alanschu

He didn't push the economy forward by increasing military spending. He increased military spending beause of his ideological beliefs about the Cold War and Communism (which is bad, which I already indicated.....his excessive military spending did NOT help the country). Especially seeing as his improvements in the economy were before the sharp increase in national debt (according to your graph anyways).

If a game has to be 20 hours because otherwise the QA team cannot cope up with freeing it of bugs you either need more or more competant testers... Personnally if a game is only 20 hours because of the QA-team cannot handle more I would opt to sack them all... A claim you can only make if you are in the loop. Which you aren't. They clearly have a goal to get the game out by a specific date. And since you mentioned KOTOR 2, all the "40+ hours of quality" doesn't mean much if it's a buggy mess. Given how people were all over them because of KOTOR2 being buggy on release, they'd probably rather NOT destroy their image any more. Actually it would be more valid. Source was totally new. Electron is build upon Aurora, like Troika had an (very) early version of Source and had to adjust/clean it of bugs/memory leaks, add in the wanted graphical adjustments etc. themselves. They didn't adjust it, nor did they fix memory leaks. And according to Brian Lawson, a man much more credible than you. Electron is the rendering engine. In other words...graphics. Source (which is a graphics engine) was not developed by Troika. Electron is. Does the building of the engine compares to the building of the game. Does UT2K7 been in production as long as UE3... nope. But damn well they started building UT2K7 was FAR from finished and needed several adjustments. Would that mean all the early work done on rules/design/levelbuilding etc. would go to waste. I doubt it. And once again HL2/UT2K7 cannot really be compared to NWN2 since NWN2 HAD a basis. You're just grasping at straws now. Last time this came up here on the forums somebody (dev) told us that that was only the graphical engine that got total revamp. Thus not the things like levelbuild, quest-building, AI etc. etc. etc. Errr, that's exactly what Brian's quote said. "Electron is the new rendering engine." I never assumed anything other than the Graphical engine was revamped. But try making a level when you have no engine to design it with. Nor tools to design it with. Try editting a previously built level with a completely different toolset. Really, do you think the leveldesigners or Chris Avallone would be working programming the toolset... You have programmers for that usually... the storywriters don't do it... (hell, I don't even wan't them to) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> He'd be working in preproduction. Kind of like the state Fallout 3 would be in right now. It's why game development takes so long. Furthermore, Lawson's post gives the indication that these rewrites didn't happen right away. You also introduce the possibilty of new bugs, new problems, and different hurdles. Even if they can still use pre-rewrite assets, it's hard to write and test scripts if the map you designed has now exploded due to the changes in the toolset.

Outside of Reagan's heavy military spending, I'm not sure how what he did was so horrible for the American people..especially their welfare. Median income went up, while inflation slowed (in spite of Cold War deficit spending). Pretty impressive by any means. To successfully increase the amount of money in the marketplace, while slowing the rate of inflation is not an easy thing to do.

No Kovalev or Elias for me. How is Afinoganov pointless? LOL. Crazy....team scores 8 goals and he, a talented offensive player, doesn't get any. It was goofy...three hatricks in one evening of playoff hockey.

Joke's on all of us.

Are games made for QA in the present day or for us costumers? Point not found...relevance not found... Then you're not looking hard enough. They said they want to release a quality game. If there's less game to run through QA, there's a greater chance that a larger percentage of the bugs will be caught. And look it ain't no RPG. Better is to actually use Vampire bloodlines, and that one made it longer than 20 hours of gameplay, nah? No. What sense would it be to compare Bloodlines, a game where the developers didn't have to make or modify the engine in any way, where tools are provided for them to make the game, with a different game? Bloodlines has much more in common with KOTOR2 than it would with NWN2, since it's built upon existing technology. Because much of the 6 years of development was not dedicated to actually making and creating the game story. You see, Half-Life was developed on top of existing technology from the Quake engine, and built with the same tools. Half-Life 2 was developed completely from scratch. Completely new engine, which would require their own toolset. The reason why HL2 definitely isn't longer (despite years more production time) is because they had so much more to do The original. As we all know Electron is the same engine but with the graphical engine upgraded. Since the underlying rules are still the same that shouldn't prevent OE from building up the game... Brian Lawson would disagree: "While we "started with" the "Aurora Engine" many things have changed. The toolset has been complpetely rewritten...from scratch. Hence, there is no underlying Aurora Tool code or anything of that nature. The tool that will be used to "build" the game will be brand new. Electron is the new rendering engine and the same goes for it. It's 100% stand alone in the sense that it uses nothing from Aurora." http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewt...&forum=95&sp=30 By the sounds of it, both the toolset and Electron are brand new. And a friendlier to use toolset should how block devs from making the game itself from being bigger? Sure you can alter the toolset, but that wouldn't mean that at the same time the current couldn't be used for levelbuilding... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It blocks the devs because instead of taking the time to make game content, they are spending time making the toolset. Toolsets don't just make themselves.

I've seen much more "OMG WTF it doesn't work" threads on Bioware than success threads. I mean, there was obviously enough backlash on the forums for Bioware to release an official statement, and Georg Zoeller probably broke his keyboard hitting CTRL-V and linking it to virtually every thread. I'd wager you were one of the lucky ones Volourn, rather than I being one of the unlucky ones. 20 page threads about people explaining how they found various work arounds along the game don't typically come around if it isn't a very common problems. And I'd be surprised if they were stickied. Neither do official statements from the company explaining why the MP doesn't work (for some people anyways). One question though, how did you work with the Relic of the Reaper and whatnot?

I get the impression with Garrett (and lots of sportscasters) that they have a bias towards who they think their expected audience is. It's not surprising that he focuses a good chunk on the Oilers in a Detroit-Edmonton series. I'd expect him to pick the Flames in a Calgary-Anaheim series as well. As for Carolina and Dallas, it makes sense. I picked Turco and Gerber in my pools. I also picked Lidstrom (0 points), Forsberg (1 point), and Jagr. At least Heatley has SOME points. Thornton? Shut down! Thankfully Cheechoo was able to salvage something. I am so hideously in last place in my pool it's not even funny.

I enjoyed the Virtua Tennis games, though I think I'm just not enough of a fan of the sport to justify buying it. I think they are pretty successful though.

Did you head back with that disassembler or whatever the heck it's called and turn all those plants into nanites?

If you got 2 extra years of dev time I doubt anybody with ANY competance would choose to "just scrap that then"... WHat? Would a shorter game not be easier to run through QA? Nice example. I assume Electron has been hacked and posted all over the net? " Even at 5 years, Half-Life 2 was still in development longer than Half-Life 1...before Source was leaked. An engine was already there... that should not block terrain generation/story creation/quest creation etc. Which engine is it? The graphics of NWN2 don't really look like NWN. I'm talking about the toolset that comes with the game for us to use. Resources have been spent to significantly improve the toolset (I think Llyranor even posted a PPT presentation about it) to make content creation for the end user less of a challenge.

Heh, you come HERE to have discussions with OE employees? Thank god Sawyer was hired!

Yeah, the assault rifle is definitely strong. The final fight against Shodan was laugh out loud funny because of the Assault Rifle. The evil geometric shapes were much more annoying! I'm surprised he didn't use the wrench as well. I always saved my ammo, even in my first playthrough. I got the impression it didn't exactly come in bunches

There is nothing particularly wrong with the begining. Just like any RPG the further in you get the more things you have to play around with. The end, well it's well known that the end wasnt as intended so you it's not really anything you can relate to another product. People said the same thing about Irenicus' dungeon in BGII and Telos as they did about Peragus. It's one of those RPG things. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I actually don't think there's anything wrong with the beginning either. It was BW that brought it up.

It's "broken" in the sense that trying to play it will result in problems. I'm not blaming Bioware for this, nor do I expect them to do anything about it. Nor am I calling it a bug. In my experiences, it is not possible to play the HotU campaign, because things are done in such a way that they do not work in multiplayer.

That's probably a fair statement.

Looks like you already pointed out problems. The beginning and end are subpar. Not to mention the large amount of problems people have had with playing the game at times. There's also people that would argue that it isn't a 40+ hour game. Because they are doing much more than just making a single player game. Half-Life 2 was in development for much longer than Half-Life, yet it doesn't have a longer game (in fact, it's probably shorter too...though neither game is really all that long). Making an engine? Making a Toolset?

I'm confused... What exactly is it, that you think Bioware was talking about when they said that they were not supporting MP? If Bioware's intention is to never make sure that it is working, how can it not be "working like it should?"

Because I was admitting it's been a long time since I played the game, and don't remember the details. One thing I do remember was attributing the title of TBB to Horrigan. Like I said, I'd need to play the game again, especially considering what I look for in games has probably changed. It's been years since I finished Fallout 2.

Yes, they did. I'm not "depowering" my own argument. Even Volo concedes that the MP of the campaign was "play at your own risk." Besides, you kept trying to turn that argument into "people want to be able to drop quest items" and that we are unhappy when we can't. Next, you kept trying to switch to different examples, when the one specifically that I addressed was the "letting people sell quest items." You then started to go "all in" assuming that I think that all exploits aren't bugs and so forth. (Despite in this thread I did concede my initial wording was incorrect, and stated that many exploits are indeed bugs). There was a very specific reason I only referred to the selling/dropping of quest items.

Unfortunate. I have given you an opportunity to make me absolutely eat my words, and you're not taking it. I'd love for the MP to work, but have no one to test it with.

Apparently you missed the part where Battlewookiee brought it up. If he wishes to adhere to the definition he provided from wikipedia, then he must consider a typo a bug. Furthermore, it was a point that going slippery slope and taking one example that I disagreed with, and trying to apply it to any example he could think of, isn't going to make me happy either. It seemed like it went over his head though.

I think it's an awfully good thing that the second trilogy of Ultimas did not live up to the "namesake" of the Ultima brand that was established in the first three Ultimas.

When did you play the XP2? Because I tried playing it shortly after it was released. Also, did you play with an imported character, or a new character? I played with an imported character.

Maybe I should clarify....I'm talking about the HotU official campaign...though I assume that's what most people feel.