Squidget

Any thoughts on this, guys? We've just had two pages worth of poll-bumping on the NWN Gameplay and Rules forums and I can no longer tell which topics are recent and which just got bumped.

The original poster might have a look at The City of Doors Initative. They are a project dedicated to recreating the Planescape setting in Neverwinter Nights, as well as writing a fairly long module to go with it. Their work (most particular the Sigil tileset) is very impressive so far. The site is a bit quiet at the moment, but according to CODI folks on the forums and IRC this is the result of some internal revamps and they are far from dead. It's no sequel to PS: T, but it might be the nearest thing we'll see to one. *waits for the inevitable sarcastic Codex-style responses from people who disliked NWN's OC*

There have been a couple threads here about topics that appear to bump themselves without a reply, and the culprit seems to be polls. Anytime someone votes on a poll the topic is bumped to the top of the forums. Frankly, there isn't any real reason for this, and it encourages people to make every topic a poll. Look at the NWN2 Gameplay and Rules forums to see what I mean - about 90% of topics there are polls, most of them for no real reason at all. Is there any chance we could get this functionality removed?

I'm recieving the error message from that link as well. I can access the individual forums themselves without difficulty, but that page gives me an error. If it helps, I'm using Mozilla Firefox.

I'm getting the same thing, and apparently Phospher is too. I haven't been able to figure out any kind of a cause, despite various tests. Neither editing nor responding to a poll seems to bump a topic back up, but sometimes it will just rise again on its own. I'll keep looking though.

One bug I've noticed quite a lot in browsing the NWN boards lies in the order of posts as they're displayed on the screen. Posts are supposed to be top-down, and a post that is replied to moves to the top. However, I've found that some posts are moving to the top on their own without anyone replying at all. They have the 'new post' mark next to them, but the post in question has already been read and is actually fairly old. Is anyone else noticing this? Is it a bug in the boards, or am I missing some hidden feature? If it helps, I'm using Mozilla Firefox.

As a high school student aspiring to be a game programmer, I'm curious exactly what sorts of preperation programming schools (such as those recommended in the sticky) look for. Some CIS classes and C++ programming experience, obviously, but what else? Math? Physics? Mod projects? So far I've been taking computer and math classes at my local college while concurrently enrolled in high school. Is doing well in classes like that good enough to get into excellent programming schools, or should I be doing more? Thanks for any replies.

I'm curious to hear about some schools outside the US as well. Are there any programming schools in Canada or Europe that come highly recommended by game developers?

Regarding Digipen - what sort of classes and grades are they looking for in their applicants? Balanced people with a full spectrum of classes under their belt? People with maximum knowledge of computers and the game industry as a whole? People who can show off a mini-demo made in one's free time? I'm taking and succeeding in various classes (including Calculus, C++, Database/web programming, and non-computer related classes) and would very much like to attend Digipen, but I'm not sure exactly what they're looking for.

That's a pretty good idea, if it's implementable. Basically it would just need an icon in every developer post that would take you to the next developer post in that thread. A little O in the corner or whatever Obsidian thinks is best. If that is an option, I'm in support of it over either choice in the poll.

I'm in favor of the Bioware approach myself. I'm generally clicking the developer post icon if the dev posts are the only thing I'm interested in in the thread. If I wanted to read other posts, I'd be entering the topic proper and just reading the dev posts along with the rest. On the Blizzard forums (those rare rare occasions I've visited them), I find that I have to read through the entire topic following the first dev post just to see if they've said anything else, which takes a lot of time. Incidentally - thanks very much for deciding to add this feature! I think it will be a huge help.

*eyes the hijack and agrees with FireFlash* Not getting involved in this one... That's all I wanted to know. Thanks!

*shrug* Can't say I've ever seen evidence for or against this, other than Visc being banned a few times. However, I know for a fact they can ban CD-keys from logging into their master server (as the master server for the website is the same one used for logging into NWN). Perhaps they just usually don't? But used the same CD-key, and trolled with it in the past? That stuff isn't hard to figure out, and frankly I much prefer the more moderated feel of the BioBoards to the "You can get away with anything" feel of Obsidian. That's the developer's choice though. Never really had a problem with it, personally. I just post links to images when I need 'em. I agree, this sucks. Anyway, enough hijacking.

The Bioware Forums have an extremely handy feature that allows you to see whether a topic has developer posts at a glance. These posts are indicated by a Bioware logo next to them. You can also click on this logo to view only the developer posts in the topic, along with a warning that they should not be taken out of context. This is an extremely useful feature for fishing out developer posts, and I'd love to see it added to the Obsidian forums. I'm sure it would also make Mayseth's job over at NWVault that much easier.