alanschu

Quite a bit has happened since my last update. It's now August 1943, and most of my carriers are now using the significantly better Hellcat over the Wildcat. First, some good news from New Guinea. My decision to build up the base on Hollandia has paid off immensely. LBA flying out from there were able to spot a carrier battlefleet. Dauntless' dropping 1000 lb AP bombs, Beauforts dropping 18" torpedoes, and B-25s dropping 2000 lb GP bombs all scored multiple hits. The IJN Shokaku was decimated in the attack, sinking the same night she was hit. Other hits were scored on some battleships on the fleet, but the bulk of the attack was wisely focused on the carrier itself. The CV Bunker Hill (Essex class) was recently made available, and along with the CV Essex, and the CVL Independence, made way to the Kwalajein Atoll to knock out her airfield. While this was happening, the rest of the entire US Carrier fleet escorted a Battleship bombardment Task Force, as well as landing forces consisting of the 2nd USMC Division, 3rd USMC Division, 24th US Army Division, and 27th US Army Division. Also preparing were smaller task forces carrying the US III, US XIV, and US XI Army Corps, the 5th Air Force HQ, and the Central Pacific HQ directly. The 2nd USMC Paratrooper division, as well as the 4th USMC Raider division also loaded up. They made way for the Kwalajein Atoll, and arrived in about a week and a half. During this time, B-24 Liberators out of the Tarawa Atoll (conquered last year) performed port strikes, with support from the raiding CVTF (Essex, Bunker Hill, and Independence). As troops arrived, the rest of the carrier fleet focused on port and coastal defenses, hoping to reduce the number of coastal guns that could fire at the transports. A battleship TF consisting of 13 battleships, including South Dakota class ships BB Indiana, Alabama, BB Massachusetts, in addition BB North Carolina, BB Washington, and a host of older battleships performed heavy shore bombardments on the Atoll. Casualty estimates exceeded 10,000 and troops from the 2nd and 3rd USMC Divisions began landing troops at night, with additional troops from the remaining combat divisions joining in the landings during the day. Initial fighting was exceptionally heavy, with the 3rd USMC Div taking heavy casualties. The Bombardment fleet made an additional, albeit less effective, bombardment, and all aircraft changed targets specifically to japanese combat troops, to aid in the fights. After two days of fighting, Allied forces were able to secure the base, and all that remains is to clean up the remaining pockets of Japanese resistance. 2 AA Divisions, the 10th USMC Coastal Battery Division, the 56th US Coastal Defense Unit, in addition the the 105th USN Base Force, 19th Engineer Aviation Brigade, and the 11th Navy Sea Bees (Engineers) will land in the next couple of days to repair infrastructure. One B-24 Liberator Flight Group is preparing to make the flight from Pearl Harbour, and cargo ships are beginning to load up USMC Corsairs, Avengers, and Dauntless' to provide aircover over the Marshall Islands. Currently there are only plans to occupy two other bases in the Marshall Islands, in order to bring Truk into range of land based bombers, as well as Guam and Saipan. I am content to leave the rest of the islands officially in Japanese control, and simply starve them out. Between holding Kwalajein, and a lesser extent the Tarawa Atoll, the remainder of the islands should be cutoff and suffer heavy attrition. In Southeast Asia, things are also going splendidly. Moulmein and Tavoy fell a few days after Rangoon, and troops prepared an invasion of Bangkok. While preparations were being made, much of the heavy bomber divisions flew into Wuchow China, to assist in the second attack on Canton. With the China's west secure, and the Burma Road open, most Chinese divisions relocated to Canton, with the aim of actually capturing it this time. With the help of hundreds of Medium and Heavy Bombers, the Chinese were able to pummel Japanese forces, and had them retreat into Hong Kong. Since Hong Kong is an island, they literally have no where to hide now. Before returning to Burma, the bomber divisions did heavy bombing runs over Hong Kong, decimating multiple ships inside the port. In fact, there were 104 confirmed hits on a light cruiser. It sunk Now a few divisions of Hurricane Fighter Bombers, P-40N Warhawk Fighter bombers, and a USMC Corsair division are flying out of Canton, interdicting any ships en route to resupply Hong Kong. Hong Kong is able to provide a limited about of supplies, but for the most part its heavy industry will be cut off and rendered useless, affecting Japan's ability to wage war. With Hong Kong cut off, and several Japanese Army Divisions effectively cut off from combat, my bomber divisions returned to Tavoy and Rangoon. From there, they performed heavy air and port strikes against Bangkok. 4 Tank Divisions blitzed into Bangkok to cut off the Malaya Penninsula from resupply via rail, and the siege of Bangkok had started. In a few days, the bulk of the Commonwealth Armies arrived and proceeded to pummel, with the help of air supremacy and numerous flights from heavy bombers, medium bombers, and even some dive bombers, Bangkok into submission. The strikes against the Ports and Airfields are done to reduce support troops, which in turn limit the effectiveness of restoring disabled combat troops to combat readiness. After a week or so of fighting, Bangkok fell. It's mid-August 1943, and things are looking very up for the Allied counterattacks! With some luck, the war will hopefully be over sometime in 1944.

I'm well aware of the Task Manager thanks. When you talk about running Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on an Intel Celeron 533 MHz processor "perfectly," I wonder exactly what you mean by "perfectly." We're talking about a processor that was released when the AMD "high end" chip was a K6-2 550 MHz. Unless you mean the old Coppermine version. In any case, you're getting a processor running on a 66 MHz FSB. Was it even possible to get a motherboard that supported RAM faster than PC-133 that would support it (because machines that shipped with it only came with 66 MHz RAM. Talk about speedy!). I'm going to assume it's at least the Coppermine Celeron II, otherwise you wouldn't even have support for SSE instructions. I'm surprised your emachine motherboard even supported a 128 MB video card. Maybe a GeForce 3....assuming your eMachine had at least an AGP 2X slot to put it in. And the GeForce 2 was the worst nVidia based video card you could have that had the required pixel shaders to run the game. "Perfectly" indeed. This is of course all running on a system with a 66 MHz system bus, with a 533 MHz processor, and slow memory.

I'm guessing it's time to chalk this one up to the "I guess we'll never really know" department. EDIT: Though we can go elsewhere with this. Do you think that SiN Episode 1 was hampered by the fact that it was episodic?

I have had no bad experiences with Gamer's Gate. I have used it to buy all of my Paradox games in the past year or so. I also used it to repurchase Doomsday after I lost the CD.

I picked mine up through Direct2Drive.

But, think of the travesty to the Fallout Franchise!!3211111. They're doing the world a favour!

I did not really expect this to particularly be "news." I've stated many times that my current project is this. I have also worked on this, though at the time it was a bit beyond my expertise, as my knowledge of AI was non-existant. Though I was paid via a scholarship, so it's not like it was a huge cost to him.

The issue I have is that their going into it with the point of being critical. What if it's actually a good game? Will they report it that way, or will their preconceived biases against the game that started years before actual release put them on a crusade to try to bring the game down any way they can?

I'm a computer programmer. Perhaps some lubricant will help you out of your viscous circle. Electronic Arts had ONE rewrite since the days of the Sega Genesis? The speed at which the NBA Live games run is not the issue.

Is this not a thread about NWN2, a sequel? Or are you referring to my comments about the NBA Live series, which could also be construed as sequels. What was the point of your original comment?

I liked Jung's influences on Cognitive Psychology. The main issue I have with Jung is his collective consciousness idea. The thing about it is that it doesn't seem to be provable, and more importantly, it doesn't seem to be falsifiable. IMO his contributions to psychology are similar to that of Freud's. Some interesting ideas, but too reliant on introspection and unfalsifiable theories. I think it's safe to say that Jung's ideas reflect his relationship with Freud. Though to be fair to Jung, his ideas are a bit less open to criticism than Freud's, which were often subject to circular logic. I tend to Occam's Razor his explanations of collective conscious and archetypes however. Yes archetypes exist, but I don't see why this has to be a part of the collective consciousness straight from the collective experiences of our DNA, when socialization seems to be an alternative explanation for such things.

He does what he needs to do to win. It's a very bad idea to cross that hero :D

And in what way are you qualified to make this statement? You were the one that said "Sometimes it's better just to use a clean slate and start from scratch."

As a funny aside, Electronic Arts just recently revamped the engine for the NBA Live series. Until this past year's version, it had still be built upon old versions of the basic game engine. There were so many parts of legacy code that people years later didn't really know what they did. I guess there was still some old Sega Genesis code lurking deep within the depths of the code base.

It's a sign of having too much money on your hands.

I find it much more common to have the game on ludicrous speed than the HOI2 games.

Naturally I recognized the dude so I knew he was bad, but the way he was talking and trying to make "smalltalk" came off entirely wrong. Depending on the family history, it seemed quite reasonable that he should not trust his brother.

"Hey pal...only what you see." And I think it's a phased-plasma rifle..

I think the Jack senses are in full effect.

It would require they keep their plans to shift focus a secret. Episode 2 was due around about now, and it may well have been in a near finished state, but it would be a pretty ****ty thing to do to release the next chapter when you know you aren't going to be doing any more. Such news would likely get out anyway, which could hurt sales with people not wanting to support the product when they'll never get the other chapters, and ultimately that would make for a bad reputation. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm not sure. I'd still buy Episode 2 if it came out today.

Except that Jags' issues could just as well be applied to any game made by Bethesda (or any developer for that matter), not just a Fallout game.

Depends on how far along they were in development. For all they know, the game could be the next big bust. If MumboJumbo wanted to shift focus to the "casual" games because they felt that there'd be greater potential for ROI, then in their minds it'd make sense to do so. Surely Episode 2 was already in development. What reason would there be to scrap it, especially seeing as the required amount and time and investment to finish it would be less than one big game. This would allow them to quickly gain revenue, while minimizing the transition time to these casual games. With the benefit of hindsight, since Episode 1 wasn't well received, it's probably a good thing for both parties involved that they didn't work on the one big game. Sure would be a kick in the teeth for MumboJumbo and Relic to lose money on that.

At the same time, it's possible that had the game been one single game, after this buyout the whole thing may have been scrapped.

That's what I'm thinking too, but of course we'll have to wait and see.

There's something wrong with people that enjoy good games, regardless of what they are called?