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Emptiness
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Posts posted by Emptiness
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Part of the problem (imo) is that the game autosaves at the wrong moment. Once upon a time, games would autosave before a transition would take place, in case the game crashed while making the transition. Later, when crashes were less of a frequent occurrence, games started autosaving after the transition would take place, to save the player from having to load a save and then immediately transition. The problem is that this design is flawed. Yes, it does eliminate the hassle of effectively having to load twice most of the time that you reload from an autosave, but it comes with the danger that if something bad happens during or immediately after a transition (but before autosave is processed) then the player is stuck with an autosave that does not provide a way out of the problem. Changing autosaves to happen before area transitions would eliminate that situation. In the case of the OP, he would be able to just reload his autosave and then not choose manual defend (or else attempt preparations before trying it again, depending on the time remaining).
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I think it would solve a lot of problems if the descriptions of D/HoT effects gave [(Damage or Healing) per (Unit Time)] instead of [(Total Base Damage or Healing) per (Base Duration)]. There would be less confusion and it would be easier to see from the UI whether these effects were behaving as expected in response to changes (such as increasing a relevant attribute).
Edit: It would also help if those effects would put entries into the combat log each time they tick.
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Obsidian created this game to make money; they are not then going to immediately turn around and give everyone the right to use, modify and distribute their software for no fee (unless they think of a way to somehow make even more money by doing it).
Making software open source doesn't mean that you give away your product for free. For example, if you have a game engine and a script compiler and some other components that you use to develop games, it can make sense to open source some of them. It doesn't mean that you give away the games.
You seem determined to argue that there are ways to make money through Open Source projects. I've already admitted that is true. If you read and comprehend everything that I am saying, you will see that I point out that it is unrealistic to believe that Obsidian will convert their profitable for-profit game into an Open Source project. The fact that it is possible for them to do so and still make money does not mean that A) they will be making more money, or B) that they will be making enough money to cover expenses, or C) that they will be being adequately compensated for the time they have spent developing the game, or D) that doing so will not open up the competition to use their hard work to make competing products for free. I believe that converting this game to Open Source would be to Obsidian's extreme detriment, and so I also believe that they won't do it. If you choose to believe otherwise, godspeed...but I would encourage you not to hold your breath.
I get that there is Open Source software out there that is making money, and that there are people out there volunteering their time on Open Source projects, but I expect that those are two different sets that don't overlap much. Where they do overlap, you'll find gullible people being taken advantage of to their detriment. It hurts the industry as well, because instead of a programmer filling a programming job you've got one less programming job available but the same number of programmers looking to earn an income.
Of course they overlap. There are plenty of examples where people and companies contribute to open source projects for good reasons.
"Good reasons" = some benefit which constitutes compensation for their work. Obviously I'm not doing a good enough job of choosing my words to prevent you from twisting them around. In hindsight, where I said "volunteering their time" I should have said "not being compensated for their time", to close up the opening through which you attacked. I'm sure there are others, though. I'm trying to express simple truths in simple ways, but there's always going to be some exception or special case that someone can try to hold up as contradictory to the entire statement. The truth is still there, even if I am not a sufficiently skilled wordsmith to fend off your underhanded attacks.
The fact that Obsidian might not publish the data separately would be no impediment to piracy at all. Pirating software implies access to a copy of the software, which implies possession of a copy of the non-code data. Since we're talking about someone willing to do illegal things, naturally they will simply copy and distribute that data with their pirated version of the software.
Right. And not having the source code at all is also not an impediment to piracy. Open source and piracy have nothing to do with each other.
Perhaps you are deliberately choosing to miss the point; I'm not sure. It isn't such a complex concept. Right now, it takes a great deal of skill and specialized knowledge to pirate a game. I expect that PoE has already been pirated (although I haven't gone looking to confirm that, and it really doesn't matter to my point whether it has or has not), but that doesn't matter in connection to this topic. The pirate still doesn't have the source code for the game; at best they have uncommented machine code, possibly reverse-engineered into a mash of some flavor of C and machine code if they have a good decompiler (and Obsidian hasn't taken steps to deter decompilation). That's enough to poke around and cut out the bits that are interfering with your piracy, but you wouldn't want to try to write your own game off of that mess - and if you did it would be a lot of work. If you open source the game, though, then you give everyone (not just that pirate, but also other game companies who make competing products) the original and commented fruits of your labors for free.
Now, before you slam me yet again about how it is possible to make money off of Open Source projects, be clear on this fact: you may have a strategy for making money for your Open Source project, but it has nothing to do with access to the Source Code of your project. That is, by necessity, freely available to anyone. Even if you set up a web site where you charged people for a copy of it (and somehow that didn't violate the Open Source nature of the project), as soon as you sold the first copy it would be pasted someplace else free of charge. The age of disseminating information and also retaining control of it has ended.
So the connection between Open Source and piracy is that by going Open Source you stop trying to not be pirated and you lower the skill level needed to pirate your software significantly. The connection between Open Source and piracy is that by going Open Source you do the work of piracy yourself, and publish results better than a pirate would be expected to produce, and hand that over to your competition on a silver platter.
I brought up piracy because someone else claimed that is was possible to publish the Source Code but still charge for the game. While that is true, it falsely implies that the revenue stream from game sales would not be impacted. I was trying to illustrate that it would be impacted, because A) people willing and able to use the Source Code to build the game would be able to do so without buying the game, and B) there would be no impediment to those people distributing copies of the game for free, and C) competitors would be able to use the game's Source Code to make competing software with the potential to draw away whatever potential business might remain after the influence of the A and B.
So the point here is not that Open Source = piracy and Closed Source = no piracy. I'm not saying that, and trying to make it look like I am is not actually countering my position. The point is that releasing the game's Source Code would have a negative effect on the company's already existing revenue stream that I compare (for illustration purposes) to pirating the game (better than any pirate ever could) themselves. Once revenue has wound down, and if Obsidian has no other plans to use the game's IP or code to leverage future revenue, then maybe Open Sourcing PoE is something they would consider. Indeed, at that point, it is possible that Open Sourcing the game could be an opportunity to take advantage of non-standard revenue streams that are not currently being tapped (and thus Obsidian might, at that point, be able to make money off Open Sourcing the game). Right now that would be a foolish move, however: they would be trading a large revenue stream for a smaller revenue stream. That's just bad business.
Yes, it is Obsidian's decision whether to convert their for-profit game into an Open Source game. Since that would eliminate all future profit (from sale of the software) and surrender to their competitors all of their hard work, it seems very unlikely to happen. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is more ridiculous to think that it will happen than it is to think that it will not.
Nobody other than you is talking about Obsidian giving away the game for free. The question is whether the engine that runs the game would be worth open sourcing. It probably isn't - for the reasons people have already covered, but it is a reasonable question to ask because it has nothing to do with giving away the game for free. Open source doesn't mean non-profit.
I never said it was an unreasonable question. What I have done is take the position that the answer is obviously no. When I talk about giving the game away for free I mean that this is essentially what will happen, as I described earlier in this post. Yes, it is possible for Obsidian to make the game Open Source and then try to charge money for the game. The point is that there will be little impediment to people who want to legally find a copy of the game elsewhere - and if people can legally get your game for free then what difference does it make to your revenue stream if you ineffectually hang a price tag on a picture of your game in a store no one uses?
There are a lot of open source operating systems. My impression is that they are generally the product of academic research. So while those programmers are not being compensated for their work, they are doing that work either as part of learning how operating systems function or as a means of academic advancement.
Ok, let's try to get your impression a bit more in line with reality then. Here are few prominent examples: The Linux kernel was developed by a hobbyist and is maintained by volunteers with lots of code contributed by commercial companies. All of the GNU tools that make Linux (and other operating systems) useful are open source (the emacs editor, the gcc compiler and hundreds of other projects).
The Android operating system is open source with most of the development coming from Google. The programmers at Google are compensated very well for their work. Other groups that want to use Android for their own purposes also contribute to the code base. The Chrome browser is open source and also developed by Google.
The Firefox browser is open source developed by the Mozilla foundation with the development paid for by donations. The Apache web server that runs the majority of web sites in the world is open source (and often running on top the Linux operating system equipped with the Gnu tools ).
And so on. There are often good business (or organizational, or personal) reasons for open sourcing code and for contributing to it.
I'm not sure what your point is here, unless you just want to argue with everything I say. In my statement, which you quoted, I specifically made a general statement. Doing so acknowledges the existence of exceptions, so in listing exceptions to my statement you accomplish nothing. I would be very surprised to learn that Linux and Android did not contain contributions from the academic sector. Even if they don't, that would just make them two of those exceptions that my statement has already accounted for.
(By the way, if you reread my statement you will note that I was discussing open source operating systems, so it is odd that you chose to include two browsers, a web server, and various tools in your list. Also, about those programmers at Google being paid to work on open source code...I would think it would be very clear to everyone that the community coders that would be doing the work the OP is talking about are not going to be paid Google salaries, or indeed at all. The fact that there are programmers out there making money writing open source code has nothing to do with the (non-existent) earning potential of people volunteering to work on PoE code.)
I think maybe you and others are mistaking my position as being anti-Open Source. Let me clarify that I am not anti-Open Source; I use Open Source software, directly and indirectly, and benefit from it. I realize that there are people and companies who make money, directly and indirectly, through Open Source projects. The disconnect here is that some people, including you, seem to think that Obsidian is in a position to just wave the Open Source wand and reliably convert PoE from a profitable closed source game into a profitable open source game. I contend that Obsidian is not in a position to do that, and that such a change at this point would be certain to negatively impact their bottom line, both in terms of actual revenue and in terms of lost future revenue. It would be a bad move for Obsidian to make at this time.
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Well..someone was crazy enough to make an open source operating system, which is a hell of a lot more work imho.
There are a lot of open source operating systems. My impression is that they are generally the product of academic research. So while those programmers are not being compensated for their work, they are doing that work either as part of learning how operating systems function or as a means of academic advancement.
There's no reason why that couldn't work with a game (and it has, because there are open source games), but we're not really talking about whether an open source game is possible. We're talking about whether Obsidian is going to take their profitable new game and convert it into an open source game.
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A wise man once said "If you're good at something, never do it for free.".
Encouraging software companies to "tap into" the reserve of programmers willing to program for free is bad for code and bad for coders.
Nonsense. Some of the best software available (and most successful both in terms of user base and money) is open source. Some programmers get paid to write open source software; others volunteer.
"Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose."
Obsidian created this game to make money; they are not then going to immediately turn around and give everyone the right to use, modify and distribute their software for no fee (unless they think of a way to somehow make even more money by doing it).
So what is the plan here? That Obsidian will retain the rights to the software, but programmers will volunteer to update, debug, and expand that software without remuneration? Who is going to take them up on that deal? People deserve to be paid for the work they do, when that work is being used to make money for someone else.
I get that there is Open Source software out there that is making money, and that there are people out there volunteering their time on Open Source projects, but I expect that those are two different sets that don't overlap much. Where they do overlap, you'll find gullible people being taken advantage of to their detriment. It hurts the industry as well, because instead of a programmer filling a programming job you've got one less programming job available but the same number of programmers looking to earn an income.
Actually, that's more or less exactly what it would mean. It is possible to pirate software without access to the source code, but giving away the source code to your software is literally giving away your software.
Wrong again. The source code can be open without the data used for the game being open or vice versa. There are lots of possibilities. As you said, it is possible to pirate a game without the source code; you should be able to think about that for about one second and realize that you are making no sense.
The fact that Obsidian might not publish the data separately would be no impediment to piracy at all. Pirating software implies access to a copy of the software, which implies possession of a copy of the non-code data. Since we're talking about someone willing to do illegal things, naturally they will simply copy and distribute that data with their pirated version of the software.
Whether open sourcing the code is a good idea for Obsidian depends on a lot of factors and is their decision, but your general statements about open source are unfounded and ridiculous.Yes, it is Obsidian's decision whether to convert their for-profit game into an Open Source game. Since that would eliminate all future profit (from sale of the software) and surrender to their competitors all of their hard work, it seems very unlikely to happen. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is more ridiculous to think that it will happen than it is to think that it will not.
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I think I would prefer DLC that is not restricted to one of the eleven classes. If this were part of a class-specific stronghold pack, which had 11 different additional strongholds, then that would be fine. You'd have to play through the game 11 times in order to get your money's worth, though; I'm not sure how many players would be happy with that.
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What difference does it make?
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I suggest that the Leaden Key ambush be moved to directly outside Gabrannos' study (such that the player cannot run into it after being worn down by other encounters) and one set of camping supplies be added to the loot found in Gabrannos' study (so that if the party is too worn down to face the ambush they can retreat into the study and rest first).
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Thoughts?
Threads like this are why I want there to be a separate section of the forum for discussing mods.
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Ten worked fine for me through the endless paths. There were a few (maybe 3) traps that I wanted to cross but could not remove. I just moved everyone away and sent Eder in like the Hurt Locker guy, he made his saves.
This is a good place for Itumaak, the EOD dog
Itumaak doesn't trigger traps.
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What OS is on your computer? What version of the game are you playing? Do you have Eder with you? What stage of his personal quest chain are you at? Where there people in the camp, and if so what happened to them? Can you provide a saved game that will allow a tester to replicate this bug?
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Well, if you delve into what is going on with the Crucible Knights you will learn that they are less concerned about doing a good job and more worried about gaining status. There are all sorts of bad things going on in the city that they just ignore.
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A wise man once said "If you're good at something, never do it for free.".
Encouraging software companies to "tap into" the reserve of programmers willing to program for free is bad for code and bad for coders.
The other thing to clarify is, making the source code publicly available does not mean the game would suddenly become free of charge; you would still need to purchase a complete copy of the game, complete with art assets, to actually run the software.Actually, that's more or less exactly what it would mean. It is possible to pirate software without access to the source code, but giving away the source code to your software is literally giving away your software.
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Over several battles, you might lose all your health, in which case you'll be 'maimed.' If you take more damage at that point, you're dead. There is no resurrection.
Becoming maimed when you run out of Health is an option that is controlled in the game's options menu. If the option is turned off, then you simply die when you run out of Health. Turning on "maimed" makes the game a little more forgiving, if you are finding yourself struggling to keep characters from dying, because it acts as a warning system ("rest now or this character is dead").
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No, I am not currently using any mods. I noticed the items were missing after I zoned into Stormwall Gorge from Cliant Lis.
Is it possible that all of the items that disappeared were items that you got off of Calisca and Heodan? If so, you may be encountering this problem: [bug] Disappearance of equipment dropped by early companions
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What system was it on? It happened to me on Linux.
I suspect that it is not restricted to any particular platform, but in my case I'm on a Win7 pc.
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It certainly sounds like they should have different names, although maybe they are both supposed to do the same thing and two different versions of "Interfering" were created (in error).
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It does not apply to ranged weapons.
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So, more often than not, when someone starts talking (either during dialogues, or npc banters), the voice over starts some words after the text that appears on screen. Sometimes it's a matter of 2-3 words, sometimes a whole sentence and a half is missing.
I had this start happening once, after I'd been playing for a while. Restarting the game client fixed it in my case.
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I find it very frustrating when I run my melee up to a ranged attacker and they ignore my melee and continue to ranged attack against a different character. I'm accustomed to being able to force a ranged attacker to switch to melee by attacking them with a melee weapon (from other games), and I think that not being able to use that tactic is something that PoE is lacking.
I wish there was a small accuracy bonus when attacking someone you are engaged with who is not also engaged with you, and a small accuracy penalty when ranged attacking someone while you are engaged (by anyone). That would make it less effective and more dangerous to continue to make ranged attacks while an enemy is attacking you in melee (and also would make getting swarmed a little more dangerous). That, coupled with an AI that switches ranged attackers to melee weapons when engaged by a melee attacker, would add something beneficial to the tactical flavor of PoE combat.
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I'm not having that problem. Try verifying your game; the patch may not have installed correctly.
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The base range of attributes is 3 - 18. You can't assign less than 3 points to an attribute, or more than 18. Racial and cultural modifiers can cause the final value of an attribute to be higher or lower than that range, but those modifiers don't change how many points you can assign to an attribute.
In other words, if you lower your character's Resolve to 3, but you happen to be a Human from Aedyr, your character sheet will show "3 + 1 (Human) + 1 (Aedyr) = 5" and it will not be possible to lower your Resolve any further.
I believe that this is working as intended.
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This is a minor bug, which does not affect quest completion or impede forward progress.
Description: When speaking to Lord Harond at the end of the Blood Legacy quest, the dialog text correctly refers to my character as male, but the voiceover refers to my character as female. Exiting the client, reloading the save, and reattempting the conversation results in the same error.
Expected behavior: The voiceover should match the dialog text, and both should refer to the protagonist's gender correctly.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Load the provided saved game.
2) Initiate conversation with Lord Harond.
3) Choose option #1 at the first dialog choice.
4) Listen to the voiceover and note that it does not match the dialog text. (Specifically, the word "woman" is spoken where the dialog text reads "man".)
Image of the dialog text:
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...but.. he's using the spoiler tag. :|Alas, no, he isn't. I added that spoiler tag to illustrate what his post should have looked like, and also so that if he corrects the problem my quote will not then be perpetuating it. Sorry if that was not clear.
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Can't buy or sell items
in Pillars of Eternity: Technical Support (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
I have no idea, but it definitely sounds like a bug.
Please provide the information and files requested in this thread: MUST READ: How to Report an Issue
Also, please indicate whether you have installed any mods at any time while playing with this party, or if you have used any method (savefile edits or console commands) to modify your characters or party, and if possible detail what changes you made.