MacMichael

I enjoy a good romance in an RPG. One of my favorite ones, as I remember it, was in NWN2. It was between my female swashbuckler, she was good, but far from lawful, and that sort of tortured paladin, don't recall his name. Now, I actually don't know if NWN2 has romances, but its how it came across to me, so I'm calling it one. Just as they were starting to get close to each other, everybody dies! Doom doom doom! It had this great tragic feel to it. A tragic love story running along side the end of the world. It just fit. It was perfect in my mind. Maybe there was more to it, if I had made different choices, but where it ended up in my playthrough just fit perfectly. There was no sex, don't have any issue with sex though, just this developing bond between two characters that gets cut short by the end of the world. I'd love to see better written and more serious takes on relationships than what we generally get in games and I know Obsidian has the writing skill to make it happen.

I think we just confirmed Project X as the thing Prosper has been working on. Prosper is actually a Obs dev!

I'm just curious if it's a countdown to an announcement of an announcement, or just a countdown to an announcement of a countdown. I've been running into too many of these recently.

Just did a quick check. Amazon doesn't mention it, but Green Man Gaming lists Steam as being required.

It's now available for pre-order on Steam, along with some weird new tier system for pre-order bonuses. More bonuses unlock as more people pre-order. Not sure about this extra shove for pre-ordering, but I might do so anyway. Just not yet.

Currently playing Sleeping Dogs, and continuing to play a little ME3 multiplayer with a friend every couple nights. Not too far into SD yet, it only unlocked last night and I worked today, but it's been fun so far.

For anyone that's interested, Green Man Gaming is doing a 30% off special on Sleeping Dogs, which releases next week, until Tuesday 11:00am UTC. Since it's a Steam game, you get a code for Steam rather than having to use GMG's Capsule service.

GoG released both Worlds of Ultima, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams, today for free. They're great games and would be worth paying for, if it were neccesary.

For others yes, for you... no. Also on sale at GoG.com for the same price.

The problem with this argument is that you want to judge whether any value was lost. Or to put it another way: If someone doesn't use their car is it okay to steal it? Surly it was going to rust no value loss will occur. Actually there are laws that allow that sort of thing. Here in the US. Adverse possession in the case of citizens taking something that isn't theirs and eminent domain for the government. Except this regards land and is instituted by law. I don't see why the same should apply to intellectual property. We make exceptions to our laws in extraordinary situations but greater good will not be served by allowing people to torrent the latest video game. Though if they download Windows and some programming tools in the former Soivet-bloc countries and build a thriving software industry that then starts buying things legitimately, doesn't that serve the greater good? Microsoft praised the rise of that area's software industry, though they did try to ignore the piracy that it was based on. If say, people in Africa download games, tools, take other peoples stories and work to build up a creative core that then starts making new work, that fresh and new, that joins the larger world community, is this bad, because they stole something? Or is this overall good, because it provides a foothold to something greater? And can you tell the difference between the pirate that just pirates and the pirate that then goes on to make something greater from the piracy and treat them differently? When you're talking about piracy, you're talking about copyright infringement. That applies to far more than just games. Maybe we should protect games different from other IPs? Otherwise focusing on just one small piece of the puzzle instead of the whole picture isn't going to work. As the law stands, it covers everything, so it needs to work for everything.

The problem with this argument is that you want to judge whether any value was lost. Or to put it another way: If someone doesn't use their car is it okay to steal it? Surly it was going to rust no value loss will occur. Actually there are laws that allow that sort of thing. Here in the US. Adverse possession in the case of citizens taking something that isn't theirs and eminent domain for the government. http://en.wikipedia..../Eminent_domain http://en.wikipedia....erse_possession http://boingboing.ne...case-in-bo.html After all, the government has an interest in land, for instance, being used. A piece of land that sits unused doesn't have people living or working there paying or generating taxes, no businesses extracting minerals paying fees. Potentially creating an eyesore or place for people to gather for illegal activities. Etc. etc. etc. But copyright that sits abandoned and/or unused should be unviolatable? I dislike piracy. I've traded games on 5 1/4" floppies. But I've also bought many of those same traded albums. I buy all my current games. I pick things up off GoG when they become available. I work in the photography industry. I talk to people all the time about how I can't make copies of their 30 year old photos because they don't own the rights to the image. They just own the print. I've noticed very few people care about copyright when it actually stops them from doing something they want to do. They may not download games, they may not download music, but that class photo of them from years ago, why should they have to track down some photographer that may not be alive that worked for some studio that may not even be open, they ask me. Because it's the law. Personally, I think copyright needs a major overhaul, though I don't trust that any overhaul that actually gets done would actually move things in a better direction. Too much money involved. I don't like piracy, but I'm not going to look down on people that do it on occasion. I'll look down on people that do it a lot, especially when they have the funds and access that they really should have a reason to. This actually reminds me of some talk/conference that I heard about in Eastern Europe/Russia several years ago, where Microsoft talked about how happy they were that the software industry there had grown and the achievements they were making, while the developers talked about how it wouldn't have been possible without first pirating Microsoft products to get the point where they could compete and produce at a level to purchase Microsoft products. I think the issue to far too complex on the macro level to simply say "Piracy is freedom." or "Pirates are scummy scum scum!"

I was enjoying the bit of candid talk about making games on the stream, until some asked if the audio was actually off, because then the audio actually was off. Disappointing.

I would really have liked to put in $100 if I could have, but it got me wondering, why? I normally would never put down that much for a game, even for a good collectors edition, so why would I on this one, that isn't even made yet, that I've only seen two pieces of concept art for, and that I never played the original. Anyone else noticing this?

I'd like to see something along the lines of a Privateer or Freelancer sequel/remake/"spiritual successor". I love the X games, have over 300 hours in X3:R and over 400 in X3:TC, but Privateer and Freelancer just feel different. In X, you really need a fleet and trade empire as you keep going. It'd be nice to have something smaller scale, you and your one ship, and with a decent story, which X never did all that well.

Finally put in $50 today. Wanted to do $100, but just couldn't manage it.

Supposedly Obsidian would only be helping with the design work and licensing tools, which I assume means Onyx, for the game. They aren't doing any of the programming. http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1100&start=40&sid=3697329120961658e3f5f660702e79bb

Also, if a country/state doesn't apply the tax to out-of-country/state goods, if puts local businesses at a competitive disadvantage as far as pricing, in many situations.

By state? Our sales tax is by county. Buy something in Los Angeles, and you pay something different than San Fransisco or San Diego, never mind crossing a state-line. As far as online purchases, anything you would have paid sales tax for in state, whether online or even picking it up in person out of state, if sales tax wasn't paid there, it's supposed to be paid as use tax at the end of the year, though most people either don't know or don't care about use tax. At least here in California. And as mentioned, any US price displayed, isn't going to include tax, unless it specifically says it does.

Think I'm going to put down $50 - 100 for this sometime after I get paid next. I'm really excited, though I don't really know why. I've never played Wasteland and inXile's list of games doesn't exactly impress me, but a style of RPG that I haven't seen made for a while by the people who were involved with a number of past favorites, how horribly wrong could it go?

There's a new offer for people picking up ME3 on Origin. Seems you get BF3 too. Think it only applies to pc preorders of the digital version, but I might be wrong, didn't look too close.

Didn't they get at least one other publisher on board, or am I remembering wrong?

It seems to be a good time to be on Kickstarter. Before the Double Fine project, a friend linked me to the Order of the Stick Reprint, which made it to the 5th largest Kickstarter project a day or so ago, before Double Fine knocked them back to 6th. Though that still leaves OotS over 1000% funded. I'm curious what we'll find out when we look at the final statistics. Something like OotS is pulling off about $580,000 right now, but with just 7,800 backers, versus Double Fine's $822,000 but over 20,000 backers. Different rewards, and different mediums, but it does bring to mind the stories about people paying a dollar, or whatever the bare minimum is for the pay what you want Humble Bundles. Makes me wonder what it would take to improve the average per backer.

I think the standard these days, if you're coding it yourself from the ground up, is C++, though there are other options. With C++ you can create native executable, so .exe files that you can distribute and people just double click to run, though I believe it gets a little more complicated if you're going cross-platform. I just started a small Privateer-like/text adventure style game back in December using Java, mostly because I've worked with GUIs in Java before but never C++, despite having taken classes are both back about a decade ago. Java needs the Java Runtime Enviroment installed on any target system, but seems fairly cross-platform friendly. Can't make an .exe though without special software, unless someone knows otherwise, in which case I'd be interested to know. Flash has been mentioned, plenty of people using that. Cross-platform, as long as Flash is installed, though I've seen Flash programs come as .exes, though I don't know what it takes to get them to that point. Before December I has really done any coding since those classes ten years ago, so there's probably fresher information out there. Also, there's modding which has been mentioned, which is might be a better option if you don't necessarily want to build it from scratch. Determination, dedication, passion. Whatever keeps you working on it three months down the line when you start to realize just what you've gotten yourself into. I think this one hinges on what sort of time frame you're comfortable with. A friend of mine recently told me the Space Pirates and Zombies team was two guys and it took them a year and a half. Don't know if it's true. Another friend is working on a personal project, Shadowdawn: Genesis, that I remember him talking about back 10 years ago or more. It's been through some changes in that time. Actually looks like it'll be finished this year.

Having finally replaced the mainboard in my desktop, I have returned to gaming, with a little X3: Albion Prelude and Borderlands. Still a little hesitant to fire up Skyrim, as that's what I was playing when it died back in November, but maybe tomorrow.

Played a bit of the demo until I got hung up on the tutorial dungeon boss's body and couldn't get free. Enjoyed the combat enough, though the camera kept annoying me. I'm actually a little surprised how well it ran, since I'm still stuck on my laptop after Skyrim killed the mainboard in my desktop a couple months back. Need to give it another try, but it looks like something I'd pick up, only question is how long after it's released.