alanschu

It matters on the individuals definition of a just war. A "preemptive strike" sounds more like a nazi Germany tactic to me. Where as JFK only pushed the cold war as far as it had to go thus keeping it cold. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I wish I could remember the name of that law that says controversial discussion, given enough time, will eventually involve a comparison in some way to Nazi Germany.

Are 3D animations done with a bunch of static images? I'm not a graphics guy so I don't know. I know they are outputted in static images (hence the whole "frames per second" and whatnot), but is the animation itself created in static images? I mean, I could see a tree, especially when operating somewhat dynamically thanks to the physics of wind blowing through it, rarely having the same image for two different leaves appear on the screen at the same time. It'd be a bit more likely in a game like Total War (except that they've gone with making people no longer look all the same, and having more distinct differences between soldiers in a single unit) where the attack animation is probably the same. Would you also get varying performance benefits with varying frame rates? With a higher frame rate, it's more likely that you'll get states where the same image will be drawn on the screen, but with a lower frame rate, it'll be less likely, simply because there is less opportunities for it to happen.

Errr...I only played the board game, which makes save/reload a bit too obvious of a form of cheating.

Heh, Allan the jerk-troll seems to be making enemies by agreeing with someone that commented about how the price was atypically high for a game that was 2.5 years old. The typical argument is that "Well, when you get it, you won't buy other games, and you'll play it for many years," so I figured I'd ask if they felt that Starcraft and Half-Life were better games. Waiting for the fireworks to explode out of that one! Go Here if you wish to see grognards defend themselves. I wonder if this will hurt my chances to get a PBEM game

I used to win it it all the time.

The darkside ending of Jedi Academy was indeed much more fun. I was referring to the original Jedi Knight (Dark Forces 2), where Kyle becomes all evil with Sariss at his side.

If the images aren't being animated, then what real purpose does it have? Because the leaves and little men in Rome: Total War are animated. The idea of doing this for static images doesn't really strike me as new though. I thought stuff like this for grass had been done already?

Jedi Knight's Dark Side ending was quite poor.

The Japanese did! Ensuing battle resulted in 20000 Japanese casualties, and the complete dissolution of the division! :D

I thought the game was pretty exciting. Pretty up and down with goalies making a lot of big saves to keep the game close.

Excellent, the offensive into Burma is going quite well. Heavy air coverage from India let me capture Mandalay shortly after Myitkyina fell. From there, I was able to dominate air superiority over Rangoon, and capture Lashio and Tuang Gyi with relative ease. All that is really left is Rangoon, and I can use that as my new forward base of operations, and perform strikes into Siam and Malaya with ease. Hordes of troops have also landed in Australia, preparing to fortify and retake the northern areas of New Guinea. Unfortunately, Palemberg has finally fallen, and it seems like Java Island will fall too. Slowly trying to extract who I can out via submarines. The Japanese air coverage is way too dangerous to try anything else.

I could see some truth in the statements I have heard about magnets helping to deal with pain, as the magnetic field could interrupt electrical signals (I'm not a biologist though), but the "healing" properties of magnets make me laugh. Even then, the pain killing aspect could just be placebo.

Wooo!

So how does DX10 independently animate each leaf/tree/little man, since they shouldn't always be doing the same animation. Or in the case of Rome: Total War, will there be much savings over the fact that the game engine refers to each individual entity of a unit in all of its combat mechanics (in other words, when your "unit" has 1 chevron of experience, it means it's the average of all your units. Each individual unit still collects experience on its own. You could have 10 guys with 8 experience each, leading that unit of 80 to have an average experience of 1). Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I thought that what you're describing already existed in game engines, which is why aspects of foliage and whatnot are repeated on the screen. For instance, NWN2 toolset doesn't recommend a large variation of trees created with different random seeds (giving them a different look), as it gets too intensive. But having lots of the same tree is much less intensive. The main reason why I was skeptical about the term "endlessly" is because endless implies infinite. And I'd be surprised if you tried to display an infinite number of little men/blades of grass/trees, and it didn't choke any video card.

I'm skeptical about applications of the term "endlessly."

The ending sequence of MGS was great. Escaping from the base in the jeep was great. I preferred the Otacon ending as well, with Meryl not making it. Made the scene where Snake finds Meryl more significant IMO. Though when you finally get to the final sequence, it is a bit lame that in the end it's just a Deus Ex Machina. As for the 30 minute CG movie, I just thought it was kind of silly, when I saw it the second time. I know I'm in the minority here, but I really enjoyed the 30 minute CG ending of Squall wandering through the wasteland (of his mind IIRC) and ultimately finding Rinoa. As a love story (which I think Square tried to do between Cloud and Aeris) I thought that Rinoa/Squall's was better executed. But then again, people bashed FF8 for having people that actually looked like people.... I'm not sure what my favourite endings are. I remember getting chills when the Guardian screamed "Damn You Avatar!!! Damn Yoooooou!!!!" at the end of Ultima VII, as well as goosebumps at the epilogue of Serpent Isle when floating through the etheral void. Pandora Tomorrow had a neat ending, though I preferred the pseudo-closure of Chaos Theory, especially considering I loved the interactions Sam had with everyone, especially Grimmsdottir. I really enjoyed the Half-Life ending, especially seeing as I never considered joining the Gman my first time playing, so I thought that the ending was actually supposed to be the bad ending! System Shock 2 had a funny ending, and I thought that the Helios merging ending of Deus Ex was pretty sweet. If I had to choose, I'd probably pick Fallout. The recap of everything, and the anticlimax of the encounter with the Overseer was great. Bonus points for the awesome end sequence, which was my confrontation with The Master.

Is the engine 100% finished? There's also the idea that perhaps they still need to have some restraint, as even with new hardware, there is still limits as well as acceptable performance requirements.

I'm not really sure what you were expecting though. That scene on the whole still looks pretty good to me.

It's been a while since I played, but weren't you already hunting Sephiroth? And weren't you already pursuing him because of Cloud's link to him? I remember it being a road block on the adventure, not the raison d'etre (especially seeing as you're already 20 some odd hours into the game by that point). The thing that always bothered me about the whole situation was that the world was a world where death wasn't particularly permanent. I had already revived Aeris numerous times from death prior to that, but now that she's stabbed by a sword, I can't? Odd. Why could I not bring her back with some Phoenix down? Her wounds couldn't possibly have been worse than some of the crap she endured up until that point. It seemed too artificial to me. I would have preferred her dying some other way personally (perhaps falling into an abyss, where her body is actually gone). I actually preferred Tifa the entire time (and that's who I spent my time at the Golden Saucer with), and I enjoyed the part where she was looking after Cloud after he lost himself more than Aeris' death scene. The music of the whole Aeris scene though is excellent, and I think it played a huge part in making people like the whole scene. I guess it's because it wasn't the first time I had experienced the loss of a companion in an RPG. I was shocked at Dupre's death in Serpent Isle, and the minor eulogy he receives at the end of the game put chills down my spine. After going through a lot with my friends Iolo, Shamino, and Dupre (both in the game, and throughout the entire series), it just seemed so empty not having Dupre in the party any more.

So is this ^_^ Mr. Korr is just having some fun.

So it's "the best game ever" because of a character that dies on the first disc?

I really enjoyed FF7, but I personally think a lot of the "best game ever" status comes because it wowed people with pretty CG movies.

I wonder if I'm in the minority about hating the FFVII ending.

I gave up and moved on to Gmail.

You know, it took my about 12 years to finally learn how to joust in that game! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It only took me 2 <{POST_SNAPBACK}> To be fair, there WAS about a 10 year gap of not playing it I'd always either get hit, or hit the horse. I didn't realize I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early on my timing. Once I learned how to do it, it was laughably easy. Made the game a bit too easy too though. But I used to absolutely loathe seeing that jousting loading screen with the dudes playing the horns come on. I also could only successfully raid Saxon Castles. Fighting the two on one battle of the Norman castles was intense!