Zoraptor

Steam itself is not DRM, unless the distributed games have its wrapper. Bit of an extreme example of the difference, but X-COM/ UFO Defence is exactly the same if purchased from any digital distributor and does not require Steam running even if purchased from it, and can be freely transferred between limitless computers simply by copying. Obviously Valve likes to have games sold on Steam with the wrapper installed (as do most publishers, for piracy prevention) as it forces people to use the client and gives them lots of valuable info while increasing its ubiquity, but it isn't essential. If what has been said about AP is true then it will be exactly the same on Steam as on D2D or GG and once installed you will not have to have the Steam Client running ever again to play, if you felt so inclined. I rather like dividing Steam into three different bits for these sorts of purposes- the Steam Client, Steamworks ("Steam Wrapper"/ "Steam DRM") and the Steam Digital Distribution service- as it makes things a bit more clear even if the client and distribution separation is a bit artificial.

I'm not sure that Game downloads is UK only, though I have been told that I've never confirmed it myself. They certainly don't ship to some countries though I have no idea if NZ is included there. GG lists the download size as 9.96GB... Cheapest NZ based sale I've seen is MightyApe for 90$, though for some reason they have it being delayed until June 4 (annoying as that is where I have it preordered) but they do have the bonus guide, else cdwow certainly had it cheap, but would probably end up delivering it sometime in August.

Hmm. Game's download service is UK only, isn't it? Steam's price is still 20usd more than d2d or Gamersgate for we antipodal types.

The problem with that is... well, destroying one of the largest metropolises in the world with over 15 million inhabitants, with knock on effects on the world economy. And even that isn't the full extent of the problem. We aren't talking about Iraq which has had crippling sanctions, a military which had been functionally obliterated fifteen years previous and large areas of its nominal territory not even in its control. NK has ballistic missiles, nukes, chemical weapons, submarines that are apparently good enough to sink a western warship in a hot zone, truly stupendous amounts of artillery, a properly functioning and reasonably modern AA infrastructure and seventy years to stockpile and prepare. If they feel pressured enough they will use the whole lot, and that means missiles potentially nuclear and if not nuclear then chemical/ biological hitting Japan and anywhere else with US bases or sympathies, submarines sinking merchant ships etc etc as well as the colossal damage done to the South from an invasion by a million man army. And yeah, they'd lose eventually but that won't magically repair the damage done in the meantime. Whatever the west does will be specifically tailored to avoid doing anything significant because while the North talks a good messianic apocalyptico we definitely don't and have little choice other than to let the Chinese prop them up and hope they eventually sort themselves out. Everything else is just window dressing.

Their threats definitively are not empty. They have 5000 artillery pieces trained on Seoul, let alone their missiles, nukes and whatnot. They can effectively level Seoul any time they want and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop them. For all the lol North Korea haha rofl from the west to try and make people think it isn't a problem everyone in power knows that it is and that there is precisely nothing that can be done. I haven't read the report (I probably will if it is made publicly available) but I'm at the point where I wouldn't believe the western "intelligence" community if they said the sky was blue.

If it ever happens I doubt it will be by Obsidian's hands. I don't really want to knock them down, but technical optimization just isn't their forte. To be fair, it is a problem with just about every ue3 game out there, and much like the antialiasing issues the blame lies pretty definitively at the feet of the engine developers rather than any 3rd party using it.

Well, that's kind of the point. If those elected have in their agenda the abolition of democracy and the outlawing of all parties... I don't know much about Nepalese politics other than there's like 5 different "Communist Party"-s, so that may or may not be one of their goals. Also, lof's attempt to appropriate the transition to democracy in Nepal for the CPN(M) doesn't look particularly fair and balanced. That comment was primarily aimed at teh Kotors tacit defence of feudal totalitarianism because at least it wasn't communist, even if the communists were elected democratically as opposed to a king appointed by Vishnu or whatever the justification was. The establishment of democracy and the abolition of the monarchy were part of the peace process which the Maoists could very easily have... well there wouldn't have been a peace process at all if they hadn't wanted it, and the civil war would still be going if they wanted it to. If they won the civil war then they could implement whatever system they wanted so it's not like they didn't have motivation. I'm not particularly a fan of the Maoists but they do deserve credit as they could have decided to achieve their goals by carrying on fighting rather than via the ballot box- and if they'd decided to just sit back and just grow rice like good serfs then Nepal would still be a vestige of feudalism.

Sheesh, if straw man ideology based baseless argumentation were an Olympic sport it'd be USA gold and silver. Nepal was effectively a feudal monarchy which its last king tried to turn into an absolute monarchy following some rather tragic events that wiped much of the royal family out, and who used some truly brutal tactics to try and enforce his rule. While the maoists are not particularly 'nice' King Gundrawhatsisname certainly wasn't 'nice' either and the political system in Nepal was better suited to 16th century England than 21st century anywhere. Feel free to waaah as much as you like about the label Maoist but they have done far more to democratise Nepal than anyone else has done. I guess democracy is only a good thing when the 'right' people get elected though.

In this case paying the minimum amount is worse than pirating as a 0.01$ donation is in actual effect a -0.39$ donation due to the transaction fees. Not that I'm defending the pirates mind you, if you're pirating indie games associated with charity then you're pretty much scum but I have seen a fair few people who appear to be really proud of having paid 1c for the bundle too and think they're awesome because they haven't pirated it.

Jaggies are inevitable in UE3- it's (in)famous for not allowing antialiasing. Personally I prefer things with fewer shaders etc as the current trend of eye searing lashings of bloom making everything look like its been irradiated by Little Boy even if the only light source is a candle and the tendency to make things look like they're been dipped in vegetable oil via over reliance on shaders is one of my pet peeves. I look around and in "real" reality very little stuff is highly polished/ reflective and most stuff is flat lighted, but play a game and, well, everything seems to be shiny/ reflective from carpet to paint to clothing to hair to concrete whether or not it makes the slightest lick of sense. Turn off the film grain, if you haven't already. Utterly pointless effect that sucked up around a third of the fps on my rig- I had the same fps fighting multiple AI in Bioshock in an open area as staring at a blank wall in ME until I turned the grain off.

I'd disagree that it's one of the best DRM schemes although no-one can disagree that it is one of the most popular. I think the popularity mostly comes from the cost/benefit ratio Wals mentioned. The ultimate cause is that if you want to play Valve's games you have to have Steam- for HL2 alone that's an 8 million user base right away, and with Steamworksed games that number will only increase. I'd bet that the vast majority of people who use Steam, much like the vast majority of people who use SecuROM or any other DRM, are pretty much completely ignorant or utterly indifferent to it right up until the point it stuffs something up.

That would be Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines to give it its full title. Excellent RPG (be warned, it's not great as an action game) for PC from 2004, can be got fairly cheap off Steam if you're interested and since it's from 2004 has low system reqs for now. Also still has active development of enhancement/ bug fixing mods. Relevant part if that it had four hubs but there was quite a lot of backtracking between them as the story progressed both in terms of plot critical and optional quests.

IIRC they effectively have to call it Gothic 4 as Piranha Bytes still owns the IP and JW's rights to it consisted of making an expansion for G3, and a sequel and then it all goes back to PB. The Arcania thing is to try and decouple it from the Gothic name (and hence ultimate control by PB) so they can make another sequel if they want.

Same with me, though I'll probably pick up #2 at some stage it's well down the list. Preordered the original, haven't even been tempted by 2 yet despite being offered the lesser collectors edition for half the price of the standard one within a month of its release. Not surprising really, 2k did just about everything in their power to tell their PC buyers to foad short of saying the actual words.

That's a poor example, nobody cares about Belgium (well, except some Belgians). You have to pick a horrible, threatening, example like Russia renaming Kaliningrad back to Koenigsburg and the province to Prussia and how that signals Russia wanting to conquer large sections of Poland and Germany and its expropriation of another country's cultural heritage etc etc. India was just ecstatic about their greatest enemy breaking in half. They could probably have called Bangladesh Bharat without getting much reaction in those circumstances.

The main problem with the current one is its depth, as I understand it- the rig was specialised for drilling to depths which others cannot manage and which makes capping particularly problematic.

Maybe he meant "Macedonia"/ FYROM, Turkey, ?Kosovo and Bulgaria? rather than Finland since the Greeks have, iirc, had objections to all of those doing various Europe-y things at various times. (caveat: not 100% sure on the last two)

That's... wrong, for want of a better term. On two counts. The primary reason Greece is in the trouble it is now is because it's last, conservative government, was grossly corrupt and flagrantly cooked the books/ dropped the proverbial dead cow down the well which understandably also dropped Greece's credibility through the floor and has given them no leeway whatsoever- more people in Greece pay taxes than do in that well known hotbed of anarchism and the, er, United States of America, after all. Everyone knows about the general corruption, it was the book cooking which has precipitated this mess though. Secondly, most actual rioters in Greece tend to be anarchists, though they may be generally Marxist in philosophy as well, rather than classical communists- they are far more liberal and anti-authority than classical communists. LoF, or at least his epersona, would probably not fit in with that.

DLC might be a possibility too, though the exclusivity deals may preclude that.

Depends on what PR system they advocate, really. With Single Transferable Vote the practical differences are that the results given are approximately proportional and that there are multiple MPs per electorate which should, arguably, increase competition in catering to local affairs. MMP OTOH, does basically codifies the MP-Party-Slave relationship.

Nah, that's nationalism- defending everything about your country including the bad parts.

Stealth assault rifles exist- eg the Russian Vintorez. They generally fire specialised subsonic (ie quiet) ammo and have integrated silencers. Arguably stealth RPGs have existed too, the British PIAT in WW2 was a quiet anti tank weapon with basically no firing flash, albeit technically it wasn't an actual RPG and was less effective than the genuine RPGs. And several modern systems have two stage launching that obscures where an RPG has been fired from.

FEAR 2 had no 4:3 support on either console or PC. True story.

Without something other than widescreen, what would widescreen be wider than? [/socrates]

I've been scrupulously accurate in everything that I've written including noting that it is unlikely that Steam will randomly go Dr Evil and cut off access for teh lulz just that they can- there's just very little practical difference between any discrete activation system be it Steam or SecuROM/ Uniloc mainly because those activation systems are largely inspired by Steam. Haha, oh wow. Post Proof Or Retract [/srs bzns] Where does "Not that it means they will cut off access, just that they can and there's nothing you can do about it if they do" imply that- it's just a simple rephrasing of the SSA quoted above designed specifically to point out that I was not saying exactly what you accuse me of. OK, given the context I admit this did amuse me.