Sammael

Memories of IWD2 Hook Horrors abound...

Having completed the tutorial and the first battle last night, here are some more impressions. The tutorial was perhaps the best tutorial I've ever seen in a CRPG; it relayed all the important information about playing the game (not that I needed it) without being in-your-face with popups every five seconds. I managed to win all four contests and I got the cloak. Then came the "defend the village" part. I wasn't too fond of it. First, I disliked the scripted death of your female companion. I'm not sure if it can be avoided (by leaving her somewhere before approaching the mageduel) or not. Waves of duergar and bladelings were ridiculously easy to defeat. I think I got hit once during the entire battle. Anyway, the battle was drawn out a bit too much for my taste. Oh, and did they really have to put the "collect'n'heal five poke-militiamen" quest in? FedEx quests to start with? Pathfinding is very bad. I clicked on a spot that was maybe six feet away from my character; instead of going straight ahead, he turned right, and circled around to the spot. I checkd whether there was an invisible obstacle of some sort, but the path was completely clear. Bizarre. Leveling - I got to level my main character once, since he is a tiefling. Graphics remain nice. I was impressed with the rendering of the githyanki mage (he seemed much better done than the human NPCs from the village). I've noticed a number of recycled sounds, and the music is forgettable.

Well, SoU and HotU had a lot more roleplaying opportunities than the original OC, and I had hoped that NWN2 would have expanded upon those opportunities. But then again, the REAL reason why I wanted NWN2 was Sawyer's TBH module. Hopefully, it'll be available before NWN3 comes out. :D

That's disappointing, to say the least.

$1500 is about how much this system cost me with VAT (18%... UGH). Plus another $250 for mouse (MX Revolution) and keyboard (G15). And it pains me to admit that it's still considered a mid-level system.

What I meant to say is that regional feats are not per 3.5 rules. They were greatly increased in power in Player's Guide to Faer

System Specs: CPU: Intel Core2Duo E6400 (not overclocked as of yet) MB: Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard RAM: 2x 1Gb @ 667 MHz GPU: Gigabyte GF7900 GS w/256 MB HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 320 Gb 7200.10 w/NCQ DVD: Pioneer 111 something Audio: Crappy integrated SoundMax card, until Audigy 2 arrives Got NWN2 last evening. However, I did not have much time to play, mostly because of two things: 1) I wanted to patch it before playing, so I went to the auto-updater. However, it was very, very slow, and it croaked after downloading 85% of the patch (which took more than 2 hours; I am on a 256 kbit wireless connection, so it should have been done within an hour). I lost patience after that and decided to proceed unpatched. 2) So I started the game, and immediately realized that sound didn't work. I spent the next two hours fiddling with the stupid integrated audio card (I'm still waiting on that Audigy 2 I ordered), and finally found some drivers for it that worked. None of the other games I installed prior to NWN2 had any issues with the integrated card, so the issue must be with the game. After this, I played for a grand total of 15 minutes, enough to make my character (a LE Tiefling Warlock), exit the house and run around for a while. Here are my first impressions: Character creation: The character model is not very customizable, though this doesn't bother me much. It would be nice to see more options (particularly for overall body shape, height, weight, etc/). I am glad to see the abominable BioSkills gone for the most part. Regional feats are not 3.5. However, the background bonus/penalty makes up for this issue nicely. I made a Ladies' Man tiefling who worships Shar. It was nice seeing that at least some people recognized me as a tiefling in the tutorial, and I hope this will continue throughout the game. I also hope deity choice was meaningful. There is a lot of room for improvement in the feat department as well. Gameplay: One thing I noticed that bothers me is that I cannot equip that duskwood bow. I am not sure if this is (a) because it's a quest item, or (b) because I am not proficient with bows. If it's (b), then this is very wrong, as tieflings and aasimar are supposed to be proficient with all martial weapons (because they are outsiders; see clarification in WotC Main D&D 3.5 FAQ). Hopefully, this can be patched. Furthermore, I would prefer the option to equip weapons and armor I was not proficient with and suffer the penalties, instead of not being able to equip them at all. Other than that, I haven't had much chance to do anything. I like the way dialogs are handled (zoom in on your interlocutor), although it may become a bit cumbersome after a while. Camera works like a charm for now and I like it much better than in NWN1. Graphics: Very nice by my standards, and GREATLY improved over NWN1 (as they should be). I have the game set to 1280x1024, and most of the details turned to high. I am only getting 15-20 FPS outside, but this doesn't bother me much (and isn't even very noticeable). Models could be a bit more detailed. I, for one, am glad the tilesets are gone. Audio: Voice acting is meh in the tutorial, music is OK, but nowhere near music jewels like Torment, IWD1, and IWD2. I'll have to play a bit more before I get a full impression. Overall: Not enough data for a conclusion. Will play some more tonight (I hope).

Such an assertion failure does not necessarily mean that the game has a memory leak. My (professional) guess is that there is an assertion in the code which assumes available memory is equal to X before creating a new instance of an object. Normally, such assertions are ONLY used in debugging. The production version of the code should have considerably more sophisticated error-testing, and the application should not crash - the error handler should unload another unneeded object, or try to create a version of the object which consumes fewer resources, or something. Somebody apparently forgot to write appropriate error-handling code and just left the assert there, which resulted in the crash.

There is a creature in the sewers (somewhere) that has an attack which has a secondary effect of slowing down your character (which wears off eventually). On my one and only play-through VTM, after suffering one such attack, my character got permanently slowed down, and I only realized this after overwriting the previous saves.

My new rig is here, and I am now in pursuit of NWN2.

Is the game patched enough at this point to be playable? I am mainly referring to (A) the perma-slowdown bug in the sewers, (B) the boat escape bug, and © Chinatown and beyond bugs. I'd love to replay the game on my new rig, but all the bugs I recall make me shudder.

Well, the rig is on the workbench right now, and I should have it tomorrow. Now to hunt down NWN2.

Well, games will have to adapt, since Intel just introduced a quad-core processor, and their single-core processors from now on will be equivalents to celeron. I hope it'll still work, though. I don't want 100 FPS, I just want a playable game that looks nice.

It's 7900GS, which is a bit better. What sort of trouble?

Well, yes. Sort of. Life getting in the way of everything and all that...

Bah. This country hasn't been called Yugoslavia for some 5 years or more.

Hello. I've been out of loop for a while, but I know two things: (1) I want to purchase and play NWN2 ASAP. (2) I need a new computer to do this because my current computer is horribly outdated (and I was planning on getting a new one anyway). Now, (1) should not be a problem. However, I want to make sure that the computer listed in (2) will do the job. Here's what I had in mind: CPU: Core2Duo E6400 MB: Asus P5B Deluxe RAM: 2x 1 Gb DDR2 @ 667Mhz GPU: Gigabyte nVidia 7900 GS with 256 Mb RAM HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 320 Gb 7200.10 with NCQ Sound: Audigy 2 I would like to hear from people with similar computers regarding the game's performance. 7900 GS is quite similar to 7900 GT, and benchmarks show that it's only about 5% slower (while being 20% cheaper). I want the graphics to look as good as possible. Will this computer be able to that?

This is the same Monte Cook who published a revised version of his alternative d20 PH, Arcana Unearthed, only a year after the original? Hah. Yes, I am well aware of his review, but the main point is - 3.5 rules are vastly superior to 3.0 in most of their aspects.

Strength Dexterity Agility Endurance Intelligence Perception Cunning Presence

I am currently preparing for 134th session of my Rebirth Forgotten Realms campaign. There have been a few bumps on the road, but, overall, it's been a pleasant ride. If everything goes as planned, the campaign should be over in another 40 sessions or so.

Is this a trick question?

I honestly don't remember. I've long since archived all my TBH stuff, and I'd have to dig through CDs to find it. Even if I did, I wouldn't post them without permission, though.

That's the only comment you have, ramza? I am... surprised.

Some old 3D models.

BoVD artwork is wrong; the art order somehow got messed up (WotC admitted this).