alanschu

I wouldn't really consider making meaningful mods with Half-Life an "easy" experience. I find the NWN2 toolset much easier. As for people still using Half-Life, I think it's more because it's Half-Life. The same reason why you still have people playing around with Quake. I contend that Doom's popularity and Windows release was not because of mods however. Modding was still a relatively "new" thing to mainstream. Doom made the conversion to Windows because Doom was a very, very popular game. I don't know. There are large parts of the NWN community that were less than thrilled with NWN2. Furthermore, NWN already has an established online base. Much like how people still play the original Counterstrike, despite the fact that CS:Source is, in my opinion, a superior product. The thing is, there are people that are NOT programmers, nor game developers, on this very board that are playing around with the toolset and seem to be making things happen. What exactly are you have problems with?

I have a feeling that that actually wouldn't be significantly faster than sticking it in your veins in your arm.

I'm typically not a fan of excessive piercings and tatooing. Having said that, there is one girl in my department that is gorgeous, despite some piercings. She used to have nose rings and whatnot, but lately seems to only have three studs just below her bottom lip. I'm guessing removing those ones would probably not actually look as good. They also don't look too bad, because they are subtle, and maintain symmetry and whatnot. She looked good before, but now she's just gorgeous. A dead ringer for Elisha Cuthbert.

Just like TV commercials are nothing more than annoying inconveniences as well, right?

I'm guessing those don't work over closed battle.net do they?

I agree. I think that toolsets are becoming more complicated (and powerful) because modders are becoming more capable.

Is it kind of like Freelancer or something? You build up your own space empire?

How would you describe X3's gameplay?

It's a gooder!

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the term loss leader. Gillette was very happy to give away his razor handles (in other words, sell it at a loss), because he'd make the money back through selling razor blades. Microsoft and Sony are very happy to sell you a console at a loss, if it means making millions selling the games.

Which Eddo would be better able to understand, after taking some elementary courses on Sociology.

Take a course on Sociology and all your questions will be answered.

Hehe, me too. It's nice to be on the other side of Hedgehogs. The last time I encountered them was in Silent Hunter 3, and wooo-eee did they suck. Only explode on impact, so they never lose track of where I am, unless they hit me!

That it was. I would like to have seen a move by move analysis of how long each player took, but I seem unable to find anything of the sort

Well, the problem is that it's logged in the "Sunk Ships" screen. There was a couple carriers that I hadn't realized I had sunk (mostly because I'm alt-tabbed during much of the turn phase, and I just let it do its thing in the background). But I wouldn't want to get rid of that screen, because there's a fair share of ships that are confirmed kills (such as that tanker that gets hit with 15 1000 lb AP bombs). In game news, April 1943 marked another time for many refits, so my Navy is sitting back undergoing upgrades. Most battleships have become giant AA platforms, and my destroyers are now equipped with the Mk9 Depth Charge, which is teardrop shaped to sink faster. Hence, it's more accurate. I'm also getting my first wave of Destroyer Escorts, which will be used to both escort (duh!) convoys, but also make Hunter-Killer groups. They are armed with Hedgehogs, in addition to a combination of Mk7/m1 and Mk9 depth charges (the Mk7/m1 are a bit less accurate, but are packed with 3 times the TNT, so if they hit...look out!). At the moment, all US based carriers are at Pearl Harbour, with the exception of a single Light Carrier still at San Francisco.

Well, this wouldn't have been allowed. The rules of the match limited the total amount of time, so moves had to be "relatively" quick. They had a maximum of 2 hours for the first 40 moves, 1 hour for the next 20 moves, and 30 minutes for all remaining moves. If you had time remaining from one area, that time carried over. So if you only used 1.5 hours for your first 40 moves, you had 1.5 hours to play your next 20. Basically, 40 moves must be played by the 2nd hour, 60 moves must be played by the 3rd hour, and the rest of the moves must be done at the 3.5 hour mark. 3.5 hours was the longest possible game.

A bit of me would like all the information to be hidden, so that I don't know what I'm going up against. This is what happened with Midway. Yamamoto though that the Americans were down to just two Carriers, because it thought that the Yorktown had sunk at the Coral Sea. But at the same time, I get a small euphoric feeling when I see that I have sunk a large fleet carrier

I wonder when that came about Volourn. Back in November, they were taking a loss of $126, as per Gamespot as well. I did find a blog that said $76, but that comes before the Gamespot article. Business Week, a mere 1 day prior to Gamespot's November article, said it was only losing $71 per unit, but that's not including the other items that get packaged, and they confirmed the $126 loss that Gamespot did. I imagine the new process for the processor will cut costs (by increasing yields), so that would help. Though that's quite a recent phenomenon too. According to the November article, the cost doesn't include labour.

Deep Blue did not make its moves immediately. In the first game it was a bit more mechanistic, not using more than 3 minutes for a move, but as the game came to a close, there were moves that were taking as many as 6 minutes. Some moves took as much as 15 minutes. Kasparov's issue was that Deep Blue wasn't designed to be a good chess player, but rather it was designed specifically to be Kasparov. He also regretted playing the final game, as he wasn't really mentally into it (as evidence by his conceding defeat after only 19 moves). The big advantage Deep Blue had was that it didn't get fatigued. Kasparov spent more time analyzing the games than any other game he had taken part in, and by the end he had lost his fighting spirit. He also admits that his prior experience with computer chess players led him to some false assumptions about Deep Blue. This was part of the reason why he lost Game 2 (it also led to him speculating that Deep Blue was being tampered with, since Game 1 was more in line with how computer chess players tend to play). The fact that it was making moves that he absolutely did not expect shocked him, and added to the pressure. That's what psyched him out.

That was one item and the only item in BG1. BG2 had a lot of them though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And not surprisingly, Baldur's Gate 2 was a much higher level adventure, and not particularly relevant to Mkreku's comment.

Well, the original Baldur's Gate has some +5 weapons if you take the time to kill Drizzt.

Well, it's impossibleness is related to the "simplicity" of the game of Chess. Checkers is also dominating (to the point where human champions no longer play it), whereas Go is patently stupid, to the point where human champions won't play it because it's too easy. I'd also argue that there are other things that will sell games more effectively (since these companies are in it for the money). Particularly graphics.

Chess is a pretty simplistic game when you sitback and look at it. All states are defined clearly, with clearly defined move possibilities. It's also a small scale game. Go is also an easy game, but it's board is many times larger than a chess board, so AI chokes on the branching factor. The state space of a 3D strategy game is significantly larger. Good AI is also very computationally expensive. SOmeone seems to be venting in the general direction of Medieval 2: Total War :D

Unfortunately, I have God's eye view of the sinking of ships. I write it off as being intelligence coups, since there is a SigInt screen that reports various troop and ship locations, and occasional movements as well, incorporated right in the game.

I thought the XBOX 360 was a loss leader?