Bartimaeus

If you *think* it's overheating, why not actually check while gaming? I would guess there's probably a problem with a fan/heatsink - probably either the GPU's or CPU's.

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Well...the use of those Warcraft 3 icons pleased me. Does that count for anything? One thing I notice right away is that it's just too big...the largest piece, (the minimap) takes up more than 1/4th of the screen vertically, while the smallest takes up almost 1/5th. In comparison, Baldur's Gate 2's bottom bar took up 15% of the screen, (and at 1024x768). With the advent of widescreen, (particularly the 16:9 brand of widescreen), I feel like taking up side space makes much more sense than taking up top/bottom space. XP bar seems silly - presumably we won't be leveling up often enough that we need a bar to see how fast we're progressing. Animated portraits? Eh... Minimap? I...actually wouldn't mind this too much...needs to be smaller, though, and there should, of course, be a larger, full-sized version somewhere else. Three things that really get me about this, though: how much space is wasted for those "other screen" buttons: stronghold, journal, etc. I feel like much smaller buttons with no text combined with simple tooltips that would explain what the buttons do as well as what the buttons assigned for accessing them are for new users would more than suffice; how much space is wasted for portraits: get rid of that "selected character" portrait, in my opinion, and just highlight the currently selected character's portrait. The other portrait stuff can stay, I guess, but it seems a little janky, although perhaps not quite Torment levels of jankiness; and finally, where are the ability/skill buttons? With how you currently have it set up, you have basically no room to speak of for even BG1 cleric/mage-level amounts of abilities, (though with the whole "grimoires" I don't think we'll have that many spells, but nonetheless). Simply not doable.

Wow. Now I know who to blame. Thanks, Putin!

Oops? Happy belated birthday, J.E. Swayer!

Having not played it, but previous Total War games...can't you manually enable most/all factions anyways? Though I'm sure they probably created at least some minor new content to make it work better, (e.g. the difference between playing the Papal States in default Medieval 2 and playing a mod that actually builds them as a real faction).

Where's the "dislike" button? This thread is one of the bigger attractions these forums have...

Sandboxie can be used to run more than one instance of a game, (and pretty much everything else - I, for example, run two Steam accounts on one computer). (It's supposed to be an antivirus tool of sorts, but it has other uses.)

I laughed as well, but then I took the poll and noticed Call of Duty has over 2,000 votes. I cried. Everyone loves joke options. Anecdotal Proof: I picked Call of Duty,

If you're referring to me, (which is possible, given that I've supported the project in the past), it should be noted that I still prefer Baldur's Gate Trilogy, (the mod that puts BG1 into BG2 and you can play both), infinitely over BG:EE. The fact that there are basically what I consider to be "fanfic" party members in the game bothers me enough that I would probably prefer playing BG even through the original engine over it.

Don't be so certain until you finish it. Blood Money was a true Hitman game and a stealth approach won't always work for you. Hmm. You made me curious as to how far I am into the game. I was kinda saddened to find out there's only 13 missions, and I'm already on the ninth. Maybe I should've played the hardest difficulty instead of the second hardest...I can't have played more than 10 hours so far. Modern games, these days...erm...as modern as seven years ago was, anyways.

Bartie it is a terrible thing having to actually think and work out how a game functions. This is how all games use to be, you console kids have it easy I'm going to ignore your "console kid" comment because it doesn't apply at all to me, given my intense dislike of consoles for the past half of my life, and that most of my favorite games are relatively old, The biggest difficulties, actually, were right in the beginning of the game, when it was trying to teach you specific tactics. Like it told you to take a human shield...and that's it. No actual idea on what buttons to press, or the conditions necessary to do it. Unpack the sniper rifle. I pick up the case...I then hit almost every darn button I possibly can, before realizing I simply have to go into my inventory, (even though it's already in my hand), and reselect it. Push the dude over the railing. I sneak up behind him...and hit what, again? I try and left click, but that just hits him with whatever I have out. I try and hit E, the activate button, which is sometimes used for combat purposes, (human shield, for example, as I found out). After multiple times of retrying, I don't have anything out one time and I magically push him...okay. I clearly should've realized that having a pistol in your hand prevents you from pushing a person. And as for the sedating opponents instead of fiber wiring them...well, again, it told me in the beginning to just put it in a secretary's drink, not that I could up behind someone and stab them with it. In reality, I didn't really need to know much of this to begin with anyways. I'm never going to use human shield because...well, it's Hitman. You shouldn't really be getting into firefights, or really be shooting any gun besides a sniper rifle anyways, (and also, shooting is a crapton more boring than doing things properly). Sedating? Well, useful for roleplaying/perfectionist purposes, but it's basically the same as fiber wiring somebody, so...I've used the sniper rifle a total of once, and only because there was absolutely no other way to win the mission in question without causing a huge ruckus...so I guess it was kind of useful...Haven't pushed a single person yet since that first mission...if you're not gonna spell stuff out, then either don't mention it and try to make me do it, and instead let me figure it out on my own (if I ever even need to figure it out), or make its usage intuitive. Don't give me some stupid, vague objective without giving me even the slightest hint as to how to do it.

Friend convinced me to try Hitman: Blood Money after complaining so much about Hitman: Absolution, (and the new Thief and other recent "reboots"). Liking it so far, but a lot of things weren't very well explained and the controls were a bit hard to get a grasp of. Nonetheless, I've gone through like 8 missions now.

Shadowkeeper has worked to begin with...just have to mess around a little. I think you have to go into the My Documents folder for the game and put the english (or whatever language you're using) dialogue.tlk in the base game directory as well as your saves folder, (and then move back your saves after finishing editing). It's been a while though, so that might not be entirely correct. Also, if I recall correctly, someone was working on a version of Shadowkeeper that natively supports BG:EE a while back. Don't know what came of it.

If your copy of Baldur's Gate is enchanted, I suggest returning it and asking for a full refund. Alternatively, become a wizard.

Those last ones sort of remind me of the end of Shamsuk's Tower from Aidyn...except cooler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=l8pImL1FeaE&t=55 HEADSHOT! :D "Thief no more", indeed.

On the downside, it looks pretty bad...but judging from your "troll face", I assume you already figured that.

I was reading some comments in its community hub and it's apparently supposed to be pretty bad. I thought it looked like it could actually be a bit of fun from the screenshots, but...

I think they look pretty similar, but different enough that it's very possibly coincidence.

Happy birthday, MCA! To your health and making many more games to come,

Won't they be impressed, I am a genius, See how I transform this old rat, Into a most delightful hat. Hm, my compliments from me to you, On this your most intriguing hat, Consider, though, this substitute, A bat in place of this old rat.

Is it just me, or is he smiling?

Excuse me, but it seemed to me that you were implying that you weren't even going to look at them because they might contradict your stance. That's not exactly what you stated, but then again, it's not exactly clear what you were stating and I thought it was what it was, . But know now that what you really meant was that you weren't going to read or properly argue against them because you already magically knew what was contained within them, which, for some reason, makes it so you don't actually have to address what they say... And I agree with you on not accepting articles as proof - I was just rather perturbed by the previously mentioned implication combined with both you being the one to initially pick out and contradict his post as well as forthcoming "rebuttal" of what seemed to me to consist of "I'm right, you're wrong, here's no counterargument, logical proof, or even anecdotal evidence", I'm not sure what you mean. I was just saying that it's not really your responsibility to have to read and go through articles BruceVC is sourcing, and roughly construct his position for him that you can you can *then* argue. I feel like it should be Bruce's responsibility to make his own, clearly stated argument for you to reply to, and *then* perhaps use those articles as backup. But he just posted articles in of themselves, which I thought was pretty lame if he was actually interested in trying to...erm..."educate" (ew) you, or even properly refute what you were saying. Which is why I thought you would've been better off just ignoring him, unless you were very interested in making him see things your way. But instead, you implied that the articles weren't worth reading, said he was wrong and now additionally deluded, and then only offered the same thing you said to begin with - after which, all in all, I was a bit intellectually insulted, which is why I commented to begin with. But maybe, like I said before, this is all just on my side. There's reasons why I normally don't get into arguments.