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Magister Lajciak

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Posts posted by Magister Lajciak

  1. Aliens is more of the 'Terror' side than horror according to James Cameron in the bonus interview. Knowing he is unable to replicate the horror moments in Aliens, he simply focus the pacing more on terror.

     

    I think we are getting into technicalities. "Terror" rather than "horror" is good enough for me! Let's get some Aliens! :o

     

    Orson Scott Card had a good essay about the difference between dread (anticipation), horror (primal fear), and terror (shock at something that just happened). Interesting read if you can find it.

     

    It would be interesting to see whether these three types of fear truly use different neural pathways or are just variations on the same emotion. In particular, horror, defined as 'primal fear'... I wonder whether there are some things we fear genetically without having to learn to do so. Hmm, it is interesting to think about.

  2. Good that I never read the Van Buren design docs. Playing New Vegas would be only half as fun knowing that they reuse some of that stuff.

     

    i only kept up with NMA during the development stages, i never read the documents. not because i don't care...but because the entire situation was far too depressing to me.

     

    I doubt there will be any connection between Van Buren and Fallout: NV. It has been too long a time since Van Buren was shelved and I am sure Obsidian has other ideas they want to implement by now...

     

    should we hold a bet? because i bet you're wrong. just on a hunch. even the FO3 DLC's have bits of VB.

     

    Well, not having read VB design documents, I would not recognize such content even if it appeared there. :thumbsup:

  3. P.S.: how do you live without Firefox? Or specifically how do you live with IE.

     

    What's so bad about IE? I am not some sort of "advanced user", so for me it's an ease of use issue - the 'ease' of IE being that it is already on my computer and I am already used to it. Barring auto-archiving, it does most things I want it to do, so why switch?

  4. I bookmark lots of links for "future reference" and the only time I ever use them is on a forum to prove a point. It's really not worth it, though as something to show your kids or comment on culture years from now I'm sure it has validity.

     

    There's probably 20 bookmarks that I've used all the time, for a long time. The rest languish in bookmark purgatory for periods of time that are eons beyond the actual existence of most of the pages in question.

     

    Well, I don't really use bookmarks and 'favorites'. As you say, the page might well disappear in the future, so why bookmark it? Instead, I tend to download it.

  5. Not a reply to help you, but to actually discourage you. :thumbsup:

     

    Speaking from my experience, I think that's a huge waste of your time. I used to pile the articles and documents I read "for future reference", and guess what? I have never ever ever ever read them again. Not once. If is worthwhile material, it gets propagated or replicated throughout the web, so there is little chance of it becoming unavailable. If it does become unavailable 5 years down the road, you wouldn't care (or remember, for that matter).

     

    Today, if I need some textual information, I find myself turning to Google 99% of the time, and to my local files only 1% of the time. Heck, even my bookmarks outlive their usefulness so quickly, I am not even sure why shouldn't I just clear them all right now.

     

    Well, I think you are partially correct. I return to the information I collect very rarely indeed (though I do occassionally return to some of it). As such, it is to a large extent a waste of time, yes, though it leaves me with a large archive of materials that are indeed no longer available online (most news articles, for example, have a limited life-span on the net) as well as the ability to use all the materials offline (though it is true that I make use of that very rarely).

     

    I guess my recognition that such archiving is a considerable time-sink is one reason why I would want to at least partially automate the process.

  6. Good that I never read the Van Buren design docs. Playing New Vegas would be only half as fun knowing that they reuse some of that stuff.

     

    Has there been any indication that they might? I really doubt they will reuse much from Van Buren - time has moved on since that project.

     

    Time may have moved on, but there's still a chance they're using some stories/quests and characters from VB. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they're integrated in a sensible manner.

     

    I suppose that's true, but they might not even have the old design documents any more and probably have a lot of other stories to tell. A little bit of Van Buren might appear in Fallout: New Vegas, but I wouldn't expect it to be significant.

    Well the issue isn't about the availability of the VB docs, as basically everyone can download it from the net (or Bethesda provides them). The point is just whether Obsidian wants to reuse VB stuff. Whatever makes sense for them, I'm not worried about the final result.

     

    I am not really worried either. Obsidian will surely make it work well. I hadn't realized that the VB docs were so freely available.

  7. I guess DX3 will be between DX and IW on the suck-oh-meter. Better than IW because of better technology, but worse than DX1, because you can't make Chess 2.

     

    Was DX2 really as bad as I keep on hearing it was?

     

    It was a crappy shooter and an even crappier RPG. It had nothing really going for it, but it was fun to play for the couple of hours it lasted.

     

    Fair enough - put that way it does sound pretty bad.

  8. Good that I never read the Van Buren design docs. Playing New Vegas would be only half as fun knowing that they reuse some of that stuff.

     

    Has there been any indication that they might? I really doubt they will reuse much from Van Buren - time has moved on since that project.

     

    Time may have moved on, but there's still a chance they're using some stories/quests and characters from VB. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they're integrated in a sensible manner.

     

    I suppose that's true, but they might not even have the old design documents any more and probably have a lot of other stories to tell. A little bit of Van Buren might appear in Fallout: New Vegas, but I wouldn't expect it to be significant.

  9. But there would be no reason why they couldn't include at least some of the ideas from Van Buren. I think the biggest reason to leave out some of van buren is because too many of the small details seems to have made it to various places. I'm they don't want to have the entire story blown before they ship the product.

     

    I also agree with bhlaab. Obsidian simply has to fix some of the "in your face" errors in NV.

     

    It is also the fact that Van Buren was being made with a different engine; was being made long ago; the design documents are probably no longer available; new people are on the project with their own ideas and so on and so on. A little bit of Van Buren might make it into the game, but I doubt it will be significant.

  10. You really wanna know?

     

    Fuel (05/12/09)

    Damnation (05/26/09)

    Bionic Commando (May 2009)

    Red Faction Guerilla (06/09/2009)

    Ghostbusters (06/13/2009)

    Prototype (June 2009)

    Resident Evil 5 (07/13/09)

    Dark Void (08/04/09)

    Just Cause 2 (September 2009)

    Alpha Protocol (October 2009)

    Dragon Age Origins (11/03/09)

    Max Payne 3 (Winter 2009)

    White Gold (2009)

    No Time for Dragons (2009)

    Age of Decadence (2009)

    Borderlands (2009)

    Man of Prey (2009)

    Mafia 2 (2009)

    Arcania: A Gothic Tale (2009 winter)

    Precursors (2009)

    The Broken Hourglass (2009)

    Risen (2009)

    Black Mesa (2009)

    Tension (2009)

    Singularity (2009)

    Dead Rising 2 (2009)

    Painkiller: Resurrection (2009)

    Reluctant Hero (2009)

    Wolfenstein (2009)

    Afterfall (2010)

    Zero Projekt (tba)

    Rage (2010)

    Mass Effect 2 (2010)

    Scars of War (2010)

     

    (PS: You really don't want to start looking forward to a new Thief game, you're only setting yourself up for crushing disappointment when it turns out to be terrible)

     

    Wow, that's a pretty huge list of games you are looking forward to!

  11. That wouldn't be his call, that's Bethsoft's. Last I recall SIMPLE wasn't a commercial asset and thus wasn't really claimed by Bethsoft, but they could considering the direct ties to their property. The chances of us seeing it in a game are about as high as Obsidian getting to take a crack at a Fallout game.

     

    I was referring primarily to the information about the world, the Commonwealths in particular. Given that he's the lead on F:NV and the original surviving lead of Van Buren, I think he is in the position to make such decisions.

     

    What's simple?

     

    http://pnp.fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Simple:_Main_Page

     

    I doubt there will be any connection between Van Buren and Fallout: NV. It has been too long a time since Van Buren was shelved and I am sure Obsidian has other ideas they want to implement by now...

  12. Aliens is more of the 'Terror' side than horror according to James Cameron in the bonus interview. Knowing he is unable to replicate the horror moments in Aliens, he simply focus the pacing more on terror.

     

    I think we are getting into technicalities. "Terror" rather than "horror" is good enough for me! Let's get some Aliens! :thumbsup:

  13. Anyone else somehow getting more hope for a KotOR III because of FO: New Vegas?

     

    'cause the peeps returning to an old franchise despite another company owning it and working on it just makes me feel that somehow they might also return to KotOR, despite SW:toR.

     

    We can only hope. Maybe we will find out some neat stuff soon, I have a feeling with the new generation of gamers playing Kotor 1 and 2.

     

    Is there a new generation of gamers playing Kotor 1 & 2?

     

    Actually there are quite a few people I have met on my forums, that are teens playing it. They want to know what happened to Revan, too. :thumbsup:

     

    That's good to hear! :)

     

    Let's hope, however, that they won't be satisfied with the MMO as providing sufficient explanation/KOTOR fix...

  14. When considering what makes most people think macs are better I think we are definitely in psychological and intangible territory. It's brand reputation, not actual performance.

    I think it has more to do with simplicity. Not everyone is a control-freak/tech-geek who cares about or would even use/utilize all the stuff that pc's supposedly are "better" for. (Edit: ie, they don't care about "performance" but functionality/ease of use in what they use a computer for, and that's it ) Now, I'm just generalizing here...I'm sure there's lots of Mac users who pant "ooo pretty," as well as those who want more Mac software support and like to tinker, but well .. then they'll either buy a PC as a 2nd rig or switch to the type of computing that works better for them.

     

    I think this is spot on. Most computer users are not gamers, they just don't care about raw performance. They just want to get their Excel spreadsheets and Word docs done, upload photos to Facebook, surf the Web, check their email, sync music to their iPod. They just want a system that is responsive and does not get in the way. For them, performance is not how fast their video card renders triangles, but how quickly they can get things done on their computer.

     

    In fact, ever since I stopped gaming, I move closer and closer to this category of users and I see where they are coming from. If I tinker with systems all day long at work, sometimes it can get very tiring, so I begin to just want everything to work out of the box and not put a tiny bit of thought into making it work.

     

     

    As an side thought, the fact that most people need so little from their computers actually explains the emergence of netbook market.

     

    Yes, but I just don't see the ease of use argument going in favor of the Mac, although it's oft repeated as some sort of eternal truth. When I tried to use a Mac, I did not see any improvements to its ease of use over a normal Windows-based computer. For me it was actually considerably more difficult to use the Mac, because I was not aware of where anything is located - even the "x" for closing a window was on the other side of the window. Sure, that is just dependent on what the person is used to, but if we were to take somebody without any experience with computers and thus not used to either system, the ease of use factor would be about the same for both PCs and Macs.

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