Bartimaeus

you can blame theodora the whateverth for that

It's hard for me to see it as being "pretty active", because it's like...it's just little tiny mods being worked on, and it's not even very many. I remember like 5 years ago when it was like, holy crap, ToBEx was making all these amazing changes and modders were actually starting to take advantage of it...and then EE was announced, and it's like everything significant totally died (edit: outside of simply making compatible for EE, I guess). I don't fully understand *why* everything died right then, since it seems like there should've been more activity rather than less...but it did. In regards to the forums' auto-formatting, yeah, it's horrid, and something they did in like the past year made it so you basically can't use the BBCode Mode anymore (which is what I used to always use)...or at least I can't anymore on Firefox. Very annoying.

Yeah, you might've seen that I was contributing to Item Revisions a few months ago when I submitted literally about 50 different bugs and inconsistencies for them to fix that I found as I was making my "IR Revisions" mod (for personal use only, sadly, since it's based directly on modifying the IR installer itself, so I can't really redistribute it without running into intellectual property problems), and I also provided a large text revision. I think they implemented much of the text revision, but I'm unsure about the bugs and inconsistencies. Really, if they could just make IR fully compatible with 1pp, I think IR would be mostly good as is (outside of some items which never got around to being revised, like the Moon Dog Figurine, or the Golem summoning tomes...which I ended up handling myself in my IR Revisions mod). It's something I've been working on my own on and off, and I think I've fixed most of the incompatibilities myself in my IRR mod...which is unfortunate, because again, it means I can't let anyone else use it since it would be unauthorized redistribution of their work.

Point me in its direction, then, since all the old mainstays (Gibberlings 3, Spellhold Studios, Pocket Plane Group, Black Wyrm Lair, ..?) that I know of are dead or virtually so. That leaves...what, the Enhanced Edition forums? Let's see...a little more active, but still pretty stagnant. So, uh...yeah, help me out here. I remember before the EEs were announced, plenty of significant mods (ToBEx, SCS, the Revisions mods, 1pp, etc.) were still being worked on...and then BG1:EE was announced, and it seemed like everyone had this "wait and see" mentality, and the community never really seemed to recover after that.

It is in fact if you enjoy playing around with mods that the EEs should appeal more to you. Off the top of my head, they have retooled a lot of stuff and changed things that were hardcoded into ini or 2da toggles and parameters, plus changed how certain effects were handled to make them more mod-friendly (i.e. contingency). Most, if not all, mod development is now done with the EEs in mind. The bugfixing goes beyond what the Fixpack and Tweakpack did, at this point. If you want a comprehensive list of changes, take a look here. The widescreen/high res options are better IMO than what the Widescreen mod managed. Not trying to sell you on the game, but the bad rep it earned because of the state it was released in is, at this point, unwarranted. At least from a technical standpoint. And if mods are of no interest to you, the game offers quicker loading times, support for high resolutions and bugfixing without resorting to third-party content. Thanks for the doc...although I think this is actually only for the latest few patches, not all changes over the course of the games' life, so some patch notes are, I presume, missing...but I could be wrong. Some interesting stuff in here that is making me consider trying a BG1/2:EE build, to give it a better (and more recent) shake. Hopefully the UI isn't that ridiculous MSPaint blue still...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it is, gosh dangit you guys. Fast quicksaves/loads: I mentioned those in my previous post, . Widescreen/resolution options: yeah, fair point, I've never much liked the mod widescreen implementation, and have always played on an extra 4:3 LCD monitor I'm lucky to have, so you got me there. In regards to modding...uh, what modding? The IE modding scene is virtually dead at this point. It's nice that they put all these modding features in the games, but if there aren't really any mods to take advantage of them... Although there are still a couple of interesting things that I could mess around with myself, yes...

They would've fostered much more good will from me if they provided the same buying options as was given to tablet users. What DO the EEs have that makes a functional difference for users that isn't covered by modding? I remember mucking around with BG1:EE and thinking the biggest difference was that quicksaves and quickloads were super fast...and that there was a broken zoom function that they would probably eventually fix. And...they added a little extra content in the form of the new NPCs (obviously) and a few items (some of which they didn't have the good sense to not make worth less than like 12k gold at the time of release...but which I presume they also eventually fixed). The concentration check and other .exe changes are covered by ToBEx, the graphic changes are almost entirely covered (outside of the UI) by 1pp and a couple of other mods, bugfixes and minor feature changes are covered by Fixpack and Tweakpack, etc. So what do the EEs actually have to offer that makes them actually worth it, outside of if you don't particularly care to muck around with mods (which I understand, even if it's not true for me)?

Although, I don't disagree. During's Tower is worth it to me. It's a great dungeon. What I hate most about TotSC is just how arbitrarily unbalanced all of it is. Why can you find like 3 Rings of Freedom on the ice island (...and then there's another sitting on a gnome that you can pickpocket in Ulgoth's Beard)? Why can you find like 3 Full Plate Mail +1s in a single fight in Durlag's Tower, in the chess board room? Why is there an additional...what was it, Kondar (Bastard Sword +1, +3 vs. Shapeshifters) sitting in a random house in Ulgoth's Beard? Just weird, bad design like that is annoying to me. Not to mention that pretty much all of TotSC is just laughably written...

...although Tales of the Sword Coast is easily the worst and most broken bit of the BG series and really not worth playing outside of MAYBE Durlag's Tower...

You and most programmers.

Also, not having to stealth kill the Nazis after you exit to the surface after saving that stupid kid (...who has an absolutely terrifying voice in Redux, by the way - they got rid of the 2033 actual child voice acting and replaced it with some Dragon Ball Z-style woman-tries-to-sound-like-a-male-prepubescent-child-but-fails-horrifyingly-badly voice acting instead; sure, the original work was pretty wooden, but at least it didn't make me fear for my life like the new stuff did, yikes) did admittedly make the Redux experience automatically better than 2033 for me. Trying to stealth kill that big group of Nazis is seriously ridiculously hard, and probably takes the most work (...and luck) out of anything else in the game. Do not recommend. Of course I played through wanting to use only throwing knives while also wanting to (stealth) kill everyone I meet, because I'm a masochistic retard...

In 2033, or in Redux? ...I guess it doesn't matter, since the answer is the same: yes. Not that it really made a difference for me, since I never used bullets anyways. Although, funnily, 2033 is virtually unplayable if you play on the "easier" difficulties: like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (also a Ukrainian dev, an odd coincidence), 4A's idea of "easier" difficulty was to make everything take much more damage to kill, player and enemies included. If you're playing the game for the first time and you decide to play on easy, you're probably going to quit, because the game is just going to feel absolutely stupid with how long battles will take because of how much damage everyone absorbs. Switch it up to the hardest, and hey, what do you know, the game suddenly actually feels like a competent shooter...but you won't realize that the harder difficulties will make things better in that regard your first playthrough. Sure, you only die from like 2 bullets, but so do enemies, and the game's stealth system is so forgiving that you should have the drop on most enemies, so really, playing on the hardest difficulty is probably easier (and certainly more fun) than playing on the easiest.

I wasn't too impressed by what I played of Metro 2033 Redux...but the one change that I really liked, I think, was that they introduced an ammo limit on all the different ammos...which meant that I could play through the game using guns for the first time without my OCD going completely mad about having to "collect all the ammos" while not ever using them. It was weird playing through without using only throwing knives (and the occasional Helsing/crossbow) for the first time.

Gosh, Steam has turned into such a garbagehole over the last 5-7 years...there was this little short golden age after they opened up the store to the halfway decent publishers and SOME indies, and then they stopped trying at all after that... I never open the store anymore unless I already know what I want to look at or buy. The store has become utterly useless for discovering things I might be interested in. Ugh.

It's *been* ten years already...

That's the way football goes, sadly. They either sacrifice some of their salary for more guaranteed money, or they take more money for less guaranteed. On a side-note, he was also arrested for marijuana possession just a couple of months ago, which didn't help his chances of staying on the roster...and it won't help his chances of getting signed elsewhere, seeing as he'll be suspended for at least a couple of games. He also has never played a full season during his 7-year long career...it's not like they got rid of him as soon as he was injured. At least this gives him a lot of time to try to catch on to a different team if he's truly determined about it...which I hope he isn't, for his own sake.

In recent news, the Packers have released Sam Shields, our once Pro Bowl-quality CB who's basically been out for the last two seasons because of concussions. He's basically the Wes Welker of CBs at this point with as many head injuries as he had...and like Wes Welker, he has indicated that he wants to continue to play against all given medical advice. I just hope that he's able to remember whom he is by the time he's 40. P.S. My first ever thread after having been registered here for nearly ten years - neato! ...Aaand it's about stupid football...

That's pretty sweet, actually!

The only thing more silly than sports? Sports games.

The new content from the EEs are pretty bad, so I personally opt for the originals. However, in general, the EEs will look better and be easier to play if you don't want to mod, so if you combine that with not minding overpaying for the EEs, then they're O.K. Personally, they're not for me whatsoever, though, and I'd rather just mod out any issues I have personally rather than accepting Beamdog's hamfisted "enhanced" version of the game.

Sorry, I don't catch the meaning. People thinking the same for Bush? ...Course, others thought the same for Obama, and others still thought and even planned worse than that still for both of them, and I'm sure the same will be true for Trump.

Trump seems like a pretty contemptible person, but wishing for his death seems a bit harsh.

Hm. I didn't really get "desperate" or "defeated" out of it...at least, not by the end of it. Yeah, you kind of get that feeling in the first half, but by the end, it starts to really pick itself up and sound the opposite to me.

Another musical masterpiece by Neil Cicierega.

Your own activity feed, too. Although you should hopefully not have friends that would make use of such an exploit...