taks

anecdotal evidence abounds for sure. i'm in the same boat as you, sand, in that i do not have a very high end system but it runs rather well with mostly medium settings. taks

i'm not surprised that a FPS engine would be the first to use threading. the bleeding edge of technology tends to come from FPSs. taks

i've noticed that a lot of people that are having problems with the graphics are a) running on an LCD and b) in 16:9, i.e. widescreen mode (both at the same time, i mean). perhaps there is an issue with widescreen support? mine runs rather well in spite of having a somewhat low-end card, but i'm only at 1024x768 on a CRT. taks

they have shared L1? or only shared L2? i've got a unique L1 per core, and one fairly large, but shared, L2. if linux pulls a core switch on me, i have to move my entire stack into a region i can use. taks

actually, i'm back to hand-coding in assembly. at least, i have to use __asm__ directives to get the performance necessary for embedded applications. it's not so much the language inefficiencies only. the big problem now is that we have a mix of vector engines on top of superscalar architectures. in other words, floating-point units are vector based (single instruction multiple data, or SIMD), but there is often more than one fpu on the core (superscalar). the problem lies with an inability for dated compiler optimizations to deal with such silicon freaks of nature. ask anyone that programs an altivec (PowerPC G4 and later) or the new intel/x86 pipes for performance. even with hand tuning it is a bear. compilers just can't deal with it. and if a language is more abstract, i.e. .NET, it simply aggravates the issue. taks

aw, give 'em a break. their stud defenseman, mcginnis, retired and the lauries sold off everyone else leaving poor doug weight and keith tkachuck to lead the team alone. but alas... i must admit. after 26 playoff appearances in a row, after last year's dismal showing, it looks like a new trend is underway with the bluenotes. hey, at least i got a world series to brag about! taks

i think they have to be dedicated. D&D crpgs have taken a bit of pummeling in the past few years. not with _every_ game mind you, but POR2 and ToEE stand out as massive failures in one way or another and IWD2 didn't sell like gang-busters. NWN1 obviously did well, and their expansions did fair. this is the follow-up they need to make sales. you're right alan, everyone had issues with U9. any time a company has to send out a remastered CD, there's something wrong. of course, if you were following development of the game you'd know why that was... taks

like, more bugs than toee, or bloodlines, or ultima 9 or any of the BGs, or NWN1, or the IWDs or pool of radiance 2 (oh.my.gawd) buggy? yeah, right. taks

games taking advantage of multi-threading on multiple cores will be a while, IMO. there's a whole new paradigm w.r.t. programming that developers will need to learn. it's not just simply "program it for multiple cores" as some might think... not to say that it can't be done, just that it may be a while. taks

yes. i did the winter challenge and inadvertantly picked the lock on the door. once i did that, the spring challenge said i was done. i would imagine that picking the lock, or opening the door in particular, is what signaled "done" for the challenges. that coupled with the carnage solution i chose for all the other areas is why i'm restarting the map. taks

oh, you were cornfused as well. i just figured there was some sort of vologic plus standard typing woes going on... taks

btw, the snow in the first room was a killer on the fps. stutter mode even though i'm normally over 30 fps. this is why i'm leaning towards a CPU limited engine, not GPU limited. taks

apparently so. i assume you were supposed to make your way through each of the timed battles to the final statue room. has anyone done this? if so, do you miss out on anything other than the battles? are there other rooms as well, such as phat lewt rooms? taks

vologic. taks

you have to read the books in each room, volourn, to get the seasons to work right. unfortunately for me, once i beat the first room (winter), i saved. when i reloaded and went to spring, it was as if i had already beaten it, too. then i couldn't get into the other seasons, so i just went into the statue room via pick-lock as well. i've reloaded and i'm going to do that whole map again since i sorta screwed up the orc thing as well (in short, EVERYONE ended up dead... hehe). taks

you find a way in, just like the rest of us did. you find where he went and then when leaving that area, you have an option to change your party (might have to talk to sand). taks

btw, i've moved the amdxp executable over to main as well. no differences yet, but i have not played much since doing so. i'll report when i get a chance. based on my workload between linear algebra and research proposal, that won't be soon... i have no time for sanity anymore. taks

what the??? taks

my guess then, is that widescreen is not properly supported. i don't run in widescreen mode, so i don't care. my settings never reset, but that may be tied to the widescreen mode. nearly every game i've ever played suffers from the long-session lag problem. most other software i use has that problem as well (like Matlab). i'd chalk it up to winders strange swapping method before calling it a leak. changing settings other than shadows and lighting do very little. this means that texture mapping and whatnot are probably not the issue. i'm guessing that the slow performance is not due to the GPU at all. it is probably related to the way the game sets up everything for handoff to the GPU. shadows and dynamic lighting seem to be CPU intensive as well. dunno for sure, since i cannot comment about specifics of the engine (none of us have the code). taks

btw, how many active posters are there on obsidian and bio's boards? a few hundred at best. they (we) represent much less than 1% of the sales of this game. most people simply don't go to the developer message boards. they buy the prima guide, or go to gamebanshee/gamefaqs, for answers and don't worry about the commentary from others. taks

there's also general D&D fanbois that simply buy anything crpg with D&D rules. i'd bet those represent a much larger chunk of the fanboi population than any developer fanboi. purely speculation, of course. taks

i'd have to say this is one of the least buggy games i've played in a looong time. most of the bugs are very minor and not noticeable unless you're really looking for them. some bugs are simply annoyances like the odd way the camera deals with buildings or your character jumping 10 feet back. other bugs, such as the badger thing, or camera stuck in a strange view, are hit and miss, and i've not seen them. i've also never run into the cut-scene or save-game issue. i did have the game almost hang once or twice, but i smacked a few keys, hit alt-tab a couple times and it sort of recovered. onward i went. taks

sometimes you're really thick. show me where i ever said they are the same. dang volourn... taks

they are all the time roshan. hell, even lethal weapon was a story about one partner forced on another. are you like, that far out of touch with reality that you don't realize this? your posts are actually completely pointless. taks

nearly all laws have some basis in christian faith. like it or not, we came out of a religious beginning. ranting that "murder was illegal before moses" is equally moronic (sand) because the people that first outlawed it based their morals on religion as well. to assume otherwise is ridiculous. oh, gee, just a minor nit "other than that of the fetus."??? so which is it, no basis in health or some basis in health, particularly when it concerns the fetus? sand does this. you and hades twins? really... the only basis for outlawing abortion is religion? you're about on par with sand here, again. hate to burst your self-righteous bubble, but not everyone that opposes abortion is doing so because of religion. pointer: understand what you are talking about before posting about it. taks