J.E. Sawyer

For a dude that cool, "simply" never applies.

This guy. Is the coolest guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Night_vi...xperimental.jpg http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123010365 Did I just blow your mind?

Congratulations on your extraordinary GIRLDAR. You have detected one of the six female humans at Obsidian.

Nope, just stuff we have to optimize on our end.

BTW, Parker and Feargus are sort of paraphrasing this Snow Crash quote from Neal Stephenson: "Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother****er in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

Euphoria is an entire animation system; to the best of my knowledge, it can't just be implemented for ragdoll deaths. Framerate issues are probably legitimate framerate issues. Mike does move with the strikes, but some of the footage had Mike knocking the guy up against a wall or other barrier. In cases like that, Mike gets pushed back away from the target to prevent interpenetration. It gives the impression that Mike is sliding in place -- which he is, but only because the system is preventing a more obvious/bad bug from happening.

No idea, sorry. Zoma: I really don't like the effect most breakout boxes have on video quality, but I think when that was captured, it might have been all that we had available.

One is a compressed video screenshot that was captured through a breakout box, the other is an ordinary screenshot. Guess which is which. E: Okay, I won't make you guess. The top one is a compressed video screenshot. I'm 95% sure it was captured using analog component cables through a breakout box, resulting in a loss of contrast and overall quality.

I think the .32 revolver and Chinese pistols in F3 are particularly problematic because they are worse than what you start with and far worse than other handguns you find later on. I think Fallout 1's progression was pretty good. The 10mm pistol felt like a solid rat-exploder and sufficed until just about the point where you go visit the raiders. Ammo for the more powerful Desert Eagle .44 pistol and 14mm aren't super common at first (IIRC), so the 10mm still remains valuable. I think there are ways that the 10mm pistol could remain viable in F3, but it has more to do with pistols in general than the 10mm specifically. A guy at work has been playing F3 with a mod that gives the player very large VATS penalties with firearms at close range, though the penalties are reduced quite a bit for pistols. It doesn't help much with purely real-time players, but it does make a big difference for VATS folks. Also, I don't really feel (as a player) that the gear I start with should be viable at the end of the game. When I play games with tiered item progression, I like the feeling that the weapon I am using is slowly outclassed as my foes become more powerful. Seeing the new weapon, whether it's being used by some other character or sitting all shiny in a store window, motivates me to go get it. And when I do get that weapon, it feels good to get over "the hump". That doesn't mean I feel that my starting gear should be worthless garbage within 30 minutes, but I certainly don't expect to be using any of that stuff halfway through the game, much less popping caps into Tesla-armored Enclave troopers 40 hours in.

It's quite serendipitous that this topic came up right now. In RPGs, I think it's fine to have "intro" weapons that are later outclassed by "big kid" weapons. For example, you go from a 9mm pistol to a 10mm pistol or a .357 magnum revolver to a .44 magnum revolver. And later on, maybe you ditch the pistols altogether and just run around with assault rifles and missiles. But I do think it's good to have something about the lower level stuff that's appealing. For example, the 10mm pistol outclasses the 9mm in every way except magazine capacity, which is significantly higher on the 9mm. The .44 magnum revolver outclasses the .357 revolver in every way except recoil, which is significantly higher on the .44. And when you get to big kid weapons, maybe using the revolvers and pistols is still useful because they are durable, reliable, and have cheap ammo. But the differences should be distinct and noticeable, always. Even when you get into bigger weapons like rifles, you can still make some clear trade-offs: a low-power, high-RoF lever-action vs. a high-power, low-RoF bolt-action. They might even out to the same DPS (or MDPS or whatever the kids are using these days), but the feel would be much different to the player.

I think this is a very good point. Cosmetic/feel good options can be fine in limited numbers, but I personally always want options to offer me something distinctly different from the other things already on the table. Rainbow Six: Vegas was full of guns that were marginally different: dozens of assault rifles with one pip more or less in their six (I think) different categories. Ultimately, those stats were pretty irrelevant compared to the attachments (especially scopes) on the guns.

I read it as, "more buttons often means more options" ...break... "more options, therefore more interesting gameplay". More buttons possibly equals more options, more options necessarily means more interesting gameplay. It came across as an absolutist statement, which is why I questioned it. Again, if that's not what CrashGirl meant, it's easy enough to clarify.

That assumes that more options always = more interesting gameplay, which I think is highly questionable. I think the keywords to each sentence are often and always, so let's combine them. I think CrashGirl is capable of clarifying what the intended reading should be. I have no idea why they removed it from FEAR 2 but corner-leaning worked fantastically in Splinter Cell, GRAW, and (especially) Rainbow Six: Vegas.

I think it's a pretty common feeling that 1st and 2nd level in 3E are garbage, balance-wise.

I think the only one I'm actually using is Better Stimpacks (sic). http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1358

That assumes that more options always = more interesting gameplay, which I think is highly questionable.

Excluding straight text input, how many keys and buttons did the original Fallout use? Also, the PS3/360 have four face buttons, two shoulder buttons, two triggers, a 4-directional (or more) d-pad, two analog sticks, two analog stick buttons, back/select, and start buttons. It's a bit more than "a joystick and five buttons". Also, LAWL WHAT DO CONSOLE GAMERS KNOW ABOUT COMPLEX INPUT SYSTEMS?!

Anything Victorian sucks. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels are awesome.

Yep, it's in D&P, though Foucault was building on an idea of Jeremy Bentham's.

http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Pr...t/dp/0679752552 It's good.

The MTT Turbine Superbike is the best turbine-powered motorcycle I've ever seen.

http://www.madmaxmovies.com/archives/Press...axDogHuddle.jpg Purebred blue heelers (Australian cattle dogs) have dark eyes, but heterochromia is common among them as well as in Australian shepherds.

I also hate that.

Sure, the player should be able to turn down their help, but when it comes to CNPCs in certain circumstances, being the C is the best option.