framerate

You guys are something else...

The answer to ONE of those is a yes. The rest are no's. LET THE SPECULATION BEGIN! EDIT: One of them is also a maybe.

Did I miss where we even announced we had a "Project Virginia"? I'm sure funcroc has a link for me to see, right?

/blush (Level 85 now ^^)

I watched some of that stream. He missed out on a lot of stuff by just slaughtering everybody. Plus he maxed out stealth early so he could just slit everyone's throats he came across. This is also why he died every time someone pulled a gun on him, so be careful. In fact, he got his ass handed to him quite a few times by Brayko I hope you guys enjoy the game as much as we do. I'm currently playing through Saudi Arabia on my current play through, and will hopefully get to Moscow as soon as my workload quiets down a little

We did our best to make sure the DRM was an non-intrusive as possible, but we don't have a lot of say in the matter (as has already been said). I've always been a big fan of open source, and I think the things I spend my money on should be mine to do what I want with (game consoles to mod, games to make my own backups up to preserve the disk etc) however I also feel that unless you're planning on doing something that Obsidian and SEGA isn't going to like in the first place, you don't have anything to worry about with most DRM*. It's sad really. There's nothing we can do to prevent people from pirating our games. All we can do is deter some of them, even if it pisses them off in the process. I mean, I'd really love to leave my front door unlocked so when I come home with an arm full of groceries I won't have to fumble my keys out of my pocket, but could I truly expect my HDTV to still be there when I get back? On the same note, locking my door won't keep the guy who REALLY wants my HDTV from getting it (my apartment still has windows). But at least the stupid kid from next door will just try the handle, feel the locking mechanism, and move on to the neighbors door. Or maybe he'll just go out and buy his own HDTV. I hope you've enjoyed this metaphor. *(Assassin's Creed 2 not included in this statement)

And let me add the HOLY CRAP FUNCROC HAS OFFERED AN OPINION. I know you guys are as shocked as I am.

10 now, actually

Your grade point average doesn't really matter. If you have a 4.0, but are hard to get along with, you wont' get hired. You could have a 4.0 and still not understand what makes a good story (and you wouldn't get hired). What matters is basic knowledge, passion, drive and personality. Don't spend all your time locked in a room doing your homework and then your nights going out to a bar to kill the things you just learned (I saw too many friends fall into this trap). Sure game development sounds like a good time. But it's a lot of work. It's easy to SAY you want to be a game developer, but to ACTUALLY want to be one is a whole other story. Someone who really wants to be a game developer, in my opinion, would have 1-2 of the following done by the time he graduated college: - A short story showing good character development, dialogue, story and/or plot (for a creative designer) - A playable level with some sort of custom assets in your favorite editor like Unreal3, NWN2, NWN or Multiverse (for a level designer) - Some custom made art assets (models, textures, environments) used in someone's playable level (for an artist) - A custom game engine, or core technology functionality to be applied to a game engine (for a programmer) - Any or all of these things in some sort of RELEASED mod/game/download Most importantly (and this is entirely my opinion) these should all be NOT school related. If that 4.0 GPA required you to write a Unix Bash shell, or a basic terrain generator of course you did it. And you probably did it quite well. But what matters in this industry is what you did AFTER you completed that 4.0. Did you go home with your A+ terrain generator and continue to modify it beyond the requirements? Maybe see if you could get a model to load in and some basic collision detection? Or maybe take your 4 page A+ story draft home and turn it into a quest in the NWN2 engine? Then you're a game developer. If you got your A+ on the assignment, popped it onto your thumbdrive and went out with you friends I wouldn't bother applying. You like the idea of being a game developer, but you're not quite committed to the amount of work. (this isn't entirely directed to you, just something I've noticed in general. A lot of my person friends have applied to companies, or asked me to give their resume to our hiring guy and it just lists school projects under their portfolio and it makes me sad on the inside). For comparison: - I had a 2.3 GPA in College. - I wrote a PSP RPG engine with basic collision detection and combat to try and emulate old school RPG's using the homebrew SDK info here - Using the NWN engine, I was hired to prototype an MMO (Arden: The World of William Shakespeare ) and I worked 8-48 hour days doing it for a year (yes, 48 hours straight) - I was turned down by 3 companies before I got offered the job at Obsidian (and Obsidian was my number one choice when I moved out ehre; least likely I assumed). I think you get my point. I got hired (luckily) and I like to think that I work hard enough for them to be glad they took the chance on hiring me. GPA can only get you so far, and while it sets you up for a good foundation for future knowledge, it doesn't have direct correlation to your actual applied knowledge, your work ethic, or your ability to work in the game industry. If you want to get here, keep up the good work. 4.0 is nothing to scoff at. It's an impressive feat in itself. But make sure you're making your own projects on the side, Have a healthy portfolio to show people when you graduate and apply for jobs. Write some outlines, some full-on short stories and some game mods to show your knowledge. Keep applying and show your determination. If you can't go straight into Design, get a QA job. Once you're in the door you can show off your amazing skills and get moved as needed. If you're truly passionate about something, in my opinion, it will show in your life and your skills. And eventually, it'll pay off. Good luck!

Thank you for actually offering your ideas and complains in a constructive fashion. I get very annoyed with people (in general) who like to just go on rants for no reason and rip someone's hard work apart without offering any good solutions. Not all problems have solutions and it's hard for a company to not have it's share of problems. I like to think we here are very aware of the problems and limitations of our past, present and future games and we are working very hard to find solutions. From the inside perspective, I really do think the OEI is very committed to making top notch original RPG's. The RPG market *is* very stale. As good as it was, I couldn't even play Oblivion because I was so burned out on fantasy text and epic dragon battles that seem to follow fun little delivery quests time and time again. But I LOVE Storm of Zehir. (and to be fair I hope to go back and play Oblivion). I think we've made a really great game with this expansion, and like Mask of the Betrayer perhaps it would have been better suited for a standalone title. But we have 2 other standalone titles in the works that I hope will carry the tradition of being really solid RPG's for you guys. Rest assured, we're trying.

We have 3 teams, 3 games. When SoZ ships I assume they'll give me something to work on At least I hope I still have a job!! Oh man, but I hope it's Diablo III! I'd love to work on that game!

Make sure the school teaches C++ (not sure if this has already been covered). I went to Indiana University. There are some amazing teachers there (Sabry, Mills, Rawlins to name a few) but they're all teaching their classes (circa 2005ish) in Java, Scheme and maybe Python (recent addition). In fact, I got to my 400 level graphics class (in OpenGL) and the first day the teacher said "I'm going to assume you all know C++ and C so we'll just jump into OpenGL", when in fact they had never even suggested C/C++ until the 400 level. I ended up teaching myself, and thanks to their strong foundation in learning how a language itself works, I was able to do it with relative ease and a small amount of time. But it wasn't pretty. Thankfully there was a non-major class in C++ that I was able to take to get the foundations and then go back and retake the OpenGL class, but it shouldn't be that hard. I think Indiana has changed this curriculum by now, but definitely look into your school's CS program to make sure at some point they teach you C++ instead of just expecting you to know it Best of luck.

Haha I don't just toss around my signature like it's nothing!

If I can make a suggestion? Make it like the letters A and P are middle of epic fight of awesome propotions. The A letter would be dualwielding ninjas dualwielding katanas and the letter P would be dualwielding robots dualwielding rocket launchers. It would be Epic. /signed.

The ALPHA PROTOCOL logo hasn't been finalized, so we're waiting until we have something nice and pretty to put up there. (I asked around the office a while back) No worries, friends! You know what we're making! (Well, most of it )