rjshae

Total troll of a title...

NWN2 uses the Electron Engine, not the Aurora Engine. Mask of the Betrayer played quite well in strategic mode ("isometric") in my experience. To me the biggest benefit of NWN2 is that it uses the third edition rules. The engine seemed fine to me--it's getting long in the tooth, but still runs pretty decently. People have their biases, I guess.

Perhaps they could present a choice between: Forced march -- higher wilderness encounter risk and no camp recovery benefits but very fast Cross country -- higher wilderness encounter risk but faster and with camp recovery benefits Road travel -- lower wilderness encounter risk with camp recovery benefits

To do that realistically, the developers would need to factor in the start time to compute the travel time. If you start in the evening, it may take longer than if you start in the morning. Or they could just use days.

I still think the magic missile effect in ToEE was one of the better implementations...

I don't know if its easier. The difference between Fallout and BG travel map implementation is mostly about random encounters i.e. when you click on a location instead of jumping to that location, you'll might get a random encounter on the way. A possible drawback is that it allows to open location through world map exploration instead narrative only, in FO it meant you could take a shortcut which allowed you to finish the game in 15min... IMO It might be nice, but you can get the same encounters without having an exploreable world map. Well it is much easy to implement a point-and-click travel map using the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset than an overland map. The former just takes a picture, some icons, and control scripts, while the later requires actually building the map in a 3D exterior area plus a whole lot of scripting, trigger areas, transition regions, lists of wandering monsters, placeable models, and so forth.

I could picture a character like some of the work of Diego Velazquez. A phlegmatic noble with a graceful mien, entering middle age, with fair olive skin and dark, well-trimmed facial hair.

Ouch! I hurt my eyes rolling them back into my head...

Yes, nearly all of those CGI-based introductory videos look completely fake. I can't exactly say they put me in the mood. The ones that usually work the best are those that are deliberately simplified, with hand-drawn or watercolor graphics.

Ancient Chinese proverb say: man with two watches never knows time...

I was hoping they would make the portraits and backgrounds tintable so the game could dynamically adjust the appearance according to the environment.

Since they have the original renders for BGEE2, I wonder if the characters and creatures are now anti-aliased? I can't tell with those wide screen shots.

$25 is steep... if you're from North Korea and aren't allowed to use a PC. Otherwise I look at it as blip--a minor service charge for saving me the time of modding up my copy. Plus there's whatever content they added, of course.

1 clown, 2 caterers and a three-man band. With plenty of booze and snacks of course.

It was announced on RPG Watch that BGEE2 is available for purchase from Beamdog or Steam.

I thought there was already a built in limit of 8 NPCs you can recruit from the Hall.

Both portraits look fantabulous! Great work. I like the casual, non-traditional poses, yet they both follow the rule of thirds pretty well. Nice use of light and shadows.

The main concern I would have with this system is whether your reputation is local or global. If you move to a new locale that doesn't communicate with the prior region, then have a reputation for cruelty or kindness still apply may break my suspension of disbelief. But hopefully that won't be an issue.

hand coding HTML is fun but time consuming. Might be faster to use a tool.

Moderate pressure tends to increase rather than dampen creativity. This is true. I wish more people understood this. Definitely. Necessity is the mother of invention. Challenging circumstances can bring out new approaches and clever ideas, whereas comfort and surfeit leads to stagnation.

Because D&D alignment has two things, "law/chaos" and "good/evil." Both of which are very abstract and poorly presented. I mean, what are you talking about? The law of the land, a code of conduct, orderly behavior? Moral good, greater good? This one sounds to be more specific ("mercy") and with probably more than just two. Which, again, is just a different categorization. Not that I'm complaining; I just wondered if it was fundamentally different. I think the difference is that D&D's alignment system was meant to say "This is what you are. You are lawful neutral." whereas this is meant to say "This is what people see you as. They think you're a ****." Okay, so more of a dynamic system defined by your interactions rather than a fixed disadvantage system.

1979 Revolution: Black Friday Interesting concept for a game. Kind of an ambitious goal though: $395,000.

Based upon the description, it looks like a form of moral absolutism. Other than perhaps having a different categorization, how does this differ from the alignment system in D&D?

I don't follow how it becomes less time consuming. What every other IE game offered was the ability to perform those actions where you were (rest anywhere) vs. now having to schlep to specific locations to perform the same action. Can you clarify your stance? What about PE makes any of the new mechanics less tedious? I suppose my view is that "rest where you are" would be riskier and less beneficial than "rest at a comfortable camp with warm food and bedding". To my mind, the former would provide a brief respite, but it shouldn't serve to relieve things like wilderness exposure, fix a damaged tendon, reconnect to the magical weave, collect more spell components, sharpen your weapons on a grindstone, repair damage to your armor and shields, and so forth. Thus the camp provides an abstraction of those activities. But the resource management aspect of a role-playing game requires some cost for recovery. In this case the cost is a march to and from camp. I guess that also provides some of the role-playing feel of the PnP version.

It beats the alternative of having each recovery mechanic tied to a different, time-consuming behavior. A bit of an abstraction, I suppose, that makes the restoration aspect less tedious but not so easy that everybody does it all the time.