Nightshape

I personally never resell any games I buy, I also know alot of other people who don't, but naturally that doesn't mean that everyone doesn't. I don't know that you're right, or that you're wrong... This is more opinion surely? From what I recall its the retailer that sets the price, even where digital distribution is concerned. A friend of mine actually works for GAME (UK retailer), they actually increased price's by

That is pretty much the only reason people are still buying so many console games. If the publishers finally have their way and kill the console second-hand market then it will be hilarious to see them blame low sales on some other scapegoat(piracy maybe?) I firmly believe that all games should have demos(that FEAR2 demo was like the first PC demo of a big game in 3 months) and that people should only buy games that they think are actually worth the money.(maybe we'd get better games then) Retailer's take something in region of a 40% cut from a game which is sold new. The rest goes to publisher/developer etc... A second hand game is pure profit for the retailer. A game costing $50 once sold makes $20 for the retailer. I buy back that game for $15, and sell it on again at $30, that's just increased the retailers profit. Hence a game which cost $50 in the first place has now made $50 for the retailer, with a risk of $15, the actual folk who've worked on the product have made $30. The sale also only counts as a single unit sold. That's my basic issue with second hand games, I can understand why people buy second hand, it's cheaper so that's a no brainer, but the retailers are making an absolute killing while the developer probably see's what $10 of every unit sold. Naturally there is some room for movement, but those figures are around the correct figure. I agree with the idea of demo's in principle, but it's not always practical to develop a demo.

No it isn't. When something is mine, and I decide to get rid of it, I wanna be able be to get rid of it. That's a minefield, I'm not getting into it.

Second Hand market is evil.

I don't believe I have seen enough to comment on general quality. Needless to say I am having fun.

SoZ reminds me a little of really old CRPG's like, Dragon Wars and PoR, in terms of it's general philosophy. I'll have more to say when I'm done with it naturally, but I've played about 6-8 hours. I'm finding the fact that the narritive is fairly lite to be a good thing as I'm playing it in a more casual manner, jumping in and out of play for an hour or so at a time is actually making the experience enjoyable. It just happends to fit with how much time I can dedicate to gaming at the moment.

Having not finished SoZ yet, I can't really comment on much... I certainly don't dislike the game, but my complaints are pretty much the same as always, clunky interface, and frustration with the camera(s). The performance is now atleast acceptable.

lol. Do you guys keep little sayings like this taped up in the lounge? Nothing like having built in excuses for your failures. It's a fact! 100% true.

On what planet is this? If I buy something that doesn't work, I can take it back forr a refund and buy something else. It's hardly an alien concept. And you should, but you seem to have a major issue with "bugs" in general, I'm just saying its impractical. My last 2 game purchases both had game stopping bugs. Not minor bugs like the mouse cursor flickers briefly over part of the GUI, but bugs, like I can't play the game type bugs. One of them involved a cutscene not ending properly and causing a total lock up of the pc. I'll agree that it was most likely some kind of system config conflict, since some people had the problem, but some didn't. I agree that it may not be practical for the coders to be able to account for every possible conflict on a system, but I should be able to take the game back for a refund when that happens. The other bug involved a trigger not activating that basically made it impossible to talk to a person who needed to be talked to advance the game. Lots of people experience this problem as well, and neither the devs nor the publishers ever even admitted to the problem. Last I heard there was no workaround except to load saves from further and further back and see if you can avoid the problem. This is an in-game bug and is completely unacceptable. Again though, simply having the option for a refund would be sufficient. Its the fact that developers and publishers can simply take my money without ever having to worry about giving it back if what I paid for doesn't work right. That is what bugs me so much. The retailer is in my opinion at fault, without getting too deep into the issues, the retailer takes about 40% of the cost of a game, they only pay for the ones they sell, the rest are often sent back to the publisher, my memory could be wrong but from what I recall that is how it works. The retailer should give the money back or exchange the product, that's how I personally feel about it. If you find yourself with a game that has game breaking bugs and it's not going to be fixed by the developer, I agree you should be able to return it to the publisher. But the idea that a dev doesn't care about the quality of a product is crazy.

Yeah coz I wake up everyday and think "I hate crashgirl, I'm gunna take her money and spend it on hookers, strippers and booze, then maybe write some crap code while i post on the Obsidian Forum". Do you realise that companies have coding standards, code reviews, etc... It's merely that you can't always get it 100% right 100% of the time.

On what planet is this? If I buy something that doesn't work, I can take it back forr a refund and buy something else. It's hardly an alien concept. And you should, but you seem to have a major issue with "bugs" in general, I'm just saying its impractical. Edit: Frankly put, you should be able to take a product that does not work back to the store, I blame retailers personally, for not accepting the return of a faulty product. When I bought NWN's originally it had some game breaking bugs, Volo has been very vocal about his excellent experience with it on release.

lol. Stabbed through the heart. Yeah, a lot of pc gamers do not wait calmly AT ALL for a patch. WHich I understand. But a lot seem to tolerate this idea that when you buy the game it will be a bug-ridden mess and that the patches will fix it. But a lot of gamers don't tolerate it. It does cause an outrage among gamers when a game is released buggy. It cannot cause apriori outrage, unlike DDRM, because no developer/publisher will admit that they are about to release a buggy game - see them do that and then see the outcry that would ensue! But we gamers pretty much know that every game is going to be buggy. I mean, we PRAISE games that are mostly bug free. The game industry knowingly releases buggy games. There is no other explanation for what we see in games. SO there is indeed a priori knowledge. Yet gamers keep right on buying these games without forcing game developers and publishers to change their ways. Look at Obsidian: Even in their short history as a developer, they have already a pretty bad history of buggy game releases. But most people on this forum are going to rush right out and buy Alpha Protocol and/or alien crpg without waiting. THEN they will all squawk and complain until Feargus threatens to shut down the board. AGAIN. The bugs are there because we as gamers let them get away with having insufficient resources deveoted to QA and clean game design. Because devs and pubs KNOW that gamers are going to buy them anyway. Dude, once they have your money, there is no recourse for ever getting it back. Unless you are lucky enough to have a store that will return open software. (which used to be totally normal, btw). Gamers ARE getting outraged about DRM, and It IS making a difference. Or appears to be. WHich is good. But I just think it is getting outraged about the wrong thing. Do you realise that in order to give you what you want developers would have to adopt the same methods that they use to write code for the space shuttle, which means your average game would have a development cycle of many years, and would constantly be patched in a very slow mannar. The developer would never release another project, and would likely end up bust.

lol. Stabbed through the heart. Yeah, a lot of pc gamers do not wait calmly AT ALL for a patch. WHich I understand. But a lot seem to tolerate this idea that when you buy the game it will be a bug-ridden mess and that the patches will fix it. If gamers could hold onto their panties and not rush out and buy games until they were fixed, developers and publishers would stop releasing them broken. They only do it because they can get away with it. My comparison really is that DRM doesn't cause nearly so much problem as generally buggy games (not that it doesn't cause ANY problems, mind you), yet people really don't seem to have any universal outrage over the blatant offences of publishers and developers releasing buggy games. I purchased 2 pc games at release this last year, both had game stopping bugs. None of them had to do with DRM. You wouldn't actually know a bug ridden mess if it came and sat next to you... Really, games have bugs, on all platforms. The problem with the PC is simple, lots of hardware combinations, and the cost of development for such a dynamic platform. Dev budgets for a PC game are less than for a console games. It's alot easier to develop for a console, my ps3 dev kit is the same as the next one, infact, I can even run my code on another PS3 dev kit and know that it has all the same parts. My PC has a different GFX card. That's a lovely potential rendering problem. Also, PC code tends to be rather sloppy when it comes to memory management, why? because you have so much... It also doesn't have the same sort of care taken over it because it will likely perform very different on a different machine, it's just not worth the extra development time, which may only effect 2% of users. You can't be certain that it will perform the same from machine to machine. Speaking to a few of the guys who ported Half Life 2 to PS3, they were not impressed by the Source Engine as an engine intended for a console, an absolute mess of an engine. To get straight to the point, the whole problem with PC's is the nature of the beast itself. It's generic and often over powered, you can't make something that is awesome and stable for everyone without alot of money behind the project (Blizzard are pretty much the only developers I know that try to actually deliver to such a large ordiance, and even they have to patch the hell out of stuff).

So C programmers are ignorant?

One of the guys I work with comes from that kind of background... He's a damn fine programmer, fast too.

regular C dominates the embedded signal processing world simply because it is simpler and a lot of the things that C++ brings to the table are unnecessary. i've never buckled down to learn C++, btw. quite frankly, i often need to get down to the assembly language anyway since gcc doesn't optimize for vector (SIMD) operations very well anyway. taks Doesn't surprise me at all really... It's always a matter of what's the best tool for the Job, different job's require different skills. I'm not saying C is dead, I wouldn't dream of going near that. Geez, sarcasam can quickly dig a hole.

Yes we are. Python is prettier. C is even prettier. I'd argue C# would has a Java-esque feel to it. Far too much personal opinion to really get into that discussion. I don't like Python's syntax at all, it just doesn't look nice to me... At all. *bzzzzt* Wrong! Maybe this was said in jest, but I'll bite. It was for the most part said in jest. Thanks for the info, but I can't see C making a comeback for mainstream applications. That said some games developers still use C for their game engines, for good or ill.

Reason enough, surely. Now that I think of it, I actually meant to say "uglier for me", due to coming from C background. But it may be a better option for someone coming from VB background. I mean, hey, if you look more closely, what exactly is wrong with VB syntax? EOF-delimited code? Python does it too. Writing "if .. then" rather than "if (...) {"? Bash and Pascal have it too. Case-insensitivity? Pascal. The only thing I see that's left is social stigma inherited from pre-.NET VB as "uncool", and "newbie's language". C# is about as pretty as code can ever be syntax wise. But ya know, we're argue chocolate and strawberry ice cream here? P.S. C sucks. C++ owns.

Bath... But you have a point.

Rockstar isn't developing the game, GTA is made in Scotland, and Bully in Canada. Two different studio's. P.S. I don't think it'll be very good, but that's for other reasons, like crap artwork.

Best ever death by zombie, right near the end... Guy torn in half and then starts shoutsomething like "Go on, eat as much as you can"... Made me feel a little sick, and that's not easy done.

That was my initial thinking... Though I was thinking it may be possible in some manner...

Reason enough, surely.

It's worth getting, Gorgon is taking small things out of context and moaning like an old woman.