Wistrik

Still playing Bioware's abandoned NWN OC, with probably more bugs than NWN2's OC. Here's a very small sample of well-known bugs that haven't been fixed after several years: - The ogre guarding the Orc King's treasure has an orc description. - Ander always thinks his friends are dead, even when they aren't, and we're not allowed to tell him one way or the other. - The plot line involving Vardoc activates immediately after the "Rescue Neva" plot line begins, rather than after it ends. Often in my games Vardoc's plot line ends long before Neva's does because I'm still busy clearing the north road. This makes the notes nonsensical since they refer to events in the order they SHOULD be happening. It also has the side effect of allowing the player to complete Chapter 2 too early, since Vardoc's note qualifies as a critical piece of evidence. I prefer to clear all areas, so I usually end up stuffing Vardoc's note in a chest. - There are many cases of NPCs waiting until Near Death in combat before they switch to neutral for dialog purposes, but an exceptionally strong character scoring a critical hit on the last strike (thus killing the NPC) can cause the player to miss these dialogs. In some cases this has a direct impact on quest outcome, as with the werewolves in Port Llast, for example. Therefore, when I know such an encounter is iminent, I quick-save and use cheat codes to reduce my strength. I like the OC's story, but I wish Bioware would take a little more pride in their work and make some fixes for it. At least the campaign is editable in the toolset, so if I ever get time I can fix these things myself. Bioware's track record of abandoning their OCs after one or two patches causes me to wonder what they'll do with DA after it's released. Edit: typos!

Got to work 30 minutes early today, just because I woke up early and knew there was free coffee at the office. Commute was much nicer, as I didn't have to pass the usual slowpokes (who were still in bed) on the way in. Stopped at a crosswalk for a beautiful brunette out walking her golden retriever. Mmmm. I'll have to leave 30 minutes early more often.

Enjoyed some good ol' NWN action last night. It's interesting that we're allowed to kill the false helmites sprinkled around the city, though with care else nearby ignorant citizenry will come to their defense. The FH provide anywhere from 23 to over 200 XP depending on my character's level and which FH is killed. Alas, this has no other impact on the game. I was hoping to reduce the number of Desther's henchmen before the battle in the castle. I like a lot of things about the NWN OC, but not the lack of impact we're allowed to make on our environment.

NWN2 requires .NET and will install it if it isn't present during game install. You can uninstall versions of Java separately, since they're kept in different folders. I only have the runtime/SDK installed because I use/edit a java app named Near Infinity. When I download a new update from Sun I uninstall the old version.

Now I'm thinking of making a "beautiful and bitter" NPC named Gabrielle. Perhaps an assassin, or maybe a necromancer. If I went the necro route I'd probably have to add to the game's rather weak repertoire of necro spells.

On the plus side, I learned to be a good counselor. Now I can more easily befriend women with tortured histories.

It was canceled because another country already tried it out on USA troops about a century ago and decided it didn't work. Of course, people in the USA are still living with the results of the test. /kidding

The measure I use is whether a game provides the feeling that *I* am in the game world, not some pre-defined personality controlled by me. I could immerse myself fully in games like Ultima IV, but by Ultima IX it had devolved to the point where I felt like I was playing someone else's character. BG1/2 have a fixed path but I get to be the kind of person I want to be along the way (within limits; CE mass murderers tend to be frowned upon by the engine and certain generic scripts). I think the lines between genres are blurring, to the point where I'm tempted not to use the old definitions any more. Instead I'll just use the game title and leave it at that.

There are some secrets, such as a hidden ring of wizardry in the grounds south of the keep at Friendly Arm. I missed it both times I played through the original game, then I saw it mentioned in the walkthrough at dudleyville.com. In Tutu you can use TAB to reveal everything, so keep your eyes open. The game does have something of a slower pace, with lots of wandering around. Bioware mentioned this in the opening words of BG2's manual as the reason for making BG2's areas more useful. I've completed BG2 many times, but BG1 only twice. It just doesn't provide the same sense of urgency as BG2.

Tutu looks better at 1024x768. Gender made a minor difference prior to AD&D 2nd Ed, as was demonstrated in SSI's Gold Box series. For example, female humans could only have up to 18(50) strength, versus 18(100) for males. I miss some of the function of the older editions, such as Sweep, which allowed low level fighters to attack as many small creatures in melee as the fighter had levels. So a level 8 fighter could sweep up to 8 kobolds in a single attack, and might kill them all if he managed to hit each for enough damage. It was a great skill versus cannon fodder hordes. Of course, 3E brought it back in the form of Great Cleave (Cleave is only as good as a level 2 sweep). I've no interest in "alternate lifestyle" NPCs. I get enough of that crap in the real world, and I don't want to pollute Faerun with it. Otherwise I may as well quit computer CRPGs and wander around malls all day.

It could be good, but only if King produced it. I don't think many can match his unique imagination. I rather enjoyed the Dark Tower series.

Play online? Only at a LAN party with people I know. I'm completely burned out and disillusioned with online internet play after 98% bad experiences over the last decade.

Wow, I wrote that a long time ago. :blush10: Saerileth is still my favorite NPC mod written by someone else. Yasraena has also earned a place in my game. I still like Tashia as a character, but her writing and implementation need reworked. There've been no male NPCs that have interested me more than Bioware's. I only install NPC mods (and only a few) because I've written my own versions of most other mods, but NPCs give me a chance to experience someone else's characters and words. I don't use mods like Tactics because, while I love improved AI, I don't like adding combat for the sake of showing it off. I even remove combat if I feel it is unnecessary; there are other ways to provide experience to a player besides throwing yet another horde of enemies at them. BGTutu is an interesting project, but isn't complete enough by my standards. For one example, one of the things I enjoy is the movie projector where you can watch the various movies you've unlocked. Tutu breaks this, but I restored it locally with some EXE hacking and renaming of movie files. Also, the water degreenifier leaves artifacts on certain maps (starting with the Coast Way outside Candlekeep) so I'll have to write my own degreenifier when I return to this project.

After trying IE, Netscape, and Opera over the years, I'm finally using Firefox. I won't go back. It works great, is fast and customizable, doesn't hog memory or performance on my system, and is closer to web specs than most other browsers (I hand-code html docs for fun so this matters to me.). This is one reason why it won't work on some sites that IE will work with. IE is known for allowing noncompliant conduct and some sites are written to take advantage of that. But I don't mind using IE for things like Windows Update or the occasional misbehaving website. Firefox does everything else, and does it better. I think I've had as many as 80 tabs running with no perceptible performance loss. Not bad for a wimpy AMD computer.

Diablo 2, doing act bosses with a level 100 MF sorceress and filling a small portion (300 10x10 pages) of the infinite stash. I modded the game to allow character level 100 (among other things), and got rid of the experience penalties after level 70. It takes about a dozen such games to go from 99 to 100 in /players 8. (I don't like having to play 1000 games to advance one level; been there, done that.) I selected 100 because it's double the level limit in Diablo (50). Still waiting around on games like DA, HL2:EP2, and MotB. None of the current releases interest me.

Regardless of which mod you choose to install, I recommend always installing the BG2 Fixpack by G3. It supercedes Baldurdash (both flavors), incorporates several other fixpacks (Extremist's SOA fixpack, Juggernaut Golem, etc.), and provides hundreds (if not thousands) of newer fixes, big and small. It is an ongoing project currently at version 3. Whatever you download, I strongly suggest checking the documentation for recommended installation order (if any) and warnings of mod conflicts (there are a few). Be aware that some mods are rather old by current standards, and their authors are either no longer active in the community, or are not willing to update their mods. If you're running with ToB installed, I recommend only downloading NPCs with SoA+ToB content, otherwise you will have a silent partner through ToB. Edit: you beat me. I forgot UB; it's not a fixpack but it does restore some interesting content.

I never had to cheat on games in the 1980s and early 1990s, but since then some games seem to target hardcore players with heroic gaming skills. I, being a casual gamer looking to relax/escape after a long day of work and traffic, am not interested in beating a contrived time limit, discovering the secret to beating an impossible creature, finding a way to deal with an insta-kill cheese feature (the latter two usually accomplished by means of repeated death and reloading), or making my way up some competitive ladder. Games that use the save/reload crutch as part of their difficulty setting quickly become tedious. Therefore, if I can't easily modify what irks me about a game, I'll use cheat codes. I've become somewhat proficient with picking warning words out of reviews and box covers, thus avoiding games more likely to give me a headache than a fun time. When a reviewer says combat is "challenging", that means it'll probably be tediously difficult for me in some respect. If I really like the game's story and environment, and cheat codes are published, then I may purchase a copy anyway and play it my way. Otherwise I pass and look for something potentially less annoying. Games that emphasize non-combative problem solving, questing, adventure, and story tend to be my favorites. I never have to resort to cheats or modifications to enjoy them.

Awesome review, thanks.

Life (not the old board game) It's not always fun, and scenes aren't always nice to look at, but the graphics are downright realistic and even surrealistic sometimes. It's also the ultimate in role-playing experiences. I spent some time playing it today and had a blast.

Dreamfall, which happens to have been nominated for MTV music awards a year or two ago when the game was released.

I prefer the way SSI did it in their Gold Box games. Your character only fell unconscious at zero hit points. If he had between -1 and -9 hit points, he'd be bleeding and would lose one hitpoint per round unless bandaged. If a character reached -10 or less hit points, they died and would need to be resurrected at a temple, assuming their body was intact. Bandaging could be done during combat, with the character doing the bandaging sacrificing one combat round to help the fallen comrade. After battle the bandaged characters would rise up with one hit point. You could either heal them and continue, or make haste back to an Inn or Temple. All CRPGs I've played since that golden era lack such a basic feature, and I've missed having it. Maybe it's not in the rules anymore, but if so I don't know why. It made a lot of sense.

Agreed. Haven't really enjoyed an RTS since Myth: The Fallen Lords. The enemies could overwhelm you and really kick your butt, but there was no AI cheating. I greatly enjoyed Age of Kings, after I rewrote the random map AI scripts to get rid of computer cheating. I recoded them to use actual Scout units for scouting rather than any old unit, and to only make decisions based on what they explored or learned from their allies. I also got rid of cheap rush tactics because I like long game sessions. Thus it wasn't uncommon for a single game with 7 computer players to last up to eight hours. Sometimes I'd be in just the right situation where I would remain relatively unscathed and could watch them fight each other. All in all I tried to emulate reality rather than some designer's idea of a quick skirmish. It was hard to do though because of the engine's limitations. The game remains a favorite because the graphics and play have a certain charm. I tried Age3 but didn't like it and got rid of it. Pretty graphics do not a fun game make (unless it's a computerized jigsaw puzzle.)

Balance wouldn't be such an issue if they'd quit making D&D combat simulators with just a dash of role-playing on the side. (I feel that role-playing suffers in the transition from table top to computer screen.) Overall I'm happy with what was expressed, especially the point about being able to adventure alone if I want to. It's about time! (If it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.)

Not just Stalker, but City17 (Half Life 2) as well. The movies are interesting as well, especially the one showing the pile of radioactive core (Elephant's Foot) that's now covered up. Creepy.

Thanks for that screenshot; it looks much better. I'm using a 24 inch screen at native resolution (1920x1200) so I can see the difference in various levels of FSAA and Anisotropy. I can still see slight jaggies in your screenshot, but it's better than the previous shots. It could also be a product of your lower resolution, and/or compression for upload. Here's one from Dreamfall, which I've been playing at 8x Combined (Multi + Super). I can't play at 16x Combined because I'm at too high a resolution for the card (a supersample texture size limit). The JPG compression is set to 6 to get the file under 1Mb for upload. There are still some jaggies, but it's infinitely better than if I run the game at it's own 4x FSAA, or nVidia's default version of 8x.