Rhomal

It is undeniable the influence first person shooters (FPS) and real time strategy (RTS) have had on computer RPG

I was not planning on a

I was not planning on a

Yeah! We need a more Nordic / Norse / Wiccan concept of brutal beatial rape, killing and bathing in the sacrificial blood (and then eating it). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I certainly hope you are joking, and even if you are as a pagan myself I think thats poor taste. If the fundimental christians were more like the pagans/wiccans in the world we'd have less issues, conflict in the world. And this matter wouldnt even be a issue. As sex and nudity isnt as considered a 'bad' thing to the pagan/wiccan faith.

Anti-Violance: "Hot Coffee" is likely alot worse than killing random people... NOT Pro-Familiy: The game has a 17/18+ Rating already. Pro-Family groups have no reason to go on war with such things Anti-p0rn: They wear there clothes during the whole seen. There is as much to see as the "prostitude action" in III, VC and SA (UN-modded)..., they should go for the movies and such, not a game like this... ANY of these groups complaining at R* for this are RETARDS... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I am assuming by your reply you have never been involed in a PR battle... It does not matter if they SHOULD or not, the fact is they ARE. And if you lie, as RS has done, all that does is take away power/credibality from you and give it to them. Thus the story becomes NOT if they should even be involved in the debate but WHY did you lie and what else are you deceiving the publc about. The you (RS in this case) does not have a leg to stand on teven to question if they should even be in this debate. As thats moot, you lied so you look guilty off the bat even if you did nothing wrong. Thats why its very critical on a PR front for them to have been honest from the start, but now...

> You say it there, highlighted: one has to install a hack (or go and dig around the hard disk with a hex editor). In legal terms, there is an additional action that must be taken; a further step: it is not part of the game as relesed and available for the consumer. I am NOT stating the EULA is not being violatied, it is. But if you see some of the quotes coming from Rockstar they are making the implication this mod ADDS to the code and put this game in the core app. This is NOT the case. All this hack is, is a small .exe that flips a 0 to a 1 in the save file more or less. This mini-game is in the game just disabled. My point is RS is NOT being honest in their PR defense and its going to, IMO, cost them in the long run.

Anti-Violence??? WTF has Anti-Violence has to do with all of this? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Your missing my point and focusing on symantics. anti-violance, pro-family, anti-p0rn... whatever. With those TYPES of groups, Rockstar lying will give them ammo.

As a System Administrator/PC Technician I would like to chime in and clarify the issue surrounding this mod. I have installed this hack. All it does it flip a 'flag' in your save game file. When turned 'on' this flag opens up the mini-game. There are NO other modifications to files that need to be make then the save game hack. Thus it

Pathetic. Like a few paragraphs is so difficult to read. This is the reason society is dumbing down.

Welcome JE!

Done a lot of music composition have you?

Mr. Soule has been quite busy so forgive the delay, but here is the mystery interview I promised several weeks ago! It is a extensive interview covering his background, CRPG music and of course NWN. I hope you enjoy, here is a snip: When you are approached by a game company to compose music do you play or view the game first for inspiration? For your process, do you need to have something from the game (i.e. demo it, read about the story/plot, etc.) to produce music or are you able to go in 'cold'? [Jeremy Soule] I always said that if this composing thing doesn't work out, I could be a psychic. No, just kidding. Actually, I try to spend time with the people I'm working with to really get a sense of what their goals are for their game. Often, you can't get the whole picture from a design document or a beta build. I know that games are always a moving target in the development stage and the people that have the best understanding of the whole process are the developers themselves. Full article: http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/smartsecti...m.php?itemid=23

NWN 2 & Old School - Part 2 My thanks to everyone, agreed or not, for at the very least reading what I had to say and posting feedback. There were many interesting comments and I would like to take this time to address a few of them. This before I get into the bulk of this article, which is the 5 points I feel Obsidian needs to address in NWN 2 vs. NWN 1. Acrodania: Micro-managing, for the sake of micro-managing is BAD. I agree 150% and I am NOT advocating putting what I describe below in for just the effect of putting it in. I believe everything suggested later on in this commentary has a point and advantages to the game either in SP or/and MP mode. I believe there should be a balance between fun and difficulty/management. It seems some of those who posted feedback to my initial overview seemed to be under the impression it

With a bit of a splash I posted my first commentary. Overall I felt it generated some interesting debate and I thank those that took a critical look as the ISSUE rather then the presentation. With that said this commentary probably won

Just for a update for those not keeping track... As you can see from the link above Lord Robilar has made it to the finals. Also Aerie, Bruernor and Blackstaff has made a strong showing in their matches to make it to the semi-finals.

For those that have played the game on the console or had a lot of playing time on the PC version. I have a question, is it possible to take over the entire territory of another gang. If so do you wipe them out or do they 'magically' reappear trying to retake areas from you? IMO if you take all the territory you should eliminate that gang,

On the contrary. An A list actor does not usally becomes a A list actor without ability. Vice city was filled will big names, so you are proposing most of them did a poor job? I would disagree. Your logic is flawed; as if they didnt have the skill, they wouldnt get the big $ they ask for. With that said, I do not think the voice acting was 'bad' in SA but so far aside from jacksons part and the guy who plays his partner, nothing has stood out for me. Aside from those 2, so far I would rate the acting as average.

The guide book has a map of all the locations of such but your right, even with the guide book its a chore. I cant image trying to find them all w/o help. I also agree it should reward you for every 10 or so found like in vice city. With only 20 clams or such thats not to bad, but 100 grafitti tags? Theres really no motivation for me to find such when everything it gives you (3 or 4 various guns in your house) can be found for free in various parts of the map with a lot less time invested.

I did all the missions for one person before moving onto the next. I think Big Smoke was the second person for which I did missions. I had some trouble with that mission, more from having to shoot the enemies within the time limit than controlling the bike. The guy at the fast food restaurant (from which you receive the dancing mission) I attempted last. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Did you just drive or did you shot and drive? How did you beat it? I spent $20. on the guide book and for this mission its useless, just tells me the obvious.

Amen! I rented it a few months ago when it first came out for the PS2. I got through every mission, until I had to steal a stereo system from a DJ at a beach party. Apparently, she wont even let you look at it until you impress her with your dance moves. And so it degenerates into a DDR minigame at which I suck terribly. I dont remember the exact score needed, but I do remember not even being able to reach half that despite two hours of trying. Eventually, I gave up. I never did beat that mission. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The mission im stuck on is the dirt bike/train mission with big smoke. I COMPLEATLY suck at motorcycle control.

Dont know about the console version but for the PC version you have a circle on the bottom middle of the screen. And the 4 direction arrows scroll though the circle. You need to hit the proper arrow direction when said arrow is in the circle. Every time you do you get points added to the score. To pass a mission based on this you usally have to get a certain amount of points. I assume the console works similar using the x, o and other buttons.

PC, hence the subject of the thread

I tried and no matter how many of the other gang we kill it never trigers a gang war. Yet when I go solo, I kill 3 or 4 and a war starts... Bug perhaps?

I picked up the PC version of GTA:SA and I must say I am having lots of fun. I wanted to get the feedback of others here and see what they had to say about it. I will offer a few random thoughts on it thus far, I am only according to its score tracker 11% compleated thus far. a. It seems the GTA line is going more and more into the realm of RPGs with each title. Now your char has stats (strenght, endurance, hunger, reputation, etc) and skills (cycling, driving, pistol, SMG, etc). I really liked this fact you have skills to build and stats to keep track of. b. I am not fond of the changes made to the taxi missions. Its almost impossible to get to your destionation w/o speeding and thus banging your cab up a bit. Yet in doing so you loose your tip. Thus you really dont make much $ on the cab missions from my experiences. I find the time time I spend in the cab, in the same amount of time I can make several times more doing ambulance or pimp missions. c. I like the main storyline thus far, its about as involving as vice city. My only gripe is the voice acting. A side from samuel l. jackson 85% of the other voice talent I have no idea who they are. On vice city a good 80-90% of the voice acting was some reconizable name. While overall the acting is good, its just a observation I felt the need to point out. d. SA suffers the same issue as vice city mission wise. Some are just too damn difficult! Some of the missions revert to arcade style twitch reflexes to compleate, and if you dont have those reflexes your pretty much screwed and have to keep retrying until you either get lucky or become good enough. e. I like the idea of gang war/claiming turf. I will admit I used the extra health cheat to do this. As you cant recruit any of your gang to help you (which to me makes 0 sense). You have to be a one man army to defend against 3 waves of attackers to take that part of town in question. And the last wave your out numbered about 12 to 1, with them armed with ak-47's and SMG's its not that easy. I did do it a couple times w/o the cheat but its NOT easy. I really think they should allow you to recruit some of your own gang when engaging in a turf war. Even if you use them as canon fodder at least it make sense. f. The eye candy isnt much better then vice city. They REALLY need to do a major FX upgrade for the next one in the series. Its got the nwn1 complex, looking dated out of the box. g. Like vice city the radio stations are great for ambiance and the DJs/commercials/talk radio station make me LOL. My 2 coppers

According to a noted physist researcher a dr. hiku (sp?) I heard during a radio interview. he spoke in depth on this topic. In a nutshell going forward in time according to therodical research and some experiments done thus far much easier and he beleive will be possible within our lifetime. Going back in time OTOH is a entire different ballgame. The amount of energy needs to be created to achive that is beyond anything we can acheive currently. So that basically means sure we can go visit your great-great-great grand kids at some point in the future but you'll prob never get back. Also as mentioned above, if we did manage to send someone back in time s/he would create a new, deveating timeline that branches off our own at the point that effected history. Thus saving Lincon from Booth wouldnt have any effect on us in this timeline. I am surprised BBC did this article so late in the game, these theories have been around for several years and even in a few books on the topic of quantum physics. I guess these theories are just now trickling down to the mass media/public.