Wistrik

Start a new game, walk to the part of the path near the fighting contest (past Georg), stay on the path, zoom the camera all the way out, drop to near horizon level, rotate the camera around the party until you find the point where your performance is the worst, then tweak your settings to get a compromise between performance and quality. That should get you similar or better performance for the rest of the game. It did for me anyway, and it's a good place to start. If you get good performance in West Harbor, you'll get the same or better in Neverwinter City. The only places that might be worse are certain indoor areas, but you can avoid that by keeping the camera 45 degrees or more above the horizon. For me the worst point in West Harbor was when the camera was between two buildings and facing north/northeast toward the fight arena. I could see the corners of the two buildings, a nearby tree branch, and everything beyond. This seemed to drag my computer down more than any other viewpoint I tried, and proved very useful for a tweak reference. Note that some changes require game restart, and you should probably restart your computer as well. I found that if I didn't do that, my performance would degrade considerably, as if the game wasn't properly cleaning up its mess while changing settings. Also this occured in version 1.03 (the final release). I hope this info is helpful in some measure.

Heh, this could go on for hours, but I'm not going to type a novel. Studying for tests was easy, because I didn't have to. All the previous week's material came rushing back so that my test answers often looked like I'd copied from the source material, though I had none with me save what was in my memory. After I've played a game the first time, I may not know everything there is to do or find in the game, but all the non-random portions I did encounter will never be forgotten. I can remember things that happened when I was two years old, despite that being 37 years ago, and I can describe much in detail, as if I was reliving it. Of course, this is easier with things I got to spend more time with. The rush of the workplace tends to be forgotten as so much blends together from day to day, but things I do at home, in a more relaxed environment, tend to stay with me for a long time. I play games at home, so this is why I remember them so well. Anyway, I'm getting older so my memory is less stellar than it used to be, but I can still surprise my friends on occasion, and static-content/plot games continue to be less interesting the second time around. I still ace tests on a regular basis too. It's been a blessing and a curse, because I can remember the nightmares and bad experiences as easily as the dreams and good experiences. I have no control over it outside of what I choose to feed into my mind.

Everlasting life would be good for starters. My family/friends always move away or die, so I don't have much of a connection to anyone. I could handle being the guy who wanders through time, having one adventure after another, watching everyone else grow old and die after living a life full of vanity. In fact, I'd probably start a business and write computer games to help them pass the time. My experience would outpace everyone else's after a few decades, and the games would always keep up with technology. I'd be able to learn all aspects of the craft so few employees would be necessary. Ah, the whole idea brings a tear to my eye. Such fun I'd have; living forever and doing something I love the whole time. In fact, ultimately I'd probably end up designing my own computer chips, operating systems, and development tools, as I could see myself growing impatient with the amateurish efforts of yet another new generation of engineers. Yes, that would be fun. Of course, I'd have a few other enhancements in order to deal with the occasional miscreant who decided (assuming he gives it any thought at all) I might be easy prey.

Graphics aren't all that important in CRPGs. Not as important as role-playing and a good story, which are critical for such games. That's why I still enjoy flat 2D games like Ultima 1 through 5, and isometric 2D games like Baldur's Gate. Sure, 3D is fun too, but I've noticed that such graphics can become the central focus of design, which is usually bad for a CRPG. (Unless you've got an awesome crew, which seems to be rare.) This might be a "clever" and "talented" team, but it's also new to the industry and has lots of growing to do. My first game (which regrettably I never published) certainly taught me a few things about balance, fun factor, and immersiveness. A business can be part time or full time, but in the case of game development, a serious crew gives what time they have. Otherwise the project can stagnate and die, which is a shame if the game truly had potential.

I don't have much background in D&D lore (and auxiliary stories), so I thought IWD's ending was okay. It was fun the first time I played because I had no idea who was responsible for the extended winter and kept thinking "maybe it's this person" whenever a new antagonist was revealed. After that, though, the curse of my photographic memory reduced the game to hack-n-slash reruns with no further surprises. (I can only truly enjoy a game the first time I play it.) IWD2's ending wasn't that great for me because I loved 'cleaning up' the ruins of the Hand in IWD. The whole 'corrupted mythal' thing was a tad interesting, but I still I hated seeing the tower go. It would have made an interesting stronghold. All in all the most interesting building I've experienced of all the d&d-based CRPGs I've played. The NWN series hasn't kept my interest because of the inability to truly influence people; everything is forced to some degree. It simplifies design, but kills replayability. I can't even bring myself to run NWN2 now. It has become the final straw that has sent me running back to the Ultima series, my all-time favorite CRPG games. Now I'm planning a (non-public) rewrite/upgrade of Ultima IV, my favorite in the series. Perhaps I can make the ending a little better while I'm at it.

I don't know about ToEE, though if they're up to date they would probably be using WeiDU because it makes mod installation and uninstallation a breeze so long as you pay attention to the order in which you installed your mods. (Most people have more than one mod installed so order is important.) I doubt Wes will ever be as experienced as I am, since I have nearly 20 years' head start on him. However, he probably doesn't have the migraines and depression that keep me from getting as much done as I'd like (and I enjoy playing games so that takes some of my time), so it probably won't be long before he surpasses me in the amount of code written. I've seen many people gasping in awe, as it were, at his construction and frequent updating of WeiDU, but stuff like that happens to most people who love coding. I've certainly amazed my friends and neighbors a time or two, though that's not my intention. It's just fun writing a program and seeing it do what I wanted it to do. It's even more fun if you write it for someone else and they fall in love with it. I won't do it for a living, though, because I don't want to be one of those guys who has to cut content out of his labor of love just so it can ship according to the publisher's deadlines. Nor do I want to counted among those who release a bug-infested commercial product onto the public, thus effectively treating them like paying beta testers. Nope, not this guy. I hate when that happens to me, and I won't do it to someone else. Thus my programming remains a hobby, and I do other things to make a living. If I ever do write another game, I'll probably release it as freeware for the enjoyment of anyone interested. People pay enough for entertainment as it is, these days.

Wes successfully wrote a tool and subsequently felt he could do anything. Well, a good programmer can, but there are also the matters of time and other resources to consider. Experience teaches these things; they aren't usually obvious to someone who's just getting started. I felt similarly back in the 80s when I was writing games and editors and programming applications on my Vic-20/C64/C128, and I had my share of disappointments. I'm not surprised by Tutu's success because the engine versions used by BG1 and BG2 were both done by Bioware. Thus many of the changes involved additions, with only a few minor changes to existing features, and the rules are the same so that makes it easy. In fact Bioware copied much of BG1's data to be re-used in BG2, as is readily evident to anyone with an IE browser tool. Black Isle, on the other hand, liked to do things differently so they created a more heavily modified version of the engine for Icewind Dale and later IWD2. And the core rules changed in the latter game. Thus I knew better than to waste time trying to make IWD2's engine work with BG2's data. (Better off writing a new engine.) Of course, since I'm not part of the online modding community, no-one asked what I thought of the matter, and I had no motivation to share. Such is life, sometimes.

If I had an office with those nice windows, I'd be in programming heaven. Well, that and some Mozart playing in the background to stimulate creativity.

Interesting article, and game. I've read and watched stories with similar subjects, but have yet to experience one interactively in a computer game. When they refer to darkness as a new vehicle, they might refer to something unique to Alan Wake, but I'm not certain. Zork (already noted) could basically end the game if you didn't have a light source, Ultima V got very claustrophobic at night if you didn't remember to bring torches, tougher creatures spawned at night in Baldur's Gate's outdoor maps, and so on. I believe the Thief games also relied on darkness as a cover for the main character. Their Bioware comment does seem misplaced. Now I haven't played JE or KotoR (yet), but in none of the other CRPGs from Bioware have I noticed that the story advanced while I was 'wandering aimlessly' from town to town or within a map. Anyway, it'll be interesting trying to illuminate an area when the protagonist is light-sensitive. This'll be an interesting game to play with the volume up and the lights low (or off).

Hmm, I'll continue to wait for Valve's and Bioware's upcoming games. Maybe this project will actually be finished, and maybe it'll turn out fun to play, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Edit: My feelings aren't specific to this crew. I have a general feeling of disappointment/disillusionment with many modern games (or attempts at games), and so I've returned to the singleplayer Ultima games to rekindle my original love for CRPGs. If you think TBH's graphics aren't that great, try to imagine 2D, 16-color tiles. (Although fan-made 256-color VGA & MIDI sound upgrades now exist.) For me the story is what made Ultima, not necessarily the graphics, though they certainly have their own charm.

Thanks to having the ability to switch the ROMs and I/O maps out of processor view, the C-64 actually offered almost all of it's 64k of RAM to commercial software. Only BASIC programs had to contend with 32k or so of memory. And yes, endings were rather abrupt back then, usually with a final screen announcing you'd won, and that's it. The early games of the Ultima series comes to mind in that regard. PC endings... well the Half-Life g-man endings always leave me somewhat disappointed, but I agree about Episode 1's ending being really cool. Throne of Bhaal's ending was unimaginative, but it was just an expansion so I cut it a little slack. After all, the whole series hobbled my character so that he was less powerful than his non-tainted party members 99.9% of the time. Yay.

Spot should disable backstabbing ability. If I can see them on the screen, I take that to mean my character can also see them. And if I can see them, I sure as heck am not going to let them get in a hidden attack, but the game lets them do it anyway, no matter how high my attributes/skills might be. (I've tested with cheat codes, it makes no difference.) I dislike insta-spawns too. So many places are empty if you walk into them through a certain door, but instantly fill full of baddies if you walk through a different door, or walk back the way you came in the opposite direction. It's silly. Then again, the way this game can bog down, the devs probably decided localized spawns were better than creating everyone on the map when you first arrive. I don't recall any unlimited spawn areas though. I'm pretty good about securing an area before I leave, and I don't remember having to give up because the bad guys wouldn't stop coming. Some areas do have lots of bad guys, but in finite quantities.

I was thinking of HL2, which is more current in my mind, but yes in HL1 the Osprey maps were the only unlimited respawns I recall, but that was okay because you were supposed to run like hell for the exit, not secure the area. (Didn't stop me from cheating in extra ammo and blowing the Ospreys out of the sky, though. Boy do they take a beating.)

I agree (er, with Metadigital's final comment). Also, if they feature something like enemy air support, I want the option of being able to shoot it down, hopefully without requiring a truckload of rockets. Hopefully they'll add a little support for us stealthy players. I tried, as much as possible, to disable enemies from afar in both Half-Life games, but so much of it is up close and personal (or unlimited respawns, ARGH!) that I didn't get to snipe as much as I would have liked (or I gave up). Indeed, some scripted stuff can be broken by sniping. Half-Life 2 crashes to the desktop every time I rocket-snipe the parked helicopter at Black Mesa East (before the alarm sounds and it lifts off to attack). Why? Because the player wasn't supposed to have that option. Indeed, I had to cheat in the extra rockets to do it, but that's part of how I test the limits of what I can or can't do in a game.

Hopefully they won't add any of the odd "Race-X" monsters from Opposing Force. Though I enjoyed playing as Adrian Shepard, I felt those monsters were out of place and didn't belong there, no matter how much OF's story tried to justify them (bio/xeno experiments or some such, supposedly.) New story-related elements would be fun to experience so long as they aren't used as an excuse to introduce some wacky new monster nobody's ever seen or heard of before. On the subject of the posted renders, I wonder if those 'fingers' in the test lab will extend or move during the test phase. They look robotic.

This mod looks promising. The team is putting a lot of effort into the details, and that seems rare these days. This mod may have what it takes to get me to re-experience the events at Black Mesa once again. I tried Valve's Half-Life: Source and found the scripted scenes and events were not working as well as in the original game, and movement felt a little 'off'. Nothing game breaking, but still quite noticeable in places. I played through it once to see how it looked and haven't played it since.

My point was geared toward the warlock. Look at Bokishi's screenshot and notice the female warlock's appearance. That look goes away as soon as you change her out of her custom initial armor and put regular armor on. Thus the warlock ends up looking like any other spellcaster, instead of having a truly unique appearance as I'd hoped, and assumed from looking at the initial character. Same thing happens to Ammon if you switch his armor out for standard fare.

Hah, I remember playing Dink Smallwood a few years ago. Quite the trippy boss. Still playing Diablo 2 exp (1.11B). Can once again pick anything up with Telekinesis. Let Blizzard nerf all they want, I'll just undo it later. (They overreact to realm player behaviors and we singleplayer folks end up getting the shaft as a result.) By the way, the game is huge and bright on my new widescreen LCD. On my old Sony CRT it was always too dark so I had trouble seeing in caves and such. It's almost like a new game now, so vibrant and easy to see. Several older games are getting revisted because of this. Awesome.

Too bad that unique warlock look disappears as soon as you put any kind of different armor on the character. I stopped playing mine as soon as I saw that she was going to look like my fighter and everyone else. Way to take a shortcut with unique character appearances, Obsidian. How do shadows look on your 8800? Sure they look good in the screenshot, but on my computer they tended to dance around the character's features unrealistically, even at high shadow settings, so I ultimately gave up on them.

More Korn... Coming Undone One of their milder songs, and I love the video.

Humans are free moral agents, meaning we have the capacity for deciding right and wrong, etc. All humans also display religious tendencies in one way or another, even the most staunch athiests. (We worship, or devote ourselves to, gods, other people, riches, pleasures, ourselves, etc.) Animals don't do these things, though they do have consciousness and other capacities belonging to intelligent life. Though they possess 'built-in' wisdom, or instinct, they can be trained by humans and thus they have the capacity to learn and to subsequently modify their behavior. They also have the capacity to have fun, which any animal owner/watcher will attest to. I seriously doubt that a robot will ever become greater than the imperfect humans who built it. Assuming it proves useful, you can be sure the military will exploit it long before the average homeowner can. And, knowing how people tend to be, said robot would likely be misused to cause grief and mayhem for others. You can be certain that no robot will be given complete autonomy; someone will ensure there is a backdoor, a way to shut the robot down if it no longer suits their purposes or when it inevitably malfunctions. We might get to see something less than C3P0 in 40 years, assuming we haven't destroyed ourselves yet.

In my experience, whether I get ill or not from playing a 3D game depends on how the screen is rendered. I don't know what there is, but some games, especially older ones, could make me feel queasy after awhile. Doom on a faster computer is a good example, and the original '3D' Wolfenstein (and its clones) are other examples. Perhaps there is a fisheye effect involved or some other rendering method that distorts the view while I'm looking around. Modern FPSs don't have that effect on me.

From what I've read, you stand to get maybe 25% or so better performance with today's software, which usually isn't written with multi-threading code. You do get better performance while running several applications, each being a separate thread, but until software is written to support multi-threading within an application, you won't get much for your money. When multiple threads are present, the operating system can assign them to different processors in a multi-processor environment, thus improving overall performance. It isn't too hard to implement. Music can run in a thread, the sound effects mixer can run in a thread, server and client code can be separate threads, networking can be a thread, input device handling can be a thread, file system management can be a thread, and so on. It requires more advanced programming, and probably compilers, but it'll become standard now that multi-processor systems are becoming more and more popular. Any developer who doesn't code for multi-threading will be yesterday's news. Valve is setting a good example that other game developers would be wise to follow. The Source engine is already well-written and nicely optimized, yet the creators are going the extra mile to support modern hardware. If all goes well in 2007, I'll be playing HL2:Episode 2 on a quad-core AMD system.

I really enjoyed Ultima IX's hybrid camera system. You could play in third-person or first person, or toggle freely between the two modes. Typically I explored in third-person due to increased FOV, but would use first person when targeting with a bow or examining something. I am rather disappointed by the narrow-minded camera options in today's CRPGs. Then again, today's CRPGs allow less world interaction than your typical modern FPS. In a typical FPS I can run, walk, swim, jump, climb, free-fall, smash things, stack things, move things, use computer terminals, etc. In CRPGs I can click on doors, NPCs, and barrels and chests. Yay. There tends to be more 'immersion', or feeling like I'm there, in Half-Life 2 than in the NWN series, for example. Older games required more from the player's imagination. The tile-based engines of the early Ultimas provided enough detail that you could distinguish objects from each other, and your imagination filled in the gaps. I lost myself for hours playing Ultimas IV and V back in the day, and I'm considering recoding Ultima IV from scratch just for fun.

Good times. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, so good I haven't done much else the last couple of weeks. Been hacking the DLLs too. Modified the hard-coded blocking formula so it increases if you pump dexterity, stays the same if you don't, and doesn't decrease when you level up, but only if you're playing a LoD character. Also (hopefully) allowing the Cow King to be killed repeatedly per difficulty; haven't gotten there yet with my new character so I don't know if that'll work yet, but it should. Been removing shadows from flames on various torches and braziers, as well. Seeing the game on a 21" screen is also interesting. Diablo 1 isn't as easy to modify, but there's not much I wish to do to it other than perhaps fix a few glitches. I downloaded the DSF buglist and then added a few dozen more bugs that I'd noticed over the years.