Spider

I thought Infogrames bought Hasbro's electronical department and that's how they got the D&D license for so long, not the other way around?

All I'm waiting for now is for Atari to announce BG:DA 3 complete with thongs and everything. I'm beting they're real upset they don't have the FO license so they could do FOBOS 2 instead. After all, that strategy worked so well for Interplay, why not copy it as well...

Won't that be "Challenge everything"? I thought "It's in the game" was only for EA sports. Anyway... NWN changing publisher, Shiny getting sold, a publisher on it's way to fall flat due to lack of money. Where have I seen this before?

Veronica Mars is fantastic. Together with Battlestar Galactica it's currently the best show on TV (although season 5 of 24 sure gave them a run for the money). So those two would be my recommendation. The reason no one watches VM is that it's on UPN and that it's not really compatible with any of their other shows. Or people in the US has real crappy taste. Anothe reason is that the show concept on paper sounds really corny. I mean, high school detective? But it actually works. The writing and acting is absolutely fantastic. And for the record I'm a 29 year old male that doesn't like walks in the woods. So to answer the original question, VM and BSG are strong recommendations. Oh, also The Shield and The Wire.

The BG series one should ship with bgtutu on the dvd.

On rare occasions games are even available to pirate before they are released. Starforce has been the most succesful in delaying cracks, mostly because the crack groups weren't able to create decent tools to crack it with. I think they have now though so SF games get cracked a lot quicker these days. At least until a new version comes out.

Having seen both Armageddon and Deep Impact I have to say that I believe Armageddon took way, way longer to produce. The secenery was more advanced, the special effects much more so etc. Deep Impact may have ben more scientific, but it was kinda crappy and dull. At least Armageddon was entertaining (if you left your brain at the door). And iirc Deep Impact premiered before Armageddon, at least here. So if I was to make a guess, Deep Impact was the rush job not the other way around.

I just wanted to apologize if you felt I was accusing you of lying. I started to explain how my posts came about, but then I realized that it only came across as a vague attempt at justification. So I won't. Let's try again. If you felt I accused you of lying, I am truly sorry. That was never my intent and I am sure you're a very nice and honest guy.

On the other hand, Oblivion didn't really have any copy protection and it seems to have done just fine. As has been said before, what is interesting is whether or not theinvestment in copy protection actally provide enough sales to make it worth it. I'm not convinced.

He knows someone that maybe downloaded said cracked version? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, I do. Although it's not through that friend that I found out the date the crack was available. That information is fairly easy to find if you know where to look. Don't even have to go to a site that distributes the crack (or cracked version).

Just felt that it was worth to point out that HoMM didn't ship with Starforce after all, they went with Securom. A cracked ersion was available 9 days before the official release date (european release). It would be interesting to know how long it'd have taken had they used StarForce after all.

I got it from here. Free and pretty much all formats: http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/ringtone.html

Hmm, tough one for me. I'm a bit conflicted. Which is why I haven't voted in the poll. The thing is, I really hate my party members dying. If a party member goes down in a fight and I don't have any way to cast an immediate resurrection spell, then it's instant reload. So I should be all for the TWOP system. Only I'm not. I think it's cheesy and removes the challenge from the game a bit. If I screw up, I want there to be concequences, even if that concequence is only a reload. I'll still have the option not to. I actually liked playing Fallout Tactics in ironman mode where any casualty simply had to be accepted (because there was no way I'd restart one of those levels if I didn't have to). Although I didn't like it enough to voluntarily imose such a system on myself unless I get some kind of reward in-game for doing so. So I guess it comes down to bleeding vs just dying. And here I really can't make up my mind. I like bleeding in theory, but in ToEE it kept frustrating me. Specifically, it was all the idiotic opponents that kept attacking bleeding companions that bugged me. Why someone would keep hitting someone who is already down rather than they guys that are still trying to kill you is beyond me. But in the end I'm leaning towards bleeding anyway, but I'm still undecided.

Good game > trivial issue of swapping a disc <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Besides, it's perfectly possible to just copy the cds to the HD and edit the .ini so that the game loads the file needed from there instead. That way you only need to keep one CD (any CD) in the drive for the copy-protection. It does take up a lot of room on the HD though.

I tried to find info on the bioboards (will want to reinstall BG2 myself one of these days) and apart from ATI issues, this could be an issue with refresh rate. Apparently BG2 forces the monitor to use a 60 (or 59) hz refresh rate regardless of what the card drivers say, so a possible solution would be to lower the refresh rate through the drivers as well. Maybe by making a profile specifically for BG2. I'm not sure this'll actually work but could be worth a shot. Other than that I didn't manage to dig up anything and their search function kinda sucks (only 6 months back).

My answer to this is it depsnds on the group you play with. And how good you are at improvising. Basically I'd say you should probably know at least as much, or preferrably a little more, than the player with the best knowledge. At least if that player actually care about how the rules are implemented. If no one has any real grasp, then it doesn't matter. It's not like they can call you on it. But it depends even more on what your group want to get out of it. If they're in it for the dungeon crawling and number crunching, you have to know the rules inside and out pretty much, but if they're a group of players who really could care less as long as they get to play their character properly, then it doesn't matter that much as long as the game flows and there aren't any glaring inconcistencies. I've played with DMs that claimed to be playing by a rule system (and di use it to gauge the players ability) but when it came to rolling dice it was always concealed and the outcome was mostly what generated the most fun experience rather than what the roll said. basically, as long as the players are ok with it, anything goes. In Sweden the concept of free form role-playing was very trendy for a while (not sure how it is now, I'm out of touch). Free-form means no rules at all, the GM makes every call. I've played in such games as well and when properly executed they can be great fun. It is much, much harder on the GM though. I am very partial to White Wolf's Storytelling system. It has everything I want in a game system, it's simple, allows for complete customization of the character, easy to learn, plays fast and the rules don't get in the way of the role-playing. Exalted is great fun if you're looking for a fantasy game, although if you're players are in it for the powergaming, they can create characters that are almost unbeatable, at least after some playing. The power level in that game is fairly high (although this is not true of all games that uses the system). But the storytelling system is very flexible and can easily be adapted to any genre. I have myself played a pure Cyberpunk campaign using it for instance. D&D is a very good system to learn the ropes with though. The basic rules aren't overly complex, and the parts that are can easily be ignored at first. But more importantly, if you have any questions there are a lot more people on these boards that know a lot about it and are willing to help than what you get with any other system. In the end though (in my eyes), the rules are unimportant. What matters is the setting and the characters. Not to mention all the hitpoints. I have a friend who once said: "When the characters can take more punishment than elephants, something is clearly wrong." That, to me, sums up D&D in a nutshell. Edit: I missed this one: This varies greatly from group to group. I can say that any player that loses interest in a game if he/she can't min-max to make their characters as powerful as possible is a player I don't want to play with. I am not saying that min-maxing is bad per se, it's just indicative of a style of playing I don't like. Basically what I'm saying is, make sure you and your players are all on the same page in regards to what style of play you want to pursue

To be fair though, Civ 3 went on to multiple accolades and spawned expansions because it was Civ 3, not because it was a fantastic game (at least not in comparison to the other Civ games). It was an inferior game (apart from the graphics) than both Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri.

Sorry to say this, but I never got BG2 to work on a setting beyond 1024x768. I have tried, but it keeps appearing much like you describe it.

Not really, my guess is that it's probably harder even. And this is something I am not even sure will happen. High quality games (quality in this case means production values) still costs millions to make and those millions will have to come from somewhere. DD is great for indie developers, because they get a way to distribute their games cheaply and efficiently, but a company trying to make a game like NWN2 will still have to rely on publisher funding. The other major winners are developers like Valve or Bioware that have been succesful enough in the past to be able to fund their own games.

Going to the HD too often? As soon as I start a program, I go to the HD, every level loaded in a game as well. And everytime I open or save a file. Or unrar stuff etc.

But they're so worth it. I have a Antec Phantom 500 hybrid (it has a fan, but only starts it when needed, which so far has been never) and it's completely quiet. I couldn't live without it, easily the best piece of hardware in my comp. Expensive though, I paid 1500 SEK for it (which is roughly

You can do both though. There is no need to get the biggest raptor (although that model is improved and thus even faster). Get the smallest one for apps and then a decent size normal HD for storage. That would give you performance and capacity for roughly the same price as the largest raptor. (just to illustrate my love for the raptor, the 36BG one is my only HD. When I built this computer I couldn't afford more and got that one with the intention of getting a larger HD to complement it later. I still haven't been able to afford that, but I haven't regretted my decision for a second. The performance boost the raptor gives me is so amazing that I wouldn't give it up for any amount of GB)

The raptor is fantastic and not at all overrated. As for gaming, it helps a lot with the gaming experience as well. Not while actually playing, I'll give you that, but level loads as well as the initial load counts for a lot, especially the level loads. Since I got my raptor, not one game has felt like the levels load slowly. Not even Vampire Bloodlines. I don't know if I'd get the 150GB one, although it is even faster than the smaller ones. So if the money is there, it's probably worth it. My preference is a raptor for OS and apps and a larger HD for storage.

In my opinion, what you really should do if you're under budget is to add a Raptor to the mix. Second, don't you already own a copy of Windows XP? Seems a waste to pay for it again. Third, where in that list is the video card? Or am I just blind?

Actually, we stopped talking about it in the other thread. And basically stopped here as well.