Pavlos

Publicising your own things is probably a sure sign that your ego is large enough to interfere with the Earth's gravitational field. Luckily, despite what the username may say, I'm actually Bablos and I in no way shape or form represent the opinions of the forum member and Team Gizka Beta Tester, Pavlos. Mr. Vince D. Weller of indie developer Iron Tower Studio was kind enough to answer my- Pavlos' pleas for an audience which resulted in this obscenely over-sized interview about their current work in progress Age of Decadence and game design in general. The whole thing is around three thousand words long so I- Pavlos has split it up into three parts So, obviously, major kudos goes to Mr. Weller for this. Part One Part Two Part Three -- To be released on Thursday

Nah... he was truly immortalised as the whining nephew from Fallout. There is a distinct lack of Feargus in your games, Obsidian. I demand justice!

Let's hope so .

The new testers are naturally excited by the prospect of playing TSLRP so it seems that a lot of them are playing for hours on end. The game's engine really dislikes this. It will refuse to acknowledge that triggers have gone off, or it will decide that it doesn't want to run a heart beat script, or that it doesn't like what you've told it to do and so makes a character run to a non-existent waypoint rather than starting a dialogue, it will crash because you click on a creature with no dialogue file set, and I have known it to skip through lines of dialogue and go straight to the player's response, leaving you wondering what was just said (hint: take the "I'll be going now" option). So it's likely that most, if not all, of the game/quest-stopping bugs people have run into are actually a result of over-playing rather than an issue with the mod itself. This is why testers are told to reproduce their bugs before reporting them.

This is undiluted awesome.

That could mean 2 things. Either one is horrible to think about. 3 things by my count. I'm personally of the opinion that the more stylish the shoe, the less damage it should do but that could just be me...

and barrels too? or does somebody else handle that? Crates and barrels are surely too much for one man to handle.

It's like the death of an entire culture. We'll have to find something to replace it...

Congratulations, Monty. Doubtless, you deserve the job .

Bah! I was just going to post this over here too and you go an' ruin my fun. I hope you're happy with yourselves. Anyway, I'd just like to thank Mr. Avellone once again for responding to our questions. Even after Emperor Devon told me to shorten my questions some of them still turned out larger than his answers >_>.

Thanks for this . While vague, it gives us a better idea as to what to expect. I'd also like to ask something: how much of the game is voiced? Is it the mix between text and voice we saw in the NWN2 OC, or are we getting everything acted out? Neither really bothers me, I'm just wondering.

Hmm, interesting stuff there. Thanks for sharing it with us. I'm looking forwards to reading the review of the game. I'm wondering how critical you can be of it, though, and how that might affect the accuracy of the article. Would Obsidian allow one of its employees to note poorer aspects of a game that hasn't even been released yet? Edit: Regardless, the needle of my anticipation meter rises and twitches with every preview I read .

I liked the theme - awesome stuff. If it's a dark and disturbing game you're working for then the main theme certainly will add to that effect. And if you don't like it for character creation... ? Well, you could always turn your speakers off .

I'd have to agree... but only to a degree (wee! I can rhyme!) Some of the music in the original NWN was good (I thought the generic castle theme was nice). The bad tracks? They didn't bother me so much, they just didn't add anything to the atmosphere of the areas, which is exactly what music is supposed to do in any medium (well... aside from music because there it's the main feature - I hope). As for my favourites? In no particular order: Planescape: Torment (though, it does sometimes annoy me that the Nameless One's theme is the basis of all other pieces in this game) Rome Total War Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II (the restored Jedi Enclave theme is one of my favourites) Neverwinter Nights 2 (they didn't add too much but I like the Githyanki theme, not to mention Crossroad Keep's theme) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (woo!) I can't remember much else - it's been so long since I played games like Baldur's Gate I(I).

Is there any chance you could tell us anything more about this scene, Mr. Brennecke? Having spent some time with it, I'd quite like to know where it was originally intended to go. Don't trust my version to be accurate. I essentially ripped apart the scene and plus, it had to be adapted for the purposes of M4-78 and Sion's vendetta against Master Vash. But I did implement some of the original gameplay programmer notes - such as the Sith soldiers disintegrating.

Now, I can't be certain but I think Atari (the game's publisher) deals with this sort of thing. I may be completely wrong, though .

If I'm not mistaken, the power was created by stoffe - a modder over at Holowan Labs. You can get information on it here.

How did you know?!

AGH! I didn't realise that this insignificant topic would provoke such interest. It worked out rather well, really. It just took a long time and limited what I was able to do in the way of writing for the companions. You can still access the samples I uploaded when the last website went up here. It is limiting because if I want to create lines I need to find phrases rather than individual words to splice together - splicing words together is much more difficult than phrases and generally leads to the character sounding as though he has the hiccoughs. Actually, I think one of the files included in that 7zip archive is a direct copy from one found (unused) in the game. The discovery of one of these unused files ignites a feeling of pure bliss in your heart . That is incorrect. Almost every area uses its own background sound file (you can check in the StreamMusic file). The areas may share UTS (placeable sounds, essentially) with similar contents but the ambient tracks are all subtly different. I know for a fact that the sound file for the Peragus exterior module (10XPER, I forget the exact name) was used in 801DRO, the landing pad where I made sure there was no ambient music, save that background hum, some wind effects and the sound of steam being emitted from the Ebon Hawk. Add to it the metallic clip clopping of two droids patrolling and... it's surprising how spooky you can make an area feel.

I decided to post my thoughts on the failed M4-78 project here over at Obsidian

Yeah, I was quite pleased when I saw them... a nice little easter egg if you ask me.

*Ventures out from shadows* Hmm... I think I'll quote myself for my opionions of Neverwinter Nights 2. If you feel like skipping through this excessively long post, I'll summarise: Neverwinter Nights 2 is a truly excellent game that suffers from one or two "interesting" flaws. In 2002 BioWare released the original Neverwinter Nights, featuring an incredible toolset and revolutionising the CRPG scene by unlocking the secrets of 3D and freeing the genre from the chains of the ageing Infinity engine. Not only this but the game featured an epic and forgettable storyline and some truly boring areas, all of which looked remarkably similar to one another. Don

My apologies: I cannot speak for the team as... I left it, heh. I'm just too busy and I really do want to move onto other things. If this thread is to be dormant until one of the team updates it, I would recommend "unstickifying" it .

Disappearing websites are annoying... No solution at this point. You can still download things via the direct links: Voice Over tests Korriban