Wistrik
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Posts posted by Wistrik
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The duergar in the right-hand picture looks like he's copping a feel, not that I blame him.
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I also make a living with by paying attention to detail, but there's no way I could put up with being QA of a software house because I'd have no leverage, no way to ensure the bugs I reported would get fixed. With my current job I have federal and international law requiring accuracy and correctness (penalties include fines and prison time), and my supervisor backs me up 100%. Nothing gets past me that isn't compliant, and I love it.
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Hi Jade. Welcome to the forums.
Since no one's asked yet, what do you study?
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Yes, it's still possible to start low and work up. If you've got some skills, a good personality, and a good work ethic, you'll get noticed and the trip up the ranks can be quicker than you imagined. Sometimes you have to wait for mediocre people to get weeded out, but time has a way of taking care of that for you, especially in a competitive company. The important thing is that you got your foot in the door. What happens next is up to you. Depending on how much of a "free spirit" you are, you may or may not be able to get hired directly by the company. They usually don't want to hire anyone who isn't willing to stick around for a long time.
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Did you try to replay the ending? The game auto-saves just before Zo
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I agree, playing these games is like reading a good book, and in some ways that's better than what CRPGs manage to pull off.
I never got to catch the inevitable meaningful final sentence in the ending, though, as the game crashed in the very last bit. Wistrik, judging by your screenshots you must be finished by now. is there anything good after the camera comes in through the doors on the beachhouse, the girl talks on the bed, the camera spans out of the house again - is there a lot more after that?I've finished it a couple times now; was too busy solving quests to focus on screenshots the first time. There is a bit more after what you experienced... (mega spoilers ahead)
You didn't mention the false Reza that walks in before the camera leaves the room, but he shows up and greets Zo
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Faith's house, interior. Lots of references to horror flicks. She resembles Samara in The Ring, the clock's hands run backward, the drawings/photos are dark, her doll appears to grimace rather than smile, her house/dollhouse have the appearance of a classic haunted house, etc. She even has a dark version of a Watilla (a toy/robot/companion) on the stand.
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The Guardian's realm. Note that I had to compress all these shots by as much as a factor of 20 (JPG settings) to get them under 500k. Image quality suffers accordingly. The graphics are stunning on a 24" screen. The place changed bigtime since TLJ, and I've read that this may be the final Guardian.
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The White of the Draic Kin. Rawr. Those who played TLJ might remember her as the egg April saved in her dream at the beginning of the game.
Edit: added egg screenshot.
Note I was playing TLJ in windowed mode. Too bad it's stuck at 640x480 resolution. That's a tiny window. Still, I was able to force FSAA (Combined 16x) to make the jaggies almost disappear on the 3D models, of which there are few.Edit2: subtitles can be turned off if you don't like reading text at the bottom of the screen. I leave them on because they're easy to read (I'm old-school) and never interfere with the view.
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It's sort of an RPG, due to playing various roles in the course of the game. Sure, they're fixed roles, but roles nonetheless. Plus you can be friendly, cautious, mean, etc., in more than one conversation. So there are RPG elements in the game.
Edit2: These shots might be spoilerish to those who haven't played the game yet.
That said, I've got more screenshots. First, a seagull or similar bird, taking off in flight (good timing on this shot), and then my favorite place: Faith's house aka The Winter (more shots of that later).
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Accept - I think the game is well worth the purchase. It often looks better than NWN2, the horizon goes out way further and doesn't suffer from fog clipping, and it runs smoothly with all options maxed even on mediocre systems. The only shortcomings are the combat (first try in this series so it's either really difficult or stupidly easy), and lots of unanswered questions by the end of the game. The latter is due to the story being an ongoing project, which is why Dreamfall Chapters episodic content is planned. At the least, it extends the story of the original game so you find out what's up with April, Crow, Brian Westhouse, and others. Of course, if you haven't played the original, you'll miss all that history. It's not required knowledge, but it helps.
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I'm currently waiting for Dreamfall to arrive with the mail.. it should be here in the morrow! I hope I don't go nuts in the meantime
Heh, I am waiting for TLJ to arrive in the mail. I have the older non-XP version so I decided to get the updated one. I've been playing Dreamfall and have forgotten older portions of the story, so I'm looking forward to playing TLJ again.
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Well that confirms it for me. Gaider writes troubled romance characters, apparently. I never adventured with Valen in HoTU, but I thoroughly enjoyed Nathyrra. The romanceable characters in BG2 all needed a professional counselor. I wonder what Dave's childhood was like.
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It looks that good?
Blame it on Valve's screenshotter superiority.
The Source engine seems to ignore in-game gamma settings when creating screenshots, so Valve recommends we boost the gamma with <favorite image editor> if we're going to post them for others to view. Otherwise they tend to be too dark. I also prefer to have the Source engine export screenshots in a non-lossy format (BMP, etc.) so that I can specify how much JPG compression I want after editing.
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My computer was built to my specs by a local IT shop. I hadn't been keeping up on technology so I let them put one together for me. My next rig will be custom built, but I'm waiting to see what comes of the new Intel and AMD processor families. My circumstances have changed yet again so now I can save up for the big upgrade and get all top-end stuff when I finally go for it.
Vista will wait. XP Pro is more than sufficient for now and I can run it for months at a time without stability problems. Perhaps by the time there's an SP2 for Vista I may be ready to consider it. I'm limited to running in 32-bit mode with XP Pro so ultimately I'm going to move to a 64-bit capable OS.
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Diablo had me hooked from the moment I laid eyes on it, which was while watching a friend show it to me. The atmosphere was great, from my point of view, and it appealed to those times when I felt like chopping through everything in my path, which is common after a long day at work and putting up wtih incompetant traffic.
Diablo II had me again for a long time, though ultimately I gave up on Battle.net play thanks to Blizzard's see-saw method of character balance and the ever-present hacks, cheats, and banal people. Blizzard might have Starcraft down pat for balancing, but they never seemed to get the hang of balancing Diablo II. In the end, fan-made mods (including my own) saved the singleplayer game for me, and I abandoned Battle.net forever.
I tried Starcraft, but I just don't have the skill to keep up with fast-paced "real-time strategy" games. They should be called "compressed-time strategy". My all-time favorite RTS game, meaning in part the only one I could beat from beginning to end, was Age of Kings by Ensemble Studios. I also had a blast writing custom AI scripts and playing against seven computer-controlled players on custom maps. The fact that it was history-based helped a lot, and I really enjoyed watching the various units do their stuff. Female villagers are hawt.
I've never been able to "get into" the Warcraft franchise, though I've tried a time or two.
Adventure games are taking up more and more of my gaming time nowadays, with the Longest Journey series being my favorite. I keep forgetting to, but I really want to obtain the Thief collection because I love sneaking around, sniping, and being a rogue in general.
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Microsoft abusing their position yet again. If they can prove code theft (verbatim copying), more power to them, but chances are this is just another "crush the competition" crusade. One day no one outside Microsoft's campus will be allowed to write software without first purchasing a license from them.
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I'm not big on MMOs because I don't care for the usual types of people one tends to meet there, the inevitable hacks and cheats, and so on, so I usually end up soloing. If I'm going to solo then I might as well play singleplayer games. This game has interesting artwork (did everyone crawl out of the sea?), but I think I'll wait for future Dreamfall episodes instead.
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It takes two of them in Crossfire to best an 8800GTX, and then only with certain games, all the while sucking up more power than the 8800GTX Ultra. Nvidia shouldn't get complacent though, because AMD could pull an Intel and revise the chip in all the right places to be the new Core2 Duo of GPUs.
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I didn't take any extra screenshots because I was too busy trying to finish the game yesterday (there were some awesome scenes), but I was watching for facial expressions. Dreamfall has them, but in short supply. Eyes roll, brows furrow, and they might slightly frown or smile. It's not immediately noticeable, isn't used on every character, and isn't used consistently on a per character basis, but it's there.
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Stayed up late last night to finish Dreamfall (14 hour game session). The dream philosophy was a little much. While the balance between worlds made sense in Longest Journey, the whole dream thing in Dreamfall seems more inspired by The Matrix. The hallucinogenic drug is even called "MORPHEUS". Regardless, it was fun meeting characters from the original game and playing the game through the eyes of various characters.
Combat was either very difficult or ridiculously easy; I found that forcing the target up against a wall or obstacle effectively disabled their AI, thus allowing me to pummel them at my leisure. I don't mind this becuase I'm lousy at coordinated fighting. Thankfully the game let me avoid it on many occasions.
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I know what you mean, Tale. Zoe in particular tends to stare like a robot most times. However, since HL2 is the only game I've played to-date with believable facial expressions, I can overlook this limitation. I know NWN2 tries, but more often than not the expressions look more comical than believable, ranging from apparent shock (eyes wide open, mouth ajar) to drowsiness (eyes half shut, head falling forward and then quickly jerking to attention), no matter the subject being discussed. It'll get better as more and more games implement it. Perhaps Dreamfall Chapters will improve on this, and hopefully Dragon Age will be at least as good as HL2 in this regard. There may be better games to use as a good example, but I've not played them yet.
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Okay final shot. This is the upper floor of the gym where Zoe works out. The lighting in this room is great stuff. In fact the game is full of great looking scenes. So colorful.
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I like these cars and buses. I didn't get a shot of it, but the underground train she takes to North America looks great.
BTW, these vehicles speed by at whatever highway speed is in this game, which is probably better than 55mph or 90kph. This shot shows the nearby building reflecting off the buses' windows, and the glare of the sun off the bumper. Normally you wouldn't see these with the vehicles speeding by, but it's nice that the developers added this much detail anyway.
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Argh, this 1Mb upload limit per post kinda stinks. I guess I have the upload abusers to thank for that.
What's a city or town these days without a coffee shop? This one's cool because you can actually read the menu, and almost the newspapers. Excellent textures in this game.
Note I was playing TLJ in windowed mode. Too bad it's stuck at 640x480 resolution. That's a tiny window. Still, I was able to force FSAA (Combined 16x) to make the jaggies almost disappear on the 3D models, of which there are few.
The experiences of a lowly playtester
in Way Off-Topic
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If I don't find you, customs will.
"Your papers, please, or we will have to shoot you!"