alanschu

You're still being obtuse. Less game = less time requirements for extensive bug testing. Labor is always the huge expense. The created content is also a sunk cost. Take an economics class! All very nice to talk about. If the tools you are using are constantly evolving, there's no guarantee that the next time you try to load the aspect of the game, or apply the tools is even going to work. How on Earth are you "keeping in mind" what things need to be "compatible" if you're not sure what the tools are going to look like the next time they are updated on the repository? Especially when designers do not make the tools? You're grasping at straws. Occam's Razor. Why not? What code alterations did Vampire use? And, given the unstable nature of Vampire, I'm not sure how anyone can actually claim that Vampire was "already done." Unless they sat on it for a year for ****s and giggles.

I'll look into it. I wasn't expecting too much, as it has been quite a while. Thanks for the tip though.

Interesting. If you could direct me to any links that'd be great! I'd still be surprised if Valve didn't offer support, as it certainly is not the status quo for engine licensing. Though it is possible.

Errr, horrible examples. Money has a high correlation to quality when dealing with military. It's what funds the R&D for pete's sake. AEGIS didn't come along by pure luck. Nor did F-14s, F-18s, etc. On a side note, given the large amount of arms that the US exports, the net difference is probably quite a bit smaller. Canada's C7 rifle is the Canadian variant of the Colt AR-15 assault rifle, for example.

you know, Gromnir has never been able to decide if josh is any good at the craft of making games. circumstances has surely conspired 'gainst him, but is still hard to say much 'bout his design skills so far. his portions o' iwd were ok, but not our favorites... but that were his first game. HoW? we gave him some serious heat over HoW, but sounds like fergie hamstrung HoW development from day 1. iwd2? never finished, but again, what fergie wanted from iwd2 were simply to get a product out the door... am recalling that josh had a single day to come up with basic story. BG3? FO3? josh may have some good managerial skills... we assume so if fergie brings him in to try and gets nwn2 out by september, but is a shame we never has ever gotten a chance to see what josh could do with actual game design... and circumstances that not seem stacked 'gainst him. HA! Good Fun! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was referring more to the fact that Sawyer posts on this message board.

See previous post I did. And it only makes me even more convinced you have no idea what you are talking about. If you can't recognize that having less content to verify in the same amount of time would mean a greater chance of finding bugs, then it's because you're being obtuse. So if that IS the problem what stops them of hiring some more people as backup? Little things like money? Ofcourse that can happen, but that is why they are also tested... long before the actual testing of the content... that is being made around the same time It doesn't matter. If your tools are evolving, it's possible that the content created in parallel no longer matches the spec of the tool, causing errors. Do you know in what state they got it. Did it function correctly? How many issues and leaks and whatever did they ironed out themselves? Did it actually already looked like Vampire now did when they got it? I suspect that, like most engine licensees (including those that work with Epic, as well as idSoftware back in the days), many engine "tweaks" involve the company that developed the software. Companies don't just buy the engine and not receive any support. Epic provides fantastic support for their engine issues, as does id. I'd be very surprised if Valve, who could use Source as another revenue stream, just left Troika to their own devices. I also question people that say they had an "early" build of Source. Daikatana for instance, received the updated versions of their engines....from both id when they were using the Quake engine and Epic when they were using the Unreal engine.

Great game to be at. A good win for the Oilers as they battled back from some adversity. Played well for pretty much the entire game, but some quick goals by a talented Detroit team and they could have been packing.

NO No... why would it do "better" at 20 hours? Is the additional 20 hours more complicated to seek through than the first. And besides that you can always hire more if the current bunch does not know enough. They'd do it "better" because there'd be less content. If there's less content, they can spend more time on other areas to find the bugs. They do not have an unlimited amount of time to test the game. They're trying to fit things within schedule, and not release a buggy game. The time is finite. Less content, means more bug testing per section of game. Rewriting is just a far more advanched way of "expanding". Especially if (like Volourn already noted) there is only a part rewritten... Really, DX:IW's alteration of the Unreal 2 engine was also pretty near rewriting... No it doesn't. And it's not just "a part." It's an entire graphics engine. Indeed. And I doubt that during this time game-design came to a complete stop. The created works could just advanche with the tools... Which still means that additional time is required, since the tools aren't finite and may introduce new problems. It's the joy of creating new tools. LOL, no it's not. You know in what state Troika aquired the Source Engine? If yes...then you can post stuff like this... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Because it was still the Source engine. And they didn't have to make their tools. The burden of proof is on you, since there's no reason why you or I should assume that they did significantly alter anything. They certainly did not rewrite the graphics engine.

I already clarified. It's broken because it doesn't work, and trying to play it has issues. But I already said that I don't blame Bioware (or anyone). Trying to play it in MP has problems, and I'm now curious to finding out how other people have been able to play it. Especially without tweaking it.

100% vanilla?

Hard Drives are already humongous bottlenecks. CPUs are good because they are all purpose, but that fancy dual core you have doesn't mean as much if it's wasting cycles waiting for your hard drive to retreive information.

Haha. I don't know why I went with Gerber over Brodeur for goalies. New Jersey was on an insane winning streak.

Hehe, MP in HotU

And it seems as though Crawford has been fired.

The discussion about Bloodlines had more to do with the graphics engine (i.e. Source) IIRC. Even then, Bloodlines rewrote less than NWN2 did.

I didn't pick Kiprusoff because I was thinking Anaheim's hot play would upset them. Go go anaheim! I'm like 41000 on the Sportsnet pool. Dead last in the group that I am in (8 or so people) by about 4 points.

To cut on prodoction time. That doesn't mean that (bar very few exceptions) EVERY dev alters the engine to their wishes. Does this always have to happen before the work on the actual game can begin... doubt it... Hell, I have a game here (Painkiller) that got a ENGINE UPDATE for all existing levels in a freaking patch! Explain that if the engine segments where needed completely in order to build up the maps and terrains... Because extending an engine is MUCH different than rewriting it. Oh yeah, they "suddenly" had a different toolset. Ofcourse if you sit at your PC for a few hours you do not advance from A to Z by B, C, D, E etc... No, after A Z is a sudden entry... No, they didn't suddenly have a different toolset. They had to make it. No, but it is altered and edited even still. Lately the added mouth-movement and what else is yet to come. A final version (or even near-final version) of the engine is not needed to make those wire-framed levels... nor do the levels have to be completely build from scratch again after an engine update... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Because extending an engine is much different than rewriting one.

Thanks for that.

How was Silent Hill?

I agree! Them, as well as Carolina, surprised me the most this season. Though Buffalo is carrying on their success. I guess I should have picked Miller to win.

I think that's more of a "story" issue SP. Exposition leads to the "rising action" to the climax, and falls down to the denoument Expositions can be with a bang, but I rarely find they are better than the rest of the story. If it is, that is VERY bad.

Point conceded to Darque. Akari posted quite frequently (in particular) when KOTOR 2 was in development, and the NWN2 boards do have lots of dev posts.

Then this would definitely explain the cut in content.

They invented something for that. It is called QA... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Excellent! I was very curious how you were going to respond to this. This is NOT an issue that QA would find, because it would never get to QA. Designers do not just add stuff to the game and wait for QA to test it. This issue would be found the instant a designer tried loading their map in the toolset. If that part of the game was still very incomplete, QA would not testing it, as it's not in a state to be tested yet.

5-6 years isn't long enough for you? Why do you think people license engines? Because they didn't change the toolset for KOTOR 2. Because they also redesigned the Toolset for NWN2. It's not the Aurora toolset anymore. It doesn't....because they did more than alter the graphics engine....they redesigned the toolset. Trust me, building levels with one toolset, only to scrap that toolset and bring in another one is not a good idea. And it's not going to be that easy of a transition to just load stuff designed with one toolset into another. Unless they built their toolset in that way (which would take even more time). You can do it if you anticipate it from the beginning and incorporate it directly into your design patterns. Furthermore, UE3 has been in development for a long time. Finally, UE3 hasn't been released yet, but UE4 has already been in development for two years, so it's not like the designers at Epic are shooting from the hip when it comes to expectations of how levels are created. They didn't decide to suddenly rewrite the graphics engine for UT2K7....the concept of the UE3 engine existed long before UT2K7 would have left preproduction.