J.E. Sawyer

Well, it's coming out in the U.S. on the 5th as Alien Shooter: Vengeance, so they beat us to market by about two years.

This is a game about destroying thousands upon thousands of aliens. http://www.sigma-team.net/alienshooter_2/index.htm Demo patch that removes time limit. http://files.filefront.com/as2demo%20eng%2...;/fileinfo.html Now on Steam http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?ar...&AppId=6290

I think it's more likely that Bethesda will change those things than move to a top-down third person camera with turn-based combat.

PoR:RoMD had terrible turn-based combat and also was terrible in many other ways. Depending on how far Bethesda goes in restructuring SPECIAL and the combat system, it might wind up being mechanically similar to various FPSs/TPSs with some sort of aim-assist or stat-based accuracy modifiers. If that's the case, it will be as similar to F1 and F2 as GTA3 was to GTA and GTA2 -- but that doesn't say anything about whether or not it will be fun to the average person. If they take firearms in the direction of Bloodlines -- yeah, I don't think many people will like it. If the firearms feel solid even at low levels and become better over time, I think a lot of people will like it. People make comparisons to F:BoS as though that's proof that a Fallout title with heavy action is doomed to fail. F:BoS, like PoR:RoMD, was a bad game, across the board. Forget genre classifications, it wasn't fun in any way. I think that Oblivion was about as anti-Fallout as you can get short of the ability to wander around, but millions of people had fun with it. I sort of break down the sad-face-for-Fallout elements in Oblivion as follows: * Scaling encounters - Terrible, not Fallout at all. * Learn-by-doing - Not SPECIAL. * No companions - Not Fallout. * Completely stand-alone quest lines that are not recognized elsewhere - Terrible and not Fallout. * No significant reputation system - Bad news and not Fallout. * Completely real-time combat - Not SPECIAL. The things above that are not like SPECIAL/Fallout and terrible in an RPG are the things that I am most eager to see changed in Fallout 3. When learn-by-doing systems are done well, I like them. When real-time combat is done well (as it is in a lot of FPSs), I like it. Companions... well, I'd like to see them if they can be done well, but my heart isn't set on them. The things I really want to see Bethesda change in Fallout 3 all have to do with choice and consequence -- which I still believe are most important in an RPG, regardless of rule mechanics or combat systems.

Barbarians in NWN2 will always have more hit points than a fighter with the same level and con. When raging, barbarians gain even more. Khelgar starts the game with 17 Str, 16 Con. If you have him using two-handed weapons and put even one more point in his Str stat, he's going to do a lot of damage, no question. And weapon specialization will always give fighters an edge in melee damage against a non-raging barbarian, but Andy Woo did make an exception for barbarian's rage: it always stacks with all other bonuses. The +2 to damage a fighter gets with a single weapon type becomes +2 to all melee damage when a barbarian rages. I'm also kind of put off by some contradictory ideas in the article. If barbarians are in such dire straits, why complain that they can wear chain mail or use magic items? Chain shirts are probably the best armor in 3E/v3.5, and since they are light armor, barbarians that wear them can still make use of their increased movement rate. I do think that barbarians in 3E/v3.5 are a lot different from the Unearthed Arcana barbarians, but I think they're pretty tough anyway.

By that reasoning, Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is proof that turn-based D&D is terrible.

Regardless of its RPG merits or flaws, Oblivion was worth the price of admission simply because you could do stuff like this:

The running commentary in the comments section here is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJ3w7lJqyU Though to be honest, Diego's Hand of God goal has overshadowed the goal that came shortly after, which was downright amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPWsGMsHDlo

I don't have much time to exercise these days. I used to fence sabre and play soccer (fullback). It makes it even funnier that they will never stop hating Maradona for '86.

http://freelimewire.info/2007/what-was-the...rents-for-2006/ Did you know that Fallout is a dead license? It's true. EDIT: 1 billion lolz. I have to imagine those are partial downloads/failed attempts or something.

It would help everyone if you gave examples of what aspects of SPECIAL sucked in real time.

Examples of failure are not proof of fundamental incompatability. I think the main SPECIAL translation issues with Tactics were a) keeping skills in Tactics that were either not used or conceptually weird for a game with emphasis on tactical combat and b) translating movement rate/cost to real time in a way that caused a lot of wackiness. Of course, I thought that some of SPECIAL's skills should have been excised for a future RPG anyway, so that should come as no surprise. When I started running Fallout tabletop games, the peek n' spray n' hide gunfights got pretty dull (as they can sometimes be in the Fallout games). That's why I switched over to a move > charge > act system that didn't even use AP. Some aspects of SPECIAL are great. Other aspects are not so great. If Bethesda keeps the great aspects and ditches the not so great aspects, I'm certainly not going to cry about it. I have no doubt that they are going to make a real time game; I just hope that they do it well. I thought Oblivion's ranged combat was fine. It was the hand-to-hand that I found unbearable.

Most of the dialogues will be "NWN1-style", with a few exceptions for rare cutscenes. Though Vance and Appelhans created great concept work, there were some concepts that were never completed. Many of the CNPCs were never concepted, and some of the other "major players" were not concepted.

I'm not sure. It happened after I tried pointing my module at a custom .tlk file to pull feat names. The module didn't load properly in the engine, so I went back into the toolset and reloaded the module, but it was corrupted (no elements listed under areas, scripts, conversations, etc.). Luckily, most of my recent work has been focused on custom feats and the scripts that give them, so very little work was lost.

My core module was corrupted this morning, which was exciting. I now consider myself a "blooded" modder of the tribe. Of course, I had a backup.

It was exactly the same, but you only had one character. You also couldn't select spells for companions, which directly ties into their AI. Most of the spells that OC companions used in NWN1 were... well, they were "no-brainers", selected in their package for you. We really should have re-visited the companion AI earlier, though.

All of the groups that were originally involved with the story are still involved, but two of them now seem inappropriate choices for faction development. You can still make meaningful choices with them, but their arcs aren't as long or complex as the other groups'.

I don't think I would get anything implanted on my eye, since that is such an important and sensitive area. I wore earrings and eyebrow rings in high school and college, but I got really annoyed at all of the hassle and maintenance that went along with it. I have about twelve tattoos and will be getting a thirteenth in a few weeks.

$296 Dell 22" Widescreen Flat Panel. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/product...19&sku=320-5205 I use a 20" and a 24" widescreen at work and they are both great.

I would have been lead on the project I'm on now, anyway. I would much rather have seen NWN2 go out in better shape and simply had "additional design" credits on the game. Anyone who's more concerned about their credits on a title than how it turns out has their head in the wrong place.

It isn't done. It's in beta stage and needs testing, which is why it doesn't automatically appear on the downloader. We could mess around with it internally using a dozen people or we could allow superfans to check it out with all appropriate warnings. The latter is a lot more effective -- and wholly voluntary.

I'm confident there are other glee-inducing base and prestige classes we could have implemented with fewer resources.

I'm not sure what tutorials you used, but adding a new area was one of the first things covered in the first tutorial I went through. http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/First_Steps

The Oblivion editor is really easy to use. You may want to try that.

I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate estimate. Certainly the renderer and toolset took more effort, but in terms of gameplay features, warlocks took more time to implement than anything else. Their GUI requirements alone took up an enormous amount of time.