Zoraptor

The trouble with these sort of definitions is that, well... How do you exclude, say, Wing Commander IV or Privateer from being RPGs? By your definition I would have to classify just about every Wing Commander game, Privateer, Elite 2/3 as RPGs. And how do you exclude them without excluding titles that are RPGs? Arguably even something like Far Cry 2 (for a more modern example) would qualify too. 'Character' skill being more important than, or (strongly) influencing player skill is important because otherwise you end up with just about anything with a strong/ branching storyline and decision making becoming an RPG. NB: The questions I pose are mainly rhetorical ones- 'what makes an RPG' discussions are usually dreadfully banal and involve lots of arguing past each others opinions and I'm happy enough accepting any definition which works reasonably well.

Yeah, the BioWare Story Construction Template was firmly established with Neverwinter Nights, and the companion archetypes (Anoarth Skyden/ Korgarous Wrexwind, ohohoho) even earlier than that.

Plus almost everyone in game compliments you if you adopt that playstyle- even D'Arcy sends you an email saying how good you were for not being detected at the Arms Dump up until he started getting shot at with rockets, Mina compliments you on several occasions, you get bonus XP for taking out the lieutenant without being detected, Marburg/ Albatross compliment you, even Leland appreciated that approach. About the only person who doesn't like it is SIE.

The two armour mods that improve hacking are just about essential when playing on hard, and pay for themselves quickly by avoiding EMP use, though swapping them in/out is annoying. Having just finished a second hard playthrough I'd say that criticism of the minigames being too hard with it are probably justified, you really do need an investment in sabotage after a certain point. And it is a bit inconsistent to have somewhere like Brayko's which is supposed to have fairly useless security have 5 pin locks, 5 letter codes and 12 clips bypasses while the endgame has (generally) 5-6 clip bypasses, 3 pin locks and 8 letter codes.

Crusader Kings was awesome cheese. Best 15 USD I spent in 2008. Mind you I only ever played it with Deus Vult and a latish patch number. Nothing wrong with facebook based publicity despite my dislike for the site, I just find Paradox's marketing rather... quaint and a touch... cute. I tend to end up wondering how EA would market Paradox games, and come to the conclusion it probably would not be with John Riccitiello playing heavy metal in a trailer or having bets with his devs over whether a game would make a profit.

Ah, marketing. They will announce it even if it doesn't reach 25k, 25k will just get it announced quicker. Fortunate, as I loathe facebook every bit as much as I enjoyed CK.

I did the Surkov mission yesterday, hard, recruit. Bought the sniper rifle, got to protect Surkov part, used rifle, eight shots, ~thirty seconds, mission accomplished. I failed it once in my first play through, when I had the sniper rifle fully zoomed in from the start and forgot how to zoom out. On tutorials, they are poor almost without exception. I'd actually rate APs as one of the better ones- it's relatively short and much of it is skipable if you want, you get feedback on how well you've done, get introduced to some of the things which will be important and if you do well enough you can get XP/ info/ money etc as a bonus.

Direct hex editing on PC works fine for everything, so far as I am aware.

You can open saves in notepad (DO NOT EDIT them in it though). If you want to edit them you should either use a utility if one is available, or you can use a hex editor of which there are dozens available for free- I use XVI32 personally, but you can even use edit.com from a command line. If you do try editing them make sure you back up as there are a myriad of potential ways to break saves. The files for the weapons are on the DVD.

I was sure that 'unified ammo' was going to get a mention- 7.62NATO, 5.56 and 5.45 rifles all using the same rounds etc. Personally, I was disappointed to find that drop on subsonic ammo wasn't modeled. I was so looking forward to another round of all the complaining Stalker got about having bad ballistics because bullets didn't act like laser beams and if you tried using a Groza or Vintorez at long range you'd end up shooting your target in the feet. On the original question, I suspect (1) is the closest answer: ignoring 'reality' as a deliberate decision to allow for far more modifiable weapons than 'really' exist.

X-Com 3: Apocalypse... I bought it originally when it was new and later "rebought" it from Gamersgate as part of their big X-Com package deal (all X-Com games, including Enforcer etc.). I think I paid like 10$ for that package including readymade dosbox configurations. Thanks for the tip. It's on special now for $6 if you're interested.

Combine with Hassat Hunter's post: people complain because an rpg has rpg gameplay- probably the most accurate summation. I think it really comes down to two factors- is the only way an RPG can 'evolve' to get rid of the RPG gameplay mechanics in favour of ones from another genre, be it shooter, stealth or whatever? And how much the "Halflife is an RPG, you play the role of Gordon/ Need for Speed is an RPG you play the role of an upgradeable car/ Pong is an RPG you play the role of a paddle" type arguments have been accepted as a definition.

Heh. Darth Nuke was also responsible for getting Mandalorians added to the Dark Horse Republic line of comics by his constant complaining about their absence. As a pile of corpses in a throwaway panel.

I wouldn't have thought they could be compiled into the saves as they are so small and seem to be totally dedicated to stat/ perk/ skill/ rep and mission tracking. I did try changing all the values that might have made a difference in the relevant bits of armor.upk and ammo.upk (even the default number of bullets sold) to no effect. There is a "suppress=inventory" line in APEngine.ini I may try removing and see if that makes a difference.

Don't think those files are actually used by the game, unfortunately- the arch prefix may mean archive. Since I was getting no obvious results I tried the nuke from orbit option and deleted the armour upk and even that didn't make a difference (nor did it even cause a crash which was what I expected). I now rather suspect the whole thing got read/ compiled into something else. Shame, really, as those pretty much definitely were the values.

Ah, so there is no need to pack/ unpack, useful to know. I'm pretty sure they are the correct values*, but altering the hex has not done anything immediate. I'll leave the altered values in place as I guess availability, prices and such may be partly determined in save games in which case getting new vendors or new safehouses may trigger them. I made the shotgun and stealth armours ludicrously expensive (since I'm not using either in my current game) so it should be obvious if it has worked. Alternatively they are just some sort of left over design file and altering them is useless. * eg Low stealth armour cost 9056 hex cost 10500 (04 29 00) Mid stealth armour cost 42262 hex cost 49000 (68 bf 00) High stealth armour cost 129375 hex cost 150000 (f0 09 02) which aren't exactly the same, but have the same ratio of 1:1.594 actual price to hex price so they would probably match before/ after any discounts applied. I'm not sure Obsidian can do anything to directly support modding- licencing agreements (and in the case of a proper editor, licencing costs) probably preclude it.

I actually wonder if the friendly against our lot caught up with them there- anyone watching that would be amazed the Australians had more than 9 men on the field at the end of it and be expecting them to try and chop opponents feet off at the drop of a hat. Cahill was one of the lucky ones there iirc, not so lucky here as it was pretty soft even for a yellow.

Moscow level 2 and level 14 are both labeled as vodka plant in some places- there are unused static meshes for some things like stills. I'd imagine the levels themselves were retasked. I would presume the information is in ..\cookedPC\packages\inventory with the clearinghouse stuff defined by a combination of arch_vendors and the others. They're all upks and compiled/ hex rather than being text files though so... I would presume some sort of base monetary values are on the item files*, and the vendors define what you have available. For the AILoot, presumably [..]LootArchetypes\AILoot, if it's not controlled directly by either the level files or on the AI, with predetermined static drops for each level defined in the appropriate subfolders For whoever it was wanted to know where the perks were hiding they're in the RPGdata arch_rpgstats.upk. Same deal though, compiled/ hex (albeit with plain text description taking up a lot of space). *If the 'base' value of flechettes is 4000, and that of phosphorus rounds is 5000 and for standard shotgun shells is 50 then I've found the money value in, well, two minutes and it may be editable relatively easily, assuming that the original files can be repacked or overridden successfully.

Mike Thorton. If you give the "oil" response to Scarlet when first meeting her you give a brief pseudo bio of GWB as your cover.

No real point bothering anyway, metadata doesn't prove anything apart from what time the camera "thinks" it is. And far more importantly, the supposed weapons are so utterly pathetic as proof of 'terrorist' intentions (omg a boat had an axe on it == terrorist is just... feeble, feeble feeble) that arguing about them or even caring about if they have been faked is pointless and a distraction.

Had that bug in the PC version as well. I 'died', fell into a boulder, revived, and was then invulnerable. Exactly the same mission.

Personally my complaint is that shooting someone 5 yards away in the head with an assault rifle is still hit or miss. I got the 50 head shots with AR perk before completing Saudi Arabia (sometime during the 3rd mission, iirc) It works pretty much as expected and as in 'reality', short, controlled, aimed bursts = dead enemies pdq, charging in like Rambo = dead you almost as fast.

Bought simply because the people at Obsidian have made games that I have enjoyed since the Black Isle days. Didn't really nned any other reason. Halliburton/ Bechtel seems almost certain to be the inspiration for the name. So yeah, basically the Bush administration (ohohoho).

There is a 'missing' Saudi mission (S06), apparently set in Halbech's Milan office, which has Parker as a handler and has all the assets for it except the map files- I'm fairly sure it is the one mentioned (in game) as being the mission that Mina and Parker went on together prior to the game. It's not O3 though, and there aren't any 'dangling' level files on the DVD to load, so far as I can tell.

Wasn't that one preciptated by a MASSIVE volcano that blocked enough sunlight that there literally was 0 sunlight for an entire year? You're most likely thinking of the "year with no summer" after Krakatoa, in the late 19th century. You got a lot of oddities like the Thames freezing over in London that year.