J.E. Sawyer

Yes. He is an old man in SoZ. You can either listen to his stories and receive a nice morningstar (Brainscrambler) or attack him to get his morningstar and the Cadorna Family Sword, which was gifted to him by Phlan ex-councilman Porphyrys Cadorna. Also there is a special conversation chain between Skullcrusher and Ribsmasher if Ribsmasher is in the party when you meet SK for the first time.

I think it's also worth mentioning that he isn't maintaining the game effects on the characters on the overland map, so any bonuses you "should" be receiving there are still absent. E.g., dex bonus to Hide from Cat's Grace, skill bonus from Prayer, etc. Again, not to knock Netriak, but it doesn't solve the problem entirely.

Yeah, it's too time consuming and expensive for a team that's focusing on an entire game instead of a single feature. Xthon summed it up pretty well in the thread on the topic: I think it's worth noting three things: 1. There are more community members than devs. In other words, the community can come up with more ideas more quickly. 2. The devs have multiple issues to work on. 3. Sometimes, when you are in the middle of a problem, it takes someone outside to see a solution. If you focus on one thing and release it as a mod in an environment that's extremely tolerant of buggy behavior, you can solve a lot of things. I don't want to knock Netriak; it's an ingenious solution that captures 95% of the gameplay cases. But it's obviously not bulletproof and it was the one thing he was focusing on. SoZ had three full-time programmers: Bobby Null (junior), Justin Reynard (junior), and Rich Taylor (lead). Toward the end of the project, they also had Anthony Davis. That's not a lot of programmers for everything they had to implement and update. I've seen a lot of threads where people commented on the overland map, party creation features, and party dialogue as though they were really simple to implement and could have been done in a snap by any modder with a passing interest in it. They weren't, and they couldn't -- not because there aren't talented modders, but because some of these features demanded code changes. On any project, there comes a point in time where you have to make decisions on what features to keep and what features to cut off. This also applies to solving bugs. I previously gave the example of the stacking issues in NWN1/2. The "proper" solution to that problem would be to build in bonus types to all bonuses, default unspecified/unnamed bonuses to enhancement (for ability score bonuses, anyway), and go back to alter all existing item templates and scripts with the new bonus typing. But from a practical perspective, it wasn't a good use of time compared to everything else we had to deal with on the project.

I understand the complaint, but please tone down the attitude. You're aggressively arguing from the position of someone unfamiliar with the code base and trivializing things that aren't trivial. If it were as simple as MAINTAIN_BUFFS_BUT_REMOVE_VFX_ON_THE_GUY = TRUE, we would have done it. We're working with a code base that's approaching its tenth anniversary and has accumulated an enormous amount of content over NWN, SoU, HotU, NWN2, MotB, and now SoZ. Virtually anything could be accomplished or changed in a game given enough time, but it's not always a wise use of time. And often, the limitations of ancient engineering decisions are not immediately apparent when a new system (like the overland map) is being designed. I know it's comfortable to assume that every feature is simple to implement and every bug is easy to fix, but that doesn't match the reality of the situation. NWN and NWN2 are driven by logic, data, and script. Visual effects can come from a wide variety of sources within those categories, and those effects often do not carry data with them that allows for easy sorting/categorization. That can make it difficult to suppress the visual effects you don't want but retain the visual effects you do want. Here's an analogous NWN2 situation: when I came onto NWN2, I learned that stacking rules were not properly implemented in the engine. Some things were handled code-side, some were handled haphazardly in script, and most "by-the-book" stacking rules were totally ignored. That's why in NWN, SoU, and HotU, you could stack tons of ability score-modifying items together to get super high stats. There were so many items, game effects and script functions that used the various bonus effects that it would have been incredibly laborious to retrofit everything to follow the proper rules. We talked to WotC about it and they said they would rather have nothing stack than everything stack, and that was the most accurate D&D solution we could implement given the resources available. As a hack, Andy Woo put in an exception for Barbarian Rage, but it was the hackiest hack that every hacked. D&D is really big. The Aurora code base is really big. The accumulated content of the games is huge. We do genuinely screw up here at Obsidian, but we're not a gang of drooling, lazy buffoons. EDIT: As an addendum, this was something that several programmers have looked at, and there did not seem to be a "magic bullet" that did everything people would want/nothing they did not want. It's possible that could change in the future, but it comes down to available time for analysis and implementation.

I used buffs a lot in my playthrough. Didn't seem useless at all. I also could have sworn I cast non-buffs while playing.

Dead Space.

The designers of F1/2/3/Tactics were not trying to model ballistics at all when they assigned damage properties to weapons, and the weapons do not maintain statistical continuity. They assigned weapons whatever damage value seemed to work and spread the ammo types out as seemed sensible. The AK-47 and FN-FAL in F:T had identical ranges, identical ammo type (7.62mm), but the former did 12-25 points of damage and the latter did 24-36.

Based on the NWN2 engine games, no it isn't rational. That said, the Aliens engine is smooth, in part because I am a raging t-rex when it comes to ensuring that framerate stays at 30 even in the worst circumstances. I absolutely can't stand games that run below 25 fps.

Yeah the NWN2 load times are pretty abysmal. :/ When compared to the Oblivion/F3 engine, it's particularly apparent; TES4/F3 levels load incredibly fast.

I fondly remember reading about how, during the Battle of Cr

Development of Onyx began after AP started. The team was familiar (more or less) with UE3, and because of the core mechanic of the game (taking cover and shooting people in the face), it seemed to be a good fit.

There's a pretty nice amount of variety. One of the reasons we chose AK was because of its wide variety of strikes. Some enemies are more skilled at hand to hand defense and are more likely to block and counter. How quickly you can take someone down does depend on the enemy and how you built your character. Cl_Flushentityhero: I wouldn't really say it's sophisticated. It's simple, but it has good variety and a little more flexibility than just doing the same two-hit combo on a guy over and over. It's very easy to target enemies with CQC when you get up on them, whereas aiming and targeting a gun can be a little trickier at close range (especially on a console controller). I think people will mostly use CQC from stealth, to perform immediate (and silent) take downs. In firefights, it will often be reserved for situations where enemies just get too close to make standard running and gunning easy. One of the CQC unlocks is a quick flying knee (not AK, but... come on, flying knees are pretty sweet), so you can also use it to quickly send a guy flying if someone steps out while you're in a running state.

In standard combat situations, Mike performs linked sequences of rapid punches and kicks. This is "standard" (albeit cool-looking) pummeling, with a nice amount of variety. This is CQC for mashers. Press button, hit opponent. The longer you push CQC strings, the more likely it is that the opponent will block and counter. You can also hold the CQC button (instead of a tap) for a strong attack, which stumbles the target backward. If you sneak up on a target or stun the target (through a couple of means), you can do a front or rear take down. Under normal circumstances, this is a harsh but non-lethal take down that knocks the target out. If you have a karambit knife equipped, it is a harsh and very lethal take down that makes your mom cry.

And it exists quite prominently in many European cultures today. Any European who disbelieves this is living in a stultifying state of denial.

Kucinich is waaaaaaay more left than either H-Rod or Obama. Like, by a lot. I suppose it's possible that with only Romney/Huckabee to run against, McCain may have fared more poorly. I also think that either Romney or Huckabee would have done more poorly in the general election because they are "more right". A lot of conservatives did not like McCain being the Rep candidate, but voted for him anyway. It's a lot easier for a moderate voter to swing to the other side if they don't like a candidate. e: I'll also argue that while Palin frequently showed higher rally numbers than McCain, I ultimately believe that Palin lost McCain a lot more moderate votes than she gained from PUMAs. Increasing fanatic rally numbers among those likely to go to rallies doesn't necessarily translate to more votes from people who are unlikely to go to rallies (non-fanatics). I believe Palin mobilized a very enthusiastic sub-section of conservatives and turned off a lot of moderate voters.

Pretty much all Democratic Party candidates in the primaries held a lot of similar views to Obama, so I don't really buy that. We have a Socialist Party in the U.S. They are socialists. Obama is a Democrat, with left-leaning capitalist policies. He is as socialist as McCain was libertarian. Which is to say, not really at all. They were both centrists within their own parties, which is (unsurprisingly) why they won their primaries. The spectrum of socialism is pretty broad in application, running from middle of the road/soft socialist European states to heavier socialist states like Sweden to "textbook" socialist states like Cuba or China. Obama's policies are pretty far away from those, and I think it's obnoxious to refer to him as a socialist because of it. His views and stances are pretty in line with the Democratic Party as a whole.

Hey, Europeans in this thread, what do you think about people calling Obama a socialist?

I can't wait for conservatives to lead the charge for a D.C. ballot initiative to throw out SCOTUS's overturning of the D.C. handgun ban.

I'm a socially liberal atheist. I was a member of the Libertarian Party for a while before a) that party became the "we hate brown people from the south" party and b) I realized that most of the country is populated by fiscally irresponsible folks who would turn the free market into a noose if it looked like there was a big screen TV in it for them.

Personally, I think the entire ballot initiative system is terrible. The U.S. is a representative republic instead of a direct democracy for a reason. The amount of money (money California DOESN'T HAVE) spent on ballot initiatives in California is unbelievable. At its worst, democracy truly is the equivalent of two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Let's try to evolve beyond that. If you want to pass legislation, pass it through the legislature. The fact that we're throwing ballot initiatives to the voters when our budget is still in such a terrible state is... man, it's outright embarrassing. If California voters had their way, no one would pay any taxes and anything viewed as a non-majority interest would never get any money. Great! Anyway, there has to be a final arbiter of the constitutionality of any legislation we pass. That's why the supreme court of California/federal supreme court reviews these things. It becomes "judicial activism" only when they rule against what someone likes.

I'm exaggerating, but this is often an argument used against gay marriage. It's the "slippery slope" -- the same idea applies to the decriminalization of marijuana. I have very strong opinions on Prop 8, but I try to keep most of my political posting on these boards pretty minimal.

If gay people can get married, it's an inevitable descent to 10 year-olds being forced to engage in mass pedo-necro-bestiality with their dead underage family dogs.

Ray-Ban RB3267s. w00t

The people in the video game are not real, Aram. They can't feel pain.

Yeah we're allowing optional non-lethal takedowns. Peace.