Spider

More excessive and apparent? It really isn't THAT bad. Besides, the game, once you get used to how combat works (specifically how the auto targeting system works) and the somewhat low performance, it's an absolute gem. I love PB for reaching for the stars because this game is loads of fun, despite the bugs (and other than the low performance and occasional crash the bugs aren't that noticable). I'm having a blast playing it. Probably a bit too much since I've played it for far too many hours now. So if bugs is the price to pay for a game this ambitious (and fun), then I can actually live with that. The stunlock issue really isn't that bad either. It's gruesome in the beginning, but when you level up some wolves and boars stop being scary. Unless they manage to get you from behind or if you get stuck in terrain somehow (if you can't back away or turn and run, you will be killed).

I personally don't feel Gothic 3 is as buggy as all that. I've certainly played worse (ToEE comes to mind). The biggest issue with the game is that the code feels very unoptimized and thus performance is pretty bad. I'm running the game on low settings with a setup that could play Oblivion on medium to high and on those settings it's playable but not exactly a feast for the eyes. It still stutters on occasion, especially in the forest, but nothing too bad. It does freeze or crash on occasion, but again not frequently enough for it to be a huge issue. Just quicksave a lot and it's not so bad. There are some strange graphical glitches every now and then (wolves running on cave walls and such) but again nothing major. There are a few other issues though. First, load times are pretty bad. It takes me about 15 seconds to save the game (I have a P4 3.0, 1 GB RAM and the game is installed on a Raptor) which is acceptable, but then it takes 45+ seconds to load a save game, which is far too long. Especially given how often you die in this game. The combat is not great and your opponents are kinda stupid. A lot of the time where there are multiple opponents, most of them will stand by and do nothing while you pummel one of their friends (which in a way is kinda nice since combat is difficult enough as is). The stun effect from being hit is very annoying, and if you ever get caught between an enemy and a piece of terrain, you're dead. But once you get into how it all works, it stops being so bad. I can now dispatch boars and wolves without being panicked in fear for my own life. I do hate the Bloodflies however. So in my opinion, the game is playable and worth checking out. Because the rest of the game is very good (and if you have a machine to run it at medium or higher specs, the visuals are pretty good as well).

I take it you haven't been designing webpages much? Although IE7 is supposed to be better in this regard and is rendering pages more along the open standards (in other words, Microsoft realizes they were wrong and are taking steps to adapt).

I'm not a fan of randomization in character creation either. Although most such systems include some ways to give the player at least a modicum of control (like rolling your characteristics and then being allowed to redistribute them as you see fit). Although having some random element to character creation can be fun. Like background tables or some such (of course with the option to ignore if it's totally out of line for your character).

I think your sarcasm-o-meter needs some maintenance.

I've always liked the Black Viper guide. http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12 It's a tad outdated (it was written before SP2 iirc) but it's still pretty good and it explains what every service does.

The problem is that D&D has defined Paladin as a religious warrior dedicated to all things good and righteous. So going by D&D standard you can't be a Paladin unless your're good. Of course there exists counterparts for evil and neutral religious warriors, they just have other names. I have no idea what those are though (Dark Paladin?), I'm not exactly well educated when it comes to D&D rules. I'd personally be fine with Paladin being used for any devoted religious fighter, it's just not the way it's done. Never much liked the D&D versions of Paladins anyway. Don't like to roleplay those type of characters and if I just want to create a tank for a computer game, I tend to go with pure fighters anyway. Extra feats beats Paladin abilities any day (I like feats a lot though, so I'm a bit biased). The only exception being Keldorn in BG2. If I'm powergaming through that game, he is the first NPC to get inclcuded, but that's because his dispel-ability is just insane.

You don't think a 80% price increase just to get a Blu-ray player is expensive? That's about twice what the PS3 will cost and people are saying that one is priced too high.

From what I understand, the XP implementation of this got a lot stricter when the windows validation tool came around (or a while after). Remember that this is for the cheapest licenses that are supposed to be tied to one computer (hence why they are so cheap). I could be wrong though, it's possible I read about how it was going to be in Vista and my memory is playing tricks on me. It's been a while since I read about it (2 months at least).

Speaking of bugfixes: I find it a bit funny that a patch for the game has been released before the actual game. http://www.gamershell.com/news/33495.html for those interested.

I was under the impression that it already worked this way with XP. At least the cheaper licenses.

He's usually well informed. He also runs a gaming news/review site.

According to a newspost on Ctrl-Alt-Del only 10% of the alloted machines have been pre-ordered yet, making this even more crazy. As the man says, at least those out to make a buck could have waited until the machine is actually sold out.

Actually, the frame-rate for me is a bit on the low side in the toolkit. At least when having two preview-windows open. This with only having a sword open in each window (although there is some background there as well). Not quite as low as all that, but noticeable. This on a P4 3.0 with a Radeon X1600XT and 1 GB of ram.

The toolset definitely allows you to create your own weapons. And it is (in my opinion) quite possible to create a longsword that looks like a longsword. But then again, I also think that there are several of the pre-made models that look fairly standard. The "Longsword" and "Cold Iron Longsword" models for example. When making a sword (at least a longsword) of your own you get to chose the blade, the hilt and the cross-guard separately. There are seven models of each to chose from and while most lean towards the extravagant, there are at least a couple in each that aren't very fanciful. It's a bit worse for the scimitars, there are only two versions of each model And the one most commonly used for the blade (and that is used in the basic model) definitely looks a bit weird. The other one is better though so modders can still do decent scimitars if they want. A more plain crossguard would help a bit though, but it's not a huge issue. edit: flails are even worse off with only one version of each model. So all that can be played with there is the color tint.

Never heard of the Fighting Fantasy books before, but I did grow up on the Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever. These books can also be found online and they are truly classic. http://www.projectaon.org/

They licensed the rights from WotC when the latter decided to axe the setting. I'm guessing the license simply expired and that WW didn't want to renew if it sales were as bad as Darque lets on. Or maybe WotC wanted to consolidate it's brands in case it (or at least certain divisions) is about to get sold.

Get VLC at videolan.org. It's a mediaplayer that has built-in support for all major codecs (and a lot of minor ones). That should play it without problem (unless it's a quicktime or real-file, then you need the corresponding player).

All of you SS2 fans, have anyone tried playing with one of the rebirth mods or the shtup one? And f o, do they hold up and actually miprove the visuals of the game? While I'm not a huge graphics snob, SS2 is a bit too old for me, but if thosemods are decent it could be worth giving it a try.

This is my impression as well. It says in the press release that their (12 person) team consists of "some of the most practiced designers and custom content generators in the community". They specifically mention two PW modders (although not by name) and that they have a combined NWN modding experience of 20 years. So yeah, modders acting profesionally (and maybe hoping they'll become something like the next DLA if the mod is popular). But it does sound interesting, I just hope they can live up to the high expectations they're creating. But how they're going to be able to graphically capture the experience of Sigil with a release date in december is beyond me. I do hope they pull it off though. Edit: I checked around their site a little and found that most of the team has worked on either the Myth Drannor PW or the Gatecrashers PW (a lot of them have worked on both). Gatecrashers seems to be a Planescape PW, so if anyone has any experience with it, maybe that person can enlighten us to the quality of that one, since it should be a decent judge of their abilities.

The amount of math in the first system is entirely dependant on how often you vary the difficulties for the tasks. If most rolls come with a modifier then it's about the same. In either case, it's not exactly rocket science. I'm aware of this. I even adressed it in my first post on the topic. I said having 91 instead of 90 is a bit pointless. The difference is neglible. But I guess it comes down to personal preference. I just don't like rolling a d100 during gameplay, nor do I like having my character's skill increasements be so small that they are mostly insignificant (1 of 100 is, while 1 of 20 isn't). Of course, 35% is 7 of 20. Peronsally though, I'm not a huge fan of the percentiles or derivatives thereof (ie systems that use the d100 or d20). To me, they're just boring. I much prefer systems like White Wolf's Storytelling system, the one in L5R (that system is absolutely brilliant by the way, to bad I didn't much care for the game's setting) or the old Star Wars from West End Games (although that one basically is a DC system, just with a different die roll). In regards of "Drakar och Demoner", the most popular versions are Expert and the 91 edition (at least before the new release) both of which use the d20. So I guess I'm not the only one who has that preference.

I never said the math isn't quick, but the same is true for a target based system. Although when using a base 100 system, it could be a tad more complex I guess. 47 + 34 is probably less intuitive than your example of subtractions. Although the subtractions are only really simpler when you use 5% increments (or preferrably 10%) which again makes the use of a d100 feel unneeded to me. You're basically already using a d20, you're just pretending that you don't.

Since we can spam (or discuss anyway) now... As I briefly mentioned in my previous post, I think asking which system is more logical to be a very flawed question. Both systems have their base in fairly simple math and thus both are equally logical. It's all addition and/or subtraction. I'm guessing you wanted to know what people felt was more intuitive (and that's what I answered), which is not the same thing. And to me addition is more intuitive than subtraction. Doing the math is simply quicker. We're talking fractions of a second here (at least on the scale mentioned) so it is fairly insignificant, but it's still there. Of course, I'm not a huge fan of using a d100 to make skill rolls in the first place. I fail to see the point of using a d100 over a d20. True, with a d20 you're stuck with 5% increments, but having 91 in a skill rather than 90 (or 18 if we translate) feels a bit pointless.

It's really hard to answer what is more logical. It all comes to own to what you're used to I guess. I personally think that the second one is slightly more intuitive only because it's somewhat easier to add than subtract (but the difference is really marginal). My first roleplaying experience was with Drakar och Demoner (black box) so I'm no stranger to the first alternative. Although I have played plenty of games that use either version.

There exists many scenarios where a developer may be more or less forced to sit on a game. The one most likely to apply here (not saying it does, but it could) is that the publisher no longer wanted to fund further development of the game, but couldn't release it before Half-Life 2 due to using the source engine. Sure, Troika would probably have been allowed to work on the game if they wanted to, but would have done so without pay and in that case it makes more sense (for a struggling company) to try and land a new contract.