taks

my version of gdb is suffering. well, it suffers because it can only give you certain responses to a crash, and can't elaborate on the response. typically, using SIMD instructions, a failure is due to a seg-fault, bus-error or illegal instruction. seg-faults are from reads outside of a memory block, bus-errors are from writes outside of a memory block and illegal instructions are because you read in invalid data that was probably outside a memory block, but the data was not designated to another memory block (i.e. it wasn't malloc'd for something else, which would have otherwise caused a seg-fault). taks

so far, there seem to be plenty. i'm not sure about diversity, however, as i'm a neutral-good character and most of my options seem to be leaning towards good. it may play differently for evil aligned, or chaotic/law. i.e. the options may be different. you definitely get choices, however. taks

so far, i'd say the writing is better than the OC, SoU and HotU. i've only played about 4-5 hours but it is pretty solid. i have a hard time rating a game, or story, on a scale. either i like it, and i'm involved, or i don't. i like this story and i feel involved. your motivation is dependent upon how you want to role-play it, btw, and i'm after the revenge factor (actual dialog choices in the beginning). you have good reason to choose particular movitivations as well. so it's not a "i'm here as the chosen one to save the world" scenario, but in my case the "you wronged me in a bad way for <insert reason here> and you're gonna pay!" scenario. of course, along the way you get caught up in the bigger picture, but that is required for any real involvement with just about any story... good enough? there are annoyances, such as not being able to revisit certain areas, but not many and not a real issue. they also have an alignment thing. by that i mean if you play to your alignment, you get experience. sometimes your choices are conflicted, but i think that is true in real life as well (i.e. the "good" option is more important from a role-playing standpoint than the "law" option, etc.). also, if you successfully use a skill, you get experience. neither provides a lot, but 30-50 exp here and there is kinda cool. my favorite mod to date, and probably my favorite NWN experience overall. taks

after getting thoroughly pissed at daggerford, i went browsing around and noticed that bioware had released another premium mod. apparently this one, Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, was the closest to done, and seemingly in possession of the most professional "polish." i guess daggerford lacked that when they were doing their final reviews (it was pretty buggy, btw). anyway, the first thing i noticed was the price, $11.99. dang, all these mods have been $5.99 but only 5-8 hours of play time. does this mean they finally did a mod that has 10 hours or so? no, not 10, but 18-20!!!!!!!!! cool. that's primarily why i never bought the others. i couldn't justify getting psyched up for a mere evening's worth of fun. 18-20 hours, however, is reasonable as many full-length games are only this long (well, some, and certainly not many that i was happy about... but you get the point). anyway, a quick 235 MB download later and oila. new mod to play while i pine away for NWN2. short result: wow. well worth it. very cool so far. not nearly as easy as daggerford, and the story is, so far, much more complex. apparently it's pretty tricky to do many quests. pick up one henchman, and suddenly opportunities for previous quests go away because a key NPC refuses to talk turkey. interesting, albeit annoying, to say the least. i've put about 5 hours into it so far and it has been mostly a joy the whole way. the music is very gripping and relevant to the situation. the quests are a bit more than fedex (though what would a game be without the occasional fedex... don't worry, they're there). plus, another cool feature, horsies. yup. and ya get to joust on 'em to boot. unfortunately, the means for using horsies is a bit contrived (not hard to realize why), and i managed to lose my horsie in an area i cannot get back to. i'll just have to buy a new one. besides jousting, there are other minigames including a battle tournament (very easy if you're not on hard-core rules), an archery competition, and even a darts mini-game in one of the inns. DLA put some thought into this one. anyway, i just thought it was worth mentioning. too lazy to see if anyone else had... taks

extreme pain. part of the problem is that no matter how parallel an app is in actual execution, it is written out as a serial stream on the screen when you're wading through trying to figure out why you just encountered a segmentation fault... ugh. taks

there is some truth to this, however, i don't agree entirely. i'm currently working with a quad-core, and one of my tasks is parallel optimization. yes, it's hard. very hard. yes, the type of work i'm doing lends itself better, sort of, to parallel implementation. however, just about any process can be split into parallel threads and SOME gains can be had. what i've noticed, btw, is that gains are sort of logarithmic. i.e. 4 cores gives you a 2X boost with certain apps (with some, it could easily be 4x, but not most). developers that are saying it won't ever happen are actually about as short-sighted as bill gates was claiming "who would ever need more than 64 kB of memory?" btw, i'm not just trying to run parallel across cores. each core with my processor has two floating point units, each capable of single-instruction, multiple data (SIMD) operations. in this case, we can load two floating-point (32-bit) values at a time and operate on them, one "pair" in each pipe, simultaneously. so there's thread-level parallelism, and instruction-level parallelism. some processors can do even more... taks

hey now, no balding jokes allowed. next thing you know you'll be telling us oldsters to get some extenze to improve a "certain part of the male body." taks

being able to level your henchmen is important to me. i enjoyed building my party to my own specifications. if you have to exert a little influence on the character for class options, so be it, as that makes a bit of sense, too (i.e. they aren't YOU, just a friend). taks

curious what the difference between a social democrate and a liberal are? are you using the term "liberal" in the economic sense, or in the US political sense, i.e. liberal = left? taks

heck, even i liked clinton in the beginning (voted for him the first time). once he got his boss, hillary, on the health care for all kick, however, my capitalist inner being began to lose interest. taks

nothing personal, but that's not much of a counter. all you did is acknowledge the impact the murderer had in the first place. certainly a valid opinion, but certainly provable to only those who believe as you. personally, i have no problem with execution but i have yet to see a system that implements it correctly (as i see it). the argument that it prevents crime has never been shown to be true. prison by itself does not prevent crime. crime rates are relatively consistent throughout every society whether they have lax, or draconian punishments. i.e. those that commit crimes, particularly capital crimes, don't worry about prision or death when doing so. IMO death penalty should only be dealt out with irrefutable evidence, not just beyond a reasonable doubt (granted, most US states do have a higher standard for actually getting a death sentence simply by virtue of the juries that view the evidence... but that's not enough IMO). taks

i think 10 years is the average but it varies state-by-state. according to ron white, texas has an express lane. california death penalty is apparently the same thing as a life sentence, but in a smaller cell. taks

Now there may be a little sense coming from my favorite source of lunacy. I disagree that we should not have gotten involved with Afghanistan, if that's what you were referring to, but certainly attempting to lay blame is ludicrous. But, that's what politics are all about I suppose. taks

nope. the button won't work. you get a few spells, all first level. perhaps you started as a sorceror? taks

besides, bin laden wasn't a terrorist at the time. taks

oh, i should add, you actually start in a trailer, but it won't let you sleep. taks

darkness over daggerford starts you out with no spells in the middle of a fight. while it is not hard to run and hide, it's sort of a waste to go through the whole freaking epilogue hiding in a corner. very moronic. why even have it. just do a cut scene where your guy stands back and lobs a spell or two. sheesh. taks

christ hades... if you weren't such an... as if we knew back then, doing what we ALWAYS did, that someone like osama would happen. sometimes, idiocy is your forte. taks

st. louis, missouri, US. currently in colorado springs, colorado, and hope to stay near till i die. taks

is there a way to instasleep in NWN... can't find a cheat code and i'm tired of moronic module builders starting out mages w/out memorized spells. what a bunch of malarky... taks

i had about a 2 hour nap about 20 hours ago... other than that, i've been awake for about 36 hours straight. i'm tired. but i'm home. don't want to fall asleep now and wake at 4 am. might as well wait till the wife gets home from pool. taks

did you just say "OH SNAP"? taks

harder on a cpu, too. taks

i didn't see tarna complaining about cold in denver. quite the contrary. the springs gets a bit colder, but we're anywhere from 1000 to 1600 feet higher altitude. overall, colorado weather is rather mild. since there's virtually no humidity (nor oxygen for that matter), even when it's 30 it does not feel very cold. of course, this could be due to a lack of oxygen. i can't tell. i'm overloaded with the stuff in NH right now. sticky here, too. taks

yes, 30 lashes with a wet noodle to humanity. taks