Matthew Rorie

I reread pretty much all of Raymond Chandler's novels over the break (not as intimidating as it sounds; he only wrote 7 of them), and am now working on The Raymond Chandler Papers. Some interesting stuff in there; one of his paragraphs on movies in the 40s would probably apply to game development now. I liked this bit, too: "My wife came from New York. She likes California except during the hot months, but I think she agrees with me that the percentage of phonies in the population is increasing. No doubt in years, or centuries to come, this will be the center of civilization, but the melting-pot stage bores me horribly. I like people with manners, grace, some social intuition, an education slightly above the Reader's Digest fan, people whose pride of living does not express itself in their kitchen gadgets and their automobiles."

Welcome to the forum, Skie. We discussed a bit about the website in this thread. The official site hasn't been updated in a while, though.

GDC traditionally has not been intended for press, but over the past few years, especially since E3 began to scale back in intensity, the SF GDC has become much bigger in terms of product demonstrations and announcements, mostly because all of the major online outlets are based in SF. (It's a 10 minute walk from GameSpot and 1up to the Moscone Center, where the SF GDC is held, and IGN is a 15 minute drive away.) So a lot of companies try to kill two birds with one stone and do the usual dev-focused stuff at GDC while also doing press-targeted stuff, either at GDC or in visits to the website offices.

If I had better guilds I'm sure I'd be more into it. As it is most of my friends are spread across multiple servers, and the guilds I wind up joining are full of people who say nothing but DING! all day long. Or there's a flood of "GRATS DOOD" whenever someone gets an achievement, even if it's for catching five fish or clearing out the deadmines or something like that. Signal to noise ratio is a bit whacked, I guess.

I got to 80 and stopped playing that character (protection War) immediately. For whatever reason, I get very bored at max level in Warcraft and always have to switch to another character right away...I wound up with five 70's by the end of WOTLK (six now if you include my Death Knight), but not one of them ever set foot in any raids, or even did many dungeons. I like soloing but I need that experience gain and new spells/talents to feel like my character is progressing. Gear alone doesn't really do it for me. So I cancelled my account today! I've done it before, and I have no idea if it'll stick or not, but we'll see in a couple months when the subscription runs down. All I know is that I have a pile of books that aren't getting read because I spend 1.5/2 hours a day playing WoW.

I've always liked Greg Rucka's Queen and Country books/comics.

Our next game will be set in Lazytown.

Just so you guys know, almost everyone at Obsidian knows how to use periods. I don't know how Dehen managed to get hired on without this vital skill.

SMGs are always dual-wielded, but you can only use one pistol at any given time.

A new Atlus dungeon-crawler. http://www.atlus.com/darkspire/ Even has a "classic mode" where you can switch on what appear to be vector graphics.

Nice pictures; hope you enjoyed your trip! I always have a good time when I go overseas, even if it's almost always for work.

Anyone follow comics that read the Secret Invasion stuff? I liked the build-up to the crossover, but I thought that, in the end, the payoff was a bit of a letdown. But then, I like the ambition that Marvel seems to have for their crossovers, which are generally very well-executed. I can't remember the last DC crossover that was actually worth following.

So if you read the preview on AP in the latest issue of OXM, the last paragraph should answer the delay question: we're now shooting on being out next summer. While that might be disappointing to some of you (sorry!), in the end everyone's goal is for AP to be a high-quality game, and the extra time will let us make the game as good as it can possibly be.

Jeff Buckley - Morning Theft. Such a shame this guy died; he could've been a classic.

The Incredible Hulk (2008), Hellboy II, and Han****. None of which were particularly remarkable, unfortunately. I've been netflixing a few of the popcorn movies that I missed out on the first time around through theaters. Overall it's been a pretty bad year for movies, I think, at least in terms of the big-budget films.

We can call them "things that you throw that may or may not explode", if we want to be more generic. The 'gadgets' category covers a good number of things that you can carry around, not all of which will be lethal.

And another one from Roberto Clemente (no relation (as far as I know)): I'm new to the gaming industry myself, so I know where you're coming from

Here's an answer from Obsidian's own Kevin Spangler! 1.If you had to re-apply for your position, what would you put on your demo reel to secure an interview? There were a few things on my demo reel that weren't my best work...I'd get rid of those. Those things, don't even bother putting them on your reel. You only want people to see your absolute best work. 2.What is the best advice you could give a student who is just starting? If you get the chance to take an internship, do it! That's the one thing I regret was not taking an internship during school. It'll be tough to manage your time, but it'll be worth the head start. I have this job because I took an internship. 3.What does a typical day at work entail? When I'm not helping with the Mocap shoots, I'm animating. I do everything from running shoots, to cleaning mocap animation. We also hand key animations. And Meetings! We have a lot of meetings, which I think is great because you can never have too much communication. 4.I know that this industry is very demanding, and requires a lot of hard work. That said, do you still have fun amidst all the chaos? Of course. Right now, we are pretty busy...but everyone has the same interests as you, generally speaking, so we all enjoy hanging out with each other. Everyone plays games. Lots of people play WOW... A bunch of us have a night where we get together and play fighting games. It's awesome. It's the best job I've ever had. Kevin Spangler - Junior Animator

You always dual-wield SMGs. That counts as one weapon in your loadout, though, so you can carry two SMGs and a pistol, for instance.

I believe the current plan is to only allow MT to carry two weapons, which you choose before a mission. You're probably going to be pretty specialized in your weapon skills, anyway, so you probably wouldn't use all four weapons even if you brought them all.

All the guns are separate skills, yeah. Melee and grenades are also different skills. Ballet unlocks the tutu outfit for Thorton and turns him into a Terminator.

How are the Caps doing this year? I haven't been following them too much lately. (Hard to when none of the games are on TV anymore.)

Hey Shawn. I emailed some of our artists and will see if any of them are able to answer your questions.

We read reviews, check forum posts, check up on RPG blogs, and the like. We certainly try to get as many various opinions as we can on a game to see what people think about it, whether good or bad.

The first big-site review is up: http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3171538&p=1 B+ from the reviewer, currently rocking an A from the users.