Zoraptor

The 'junk' characters will include the number values, as hexadecimal. Many programs will interpret these as funny characters, typically rectangles. I haven't used notepad++ much but I'd be surprised if it doesn't have an interpret as hex/ binary or data inspection tool somewhere- otherwise get something like xvi32 (freeware) which has both raw and interpreted data in split windows, and use that. The uninterpreted junk characters after the variablename are usually a long string of zeroes with the actual variable visible as, well, something which isn't zero roughly in the middle. If you're not sure what you are doing make sure you have back ups!

If people said AP had PS2 level graphics what level of hyperbole do those need? At least it'll run on my 4MB Matrox Millenium? Is it coming for Atari 2600? ??? ?

Arcania is also being funded by the same investment group that part funded NWN2. Whether that is included in the 6 million or not isn't clear from what I read, so it could actually be more than that. I suspect JoWood needs to sell millions of copies because their financial position is dodgy rather than just to recoup investment because they should be in profit well short of millions of copies if that's the total cost.

If that's your primary criterion then you'd be far better off buying from Impulse (Stardock) or Gamersgate (Paradox) as neither associated company makes console games at all. I doubt Valve even think of PC as being a platform at all any more. The platform they support is Steam, not PC, as evidenced by the move to Mac and PS3.

It's Steamworks, you can buy it retail/ DVD and (theoretically at least) it will install completely from there up until it gets to the mandatory online verification/ downloading of updates. The only complaint I have with Gamersgate is that I can't buy with my UK credit card, only my NZ one. There's a bunch of games in that sale (MoWs, KBAP, SR2:R) I'd be all over if they did. I'd probably even buy King's Bounty: The Legend again.

FNV will be the first Obsidian game, and Civ 5 the first Firaxis (PC) games I won't buy, both because of Steamworks. Can't say I'm particularly worried about either, I have far more games I want to play than I have time to play them, so it's just money saved.

To quote someone else, whenever something they like is criticised no matter how mildly...

Syriana was cited as similar to/ an inspiration for Alpha Protocol at one stage. And it is 'referenced' (Leland as an off the top of head example).

Sega owns the IP- you can check on the USPTO's search engine, TESS, as trademark ownership is generally an accurate indicator.

The economic system is still working pretty much as intended- it's just that any benefits for the inhabitants has almost always been (and remain) circumstantial and limited to a favoured elite, and it's primarily designed to gain maximum profit for outside parties rather than benefit internal ones.

In terms of the changes of the first iteration I'd suggest the timeline of events suggests a likely reason, especially given that the previous attempt to use their UE3 licence had failed due to lack of a publisher. Whether that would be a matter of 'blame' or 'credit' really depends on what the first iteration was and how it would have been received, which we'll never know. That's pretty much what is meant, I think- since honeycomb is basically a bunch of minimum space hexagons it fits a branching 'cell' structure pretty well as an analogue.

Yo, RPGMasterBoo imma let you finish but the Mongols had the largest empire of all time OF ALL TIME! They also had two successor states make the 19th century, if only barely, blatted the east slavs badly enough that it took centuries for them to recover, conquered China, squished the arabs so badly that they never recovered, set the stage for Safavid Persia, etc etc. Better targets of ire, from a historical perspective are the Aztec and Inca, both important less than a century; Mali which lasted barely longer; the Sioux, the Celts and Vikings who were never organised 'empires'; the Holy Roman Empire (famously none of the three post Chuck the Great) etc.

The full length portrait? There'd be a lot of paintings like that. Wouldn't surprise me if there was a Bond villain with a similar portrait though (Dr No or whoever it was with the stolen Iron Duke portrait hanging on his wall). The equivalent Brayko painting though is a reference to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' cover. (My immediate reaction was actually George Michael/ Club Tropicana, which disturbs me somewhat considering what Michael was wearing in that shot)

I think his point is that you could link AP to Steam as a delivery mechanism even without including it on the DVD. Which is true, to a point, but way more trouble than just including the middleware with the initial release like most every other title does- you'd effectively have to patch it (steamworks/ GfWL) in to allow DLC to become available.

IIRC even if they implemented a quota they be obligated to make it apply to all EU players rather than only English/ British, so much of the problem would still exist.

The Hagia Sophia does have minarets... ...since ~1453

There's nothing contradictory there in the slightest. I suggest a re-read if you're really bothered.

C'mon gif man, it's not like it's hiding on page 1 or something, it's about 8 posts up the page.

I don't know about not having faith in the project, it may just be that at a point you have to accept that some projects simply are not geared by their structure towards having DLC. Meaningful DLC for a primarily story driven game is a real pain to do well, as evidenced by the generally lukewarm reactions to a lot of the DAO/ ME2 stuff. How could you do meaningful DLC for a game like Alpha Protocol? Sure you can do really basic stuff like add items etc but integrating new missions? Very difficult to do well I would think, and if sales were good a quick turn around sequel would be a better bet IMO. Not on PC I'm afraid. DLC ain't a problem for the consoles because that functionality is pretty much intrinsic, but on PC you need a way to deliver it.

If they were considering DLC they would probably have shipped AP with either Steamworks or GfWL on PC, otherwise it's pretty difficult to monetise it short of going the EA route and establishing your own equivalent. And while PC certainly would not be the major DLC revenue stream it is pretty much 'free' money with either of those middleware.

The relevant quotes are "The publisher announced that Commander Shepard's spacefaring sequel has moved over 2 million copies this week." (They don't link to their EA source so it cannot be checked, but moved is almost certainly shipped given the quote below) "Mass Effect 2 – sold through over 1.6 million packaged and digital units in the quarter for Europe and North America combined and launched with a Metacritic rating of 96 on the Xbox 360" The only real question is whether ME2 launched prior to Q4 (can't find a definitive answer in the pdf, don't care enough to look elsewhere but it is certainly implied that it and BFBC both launched Q4) and how many sales it has had since then. The 1.6 million is a minimum and represents very good sales and a profitable title in any case. So I lied and checked Q3 as well: "BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 shipped January 26th [..] We announced the shipment of 2 million copies and the early read on sell through is strong."

As a clarification, this is in fact exactly how sales figures generated by copies shipped work. You don't ship more until the stock is low so you have huge first week 'sales' and then... well it depends entirely on how many actually get sold through. Ship 2 million copies and if they don't sell then you may not ship another single copy, ever, and rely solely on excess inventory stock. Or they sell and you ship/ fabricate more batches as demand dictates.

Have to say I saw the figure Volourn quoted as well so while it ain't accurate he isn't just randomly making it up. The 1.6 million has a link earlier in the thread- it's from EA via the Wall Street Journal, so reputable. There are two types of sales figures, one refers to the number of copies shipped to retail, the other to the number actually sold- 'shipped [to stores]' vs 'sold through' from stores. NPD are actual copies sold (not 100% accurate for a number of reasons, but generally pretty good), as is the figure EA provided. A 2 million copies shipped figure if accurate implies around 400k+ copies being held in stores as unsold stock, so both figures can be accurate.

That figure is rubbish, as alanschu said EA is obligated to give accurate figures. If they don't, it's fraud and people may go to jail, suffer fines or whatever else relevant laws say. In a battle between an unsourced press release from April 14 claiming an extra 5 million sales, and an official EA release from 31 March... it's EA 100% of the time. (At a guess the 6.6M is almost certainly a typo for 1.6 million and someone just has fat fingers)

Probably outside of patch scope, but being able to bind specific abilities to hotkeys, or have a next/ previous ability/ gadget set up, would be nice to avoid the frequent need to go to the radial.