Bartimaeus

One thing that always bothered me about NWN(2) was the lack of enemy equipment dropping after killing them. Even if the equipment is utterly worth less to me, it's still neat to actually see what they were wearing. Balance-wise, it sort of does make sense to not have them drop everything, especially at higher levels when +2 or higher items become the norm, because they can just pick everything up and sell all of it for boatloads of cash...but still. (edit) Also, a neat idea above - I don't agree with it exactly, but having normal items break/shatter upon death would be okay too, as long as it's not every time and it's not breaking anything important/particularly useful, and as long as there's some sort of unusable item to replace the old one, (i.e. broken sword).

Boots of Speed does make it more than tolerable, generally...but that doesn't really help unless you're playing solo, because you'll have to wait for everyone else to catch up to the character with the Boots of Speed regardless. Always made Boots of Speed worthless in my estimation. Especially considering it doesn't add the full haste effect, (the bonus attack per round), but just increases movement speed.

You'll have to forgive me, for I was wrong...but then again, so were you. :D I had forgotten how *truly* slow BG1 walkspeeds were. But, similarly, you forgot how fast BG2 walkspeeds were. Time Test: (From Candlekeep Inn door to the steps up to the Temple of Oghma at 30FPS for each game; from the click to the moment the character gets there, as well as making sure the character doesn't bump into any patrolling guards) BG1: 31-32 seconds BG2: 20-21 seconds BG:EE: 25-26 seconds Looks like they went smack in between the two speeds. I recorded the results via Fraps, but don't have the inclination to upload the videos right now. Maybe in a little bit. Still wish they would've just systemically upped the speeds of everything. If creatures went at speed 5, they should've went at 10. If they went at speed 4, they should've went at 8 or 9, (probably 9, to maintain balance for slower creatures). Et cetera. But that's just me. I feel as though BG2 walkspeeds are still too slow at default FPS - at 40-45, it's the best, IMO. I have no patience for walking around.

Yes...I remember Bassilus' audio for that line missing, though I thought Nimbul's was intact. Perhaps that's just poor memory, though. I'm pretty sure that's probably the result of some bug occurring, though, not them actually taking the lines out. That'd be terrible if they actually did take them out, since they obviously had no plans to replace any audio lines, whereas it at least sort of makes sense for movies, because the style would be extremely inconsistent. Too bad my DLTCEP, (Infinity Engine game editor), isn't working correctly with BG:EE - it refuses to play any sound at all, even ones that I know are there. However, I checked into the creature files, and the sounds are still being referenced to play, (line "Heh hurh heh! Oh, brother Thurm, why not grace our ears with a ripping tale of the old days! Always a delight!" should be playing BASSL01, but it doesn't appear to be working in game - don't know if that's because the sound is not present, or whether they introduced a new engine bug, or...), so I'm not completely sure what's going on. The lines will be no doubt restored pretty sharpish, however, regardless of the cause, given the amount of complaints on the forums. (edit for the rest of you) As far as I can see, the release actually offers more for modders than players - though, hopefully, that should translate for it being more for players as more mods are introduced. As I understand, a load of stuff was unhardcoded, (I have no idea what, not being much of a real modder), which should make things a lot easier to mod or make some things actually possible whereas they weren't previously. I just hear modders like Ascension64, (ToBEx creator, essentially my lord and master), praise BG:EE just because of the things they did on a coding level, even if things aren't looking great on a content level. So...we'll see. As for me, I hope they fix the content-level stuff and get around to BG2:EE. I really, really wish they hadn't introduced 3 new party members, or the Black Pits, as I feel that they were the two most unprofessional things they did to the game. The game is supposed to be "Enhanced", not "shove mod-quality content down your customers' throats while breaking other things". Pfah. Not that it matters to much to me, anyways, as I'll probably be disabling any area references made to the new party members to begin with, (i.e. disabling their appearance in-game at all). I've always hated NPC mods.

That's nonsense, of course. Walk speeds are the same as pre-BG2, (i.e. BG1). It's actually painfully slow. I would've wished for BG2 walk speeds, except that all the other non-(demi)humans should also get a speed increase in order to make it fair, (which they didn't in BG2). Thank God for Boots of Speed. @Lorfean: They did make a new mine flooding one, which actually looks good, (I didn't think the intro/Friendly Arm Inn ones did). Resting one looks decent. There's no Inn resting scene, nor Nashkel; haven't gotten far enough to get to the Duchal Palace/Candlekeep Library/Durlag's Tower to comment, however. Also haven't see the Gnoll Stronghold, if there is one, because I haven't bothered to go there yet. (edit) Just went to Baldur's Gate for you, (was exploring all the wilderness areas): there is a Baldur's Gate one. It's not...bad, in my estimation, but not very good, either. It seems to me that they sort of fall apart whenever the camera moves or there's supposed to be any sort of real action...(hence the failure of the intro and Friendly Arm Inn, especially compared to the originals, whereas the resting and flood cinematic seem pretty good). (edit again) No Durlag's Tower or Gnoll Stronghold, either. So you're right there, too.

Yes. They found every old voice actor that worked on the game over 14 years ago and had them record additional lines. 1. Sorcerer still lacks a primary stat. 2. In my humble opinion, get constitution up to 16, (max bonus HP per level for nonfighter classes), dexterity up 18 or 19, (if you're an elf), and make your other stats balanced. Wisdom/Intelligence/Charisma all at 12 or so, IMO. Then rest into strength. @Turn-based vs. Real Time With Pausing: Thank goodness it was real time. Would never have played it otherwise. @BG:EE itself: The game mostly works fine. There's no game-breaking or crash-making bugs that I am aware of yet unless you run with an Intel onboard GPU, (in which case, the game doesn't work at all, thanks to Intel's lack of proper OpenGL drivers for those chips). But there are a bunch of normal bugs, which should hopefully be fixed in the coming week(s).

I like the idea of soundsets.... But I don't like hardly any soundsets. Three that come to mind are Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter's two male soundsets, "Gods grant me strength", and "You'll sleep with the dead."; and one of the female ones: "Let's spill some blood." As mentioned above, Baldur's Gate 2's "Let's do this quick and painful" was also good. Otherwise, I can't recall a single good soundset from any other game. And, as also said above, certainly none from NWN. I always played with "none", because I couldn't really stand any of them. Ideally, yes, I'd like to have good soundsets. Failing that, and we're stuck with bad ones, I might just repurpose the repurposed IWD:HOW for IWD2 that I repurposed for BG2 (wat) for P:E. As for what type...I think BG2's is the most diverse. (edit) Also, definitely yes in regards to being able to limit when you hear them, (a la the Infinity Engine games).

In regards to earlier discussion about party members leaving/attacking: since there's not going to be any alignment system, but just a reputation system, I do hope that, unlike BG2, there's an internal reputation system, and an external reputation system. That is, how the rest of the world perceives you...and how your party members see you. Events like having Viconia join you in Baldur's Gate potentially making your other party members leave because of a reputation loss just by having her in your party is silly. It *should* affect how outsiders who don't really know you think about you...but your other party members should be able to see the sense behind your decision, as well as the fact that just because you let a drow into your party doesn't necessarily make you and your actions evil. And if they do have such preconceptions, you should be able to explain the reasons behind your decision. Maybe that still won't make it perfect, because drow murdered their entire family or whatever, but it should help at least a little, and shouldn't affect every single good-aligned party member. If I recall correctly, in Baldur's Gate 2, after you save Viconia from being burned at the stake, Jaheria even says that people will see the party as less, even though she doesn't see it that way, (or something like that), and the party takes a -2 reputation loss anyways, potentially causing good party members to leave if you were at like 8 or something, which is ridiculous. I have no idea if they've already covered something like this, though. They basically already had things down in NWN2, (especially Mask of the Betrayer), so hopefully it should be O.K. The only thing about NWN2, is that I don't think there should be visible influence meters, or big popups that say "Saying you like to murder babies was not O.K. with Kaelyn, 100 influence loss, derp". But that's just me.

I've always hated how some programs store settings/saves/other data somewhere in the (User)\ directory. Since firstly, I do not use the (User)\ folder for anything at all, and secondly, I have two partitions - one for games/files, one for Windows - when I reformat, that stuff always gets stinking deleted, because I assume that it's smart and is self-contained. Storing it in the game directory is infinitely preferable, (a la Baldur's Gate). In addition, I don't really care for having backups of the game's CDs on my hard-drive, and then having a backup of what the game directory should actually be after installing, (because when you reinstall, all the settings are messed up, patches aren't applied, etc.). So yeah, I agree with the OP on both points.

I would not have minded LAN support...but it is not something that I feel is absolutely needed, especially given that we'll be able to generate our own parties if we want to anyways, (yay!). But if they're absolutely focused on singleplayer, that is completely fine by me, too.

Yes, I always wanted this feature in Baldur's Gate. Pausing every time I finish casting a spell to make sure that the character is either attacking or preparing to cast their next spell is a mite...unneeded. It'd be better to be able to assign future actions all at once...if the situation changes, then you just overwrite what you did.

Well, this is an awfully strange thread.

Flash by L.E. Modesitt Jr. Apparently it's a sequel to a book called Archform: Beauty, which I picked up after reading Flash. Pretty good book, although it's kind of weird, (like loving a robot?), but I thought it was good enough to get any other books related to it. Starting on Hell Hath No Fury by David Weber and Linda Evans, which is a sequel to Hell's Gate, which I kind of liked, kind of didn't.

Darkness Descending - Harry Turtledove A World War 2 alternate reality where technology is replaced by magic and fictional creatures. For example, bombs are replaced by 'eggs' which are sorcerous energy compacted into a small ball. Dragons are the planes, albeit, they aren't the intelligent beings that are depicted in most series such as Anne McCaffrey's books, or Hell's Gate, or basically anything else. They're stupid creatures that are forced to work for humans by torture with iron rods that they beat with them in specific orders that give them instructions. Nuclear power is replaced by sorcerous energy that is created through multiple ways: Life force, which, by the average sorcerous can be extracted through their own life. You can, however, also steal it out of other creatures by killing them. An example is the Kaunians, which are the Jews in this series. Other ways aren't really explained, as I believe life force is the main way to power spells, as well as weapons, such as guns, (called 'sticks', which shoot energy beams). The Algarvians, (combination of Soviets & Germans, in my opnion), are hungry for war, and start a war with Unkerlant, (?), which is the biggest world power besides Algarve. Algarve has been slowly conquering the other states of the world, or forcing them to become vassals, but targeting Unkerlant is draining their resources. Algarve's climate is mild, and Unkerlant's is a freezing wastehole, so you can see some obvious problems in Algarve trying to conquer them. Also, Algarve's clothing is mere kilts, and that's their required uniform, so they're naturally freezing their butts of while the Unkerlant soldiers are wearing actual pants and generally heavier clothing. The part I'd like to say most would be the Kaunians, but that would wreck most of the book, I think.

The Dolphin's Bell by Anne McCaffrey. A Gift of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey. At first, didn't really like Bell, but it turned good in the end. Gift of Dragons was really mixed. It's four short(er) stories put into one book. The one I liked most didn't even mention a single dragon through-out the entire story, so I thought that was weird. The other two were good, but the last one I really hated because of how McCaffrey treated her later in the series, and now I can't stand her, (some girl named Aramina who can hear dragons, is trying to avoid capture from bandits whom would use that ability to avoid the Riders).

Thank you, But seriously, folks...the name really can't be more than a REFERENCE to Snow White...right..? Why? Why shouldn't an RPG be based around Grimm-style fairy tales? Would MotB be any less brilliant if Safiya was a Fairy Godmother? Would it gut the story if in a coffee shop? I do dislike this idea that what makes a good story or setting is that it takes place in a fortress made out of a thousand skulls, or on a plane crafted from billions of years of pretension, in a parliament made of a hundred-thousand objections to the split infinitive. It's not - it's what is done with it. What's cool about is the content of the conversation, not that it takes place where it does. What's cool about Kreia is her character, not that she can make lightsabres float. [/rant] Because a Grimm-styled story would be an entire cliche in itself, as the stories by them are the originals. "takes place in a fortress made out of a thousand skulls" No, but it's a nice little tidbit in the story, innit?

Rereading Masterharper of Pern. Alector's Choice, Darknesses, and Scepters by L.E. Modesitt Jr. I liked Soarer's Choice, so I thought I might as well pick up on the rest of the series.

The Dolphins of Pern - Tells how the dolphins came to be on Pern, and how they were made to be more intelligent than the human predecessors, and how their relations with humans were re-established after their decline for thousands of years. Dragon Harper - About a kid, named Kindan, who recently had a watchweyr, (nocturnal version of a dragon), but gave it up to a girl whom is his friend, (), and goes to the Harper Hall, (essentially the culture, skill, and learning center of all of Pern). Unfortunately, a quarter of Pern's people are wiped out by the end due to a pandemic plague. Dragon's Kin - Same kid as last time, (Kindan), except before the plague, and Harper Hall. He's in a mining camp, (Camp Natalon), and how most of his family, as well as his father's watchweyr, (different than his), were killed in the mines. After that, he is fostered by Master Zist, (of the Harper Hall), whom takes him as his personal apprentice. Unfortunately, he is saddled with the problems of the mine, whom now has no watchweyr, (who are extremely adept in seeing stale air, where explosions might take place, as they see heat rather than actual shapes. A fire is like the sun right in their face to them, so they know where heat is), and since his father had one, they force him to end his apprenticeship so he may Impress, (the bonding of a human and dragon/watchwher/fire-lizard) one. Whoa, that was a little more indepth, Although, I've already read all these, by Anne McCaffrey. I just got today Darkness, Alector's Choice, and Scepters by L.E. Modesitt, (Jr.), because I absolutely loved his Soarer's Choice, as they had a completely unique, and very strange, set of magic, combined with modern weapons. (edit) Also, I loved the Wheel of Fortune.

Well, hey, it's not my fault older engines are, (evidently!), better.

Thank you, But seriously, folks...the name really can't be more than a REFERENCE to Snow White...right..?

I'll go with C for 10,000...because I need a new computer for this going-to-be-a-pile-of-crap-game. And I don't mean the gameplay. I love the gameplay. But the first two games barely run on my computer, even though games with better graphics, (like Left 4 Dead), run very smoothly.

I actually looked up Vioette Szabo on Wikipedia after they said it was based on her. You must've been pretty good to have a game based on you sixty years later after your heroic death.

Left 4 Dead Team Fortress 2 Baldur's Gate 2 - Improved Anvil (friggan' impossible...) Donkey Kong Country 3 on an emulator Terranigma on an emulator

That, too, was my first book read of the series, (Masterharper of Pern, ). Perhaps you should try On Dragonwings. At first, I thought it was going to be a historial reciting, but it's the actual story on how humans came to Pern, how they bioengineer-ed the original dragons, how they got larger over time, etc. It's actually quite interesting. Perhaps you should give it a read.

On Dragonwings, by Anne McCaffrey - Part of the Dragonriders of Pern series. I haven't read much of the series, but what I have, it's much more, ah, medieval...than this. This is a whole lot of Sci-Fi I didn't know existed in this series.