Humanoid

True, real men put it in autoexec.bat P.S. Real men also don't load DOSKEY.

Put a shortcut to the game in your Startup folder, then you won't have to fire it up.

I'm not so sure about the whole positioning thing. I mean, I loathe the infiltration of the role trinity of MMOs into single player games as much as anyone, but bluntly, the potential alternative of having to micromanage my positioning every few seconds to keep safe is even less appealing. Even the use of chokepoints and such is overstated I think, collision detection is only the beginning and only simulates moving around concrete pillars as opposed to actual combatants. Consider sports such as basketball or any flavour of football, just getting past one guy on a wide-open playing field isn't trivial in itself, and that's with the defender being limited in what actions they're permitted to take. (Someone tries to dribble past you? Punch them in the gut as they go by.) So what I'd be looking for is some kind of abstraction of the act of actively blocking an enemy's movement. Attacks of opportunity are only half the solution, it penalises them some health for moving, but often is not a meaningful penalty given a sufficient number of hitpoints to burn. And typically it'd be a lot as opposed to one or two hits worth, a critical problem introduced by the HP inflation talked about earlier. Give up 10% of my HP in order to be able to squash that mage? Easy decision. I don't have a definitive solution for this - most of what comes to mind does tend to come with potentially irritating downsides. At the extreme point you'd have 'sticky' fighting, where once engaged in melee combat, there is no lateral movement - either stand and fight or fall back. Think Zone of Control mechanics in the earlier Civilization games. Perhaps toning it down, you could have a severe movement speed penalty in the same scenario - at say 25% speed, the enemy that tries to run past eats four times as many attacks, which in most systems is something to think about and ought to be far from trivial. A different approach might be an toggled ability by a character to enter blocking mode, which might do something like trade an attack penalty but keep one designated target in place.

And yeah, each enemy has X number of block *chances* per turn - they get used up regardless if the attack actually succeeds or not. I think fully levelled Daggers plus Dual Wield is seven attacks per turn, versus three for swords.

Prior to the DLC, you'd budget for about level 30 - in reality you'd get another couple levels or so further, but you'd be stuck inside the final dungeon by that point and won't be able to properly use those skill points. 30 levels at 3 points per level means 90 points to spend. GMing a skill is 25 points, plain Mastery is 15, so the rule of thumb is that you got to GM three skills total and master one if you fully focused your skill points. Someone who's played through with all the new post-release dungeons would have a better idea of what the new effective level cap is.

I would've thought that Original Sin would be the opening gambit of that scheme.

Bladedancers are just as powerful with daggers as they are with swords, perhaps moreso given the utility of chewing up block charges. Not that you shouldn't have taken the scout - you probably ended up with the better balance as a result. The Crusader being committed to the shield means they'll fall away rapidly midway through the game as a damage dealer, they are very definitely healers. Aside, you'll probably find you won't have the points to really push three magic skills on each spellcaster, I'd focus on two for the majority of the game as to not spread yourself too thin.

Interesting, because I feel the most common switch is actually the MX Brown since it's marketed as an all-rounder. I believe Logitech's mech keyboards use them, which probably makes them the most readily available option for browns. Only properly used brown and black myself, at home and at work respectively, the latter further dampened with O-rings. I don't like the black, with or without the O-rings, but it's just a cheap Rosewill (Newegg's house brand) so not a big investment. Really want to try out a Topre RealForce, but at about double the price of Cherry switch keyboards and being very hard to source locally, I've been reluctant to pull the trigger.

I think they're only 2-key rollover - or at least the originals were, which would make them pretty poor gaming keyboards.

The other thing is that there's often a fear about allowing one class to get significantly wealthier than the others. God forbid a thief actually be able to steal stuff worth anything. Playing a bit of TOR back in the day as a smuggler, the first act has you acquire a fantastic treasure worth a fortune as a final reward. Except that it isn't worth anything and you end up with the same amount of cash as that altruistic monkjedi who has spent exactly 0% of the game pursuing material riches. Sure, that extreme measure of equalisation tends to be associated with MMOs, but it's also prevalent in most single player games to some extent. Dragon Age for example gave out a few unique items, but a pittance in gold, and the items sell for mere pocket change. As absurd as it sometimes gets, I respect the Elder Scrolls games for at least allowing you to take anything and everything to feed your personal fortune.

Mainly a problem for people who were weird and bought a Pro Audio Spectrum or Gravis Ultrasound instead of a Sound Blaster.

Atari famously buried most of their inventory of infamous E.T. video game, often called the worst video game ever made, in a New Mexico landfill some thirty-plus years ago. Well, those games have been found.

Would be happy with an almost complete rewrite of SWTOR...

Not really advice, but brings back memories of the hyped Quake-killers of the late 90s. I think the big ones were meant to be Unreal, SiN, Prey, Half-Line and Daikatana. Unreal and Half-Life obviously did pretty well, SiN somewhat less so, and Prey had an almost Duke Nukemish development cycle and released in 2006. Daikatana is just a punchline. But yeah, I'm not much use since the last FPS I can honestly say I genuinely enjoyed was NOLF2. EDIT: And some old news headlines from 1998 verify my recollection: http://www.bluesnews.com/archives/jan98-3.html Some familiar names on the page there, heh.

The switches themselves are made by Cherry, not SteelSeries, and are commonly available - the vast majority of mechanical keyboards will have Cherry switches in them (some no-brand boards will have knock-off switches of the same design). The advantage of this is that you can therefore replace both the switches and the caps (since they're generic) individually. A place like WASD Keyboards sell individual switches and caps which you might want to look into (I've used them personally with no issue shipping to Australia). If your switch is damaged and not just the cap, then it's a bit more of a tricky fix which might need additional hardware (potentially messing with solder), but it's still within reason as long as the electronics of the keyboard aren't shot.

My experience with IWD2 was that I started with only two characters, and got to up around the ice palace-type level (no memory of what that place actually is), at whiich point it got a bit too hard for my tastes and I added two more to finish the game with.

Shouldn't the game be named Lost Beta then? I'll get my coat.

I have never heard of an Atom car. Based on the name I was hoping for something like the Peel P50, but alas.

But is it an lgbt-all-in-one table so everyone can romance it, or just an ordinary table that by being such promotes bigotry and exclusion of the minorities? If you implement romanceable tables, you'd need to implement romanceable desks, benches and kitchen counters, yes.

It'll be the biggest event in South African cinema since The Gods Must Be Crazy. Indeed it could be titled The Gods Must Be Crazy in Thedas.

A Let's Play video series of DA3 by Bruce would have to be classified as a romantic comedy.

I don't know Origin's policy on VPN, but the game is cheaper on Origin's Mexican storefront, yeah, for those who want to use a VPN. Amazon, on the other hand, perform no geo-location, they take your billing address country and nothing else.

It's taken me four pages of discussion to notice the typo in the thread title, I'm slipping.

Don't know anything about the game, but upcoming Red Orchestra 2 giveaway. One day only, starting sometime tomorrow.

I'd look towards the 'boutique' home media releasing companies - even if not to purchase, the range of titles they release will give you some very good ideas. In the US, most releases in the Criterion Collection or Cohen Media. For EU releases, there's Eureka's Masters of Cinema collection, Artificial Eye, the British Film Institute, or StudioCanal collection (which is discontinued but still available, classic titles are now folded into the StudioCanal classics line).