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Reddie

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Posts posted by Reddie

  1. Romance in games is always cheap and rushed out - consequence of the game not really having enough "time" and/or the designers just being garbage at it, I suppose.

     

    My experience with ME, DA, KOTOR didn't really feel more enriching if I hooked up as opposed to not hooking up, I guess there were some sappy lines though.

     

    I think this may be a reason why romances in games you've mentioned well, sucked (KOTOR had some good parts, but far from being significantly better). BioWare treats romance as fanservice, they literally throw it into their games because, well, it sells. Their fanbase largely likes it, but they do feel stupid, rushed, unnatural and forced because they do not consist an actual part of the plot.

     

    Good romances in other types of media are always parts of the story itself, and should be treated as such. So it's writing quality we are talking about here.

    • Like 1
  2. When you get a book, or a movie, or any other media and it has a romance subplot - which is pretty common - are you like ewww, there's a romance here, disgusting? ;)

     

    Yes, if I think that romance is stupid and detracts from the plot, setting or characterisation as a whole. Which is the case in 99% of video game romances I have seen.

     

    I have addressed that point. Your complaint is against romance quality, not the romance itself. I consider most of the media nowadays to be crappy, but I don't see this as argument for not making any new ones.

     

    What is soooo wrong in having Project Eternity be part of this 1%?

  3. What I'm equating is Videogame Romances = Sad and Childish.

     

    That is all.

     

    If you don't equate romance itself, in whatever genre or media as childish, then in fact you are counting videogames as a childish form of entertainment and romances in them get caught by extension.

     

    Which really is sad.

     

    Because the format is not equipped to handle it in a less than embarrassing way.

     

    If you don't feel embarassed about reading a book with romance subplot, why do you feel embarassed about reading in-game text with romance subplot? Because with Project Eternity being like IE isometric RPG's this is the level of presentation we are talking about.

  4. Why do people want romances in games anyway ? Just curious.

     

    I don't think someone asked the question: why do people don't want romances in game?

     

    When you get a book, or a movie, or any other media and it has a romance subplot - which is pretty common - are you like ewww, there's a romance here, disgusting? ;) Do you advocate for any media in work to not have romances? Even if you have some sort of fictional work that in your opinion could do better without a romance subplot, I'm pretty sure it's about the subplot's quality and not the fact that in presents a romance.

     

    So if I take a point that good romance subplot enriches media experience in so many ways, why some people consider it so strange that I would like it in a game?

  5. So then what you are asking for is something that has never (properly) been done before in the history of computer games. Just the sort of thing to try to add to a low budget game with an 18 month long development cycle.

     

    Precisely because it's a crowdfunded project, I feel that it's completely in order to expect it to be fresh and innovative. Just the sort of things Obsidian couldn't do with any big publisher. The world is new, the character stats system is new, yet I don't see you complaining that this unnecessarily drains resources and how better would be had Obsidian used something that already exists.

  6. I think post-Gates Microsoft is a train wreck and I would like to avoid Windows as much as possible, but I'm a little concerned that Obsidian had to go with Unity solely due to the difficulties porting Onyx to Linux and OSX. Onyx seems like a more capable engine that might result in better graphics than Unity. So as much as I would like to be able to play games on Linux lower graphics quality is a pretty steep price to pay. It's a done deal now, but I'm not sure it was worth it. It would have been nice to have at least somewhat better graphics than the Infinity Engine. With Unity the graphics may actually be worse.

     

    Well they announced they have engine ready before announcing Linux/OSX versions, so I don't think it's the case. But a compromise could have been (of course it's irrelevant now) to just modify Onyx where necessary for it to play nicely with Wine, the open source impletmentation of Windows and DirectX APIs.

     

    For example, Linux version of EVE Online client works this way.

  7. As a technical ignoramus I'd be happy to be educated, in layman's terms, about engine versus graphics.

     

    Engine governs what is displayed. Graphics are fed to the engine to be displayed.

     

    When you have a raw graphics interface, like DirectX, it's impossible to simply take the scene and display it. A lot of so called "boilerplate" code needs to be written. Graphics engines are just this code. Notably, they can include simple rendering functions, doing all the setup necessary, or they can support various kinds of assets (jpg, png files, 3d models) to be used out of the box. This sort of things. Of course it's impossible to fully explain without going deeper :)

  8. Then go ahead and give specific examples of what you consider a game with good romances, if it exists.

     

    It does not, but is that an argument that there should be no attempt at one?

     

    BG2 and PS:T are some known examples of romance plots that go different than what BioWare recently fed it's fanbase with, but granted, these do fail, albeit on other aspects than over-sexualisation and fanservice.

  9. Actually they aren't the only group, I am a straight male and I support this idea in the interest of equality. Its not like you will even notice it if you don't want to but it clearly will make a difference to people so how will it hurt or change your gaming experience. Please respond, by allowing this character choice how will it effect your RPG experience?

     

    I am not arguing that it would affect my experience. I put an argument that in spite of this reasoning there are more minority groups that PC should be optionally part of, only those groups are not as demanding as LGBT, despite being probably more numerous (i am pretty sure there are more allergic people nowadays than transgender).

  10. In fact, if the game is designed to be multiplatform from start - and it's always a good thing to decouple unnecesary dependencies - the cost of releasing it on another platfom is minimal. If Obsidian plans to port graphics engine from Direct3D to OpenGL - now that would be a lot of work. But if it's already written in OpenGL, the only thing necessary for porting is to compile source code to target platfom and write scripts dealing with platform-specific things, i.e. filesystem layout. And there are libraries for that, most popular being SDL.

  11. Honestly, the rationale that "there has to be a transgender option or I can't relate to my PC!" is just plainly stupid. I am allergic to dust and the condition (used to) place heavy burden on my everyday life. Thus, I can't feel fully connected to my PC unless there is an option for him being allergic! This DEFINETELY needs to be represented in game, or Obsidian will discriminate against people with allergy!

     

    Now, I would like for all the LGBT folks on this forums (great you are here, I have nothing against you as a people) to rethink, why they are the only minority that wants to bend the game to "represent" them, while other minority groups - people with illness, disabilities, various kind of facial and/or body features etc. - can live without it GLADLY. And ask yourself, why your group is so often viewed as unreasonably demanding.

    • Like 1
  12. Animations are not really important for me, but interactivity is. However, i also count in text-based interactivity, as in reading the description of what's happening without it being animated. Even if this consists majority of all interactions, I can live with that as long as description is good (in terms of both writing and being accurate) and doesn't contradict whatever is displayed besides it.

  13. To be fair, Steam is no different than Origin or Uplay or Battlenet.

     

    Of course, but - correct me if I'm wrong - these are digital distribution platforms for each individual publisher, so unless Obsidian becomes a division of EA (*shiver*) Project Eternity on Origin is out of question ;)

     

    And I believe we actually purchase a license to use a software each time buy a software and agree to its EULA. This was something that was debated long before online DRM and basically we do not own the rights to a software, but just the rights to use it. Its a complicated thing so I'm not trying to open up that discussion. Just though I'd state it since you mentioned about not owning a software.

     

    You're basically right here, but i'd like to clarify a bit. When you own a physical installer, license is assumed to be bound with it. Of course, in accordance with copyright law, this physical copy can't be multiplied, but when it is given to someone, or resold, or inherited, the license is still considered valid. That's the difference between having a licensed product and a license subscription.

  14. So I'm curious as to what people meant by DRM, is it the online DRM, or does it include traditional copy protection. IMO, its not reasonable to expect Obsidian to forfeit all copy protection. Otherwise I will bet you there will be people who buy the game and share the installer with their friends and divide the cost. Some people are that cheap.

     

    Obsidian do have the right to protect their work at least with CD keys or something. It doesn't have to be online DRM, but at least to deter people from easily sharing the game.

     

    DRM is a copy protection scheme, but not the other way around. As the name says, Digital Rights Management has a goal of not only "protecting" said media from being copied, but also (and perhaps most importantly nowadays) to "manage" your rights to it. Meaning that DRM tries to tie a game to a person, either by using some sort of PC signature (e.g. Starforce and other DRMs that act as an optical disk drivers) or by using online accounts, like Steam.

     

    This online DRM _would_ be acceptable for me if it was only emulating whatever I can physically do with my purchased product. But the scheme got largely abused by greedy publishers, since it enabled them not only to manage, but to limit your rights as they please. At Steam you no longer own a game, you only have a license subscription - presumably lifetime, but this could change. As such, I - unlike majority of people, I am aware of that - consider Steam one of the WORST DRM in existence. The purchase made on Steam gives me impaired product that I cannot use as I want and as my country's law gives me right to.

     

    So having a Steam-exclusive release or a release with Steamworks DRM that requires Steam anyways and forces me to agree to their TOS is completely unacceptable for me and I won't pledge a dime unless Obsidian gives a clear message here. Sorry guys, I'm sure your game will end up awesome, but I want to HAVE it, not RENT it.

    • Like 1
  15. I'm saying that the text-based localizations they do are of top quality

     

    Used to be ;)

     

     

    Fan-made translations are almost *always* inferior to their official counterparts (I am yet to see a proper fan-made translation), because most of the time they are done by amateurs, for free. This means less time invested in the product, no proper quality assessment process, lack of coordination between multitple translators and, quite often, it's just a straight-up translation rather than localization.

     

    In theory. The same theory applied to software used to "prove" the superiority of proprietary development model, unless open source proved it wrong.

     

    But I digress. As a counter argument: fans may have way more time to offer in product precisely because they are not constrained by paid working hours and they are, well fans - which means they like what they translate and have great knowledge of in-game world and story.

     

    The claim that fan translations are always inferior rests only on the fact that there are not enough modern translation efforts to verify it because most of the games are now localized. There is a plethora of quality fan translations in other media - TV, movies, manga. Regarding games, fans have helped translating KOTOR and I believe the localization would be of lower quality if not for their help.

     

    Also, the game *will* feature little snippets of voice, akin to Infinity Engine games - and these will remain untranslated by fans. A partial translation just doesn't look good.

     

    Wasn't it your argument that translating text only would be cheap enough for CD Projekt to do? Also, it's not at all impossible to hire voice actors and a studio funded by fan effort! Recently, Musopen project hired Czech National Philharmonic Orchestra to do a full-length album filled with classical pieces. The cost was about $10,000 and it was raised by Kickstarter. I'm sure that voice localization, given there are only little snippets voiced, would cost even less :)

  16. Fan-made translations are *always* terrible, something English-only speakers might not be aware of.

     

    Not true. Recently, fans have translated DLCs for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age. While I agree the quality is lower than CD Projekt's localization of Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, it's on par with their more recent localizations (i.e. Mass Effect, which received a medicore effort - not terribly bad, but not great either and certainly worse than english version).

     

    CD Projekt has been doing localizations for the past 15 years and has been doing a decent job, but they showed the most strength in localizing Infinity engine games.

     

    I understand your argument here is: their best translations were 2D cRPGs, so if they will receive opportunity to localize another one it'll be just as good? ;) Regardless of the fact that Infinity games just happen to all be from before a decade.

     

    Plus, there's this GOG aspect that needs to be considered.

     

    And which has absolutely nothing to do of whether CD Projekt will localize this game or not.

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