Humanoid

Good to have confirmation. I'm using Arcsoft Totalmedia Theatre + AnyDVD HD right now for my HTPC and probably will stick to that for years to come, but am thinking of building a second one, sans the terabytes of storage, as secondary device for a bedroom or whatever. An AMD Trinity (A10) based miniITX box will probably be home to Win8 if the pricing is competitive and the media support is there - primarily Blu-ray and FLAC. I am aware that I technically can get away with playing the main feature on discs with the basic support that the likes of MPC-HC and VLC have under Win7, but I like my extras.

Interesting, hadn't heard anything of that. Blu-ray support is a pretty big deal because it costs a fair chunk of cash to get proper support in Win7. Unfortunately Google is being a completely useless bastard when queried about actual support: it just returns page after page of copy-pasted articles from May about the removal of DVD playback, and nothing about the situation *now*. Microsoft's Win8 site is even more useless, offering the key for the Media pack but hardly a word of what it does.

Blu-ray support? I remember that MS state a while back that not only would there be no Blu-ray support, but no native DVD support either in Win8. Something about royalties or somesuch. Hmmm, must investigate further.

But wait! Now that they're part of EA, they have the rights to do followups to SimHealth and Theme Hospital!

I believe Tim mentioned at least in passing that it's a valid option, not sure if it was in one of the updates or in one of the third-party interviews. I will start the game with the intention of soloing, but am not bound to the idea, so I'll see how it develops naturally. The other angle is that that your character does have weaknesses, ones that are compensated by the other abilities in your character's skillset. A situation where the only solution to a given problem is to throw more bodies at it is just as artificial as the scenario of one character being able to do everything as per the other games you cite. That said, it should be very much a valid roleplaying option to hire a bunch of goons from the Adventurers' Hall on a short-term contract, if a soloing character decides that they must absolutely wipe out that pesky group of tough foes. Perhaps my definition of solo is a bit looser than those who might swear off having a second portrait in the interface for even a split second...

Looks like you're really taking this moderator business to heart then.

Suspect I would have pledged the same either way. Generally speaking though, I prefer turn-based for a solo character game, but RTwP for a large party-based game (which this will mostly be), so I lean towards this preference in this context. It's not that I mind turn based combat with a large number of actors, but it's more in the realm of a tactical combat game than an RPG, where combat is one of the things I care least about.

Lenovo X230t - convertible tablet variant of the best notebook in the world. Of course that's a fully fledged PC running Windows with all the pros and cons that entails, and a price tag to match. Don't know much about Android tablets. Asus Transformer Prime I guess would come into consideration on the strength of its keyboard option - good to have when looking for someone who's not quite sure what they want.

This discussion is kind of going on in three threads in three different subforums at once. D: Ahem. Anyway, a compromise I could take is that the so-called 'wilderness' areas would not be, strictly speaking, untamed wilderness. Sparse areas are perfectly reasonable, but there ought to be a reason why that area is broadly of interest in the first place. At the simplest level, it would be simple proximity to a major area of interest. Perhaps it's an area that for a non-obvious reason, the local nobility has a curiously disproportionate interest in hunting in. Or perhaps the opposite, what would appear to be prime grazing land, yet no farmer has made any attempt to claim it. Somewhere where relatively mundane old archaeological knick-knacks have been occasionally dug up by locals. A UFO sighting in the area. I suppose I would describe it as starting from the BG2 design rather than BG1, but then expanding on it. The abandoned temple where the black dragon is for example, has a largeish outdoor area. Keep the darkest, "obvious quest area" on that map, as a separate wilderness area adjacent you can have a number of options for creating a fairly sparse map with some related, even if only tangentially, points of interest. Remains of an old dwelling where some of the servants may have lived. Auxilliary worship sites. A place where looters may have withdrawn to some time ago.

Logistically though, I'd assume they'd have to compromise a bit to leave in a hook for the expansion (assuming the events of the expansion take place subsequent to those of the main game, which for a full expansion is far more likely than it is for contemporary DLC). That's before even getting into possible sequels. So I don't imagine there'll be complete freedom, like having the PC disappear to wander around searching for the other end of the world. I don't envy them the job of finding a workable compromise - something which gives satisying closure without painting themselves into a corner. An example I guess - selecting the new councillor at the conclusion of Mass Effect. Viewed in isolation, the initial reaction would be "cool, I get a hand in the future direction of the gameworld." But I think most probably by the time writing for the sequel had begun, the writers may well have been regretting the move to put that decision in the original game. It didn't harm that game in itself, but on the other hand, neither was there really any specific reason that would favour doing it - any gain would be far dwarfed by the potential future issues.

I flat out did not enjoy BG (so I better end this post quick before the pitchforks come out), so I prefer to abstract my treks over areas-of-non-interest to the overworld map. If there's a function to arbitrarily stop and any point and see what's there (a big fat nothing, as per Fallout) then fine, but it will be rightly ignored. Fully explorable wilderness areas have the paradoxical quality of potentially making the gameworld feel *smaller*. Or for realistic scales, feel like painting the Great Wall with an artist's paintbrush (as per the post above).

On-topic post! Kickstarter 500k threshold has been crossed so the backers on that side can be counted as officially committed (they can still withdraw their pledges individually of course), and added to the main counter, the project as a whole is less than $150k away from meeting the overall $2m target so the slightly uncomfortable status of meeting one goal but not the other shouldn't last for very much longer. Looks like some additions to the various tiers are also pending, a T-shirt seems inevitable now at the very least.

Geralt sort of had an ulterior motive for playing the father figure. *nudge nudge* I certainly wouldn't have done it out of altruism.... I also observe that due to this thread, I now have had that George Michael song in my head for the past hour or so.

Humans I always name manually, I have a couple of fairly rigidly defined characters I tend to reuse, plus I also have a pool of about half a dozen full names that I choose from, depending on the character's intended personality. I have to admit that for most of them, the names first saw air in The Sims and how they're played in RPGs tends to derive from their personality in that game.... What I'd like to see actually is a 3-part name construction: Last name, nickname and given names, and in addition, have it selectable which of the three fields you will primarily be referred to by. In some contexts the non-nominated one might be used, e.g. a town official may always use your last name. As the non-human races I tend to stick to the random name generator, unless the setting is one where them having human type names is something that's established. Exceptions for comic relief characters of course.

Think it went up as part of the big Mac + Cyberpunk announcement, yeah. Needless to say, I picked it up (and Twinsen's Adventure for no sensible reason, skipped Postal and already own the other two sale titles). 141 now, woo.

They should bring back those old-school hintbooks where you had to colour in the blank sections with a magic marker to show the hidden text! P.S. Is it the right time to admit I haven't ever finished, or even halfway finished this game?

Might and Magic 7 not only had spears wieldable with a shield (or other small offhand weapon) given enough skill, but they were the best weapon for any min-maxing warrior to have.

So is the omission of Beyond Divinity from any discussion here meant to imply that it's best ignored? Sort of like the Invisible War of the series?

Triples (typically 53/39/30) have kinda fallen out of fashion in favour of compacts (50/34) for partly that reason, the 34 tooth ring is usually low enough for inexperienced climbers while still being able to retain the mechanical simplicity of two chainrings instead of three. Dynamos are pretty much something that won't be accepted nowadays due to the increased friction. Electronic shifting has recently been introduced for high end componentry, but not in the way you set out - it simply uses a battery-powered motor to shift the chain instead of the traditional method of cables pulling it from cog to cog.

If the shipping destination is changed to Australia, it becomes available - looks like it applies to all Wilier brand bikes. Guessing what's happened is that the shop no longer has the rights to sell them in the UK, oddly enough.

Browsing bikes in the $1500-2000 region right now and have a few candidates. Just doing a quick straw poll for aesthetic purposes (though options on other aspects welcome of course) amongst you lot for my own nefarious interests (and because I am an easily influenced sheep). http://www.wiggle.co...xp-athena-2012/ http://www.wiggle.co...rion-1105b-105/ http://www.wiggle.co...5-8avio-athena/ http://www.wiggle.co...e-ultegra-2012/ Mirror mirror on the wall, which is the fairest of them all?

In the the latest instalment, I vaguely remember seeing a weird variant of the cutscene weapon problem. Whereas previously it'd be a simple matter of it switching weapons automatically, it seems ME3 has a thing where you're, for example, holding an assault rifle but the game uses the animation set for the pistol. Guessing it's an issue caused by all weapons being optional now?

That doesn't count and you know it! Unless he's working on the unannounced Dragon Age Xtreme Beach Volleyball spinoff. Oh wow, even the acronym matches.

The maze-like layout extended throughout pretty much the whole game. The Kings' headquarters, oh god....

This is the point ought to I admit I never played BG and slink away. But sounds about right - someone who's a real danger and not just an annoying insect that bothers you while the warriors and mages do the real work.