Daemonjax

I torrent stuff all the time to try it before I buy it. Maybe your friend just doesn't want to get burned by paying full-price for a game he isn't sure he'd like. Because in that case, the only sane options are: a) don't buy it, and reconsider getting it when in the bargain bin b) torrent it and maybe buy it later if you like it.

I prefer the originals, but those are quality retex's. Good job!

I've found the dissapointer to work well enough as an alpha strike weapon early game even with the "terrible" attribute.

When I said optimal, I was referring to it being the optimal meta-game strategic choice.

A full blown program written in java or whatever with a gui would be best. Probably, but I've never been good at GUIs myself. I can make a very pretty spreadsheet, though. Yeah, it takes me longer to make a GUI for a program than the program itself.

2D games like this can look really good because their art assets aren't limited to "how do we make this texture tile-able so we can re-use it 1000 times".

That's easily testable.

Save the game before leveling up, so you can try out all of your options before deciding. Or make a new character and use console commands to level them up to test out everything in the tutorial. Maybe in the future some players might put together an Unofficial Game Manual or something, but right now we kinda have to figure everything out the hard way.

From a design point of view, it's a lot easier to make an rpg when the player characters are limited to only walking around and interacting with world objects via scripted conditions (so no charming people then talking to them or whatever). It also makes combat easier to balance when pre-buffs won't matter either way, like for food and potions.

Loading times are acceptable on my system (2xSSD in raid 0 -- maxes out sata3 controller bandwidth)

Retaliation requires getting hit, and so is sub-optimal on a rogue. Also, you'd want the slowest, hardest hitting melee weapon in the game equipped. Riposte is OK if you're optimizing for a deflection tanking rogue. I wouldn't. What is the chance to riposte? EDIT: 20% according to wiki, so could be anything

It's definitely optimal to rush to find all your companions as early as possible to control their level-up choices. It would be better if we could control that.

If you're going by what it says in the character sheet and tooltips to arrive at that number, you're going to be disappointed when actually playing.

That is interesting. We'd need to do that for every fight in the game, and then we'd be able to say something very real about the difficulty of the encounters (percentage of fights that can be won without any tactics). I don't think I'd ever be so bored to do that unpaid.

A full blown program written in java or whatever with a gui would be best.

Combat vs first wolves with fighter npc tanking: I use a fraps recording locked to 30 seconds, and then use virtualdub to watch it frame by frame, taking notes using notepad++. Then I put it together to look like this: It's as time-consuming as it sounds. I can easily spend over 30 minutes looking at ~6 attacks frame by frame and getting the data. Whatever I find goes in this thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72272-combat-mechanics-attack-speed-recovery/

If the 3 missiles are affected by DR individually (I think they are), the damage is significantly less than just adding the missiles together. I agree that fans of flames (aka burning hands) is the best level 1 spell now.

Cipher is good enough to be an unlockable character class after beating the game on hard.

This is probably the best engine suited to the task that they could afford on their budget. Would the game be better with a more expensive and/or custom built engine? Of course. But we don't live in a world where money and time don't exist.

So DEX bonus does affect Recovery Time. According to this video, 2H weapons suffer from an additional +50% to recovery time so that would be 54 frames. Armor and DEX apply to the base value, however, which is 36 frames. So, for example: 2H weapon (base 36 frames, +50% for 2H), +20% armor, -10% DEX would be: 36 + [36*50%=18] + [36*20%=7.2] - [36*10%=3.6] = 57.6 frames All this because I'm studying the viability of a high DEX fighter My testing (which uses a frame-by-frame analysis, 30 frames per second) shows a 1h fast weapon (not dual-wielding) on a dex 10 naked character has an average total attack time of 58.5 frames. 1h average speed weapon (not dual wielding) on the same naked character has an average total attack time of 84.71 frames. 2h sword "slow" speed weapon on the same naked character had an average total attack time of 87.5 frames. For the effect of dexterity, I'd use the magic number 2.25 since it matches closely with what we actually observe: 50 dex: 50 - 10 = 40 ==> 40 * 2.25 = 90 ==> 1 + 90 / 100 = 1.90 ==> 58.5 / 1.90 = 30.79 (29.8 observed) 18 dex: 18 - 10 = 8 ==> 8 * 2.25 = 18 ==> 1 + 18 / 100 = 1.18 ==> 58.5 / 1.18 = 49.58 (49.71 observed) 14 dex: 14 - 10 = 4 ==> 4 * 2.25 = 9 ==> 1 + 9 / 100 = 1.09 ==> 58.5 / 1.09 = 53.67 (53 observed) So, for your character (naked... 14 dex? You can't actually get a 10% dex bonus, so I assume you meant 12%): 2H weapon: 87.5 / 1.09 = 80.26 average total frames between attacks. I haven't done armor testing yet.

I tested it, and a naked dex 18 character's attack times are reduced ~17.5% when compared to a naked dex 10 character. I haven't done armor testing yet.

They shouldn't have made sneakmode slow you down so much since it only works out of combat. But, I guess we should be thankful that there even is a fast forward mode.

You can do that now with a screenshot and an image editor. I'd prefer they didn't waste any development time for a feature that can already be accomplished. They should just include step-by-step instructions in the game manual.

Death godlikes definitely need more portraits because there's head options that don't match any of the existing ones. And the race is unique enough that you can't find matching portraits online. For humans/elves/dwarves the problem is easilly solved by doing online image searches, but death godlikes are unique enough that you're not going to find anything that fits.

The game is really good, and definitely worthy of at least two playthroughs on hard (once as a dps character and once as a tank for different starting attributes). After that I'd wait for the mod-scene to develop further. The artwork is definitely top-notch and inspired, and the same goes for the voice-acting that's present. I'd definitely pay the same price again for a worthy sequel/expansion.