Tigranes

I'm pretty sure they will encourage the over-the-cam 'drive' mode like we've seen in NWN and KOTOR, then the use of the shoulder buttons to cycle through available characters. The RHS buttons to open up menus for spells and abilities. It would still be faaairly clunky, though, unless they seriously dumb it down. (There's a lot of hoopla about using the phrase dumbing down, but it is, technically & literally, dumbing it down when you have to accommodate gamepads.)

You have been bitten by a grue. Please go back four posts. That would be nice. Anyone know what happened to Bruce Shelley and the other oldies, or did they jump before now?

Groar, me hate consoles, groar groar. I wonder how much of a payoff there is in withholding a pc version for other consoles, but hopefully they use the time to polish it up.

Morrowind people still look terrible with any mod. But that's alright, I knew what I was getting into. I'm playing a melee-oriented character for the first time and I really do miss Oblivion's blocking / sneaking / bow action (MW combat is definitely more bland), but I am not regretting my decision to go retro. Atmosphere in buckets and I'm no longer having to turn a blind eye to idiotic decisions. Hell, if you dig around the wiki, Morrowind sometimes comes up with pretty good dialogue! (Pity it doesn't last.) I also like how uncompromising the world is in comparison. Not because I'm a sadist and think games *have* to be challenging, but I just can't get immersed in any world that is so obviously handing things to you on a plate. Morrowind makes sense in comparison. In the end you don't get the diverse options and creative problem solving of, say, Sierra adventure games, but nevertheless.

I am not impressed by their unannounced games TBH. I love and mourn ES as much as any of you, but they clearly show that both ES themselves and Microsoft had assessed that their bread-and-butter game style was no longer viable. What we see instead is a couple of actiony / platformy games that might have become anything from flops to awesomes; a couple of Diablo clones; a couple of unknowns (but again nothing like what they have done before). ES have never shown the ability to do great storytelling and have not proven themselves outside the narrow Age of Empires style. That doesnt' mean that they deserved to be tanked or they would have failed at it. What I am saying is that a Microsoft bigwig with a heart of steel in the financial crisis, looking at an AOE3 that had hugely disappointing multiplayer numbers (though respectable SP sales), and maybe Halo Wars that's not turning out so hot (maybe), and a series of games that are all pokes in the dark -

It is also the case in NZ (since, uh, australia does it). The prices are better than there, though. Australia sometimes gets really screwed over by its own size. You have places like Melbourne where the gigantic, unplanned urban development causes a huge amount of congestion, then you have to spend millions more getting any sort of pipes and services out to the far-reaching suburbs.

Flat. Bland. Forgettable. Underdeveloped.

Heh. When I learnt by myself I just set myself on learning songs, skipped every single sensible thing imaginable (including learning scales, practicing to metronomes, hell, knowing how to palm mute or change strings!) and just learning songs from Amazingly Easy (...Linkin Park) to Easy. But then I started playing very regularly with other people, and I could play other instruments before, so I picked up keeping in time and other such things as I went. If I didn't do that I would be one of those Teenage Horrors. I dunno alanschu. It *is* important to do scales and stuff but it's also important to keep yourself motivated, so maybe do half and half. Most Foo songs, esp. their older ones (Colour and the Shape, etc) are pretty easy once you can move around the frets relatively quickly, but you can find easier ones to start off with.

I don't want stupid pointless programs cluttering up my computer. I disabled Live for FO3 as well. Also I don't have a credit card of my own at the moment, so it's a bit of a bother. Maybe I'll just buy second hand.

Hrm. I sold my copy of the Witcher as I had finished most of the game and couldnt' bloody run it beyond 5fps on my old computer. Now I have a new one I've been meaning to get on EE, but uh... nobody in NZ has it in stock anymore. :/

I'm playing Morrowind again now, after I put +60 hours into my first play years before. I put 60 into Oblivion and finished it; 35 into FO3 and finished it. Got to say Morrowind is my favourite, though a 'better game'? I wouldn't say that. All 3 games are similar Bethesda-works in that they start out so full of promise, but get a bit like stretched butter as you approach endgame; in other words there is this promise of a big world with so much to do (which is fulfilled to an extent), but in Morrowind you soon realise so many characters are made of wood, and even though the setting and places are excellently unique you can't really do much with them; in Oblivion you soon realise how every town is like the other, has idiotic Radiant AI peasants running around "chatting", and the dialogue is still mediocre; in FO3 you discover just how small human settlements can get, and of course the repetitiveness of Super Mutants. Odd thing is though, apparently I can get back into Morrowind (after a few years), whereas I've failed to do that with the other two. I think Morrowind is much, much stronger, incomparably stronger, than the other two in atmosphere. Oblivion doesn't have atmosphere. For all the bloom and the grass you don't feel there, and the world never feels interesting. Morrowind had some wacky stuff; on many occasions it still felt like stuff wasn't there just so you could do your quest, but the world was just what it was; music fitted well; art design fitted well; even the interface/font. Some will argue that FO3 has plenty of atmosphere, but (without getting into originals debate at all) to me it felt rather patchwork. You've got several things like, uh, all of the main quest which makes no sense and breaks immersion, and lots of things felt very theme park-y (perhaps exacerbated by how small everything was). And when you take the atmosphere out of the equation in these Bethesda games, not that much remains. Quests? They got better with FO3 and there are some cool ones out there, but not enough to make it worth it (and some are loaded with facepalm). Combat? Not unless I share Todd's disturbing head-explosion-fetish. (Oblivion is a lot better after you mod away the retarded level list, though.) In the end they were all good enough games, but Morrowind does well on that factor which matters the most in a Bethesda game IMO, and so is still fun going back. Needs more bloom though, I freak out because I can actually see people's faces now.

Because this is a competition officially hosted by Obsidian, with prizes coming out of their basket, it would be unwise of them to give away t-shirts to R-rated material. We will endeavour not to be draconian about it, but have to keep within certain limits. I suggest that as a basic rule, sexual content is left implicit and passing (i.e. 'romantic'), drug use is not overtly glorified, and again, violent descriptions are not gratuitously excessive. If you want to know whether something will 'make the cut' theslug, PM me.

Current list: -> Uncharted Waters 2 (or, New Horizons): Koei sailor/trader simulation from my youth. Loved it back then. -> Morrowind. A lot less facepalm than Obv/FO3, but obviously deficiencies in other areas. I think I still prefer it though. -> Shadow President.

I told you to stop putting porn up in your profile.

8925. I also accept cheques.

I hunger.

He popped by recently.

I love how in 14 years, they made 5 games.... and 4 expansion packs. Still can't believe they're dying.

Awesome, more people! I started work on what should be the simplest of the five outlying areas in my module - a tiny island off the coast, where a miner/forager has found a way down into an ancient sunken city. It's my first time using sandy / rocky textures as the main base though, so it doesn't look all that nice. Oh well, good practice. This is probably more feasible, and sounds quite similar to what Guard Dog's doing with his new team. Check a couple of pages back.

We are nearly ready and should go live in the first few days of Feb, with the screenshots and clear details of everything. Deliberately bad fan fiction is also welcome, I've planned something special for bad fiction.

100mbit is fairly common in South Korea and will soon become 'standard'. As Korea is the world leader, I don't see it being out of reach for others. edit: And yes, most of the time it's the ISP capping, not the infra/tech.

Wals contributes his genes to Third World biological databases, while doing some private detective work on the side for Greenpeace.

Aldenon(sp?) was hideous. It's a classic example of a rambling old man done badly. It was.. well, it was Mickey Mouse. Grobnar didn't impress, mainly because he's just a pale, pale shadow of glorious Jan. But then, some people will say I have no taste because I liked Minsc & Jan. More than anything, I think it was just the superior voice-overs. Sa'sani and Nas'sirin would have been excellent if the VO was a a little more polished and consistent. (Volo had to be the "Give Tutorials" man so he's forgiven.) Khelgar, too. SOZ Khelgar seemed to be a different person, and the character just became significantly worse for it.

Perhaps the PC compatibility problem would disappear if we got everyone to buy the same Dell, as well.

Was joking, meshugger. Sort of. Without getting too professory (again), these days we're so concerned with "being ourselves" that we have a tendency to think any kind of failing is okay because we're 'being true to ourselves'. I know that's not what you're advocating mesh, but people seem to confuse the two a lot. It's all good yelling I'M FAT AND I'M PROUD, but not when you then make no effort whatsoever to control your eating habits or do some exercise. Equally, theslug keeps telling us he is a supreme bastard, but that's no reason not to make an effort. And you jump in a new environment where you *have* to change, well, you change. (Or you leave in tears.) So what you gonna do slug boy? For my part, I've gone days without receiving any projects and thus with nothing to do. One project is held up because our client has gone MIA and won't give us the details; one project is... held up for no reason whatsoever by my superior; so I elbowed my way into another project just to have something to do, but apparently that's not starting yet either. Which means I've been going home early every day this week when I get fed up with reading Codex LPs.