random n00b

Hmm. I need to visit Portugal.

With SCSII, that's not the case anymore, as Spellstrike (and possibly Ruby Ray, etc as well) is now area-based instead of target-based. No more win button for the AI. Chances are the mod didn't "decide" anything, you did. I don't know if you were aiming for Irenicus' "good" ending, but it's 100% dependant on player choices how he acts regarding his bargain with the PC. And with Jaheira it's even worse - she can *smell* whether Irenicus will give up on being an evil SOB or not, even before he actually gets to do anything!

Nope. Not in any of the examples I used, anyway. In those, heroes and villains are constantly receiving insane amounts of physical punishment, and walking out of it, no problem. And any attacks that would kill or seriously cripple them are resolved as "close calls", unless there's a plot reason to inflict a serious injury on a major character. It's not too much of a stretch to assume that the game mechanic that represents "hit points (or whatever)" is not a simplification of all the variables on which health is dependant, but merely a representation of how close the character is to receiving a fatal injury. I thought this was pretty obvious. Again, it's not realism. It's in-universe consistency. Then I don't see how finite ammo could be a problem. Survival horror games and metal slug don't really support your points. This is a completely different kind of game, and design features that defined ammunition availability factors in those games are not the same here. Ouch. You might have hit the nail on the head there.

No. It's like the equivalent of some dude eating pork, then some insane Jew passes by, and decides that said dude is a hideous infidel and must be blown to bits for it. Fun, eh?

Doesn't the SCSII modded Spellstrike tear down Spell Immunity? Yes, half-assed comes to mind. But it *is* just an expansion after all...

I'm sure the feeling is mutual... Yeah. I guess if you ever find something you don't like about life, you'll end up kissing the barrel, right? Because trying to change that which you don't like is simply out of the question. How about some dude in a bunker? You know, the flesh-and-blood kind, only behind six feet of concrete. Hell, scrap the concrete. How about a guy that's a mile away, riding on a bike? I can sympathise with the feeling of frustration when a game forces you to take a certain approach, when others that would appear completely consistent with the setting simply are not presented, without explanation. What I do not agree with is using that as an excuse to explain things that obviously don't fit with the mood of the game. AP is supposedly a somewhat serious spy-themed game, set around present time. They ran out of ammo in The Matrix. Bond runs out of ammo, as does Bourne. But simply because you don't like to be forced to a conservative use of your one favourite gun, that is reason enough to implement a design element that makes no sense whatsoever, from an in-world POV? I don't think it's a matter of realism, but a matter of setting consistency. People die when they are shot, and guns can't fire forever. You don't like running out of ammo as a result of indiscriminate use of your resources, so you demand infinite ammo. I don't like dying as a result of me making stupid decisions. I like my stupid decisions. So I demand god mode enabled by default.

I'm going to clarify my earlier post, lest Very Bad Things Indeed happen from a misunderstanding. What with mods threatening crackdown and all... The jab at Hades was more of an example to point out the irrelevance of official Christian dogma and past actions when discussing instances of religious fundamentalism, than an opportunistic bitchslap. Yes, those Westboro nuts and their "God hates ****" campaign is very much comparable to Iranian religious leaders advocating execution of homosexuals. The crucial difference, I think, lies in the fact that such policies are no longer proposed seriously (let alone implemented) in the West, and any unofficial attempts at enacting this kind of bigotry is curbed quickly and decisively by the authority. Executing homosexuals is as unacceptable as depriving people of their right to have an opinion and voice it, something that's simply unthinkable today. That is the parallelism I was trying to establish with my previous comment. Mr. Phelps and his crew are "good Christians", in the same measure a serial child rapist/killer is a "respectable citizen". @DN & Kyle: Are you sure you can't do that by PM?

And I'm sure that if admin backed it, there would be some folks that would love to see you banned. Fortunately, we don't allow that kind of behavior anymore, now do we?

I wield the full power of Unicode. And, I'm bored. Well, I don't know about "responsibility". But I know that the chance of having the lead designer answer my questions regarding a game I highly anticipated was one of the main reasons that led me to register here, to begin with. *shrug*

Yes, this is something I often hear. But is is actually true? My knowledge of religion is patently limited, so can anyone provide verbatim quotes from the Bible/Quran that actually encourage physical violence against "heretics"? Also, interpretation and context are important. At any rate, what does the Bible have to do with this, at all? It's not Christians that are executing homosexuals in Iran. The same EU which failed to get their act together regarding the Muhammad cartoons fiasco, you mean? Lol...

Is that an XM8 I see there? Thanks, Mr. PR.

That sounds nice, but how exactly and to what extent do you make weapon choice have an effect on the mission? That seemed to be the case for Blood Money, but in the end, the fiber wire is all you ever needed. Fallout also had a great variety of weapons and ammunition, and in the end, only a handful were really useful and effective enough to use on a regular basis, with almost complete independence of the encounter. Bottom line is, it's very difficult to preserve suspension of disbelief when combining stuff like "superspy skills" and "realistic" aspects such as meaningful weapon choices, ammunition types, etc. Simply because a bullet is a bullet and it'll usually do a number on you. Realism ≠ fun. Yeah, one of the things I liked so much about these boards back then when K2 was in development was how MCA would routinely interact with users and answer questions about the game. I wish we could have that back. I would really like to hear what motivated this design choice. Pehaps not. This is the game that "will change the way you think about RPGs", remember?

They brought it upon themselves.

Hey, they removed the level 20 cap from KotOR2 on popular demand, completely breaking the game in the process, so they'll listen this time as well, right? RIGHT? /signed

You might want to be careful with that.

And this is why we need that :borg: emoticon. Instead, we got

Why would a gay Moslem convert to Christianity, anyway?

Well, you put forward a good example of why you would want to, but I was asking more in a general sense, as a rule of thumb, maybe, as the apparent current tendency in games is not to deal with that at all. In your example, not showing what happens in the room serves an explicit purpose. But keeping the spectator guessing about what happened only works in very specific instances, I think. It seems I made a poor choice of words. I didn't mean cutting stuff that's already been filmed from the final version. I meant deliberately curtailing the sex, just because it's sex. Yes, I never disputed that. I still think that not having a rather clever writing or a plot reason to do so will result in an artificially prude work. That's sidestepping the issue, really, since that doesn't really deal with crime, but rather, how third parties are affected by it. Take "Mr. Brooks", for instance. That's a movie about murder AND how it affects people. While the movie is not *explicit* on murder (doesn't show brains spilled about, this is comparable to not showing full frontal penetration, I think), it would just not be the same without the visual shock that seeing somebody shoot people in cold blood induces. But is it then a true "war" movie, without the "boom!" shots? I don't think so. Even films like Thin Red Line and Apocalypse Now, that focused heavily on how war can break people, aren't shy on the visual violence department. And they do it for the simple reason that it's easier to empathise with the characters (and therefore, make them more credible), if crude scenes of mindless violence are shown to set the mood. Can this be extended to sex? I'm not sure. Heh. Again, miscommunication. I'm not really interested in the mechanics or rewards or even the specifics of it. I'm more interested in the numbers of games that deal with sex as casually as The Sims do.

Yes, but can you get them inside the areas where the quest givers are? Sentries can be (and often are) killed by muties, but from what I saw, they seem content with that, and they never get even close to fighting crucial characters. I'd love to install a mod only to find that it allows for the main quest to be broken. Love, as in Shift+Del.

Er, yeah. I reckon that's exactly what you said in your post. It's just that I read it AFTER I hit the "reply" button. :S Gimme a break, I can't keep a track of everything when I'm drunk. :ph34r:

Um. You mean you can actually get to Rostok and find everyone there dead and replaced by snorks? Wouldn't that break the main quest?

Even though I disagree with gabs 99,9...% of the time, she's not supporting "pirayc" in her post. You are making assumptions based on... what do you usually call it... ah yes. A "mythical myth, r00fles!" So, yeah. Stealing is wrong and all. But being glad that a POS DRM scheme that cost EA the big bucks was destroyed within days of release seems fairly legit to me. Breaking the DRM does not imply stealing. How can this be, Magical Volo?

Does it do anything apart from buffing up monsters? Any new content? Weapon changes? I really don't understand this complaint, unless you mean how the weapon degradation is wayyy faster than in real life. Why were they horrible? I assume he was referring to weapon damage, rather than shooting "feel". I hated how the AKS74U was nearly worthless when compared to the Obokan, and that in turn did very little by the time you got your hands on the Vintar. And, um. The silly fake names sucked too.

900 year old women don't go flashin' cleavage around like that. See?

Actually, I take that back. I've seen better in... Tekken 5. I am SO not getting this game now.