Humanoid

I recall the story that's been floating around some years that nVidia made enemies of both Sony and Microsoft over the contracts for the respective consoles - something like them being stuck with the original contract from the time the consoles were originally designed and being unwilling to renegotiate or something. Can't just change vendors mid-cycle of course but naturally, but it's not surprising that because of the lingering emnity that they'd switch camps to AMD (which have been supplying Nintendo since the Gamecube I believe). So in all likelihood, all three next-gen consoles will be AMD powered. A marketing coup no doubt (not sure if they can get their logo on the actual consoles though) - but apparently in terms of profit it isn't that big a deal which is why I imagine nVidia weren't too concerned about burning bridges and preferred milking the current contract. Actually I think the real advantage maybe AMD getting a leg up in terms of ported game performance if the architecture of the mooted console graphics are anything similar to their desktop chips, given that developers will presumably optimise for those platforms first and foremost. As for the Blizzard staff cuts, reducing customer support staff (a lot of them in-game "Game Masters" I think?) might make sense in the context that they've lost ~15% of WoW customer base over the last year. Think it was something like 10m down from 12m. I suppose then the actual development staff cuts would be the more interesting news - chopping about 60 developers sounds like a bigger deal than the headline 600 general staff number.

I always thought that Las Vegas sign was a chainsaw over his shoulder, oops.

If available at the right time I'd probably start a game from scratch using it - I've tried the ME1-ME2 export procedure and it made the character facial structure a bit wonky so there's no real reason to export assuming the editor is reasonably comprehensive.

Tempted to do the same except for cycling instead of football. In the latter it tends to be a choice, but for the former it's usually the only language (well, Flemish that is) used for most "minor" races. To date being the cultural barbarian that I am, I haven't picked up any other languages though. If so inclined I'd probably pick up German reasonably easily given that my parents speak it, but I don't see any immediate utility in it. Same goes for Spanish which my sister speaks.

I remember ruining Alpha Centauri for myself when I found about the commonly abused strategy of Supply Crawler spam. Makes Civ4 Stack of Doom (ab)uses seem reasonable. But yeah, I continue to treat SMAC as the true Civ3 because the official game of that name was so underwhelming. (Call to Power was a complete waste of money, the only amusement I got out of that one was the one awesome African music track and the comedy value of the "Australian civilization" headed, hilariously I might add, by Carmen Lawrence)

Marriage in Skyrim is just a business arrangement, the word romance doesn't appear anywhere in the script. Though to be fair I think the priest pretty much says as such - something like "Skyrim is a harsh land so people just get married willy nilly" (I paraphrase slightly) - so they've conveniently covered their posteriors. Good read on that Thieves' Guild thing anyway, I like complaining and I like reading complaints so I find that entertaining. Anyway the point is not that the questline is heavily railroaded, but that the destination of the train is so bizarrely improbable. I hadn't done the Dark Brotherhood when I stopped so not sure about any comparisons to it.

I played ME2 then ME1 so I'd be in a bit of a pickle if I chose to buy ME3 - ME2 was finished with a boring old default Shep who wasn't really RPed (no idea what key choices I even made), whereas my ME1 character was at least reasonably developed. I really don't feel like replaying (either game) so as I imagine there probably won't be an ME1->ME3 export procedure 'll probably end up just creating a new Shep. Eh.

The more pertinent question is whether it'd be reasonable to mod in options for those sort of quests or is that outside the scope of the creation kit?

Heard that the PS3 was the most problematic platform in terms of freezing but nothing specific. On PC I get the occasional slowdown, feel like it occurs when zoning to an outdoor area, after I've been playing a while - minor memory leak maybe. Only had a couple of CTDs so far in about 50 hours play with no readily identifiable cause but I'm a compulsive quicksaver ("Did the game detect that last buttonpress? Better hit F5 again to be sure"). I also have an issue where the eye graphics of my character get screwed up after a while, not sure if that's a vanilla bug or a mod (the blocky faces one?), or maybe even just running out of VRAM (1GB card starting to show its age at 25x14 resolution) Tangential whine: Anyway, I'm on an indefinite break from the game now though not halfway through the main quest yet (I'm aware I could knock it off in a few hours more). I probably haven't played any of the previous TES games as long as this one so it may be a familiar complaint, but it's a game that one can easily and unintentionally ruin for oneself simply by playing a certain way. If I had the patience to restart, I would and cheat a moderate sum of gold at the start of the game, then loot nothing except quest items and direct gear upgrades; would not touch any of the crafting skills; would not take any companions, and would not do any randomly generated quests. With those restrictions I probably wouldn't have dug myself into the hole of tedium which it turned into for me.

Stamina is just magicka for non-magic abilities (except that the basic attack doesn't take up any). It does make it trickier as a battlemage type character since you have to spread your level-up bonuses across three stats rather than two, but gear and potions can compensate - generally speaking gear can reduce mana costs of one school of magic, while potions can increase the total pool. Bear in mind that with the starting 100 magicka some spells you won't be able to cast at all since they cost more than your maximum. I also think that stealth archers are the strongest build in the game almost to the point of being broken. I abandoned my first character because it got somewhat boring - you end up sniping from a distance, move away a little while the remaining targets run around for a minute, then they reset and you repeat with them having zero chance of finding you. And yeah, you have to find a little alchemy table to mix potions, and an enchanting table to enchant gear. They're as common as muck though, any decent settlement has at least the alchemy table, and they also tend to be midway through in most of the the non-trivial dungeons. ________________ As for the level scaling, my understanding is different. Most generic creatures don't scale, they're replaced instead. I believe a Frost Troll is a Frost Troll. A zombie is a zombie. The only difference is that once you're higher level, you randomly get spawns of "strong zombie," then "stronger zombie," and so forth. It's a literal change - i.e. "strong zombie" would be the actual tooltip in the game. The lower level ones still spawn for variety even when you're at the level cap, even though you could kill one with the equivalent of a rusty letter opener by that point. Now there's also a floor and a ceiling for each creature type so eventually you do genuinely outlevel all possible versions of a creature - for example there's a point at which you activate "strongest bandit" (which isn't all that high really) and past that point you will outlevel anything that can possibly spawn in a bandit's den, making them trivial. The reverse is true for the floor - there is no lower level version of Frost Troll therefore if you encounter any early on, they will smack you around pretty hard. There is a regular Troll which is easier but they don't share a spawn point - the locations they're respectively eligible to spawn are mutually exclusive. The things that scale 1:1 Oblivion style (or 5:5 or somesuch) are restricted to named boss creatures generally and therefore mostly encountered on the main quest.

I loathed Oblivion (only played maybe 3-5 hours total) whereas I've played this about ten times that amount so it's an improvement - but yeah, going too far off the beaten path in terms of character development will mess you up. If you engage in combat normally (unlike me, who barely needs to swing and never generally takes damage) it generally isn't a huge issue. I believe how it works is that unlike Oblivion you don't get a 1:1 levelling of each enemy type. Instead it's a stepped system where once you hit a certain level, a diifferent creature becomes available to be spawned. So in a bandit's den if you head in at level 1, all you get are "Bandits" which are by definition level 1. If you head in at level 5 you probably still only get the same. Once you hit level 10 (as an example), the random generator starts producing "Bandit Thugs" (in a mix, some low level ones continue to be generated) which are much tougher. At a meta-level, the worst possible outcome would be for a character to, fresh out of the Temple of Trials, go to the first town and engage in some kleptomania - at which point you end up a level 10-20 character with level 1 ability to fight and survive fighting level ~20 enemies. The only way out of that hole will probably be to buy skill training funded by said crime spree - but you'd have to finagle a bit to gain access to fences at that early stage of the game. Further there are some anomalies due to certain monster types having a minimum and maximum level. Notably the minimum level dragon is, I believe, lower than the minimum level bear - resulting in the former being easier to dispatch until you reach a certain level. It also creates the infamous scenario in which (because creatures in the game can attack each other) a bear easily crushes a dragon in single combat.

I have trouble killing anything if I don't catch them with the (almost ridiculous) 15x damage multiplier for sneak attack. At one point I ended up having to travel by night just to avoid random nasties - or just wildlife. It's not a matter of which archetype one chooses but rather the fact enemies scale indiscriminately. I'd have a relatively easy time being a stealth assassin for example, but I'd have a hard time being a stealth assassin who happens to also be good at pickpocketing - because the skill in pickpocketing although useless in combat causes the enemies to level up. It's more true of some skills than others - the category of skill that makes you weaker includes the aforementioned pickpocket, along with speech and lockpicking. Some are marginal, in that they indirectly give combat advantages to offset the higher level enemies, such as smithing, enchanting and alchemy - which if (ab)used correctly can be the dominant stats in the game. Indeed the latter two are the best for taking down mages because you can stack resistances against their spells - and there are no restrictions regarding changing in and out of gear during combat.

Different experience for me as a stealther with no archery skill at all - at level 40-odd the higher level dragons squish me pretty fast so I mostly resort to avoiding them/running away. The problem with stealth killing everything is that the sneak skill got up to 100 while one-hand skill was barely 40 and light armor skill half of that again. Of course it's not just the sneak but the associated pickpocket that is doing me in levelwise. I can get by on the quest dragons and such by liberal chain-quaffing of drugs but it's tedious. I could try to alleviate that by learning alchemy so the potions would be worth a damn but then that'd cause even more level scaling issues. (Also carry weight issues, which frustrated me enough such that I went ahead and cheated to set the capacity at 2000.) I know that with the "right" build even the hardest things are trivial but a flat boost to difficulty would make it unplayable for others. Not sure what the solution would be other than coupling the scaling to a subset of skills (exclude lockpicking, speech, etc) rather than by level. This is on default difficulty for what it's worth.

In a decade or two maybe we'll have the trinkets and stuff back with digitally distributed special editions, by way of 3D printing. Of course that's still digital stuff and the regular edition owners can "pirate" the extras but still... (TPB's already got a section up for 3d model files. >.>)

With Revolution Software due to release Broken Sword 5 this year as a pure 2D point and click, and with multiple other projects of the same nature being developed concurrently by them, it's a rosy smelling future for the genre - driven as it may be by the tablet and smartphone market which I have zero interest in, I don't mind being a beneficiary.

I have an odd relationship with NWN2 probably inverse to most people - MoTB I couldn't get out of the starting dungeon because I got sick of resting after each encounter (admittedly with probably an over-exotic character build), while SoZ I played almost to the end (where you open the chokepoint allowing access to the endgame area). The original campaign I only got as far as initially entering Neverwinter.

Relented and bought a week ago (combination of patch release and $30 sale convinced me to try it), and been playing it a decent amount over the past week. Took while because I maintain that Oblivion is the worst game I've ever had the misfortune to spend money on. Didn't buy that on release either - was a good 6-9 months after which should have been plenty of time for modders to fix it - but nope, still completely awful - so I don't believe the "mods will fix it" principle is necessarily true for a sufficiently bad game. No real surprises thus far, all the strengths and flaws are ones that any experienced gamer would attribute to any TES/Gamebryo game. Three-word review would go something like "huge, but shallow." P.S. I'm a bit scared about installing the hi-res texture pack with my 1GB card. Any reports?

Rarely ever use headphones since I don't have to worry about bothering any co-inhabitants with a chunky set of speakers, but decided to retire my Audio Technica AD700s because I just couldn't get used to the bulk. Disappointing because I bought them as replacements for my equally massive but somehow much more comfortable Philips HP890s (which I retired after a few years of running repairs using superglue and electrical tape). No complaints about the AT sound though. Replacing with a pair of Alessandro MS-1s which are basically a modded version of the Grado on-ear phones like in the opening post of this thread, haven't received them yet though. For my portable player I use the venerable Koss PortaPros which have been manufactured with basically no design changes since 1984. Love them to bits - and under $30 imported (vs $100 local retailers are asking for....).

Hmm, just popped in the CD I got with my drive (an LG combo drive) and it's PowerDVD 9 (never used it personally), and updates ceased for it middle of last year, so one would be out of luck regardless of using the paid or OEM versions. Apparently the OEM version does have an autoupdate feature though so I assume you'd get updates until the parent product is discontinued. Bastards either way want you to cough up another $50 for the current version - the hardware basically costs that much now. I use a HTPC and free software like Media Player Classic HC and VLC Player can play the main feature on unencrypted discs - you just don't get menus since they're in a licenced format. Not sure of the etiquette/legal status of decrypters here though so I'll leave it at that - just that I've had no issues with any of 200+ discs so far.

Do OEM versions of software players get free updates? Would be poor form if the software included with the drives weren't able to be kept up-to-date. I know they're hobbled in some ways (limited audio options usually, no bitstreaming or whatever) but one would think they'd at least do a basic job okay. Aside, I do buy a lot of blu-rays of older movies (and when I say old I mean right back to the silent era - Chaplin on Blu looks amazing), and they gain, arguably, more than recent films do. The result is more to do with the mastering than with the age of the film because even very old film has better resolution than 1080p. 16mm film certainly does, though I'm guessing 8mm film probably is marginal. That's before we get to the audio where the difference is often just as big.

Fast storage is incredibly addictive. I have a 128GB as my system drive, and then added a 256GB as my games drive. My HTPC has another 128GB drive in it. Scares me to think that's over $1000 worth of fast storage but I can't go without it now.

The aforementioned i5 2500k. 2600k doesn't add much other than a trivial clock speed bump and hyperthreading, which is useless for gaming. If you refuse to overclock then plain 2500 will do.

PCI-E standards are backwards and forwards compatible, the only real impact is that each revision has twice the theoretical bandwidth of the last - i.e. PCI-E 2.0 8x mode will be equivalent speed to PCI-E 3.0 4x. Now given current cards basically run 2.0 8x with no loss from 2.0 16x, I don't think PCI-E slot specs are going to be a real limitation when you do upgrade your video card, yes. As for CPU compatibility - Intel in the near-term will have two tiers of CPU platforms, Socket 1155 for mainstream, and socket 2011 for 'enthusiasts' - the former will be restricted to quad-cores. Z68 will be compatible with Ivy Bridge which is launching next year, but no guarantees beyond that. However given that Ivy Bridge is mostly just a die shrink of Sandy Bridge, it's unlikely that you'd ever feel the need to shift up to it, 20% faster projections at best can be easily matched by just overclocking your 2500k. At any rate, the best advice for buying a motherboard now is just to get what you need now, and expect to be disappointed if you expect future drop-in upgrade possibilities. Personally I'd say the most important criteria in choosing a board right now is having enough SATA3 ports to accommodate any future SSDs you might add, and number of USB3 ports. In over a decade of building my own systems I've never had the opportunity to keep my motherboard between builds. Don't expect this to change.

Not true in a literal sense, but there are a couple limitations - your OS really ought to be SSD-aware because there's some 'housekeeping' it needs to do on the SSD which otherwise will slow down excessively with use - this is called TRIM. Secondly, semi-related to the first point, it is recommended that the SATA mode in your BIOS support and be set to AHCI prior to installing the OS - this is required for the TRIM functionality. Without both the above functions available, you will have to run a utility at regular intervals to do the self-maintenance job that would otherwise happen automatically. Fortunately this isn't really a concern with current OSes and any remotely recent hardware. Good starting point for SSD uninitiated: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069761

Hint system? The Smoking Mirror is the worst Broken Sword when it comes to absurd puzzle solutions and surreal encounters. Director's cut has a button in the bottom right that gives you hints on what to do. I keep hearing horrid things about BS2, I might as well play it to further understand why it gets that (that and what the hell, have nothing else to play ). I played the sequel first in the heady pre-Internet (for me) days, so it's no doubt going to colour the comparison - but I have no general problem with it. While a couple of the solutions made me go "what?" , it was nothing that a little spot of trial and error couldn't fix, even while accounting for my barely-teenage brainpower and obviously having to suck it up with not having the option to look at hints either in-game or online. In hindsight I also liked that it's the only game of the series to deviate from the overused Knights Templar storyline. I haven't played the remastered version but from what I've read it's not an extended version like the first was.