J.E. Sawyer

It sounds reasonable but why "believe", while you are the project director? ...I guess this is probably a question about developing process. I didn't personally code it, but that is the way it is supposed to behave and appears to behave.

I believe it is only triggered when you kill the last hostile within range. So if you're in an extended firefight, it's not going to go off until the last target drops.

It isn't seen after every kill and it's optional.

Yesterday was a bad day, but today went quite well. I cheered on Germany at Old World Village in Huntington Beach and then retreated to an almost abandoned sports bar in Irvine to quietly root on Argentina with a friend. Terrible calls in both games, but I think the better teams are moving on. I like both DFB and Argentina, but I hope Germany takes it next Saturday. He had a nice assist to an offside player.

These two things are not similar in terms of resources and tuning required. The former is as simple as applying an (already extant) facing-based knockdown animation on someone caught in the path of a door being kicked open. The latter, at a minimum, requires synchronized animations between Mike and ragdoll knocked out characters; idle and directional movement cycles for Mike and the character being moved; and subsequent transitions out of those states back into ragdoll. Stealth, done well, is a system that requires a large number of features and a huge amount of tuning. Frankly, knocking a dude down is simple as hell.

From a high level, it's important that the people who are developing combat mechanics have a thorough understanding not only of the moment-to-moment player experience but also what is required from the engine to support that player experience. Onyx has been in development for about 4+ years and we've (especially Nathaniel and the programmers) put a lot of effort into ensuring that the core combat game play can be well-supported by the engine. But the other side of this is ensuring that individual area designers are using the core game play mechanics well. On DS3, that's Nathaniel's responsibility. On F:NV, it's mine.

Nathaniel understands combat mechanics very well. You have nothing to worry about in that department.

Germany played very well at the start of the second half, but Podolski alone can't make up for a missing man on the field. At the end they were too tired and too rushed to put anything together.

A mountain of work is made from many trivial tasks.

Actually, the task to be done once game play and other features are set is "bug fixing", a task Obsidian has regularly been criticized for not performing steadfastly enough.

"Posing for"? Like, as a model? It's time to Get Real™. In 1993-ish, my father did sculpture restoration work for the city of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He was assisted in this endeavor by TSR staff artist Jeff "Pretty Much Every Major AD&D Pre-3E Book Cover" Easley. I wanted to be a fantasy illustrator, so I was really excited to meet him, Brom, Clyde Caldwell, Robh Ruppel, and some of the other TSR illustrators. Robh Ruppel needed a model for a Solamnic squire on the cover of a module he was illustrating, so he called up my dad and asked if I could do it. The module was Knight's Sword, and was written by... future Black Isle co-worker Colin McComb! ... though I didn't realize that the guy who wrote the module I was on the cover of worked at Black Isle for the first year I was in Black Isle. True stories. http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dl/dl-dlq1.htm (I'm the dragon.)

Survival affects the efficacy of food items, not stimpaks.

They can be, but what I listed are usually the deciding factors in any given moment.

Diablo 3 won't be on consoles.

Nathaniel is a good designer. BTW. In case anyone cares.

Small Guns and Big Guns were not combined; Big Guns was eliminated and the weapons formerly under that skill were distributed to other skills. The rocket launcher and grenade machine gun are under the Explosives skill. The Gatling laser is under Energy Weapons, etc. Even within each weapon skill and each "tier" within each weapon, there are pretty significant tactical differences between weapons. The player has the following to consider: * DAM vs. DT - A big deal. Do not shoot a heavily armored target with standard 9mm bullets. * DPS vs. Health - Some targets have a boatload of health and low DT. DPS is more important against these guys. * RoF vs. Spread - Though not always the case (the minigun is a notable exception if you have a high enough ST), higher RoF weapons tend to have worse spread. I have a few "proving ground" areas in the game where I will drop in and use the weapons from a given skill/tier in different circumstances and adjust them based on viability in a given niche. If I ever find myself saying, "When would I ever use this?" I go back to the drawing board.

It got more weapons to give more tactical options to the player. In the video, I hope you noticed that the minigun was more effective at dealing with individual targets than the GMG. That's by design.

The FoV in F3 is 70 degrees, so things can "fisheye" pretty easily.

F:NV's UI makes it very clear what skill governs the use of any given weapon.

I said energy ammunition, which is whatever we define it as. The defining characteristics are arbitrary but consistent. It's less important that any individual person agree on where a weapon should be placed, more important that we are consistent about where we place things and that they are placed in skills that help balance the lineup. To use another example: working on the internal components of a computer to recover corrupted data. Some people might think that's Science. Others might think it's Repair. Where we put it ultimately doesn't matter outside of the context of a) what the game consistently establishes each skill is used for and b) how often each skill gets used. You want to put things roughly where people expect them to be, but in cases where different people expect different things, the best you can do is make a decision based on game play factors and be consistent about it

We also have a lot of weapons, so hopefully you will be satisfied with the selection.

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons.

It's what they are classified as right now. Flamer fuel weapons are oddballs because they aren't really Explosives, or Guns, or Energy Weapons. From a balance perspective, Energy Weapons seemed like a good fit for Flamer Fuel weapons.

Technically all firearms do is contain and direct explosions. Ergo, you have just made me re-classify all guns as Explosives.

Correct.