try" because I have messed up and bought sequels to otherwise good games prior to reviewing them (Doom 3 and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 come to mind.) Usually, I wish that I had just waited. For instance, even before the patch to KotOR 1, I bought it because it had good player reviews. I was dubious even then because (for those of us who remember its biggest controversy) there was no playable demo of it. So, the moral of this story is that we (and by "we" I mean the customers, LucasArts, and Obsidian Entertainment) should learn from our mistakes. Customers should think twice before shelling out the big bucks to purchase software, and the companies that produce them should take the responsibility upon themselves to provide quality products and services. [edited] As I think more about it, I doubt seriously that OE's quality is to be questioned. I'm basing this statement off of correspondance that I've had with them. They seem like they really care. I would guess that LA has "tied their hands" in terms of providing any kind of official statements or support. Perhaps OE can learn from that mistake and specifically allow that type of customer relations with other contracts they win. .. quietly steps down from the soapbox..

I was replaying Diablo this week and happened to think about somthing that struck me a bit peculiar. Are computer game player characters autistic? I mean, I slayed this monster; a pile of gold fell to the floor; and I instantly knew how much was there! Forget Ishmael, call me Rainman!

I have a strong suspicion that you are exactly right. And if I were to guess, I don't think that OE is allowed to talk about the issues with the product (well, other than saying various forms of "soon.") Personally, I imagine that they are under an NDA or some equivalent to not talk about specifics with works in progress. A patch would fall under that category. Or if that theory doesn't float, the other idea is that they are trying to avoid the problem of issuing a statement about patch fixes only to have everyone and his brother crying "why aren't you fixing this other problem, too?!?" I haven't purchased this game yet, and from the looks of it (primarily from the original post for this thread) I won't be purchasing it for a long time ... if ever, and I'm ok with that (I had the same opinion with Ultima IX). I find it very hard to believe that in an industry such as the gaming industry, the powers that be would allow the release of a product that has mono music sampled at ~10Khz. That is totally uncalled for. I mean, my Star Wars LP that I got way back in 1978, scratchy as it is, would sound better. Basically, I don't really care about the missing content; but music is one of my great loves. Thank you markussum for pointing this major problem with this product. Unless it is fixed, I guess I'll just have to be thankful for the first KoTOR (but even it got old after a while.) Perhaps this will give me more time to read up on OpenSSL.

This is actually what I figured would be the case. I shudder to think the kind of logic that would have to be programmed in to automate a user's actual game play. I'm sure it could be done to some degree, but it wouldn't be worth the effort (might look good on a resume, though ) Forgive my ignorance, but what is a d20 tester? My first guess would be a combat tester. In a previous job, I worked in the drafting group for Solid Edge. Generally speaking, the developers and the testers worked together to solve problems; but fundamental GUI changes, etc. couldn't be introduced without jumping through 2^n hoops. The bug tracking system was ok, but it definately could have stood some improvement. There was one particularly nasty (at least in my way of thinking) bug involving corrupt data files. We would get files in from customers and rather than try to fix the corruption at the core (i.e. the code), our directions were to try and fix the actual data files. I never could understand that. 99% of the time, the file just wasn't fixable. The management was convinced that the save routines were perfect and couldn't possibly be at fault. Talk about frustrating! I mean, how many times have you saved a CPP file and found it to be corrupt? (Please don't say, "Gee, that happens all the time.") In my current job and my "at home" project, however, I am the tester and the developer. Obviously, it's not the best scenario. There is a design spec for the project, but that's about it. How long is a typical design process for a game like NWN2 or KOTOR2? Once it is set, what is involved in changing it? As for testing, I am proud to say that with my side project at home, none of my 4 (yep, four) customers have had any major problems with the toolkit I've written. I've yet to talk to my marketing person about those sales! " Of course, that's an entirely different topic. A word to the wise: Trying to code, test, debug, document, market, create a website, do tech support, and otherwise sell a software product BY YOURSELF is an extremely DAUNTING task.

Thanks. I'll certainly look for it.

Hi! I usually shy away from forums, but I saw this Developer's Corner and was intrigued. I've been developing software for many years now. These have been primarily government contracting jobs, but I've done a couple of commercial apps as well (one of which I am trying to market.) My question is very basic... When it comes to testing software applications, what are the best approaches? I ask this because, at present, the project that I'm currently working on has no real testing procedures or policies to speak of. In fact, we don't even have a test lab. It seems (with at least my organization) that testing gets put off and put off until it is just too late in the development cycle to even matter. Try as I do; I don't write bug-free code. I can't imagine any programmer who does, but obviously some bugs are harder to find than others. As for testing, the company I'm with has just started seriously thinking about a test lab. What sort of computer systems does Obsidian use (i.e. Dell, Gateway, home built?) How many? Do you automate your tests? What sort of tools do you use (commercial or in-house?) Thanks, Brian