tubgoatstugboats

If you look in the sap collectors you should be able to pick up the sap in them individually, then you should be able to collect all normally holding the button. The bug happened again once or twice more for me in about 10 more hours of play, and I just collected each sap individually again and it was fixed again.

Have a cut scene of the koi jumping and eating the player on a zipline or falling on occasion if they are to close to the water. Make it a rarely occur or perhaps only once per game so it doesn't get annoying, but would be fun to be on a zip line and then have a cut scene of the koi jumping up like a bass to eat the player, especially if it wasn't mentioned in the patch notes. (assuming it doesn't happen EVERY time, which would be obnoxious). Silly idea I know, but it wouldn't be hard to do, would be a funny little wtf moment, and would be relatively painless to add, not that programing is easy. It would even add a little uncertainty to the water area, which is in my opinion the second safest area and there is a huge disparity between the first two and the third.

For a short while now i have been learning C++ with an overall goal of making my own game, you know pretty much every gamers dream. I wont try to say i am good but i am learning. While doing other things i try to visualise everything in my mind. Not much to think about while renovating a bedroom. One question i continously have is in reguards to the game engine. I have a few ideas in mind, but i think i need to narrow it down early. The options i see are using the unreal engine, using a completely free engine (i believe panda 3d falls into this category) or piecing my own together though various open source engines. I lean towards using the unreal engine because it is in professional use, but i would like to hear the opinions of others. A goal i have is to get picked up by a company for this game, i dont know if using this engine would be a positive negative or indifferent. Would it be preferable to initially piece together my own engine and just be open to changes later? One main reason i am leaning towards using it is because i do understand that pitching a game is already difficult, i figure if i use a known decent engine it could only help, and if it doesnt happen i can easily continue on and join in the growing indie scence which to be honest doesnt bother me one bit.

Experience gained in a game generally follows a few rules. Level cap, gain x amount for doing x task, scaling, finite resources, and requiring certain amount gained per level. Personally im tired of games with scaling. Scaling tends to reward the casual player and ensure they are of proper level for the story. This is fine and dandy for many players but the other side of scaling is that it punishes people like me who enjoy going at it till my character is completely overpowered for the story. Granted i dont like to cheat because it isnt earned, and i have plenty of time on my hands, but im not against it in single player games. Developers need to have the scaling bottom out at an average amount rather then almost nothing. If the developer is concerned with realism, they need to remember that even Carlos Hath**** used got better by target shooting. Finite resources such as no respawns in a game is one of the most frustrating things to me in any rpg. When you kill everything and nothing ever comes back what the hell is the point, it just makes the world feel empty. I personally dont believe any RPG should not include respawns, no exceptions. Dont get me wrong i have enjoyed games without them gothic series and risen are examples, but the bottom line is the game felt very empty especially near the end. In games with their resources limited players are forced to make choices with only partial knowledge and later on they my regret their decision. If that player decides to go back to an old save then all the time inbetween was lost. This feeling of loss should be kept to a min, because enough of these decisions will piss of any player since they feel its a waste of time. Out of the methods used that I listed those are the only two which piss me off. In games where these two things are used especially the latter i tend to not enjoy myself as much, and i buy games to enjoy them, not be forced through a story. Personally i think the experience point system is used because its something the player is familiar with or perhaps because its what the developers know to work and dont want to put the effort into making a new system. I found oblivion and marrowwinds systems to be great, using the concept of practice makes perfect. Experience points have been tried and true since pen and paper gaming, its just getting old in my eyes.

I assume you weren't at a ninja school then? Safe assumption, in my defence i didnt mean to he caught me off guard. i was booted from ninja school when they found i became a rogue ninja in various mmos.

of all things to be upset about with fallout three i think i was upset about the most trivial, there was no spear, yes i know its petty but in past fallouts we saw there wasnt a lot of ammo for a while which makes sense since most likely they havent been in mass production in a while. The point being is you were handed a gun very early and after the start theres no need to use melee anymore unless its your preference.

The problem is people don't know what dark is. The term dark seems subjective, but to some extent we can see different degrees. An example is Hitler compared to the care bears. For most people in the US, we live a very sheltered life, and we are soft because of it. There is nothing wrong with this however for someone who is generally a nice person, and has never really suffered and seen real suffering it is unreasonable to expect them to know how dark a person can be. To anyone who thinks that the story and themes of da are dark, i simply ask you never read anything written by Dostoevsky, because you will kill yourself. As far as the gaming industry is concerned games which are truly dark are harder to sell to the masses. So expecting a mainstream product to be dark is a bit much. Something truly dark, has yet to be created however there seem to be some progress with games like the Witcher, which is one of my favorite games. Though the whole game your pitted with decisions which are messed up situations with either choice. This is essence of a "dark" game. Forget the concept of good and bad, a "dark" game should have more then this. Think of ME1 where you have to leave someone on Virmire, there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, it just is. I believe these types of decisions are essential to a "dark" game. Decisions which leave you for at least a moment thinking "was this is the right choice" are essential. The concept of good and bad have been done for some time, and the old concept from DnD of aliment, lawful good or chaotic evil, are just to simple to describe the human condition, selfish decisions can be the best for all parties. Just because da isnt dark doesnt mean its a bad game. I thought it was ok, but had some serious issues none of which i feel like getting into. This is not to say it doesnt have some dark parts but as a whole it is not. As it was said in an earlier post you really need a few pieces to make a truly dark game, environment, story, and so forth.

I would imagine philosophy helping a lot, but i may have a bias towards the subject since i was close to finishing my degree in it. Simply put philosophy will help you look at things in different perspectives and help you to observe the world, including yourself, from a third party standpoint. This seems like it would be important in writing scripts because no matter how immersed into a game a player is, the bottom line is they are not in it. Some of the most compelling reads today are from philosophers. Besides as a fallback you can always study law, which is the route the majority of people who obtain these degrees go, mostly because all the big philosophy companies are just delusions, and because law schools like philosophers because they tend to be better at the interpretation of law. The downside to philosophy is your degree is not as focused as other peoples, as a result you may have to defend your reasoning behind getting it to everyone from your parents to potential employers, but if statistics make you feel good i read somewhere a few months back that even during the current economic times people with a philosophy degree remain 95% employed. Basically you'll learn to think a bit more outside the box then most people, and you will question everything from personal motives to economics. Then when you get hired for a company you might do well because you will have different views, know why you have these views, and will be able to convince other people of your views. On a side note take my life lesson to heart, schools don't like it when you lay a teacher out, even when its self defense, this is why i was close to getting my degree.

Yes and no, things have slowed down because of school, and i just bought a house, so its a little on the back burner however when i have free time i have been learning c# and the concepts of the game are constantly running through my mind. The reality is i dont even have hot water in my house and my internet was established only a couple days ago. That said within a month or so things should smooth out a bit and i can focus on it a bit more.

My all time favorite RTS is Starcraft, was addicted to it enough to make the top ten in ladder matches, and the reasons why i liked it so much was because multiplayer was easy to get into to, it sported 3 different races which were radically different, which at the time was kinda few and far between, most games had 2 or 3 that were litterally just different skins at best. Also in single player mode the game was a story, and pretty well told people liked warcraft 3 but hate starcraft, strange because starcraft was the road paved to warcraft 3, and was very good considering when it was made. Since then no game has stolen my time as much, rts rpg fps doesnt matter becuase none have come close and i play games alot. Theres my input whats yours?

WoW is terrible don't play it. I played it, did everything that was avaiable at the time, realised that it was possibly the worst game ever made because they try to make everyone happy, and by doing so it screws over the game, which made me sad because it was 10 bucks a month, so i decided to not be sad, drop WoW and be awesome insted. True story.

Thats a good idea, it would help me with the fact that I have no experience, also it would help me understand how to get a nice set of rules down that are simple enough to be understood on only few pieces of paper not to mention some experience in the business world, because my experience is limited to sports car restoration. Thanks again for the input and advice, this is why this is literally the only forum that i read, nice people willing to help even someone like me who is litterally coming from nothing.

I appriciate the honesty more then you know, and i personally dont believe this truth to be a downer. It wont stop me from making the game by any means, but it will help me with a timeline. I have been trying to learn c# in my spare time, have been told by more then a few people that XNA is pretty easy to use and a good way to learn especially since you can port to the 360 with relative ease. I figured pitching a game to the industry might be pretty tough because every person who has ever played a game has an idea for one. As one would expect I am taking your advice to mind, however I doubt I'll ever be in the industry myself, tinkering is a hobby of mine do it with cars, power tools, computers, considering I'm in biochem someday maybe people don't know yet. The point being this would be a nice hobby to get into because there isn't as much limitation in it as say working on my car, so it may never get published, but it doesn't matter because it is only my hobby. Thanks for the information. PS Assuming Obsidian is still around don't be surprized if I try to get your company to pick it up when it's WAY further down the road, except for KotoR 2 I am a big fan of Obsidian's work, even KotoR 2 was ok, but it needed some more time.

Having played all of the gothic games i would have to say that gothic 3 was the weakest and strongest out of all of them. The programming of gothic 3 was insanely weak and shoddy. The game was litered with bugs, it came out only months before vista was released yet the company made no effort to fix it for vista. As far as programming goes i have seen first phase betas more polished, infact most of the issues should have been fixed prior to any sort of beta. Also i do have to bring up that fighting animals never got easier, if you werent paying attention a wolf with nothing special about it would get his first hit off then you would be chained indefinately till death no matter your health. With that said it had some high points to, the story was good, voice acting was surprizingly good enough, and the one thing i liked most was every quest you did had an effect on the games outcome while mantaining an open world concept. So basically the game was both openworld and very liniar at the same time which gave players the feeling that hey what im doing right now does infact matter, which is very different then most RPGs which side quests done mean junk on the end result besides a possible good or evil shift which has become pretty common. I do plan on buying risen, however, i also plan for it not to work. I have learned keeping my hopes down will make me much more happy when im pleasently surprized all the time. Also im not going to bother looking up any screen shots, or learning about it at all because i have already decided to buy it and doing so might get my hopes up.

Dungeon Keeper was awesome infact since mine was destroyed i have been meaning to get a new one. As far as IGN's list goes, cant say i agree with a huge chunk of it however things like this are bias on taste, however company of hero's over starcraft and command and conquer, i think not. I think some people dont even remember how the expansion alone for starcraft won game of the year in a couple magazines, let alone the main game.