Tigranes

Aye. Was trying to put integers in a string entry. :"> That's what you get for never actually learning C.

......... Never mind, I'm an idiot.

Aha, so that's how you fix the 'diluted' textures. Good, good. So you suspect it's a memory / CPU usage issue? I'll try running the toolset with no other applicaitons at all.

1.5gb ram, and i have 12.5gb left. Yep, it keeps happening. Firstly, toolset can hang really bad when I'm closing script editors of all th ings (opening is fine). The modules can also save fine when I don't have any custom scripts / conversations, but after that it gets this kind of error, I can't save, and the savefile is corrupted (i.e. missing all placeables/creatures or not loading); Anyway,f rom what I've seen, toolset looks good and not as overwhelming as I'd feared. With that camera plugin it should get better. Terrain is stupid though, the fact that if you place one terrain texture over the other, they dilute each other and unless you remember the texture name so that you can use the Replace function, it's gonna look like a load of hookie.

Okay, created some very simple stuff for testing, but I can't save because it says Error: Found ZeroByte Resource: Area1.git. I have just a building and some placeables, a trigger, couple of conversations and related scripts, some custom-tagged humanoids. Any ideas what I messed up?

roshan: omega hadn't worked for me. All happy now, though. By the way, 9600 Pro does things fine.

Finally made it work so having a little lookaround. The camera movement is stupid and should have been arrow keys, but I can live with that. The toolset isn't actually that different or more difficult compared to the NWN1 IMO, in terms of basic activities (i.e. laying down terrain/placables, making basic conversations and scripts and triggers) . The exception to that is the screwed up Undo funciton, and the fact that it takes me 15 seconds to open any property menu.

Toolset finally works! I'm seeing it for the first damn time. Dunno if the game still works, though.

Quicksave in G3 is G or F4 or something, as I remember. But then, I have the full game. And in the full game it doesn't 'kick you out' when you go into the menu to save... heh. they invented new stupidities for the demo, amazing.

Now you can download 60 more megs to revert to 1.02!

I dont care if its the pre-alpha as longa s I can open the toolset.

I don't understand why everybody wanted a party, then let them go by Ai instead of using puppet mode. I puppet mode everyone fully and it's really fun. Ah well. That means I play on hardcore with no backstabbies.

How would you move with the mouse with Gothic's low angle? Same with KOTOR? Are you using quicksave or going into the menu to save? I use the former, and wh ile saving takes quite a while it doesn't take THAT long. Maybe that's the reason? Still, the load times *are* horrible. I have my guitar with me in the room, and I can usually play a song on it while Gothic loads at startup.

Actually, i Have a My Documents/Documents folder where I keep my documents. Huh. Downloading beta patch now, maybe this will make my toolset work! WEEE!

I Ctrl+Y'd xvarts after a while.

Stats is mainly, how much damage you deal once you DO hit, I think. I noticed a big jump when I got 150 strength and got the Swordsman upgrade. The first few 'areas' are pretty fun. I mean, there are some "Find 10 things for me" quests, but you can motsly ignore them. And usually they ask for things you should already have if you're someone that looks for things as you walk along. Gothic 3 is fun to play, but the formula is repetitive and I don't hold high hopes for the plot, so I quit after 10-15 hours and I probably won't get back to it for a while, what with NWN2 and MTW2. I had seen 5 cities and they were similarly 'questhubs' with no real life.

Look, Ian's back!

NWN2 saves every module and thus area you have visited in the game, and all the info. It can't be the entire module though, since they're only about 10-20mb per module - but how can just scripting and such be that big? Possibly it could use those saves to store data on creature spawn / placement / stance / status,loot (which we know is eternal), all other scripts, items, containers, and so forth, but... still.

Hrm. Actually, I liked the exploration bits just as much. If BG2 had those 'wilderness' areas in addition to everything else it had it would have given me a massive gamorgasm. Of course, BG2 is already bigger than just about any other game out there. From someone who never had an oppotunity to play pnp that much it was really cool to come across these little encounters.

Haha, I see your point alan. But for someone like me, I'm willing to sacrifice that particular sense of plot integrity / realism because I love exploration BG-style. Perhaps BG was a bit too mucho n the empty side, but still. I find that I don't mind the above nonsense as much because I'm used to it, but what I really mind is the feeling that everywhere you go, something has been elaborately scripted to await your arrival. It also makes it feel more linear if everything 'has a purpose'. Whatever floats ze boat.

The response lag could well be just Bloodlines being a mess in terms of code. Does it happen with mouse clicks or any other buttons? Or is everytihng else except movement responsive? Is your FPS good? (over 20) If so, probably not much else to be done.

NWN1/NWN2 Top Down cam has always had the capability to look exactly like the IE isometric. There are just more options now. You could even set the camera at that angle/height then enable free cam (post patch 1.3), then use the arrow keys to pan the camera freely - so that it's exactly the same as IE. That's what I plan on doing, with occasional zoom-ins for purtiness (and steep elevations, etc).

But Pop, I play NWN2 in pseudo-isometric. Doesn't feel that different than IE view TBH. I think it was because the kind of things the player could interact was pretty limited in BG1. It wasn't as innovative with the game engine as some later games are. Usually it was either "NPC walks up to you" or "You see monster" or "You find rare item". There aren't magical portals ou can uncover, or elaborate magical traps, or whatever. The scripting wasn't as advanced; Ithink NWN2 mods could do a lot more in the BG style and make it feel less empty. Even so, BG was wonderful and still has a charm of its own, I still play it.

Volo, I agree with you for vanilla BG2. And that's probably what you were talking about, so we wins, game over, etc. Since I finished BG2 about +20 times, I had the opportunity to extensively try both Tactics and IB - the two best battle mods, afaik. Tactics mod was pretty good, but it felt a little neutered for some of its changes and generally, I was getting bored. IB is definitely more radical; some, like Torgal, I learned not to install. Improved Abazigal is pretty damn insane as well; I'm sure there's a key to beating him, but I never figured it out. Another is Improved Illasera. She goes invisible, then just does it every time you dispel it; she fires arrows that hit every time, even if you're concealed, and does it like 4 times a round, each of them with slow and other status effects. She has great DEX, blade barrier I think, and som eother crazy things that block spells. Her minions were pretty good too. Still, most of those battles rae pretty damn fun becuase each time you die you can modify your tactics, ands ometimes try pretty crazy things. edit: KOS was pretty damn easy. The second wave was pretty good though. But if theres a boss fight where there's only one enemy (first and third), I expect it to have some pretty neat things. It would have been awesome for the first KOS to have BG2 dragon Wing Buffet; imagine the KOS coming out of the portal, waving his arm then your party flying to the far corners of that circular room, knocking them out and fizzling ze spells. Some unique spells / abilities for the boss as well. It's not a real boss if all it does is have 500hp and sit there dishing out physical damage. Stupid and boring. Of course, I remember vanilla BG2's Irenicus tree fight. Totally roleplaying my solo Rogue, he noticed that Irenicus didnt even notice him before the guardians were killed; so cunningly he placed all his available traps right next to him, then disabled the guardians. Traps fire before Irenicus gets protections up, Irenicuse dies in 0.5 seconds. Even if you don't do that and go into the battle unprepared & unbuffed, Irenicus is pretty easy as long as you spread your praty out.

I understand that quite a few criticised BG because each wilderness area, you'd often walk around (slowly, too) for 10 minutes to come across one encounter. Those encounters were golden though, and in true pnp style; and especially with graphics nowadays, which are just starting to be as good as the best of 2D (so far it has been inferior, IMO), we could really do with something like that. Oblivion and Gothic probably do it very similarly though. In fact, they DO use the BG model, just with a different representation. You're still walking along anywhere and everywhere on the world map and finding random things. I think mods in NWN2 can definitely do a BG-style world creation because of the World Map; I know I'll be oding that if I ever finish a mod.