Noceur

I lost my rogue henchman, not the tank one. Perhaps it depends on which one you get in the prologue thing (playing as a rogue or mage gives you the tank character in the prologue I believe, whilst playing as a fighter gives you the rogue). Nevertheless, I agree... it's pretty buggy. I honestly thought it was the end and was about to give up on the module before I found out about the script thing (because I really needed a rogue in my party). Besides some quests that I can't seem to finish (I think I've only encountered one) I've also found that you can screw up some up some quests depending on which order you say things. Well, at least superficially and dialogue-wise. The quest is finished either way, it's just that if you say the dialogue in the wrong order, it seems as if you haven't gone to the bottom of it, even though you have all the clues. Ah well, regardless of whatever bugs (none are show-stopping, I believe), it's a very fun campaign.

I like the killing vs dialogue questing so far. btw, I came upon a bug... if one of your henchmen goes missing (due to a bug) after a certain quest, this is presumably the solution (haven't tried it yet): In Yon Chatte Windowe, type: 1. ##DebugMode 1 2. ##dm_runscript db_findhench 3. ##DebugMode 0 This should fetch the missing henchman to your position, according to Zeh Devs. EDIT: It works, thank ye gode... I was totally rogueless there for a while!

Thanks for the heads up... installed NWN + EPs again. Now patching... I wonder if it'll be done downloading the patch before NWN2 is released Seriously though, I hope this will keep me entertained for a while... my last entertainment was that stinkin' Titan Quest and there's only so much you can do on the Fields of Lootage. ps. <_< Stinkin' Ramses and his 3 identical sets of gloves... that his predecessors got burried with.

I think F.E.A.R and Heroes of Might and Magic [insert extremely long and tedious string of roman numerals] were the last games to go. I made a huge wipe recently, baleting demos (Call of Juarez for example), games and stuff because I'm really running out of disc space... I can't remember them all since I'm a saver and they were extremely numerous. Deus Ex went fairly recently, further back in time Quake 4 and way back; Oblivion. Prey is still on my drives for some reason. And Titan Quest, ahem... Dawn of War stays until Dark Crusade is released and long thereafter, bwehehe.

Wow, that actually does look frighteningly much like Morrowind. o_o Nice that you can scale it enough to work with Radeon 9600 and 512mb ram though.

Yes, I know, but I have a morbid fascination in water ripples.

Don't copy that floppy! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Welcome to the end of the computer age! BWHA HAH HAH HAAH!!! Anyway, this is a really silly question, but does the water ripple when you swim/walk in it like in Morrowind? I haven't actually seen anyone comment on this.

Console oriented but also released on PC, right? At least that's how I interpret the quotes from the IGN article. At least PG, as the SEGA thing seems to mention that it's to be released on PC as well. Just trying to secure my future seat in front of my PC, here.

Not to mention that for most objects you also have to model a high-poly version + the low-poly one. Ah well, I think normalmapping kicks ass. It's not the cure for cancer though

I'd like to see Twilight 2000 remade or something... have it work a bit like Silent Storm, except with the Twilight 2000 RPG rules... I don't know if it needs next gen stuff. I guess I want to see it remade mostly because it CAN be. It'd be awesome to actually drive from Krakow to Berlin in some old jeep. REAL TIME! *snickers* Bloodnet would also be interesting. In the early 90's and around there I think there was a lot of games that had a great idea, but the tech was only ALMOST there so they all fell short. I just can't come up with any game that I'd REALLY want remade because most of them are VGA and looked (and still looks) good. Hyperspeed with more focus on the Adventure part, because that was awesome. I loved talking diplomacy with these strange alien species. Hyperspeed and Elite, something like that. Man... now I want to play that Elite Remake again... DIE FURBALL! > EDIT: Deus Ex 1. Murr.

When it comes to abandonware RPGs, Albion and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos both come highly recommended. Lands of Lore was one of the first games ever to make significant use of the CD format. It makes use of the format with voices by actors including Patrick Stewart. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Is Albion that awesome game where you can type in words in the Ask About thing?... like "Ask About youth" and the NPC will tell you about the youth of his race and stuff like that?

I bet someone has that framed somewhere. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> IBM did something similar back in the day... their CEO (or some other IBM bigwig) said that noone will ever need/use colour graphics. " Just imagine Pong without colours!

Maybe the generation after next as long as they keep pushing the technical envolope. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Mm, I wouldn't keep my hopes up. :/ Probably pretty close in some circumstances. I'm not gonna pull a Bill Gates, though... Nobody will ever use more than 640kb my arse.

Then you must be the only one, cause the UE3 tech demo clearly shows how there is no difference between the two, when proper maps are applied to the model. I guess that's why everyone is blind, and you aren't. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, that was what I said as well. You can cleary see the difference. Especially in contours. You see, that's the difference between Textures/Shaders and polygons... textures and pixelshaders don't alter/add geometry. There's more to geometry than just "looking good" too. We'll most likely get to a point where there's no real distinction between real-time rendered stuff and pre-rendered but we ain't there yet.

Yeah, the product name "Painter" really says it all. I still have no idea how, or IF you can merge two layers in it... and stuff like that. But for Orgasmic Wacom Joy, it's The Tool. It takes more advantage of pen tilt and rotation than Photoshop as well (since you don't really need pen tilt and rotation in a program that is designed to be more of an image-editing and design tool, I suppose). Anyway, just wanted to congratulate you on going "pro" ;P (Seriously though, you can actually feel the difference between intuos and graphire)

Sarjahurmaaja: I bet they could (if they had Finnish codemonkeys going Assambler on the engine's arse), but would it be feasible? And more importantly, what kind of machine would you need to get more than 10FPS out of it?.. ShadowPaladin: What I'm saying is that you can make a good cut-scene with today's real-time rendering technology. Period. I've already made a mega-post about how superior a pre-rendered sequence can be to something made with real-time rendering in terms of image quality so don't you go putting me in one of your Filing Cabinets. You know, I think cut-scenes at all can be a droll... especially in games where I'M supposed to be in control of my character. Just imagine how different Half-life would be with cut-scenes (FMV or not). Some might like it better, but I think it'd take away one of the things that make Half-life... you're always in control of Gordon.

ShadowPaladin: Yeah, of course... taste and stuff differs and stuff, so I can't argue with you there. Sarjahurmaaja: Yeah, again I agree. There's no room for facial animation and stuff like that in the Warcraft3 engine. They COULD make an engine to have all the spiff, but Blizzards wants people with low-spec computers to be able to run their games. I think Warcraft is a text-book example of games where FMVs ARE still required if they want that extra spiff in a cut-scene. I'm just saying that if you've got The Engine of Mighty Graphics, then you might as well use it for the cut-scenes.

Yes, I agree with you... with today's technology we can have visual quality at such level that FMV sequences are rather pointless... as you say, mostly because they are expensive. On normalmapping, however... it's a marvel, yes, but the model still only has 5000 polys (using your example). The normalmap is primarily (why, exclusively I'd like to say) used for lighting and shading of a model. The contours of the model will still show the low polycount. The question is, does it matter? In a movie it does, but in a game... not really, no. Most of this new tech is, as some would say, "cheating"... You've got LODS and sprites and stuff for trees when you want to show 20k characters on-screen. And it's ok, by me. I'm just saying that it shows. Perhaps it's because I'm working with CGI, but I'm not really that impressed with the next gen graphics. Neither am I that impressed with most CGI in movies... the Matrix is probably the best example of obvious CGI. (EDIT: I meant to say that maybe it's because I'm working with CGI/3D Animation that I can see and/or guess how stuff is built in 3D... like spotting polygons on a low-poly normalmapped model, spotting LOD models etc... I'm not saying I'm better than anyone, I'm just saying my job's ruined it for me... I can't enjoy a good CG sequence without looking for edge-loops, contours and bad deformation (and intersecting geometry!)) Anyway, I agree with you... FMVs are not nescessary anymore (they haven't been for quite some time, actually). But it's not because the next gen stuff can do in real-time what a renderfarm can do in a week... because it can't. It can take short-cuts and produce something that's good enough, however. And that's a real moneysaver. Hades_One: Yeah, KOTOR2 could've gone without using pre-rendered stuff... Splinter Cell 1 for PC was even worse... not only did they use in-game assets (or close to), but they compressed to videos so much that it looked FAR worse than the game itself. Anyway, yes: The same feelings and cinematography can be displayed using in-game render engines as can be with a hardware renderer, so there is no NEED to use FMVs in games. In fact, it's probably smarter not to, since they take up large amounts of disk-space (disc-space for consoles) and its generally more expensive.

Morgoth is correct, although at work I use Intous2 A5 and it works just great. I'm more comfortable with the A5 actually. (I've got an Intous1 A4 at home, and sometimes it feels a bit too big... sorta like working on a huge canvas Anyway, if money's an issue go A5... I've never felt that it's too small. Oh, and Painter IX kicks ass!.. all the little stuff makes it so much better than Painter 8.

Actually, that supports my post. The FMV is a movie. That was my point. And I totally agree... I prefer less FMVs. The Warcraft games had an OK FMV ratio, with some in-game scripted cut-scenes if it happened in the middle of a map and FMVs when a map was finished. And if the developer is using the game assets for an FMV, why the heck don't they just have the cut-scene render in-game? I'm not arguing for more FMVs in games, I'm just saying that next gen games -cannot- do what an FMV can in terms of image quality, etc. Potentially, of course. Just because a developer choses to use an FMV doesn't mean it'll look great.

Epiphany, are you seriously saying that next-gen graphics can out-do a pre-rendered sequence? The reason an FMV sequence is able to surpass what any machine can do in real-time is because the FMV sequence is PRE-rendered... that means that when the machine must spit out AT LEAST 24 frames per second for it to look smooth real-ltime, that same machine can spend hours on just one frame if you make it into an FMV. Lets say that the machine in question can render a million polygons on screen at 24 frames at second... if you put more polygons in the pipeline, the FPS will decrease. If, however, you choose to pre-render the sequence into a full-motion video, then you can up that polygon count much as you want... or as much as the development cycle allows. It's of course much more complicated than that, with relfective shaders emulating ray-tracing and "hacks" for making radiosity work either baked or realtime. And while real-time rendering engines and hardware go forward, so does the "normal" renderers. I mean, do you seriously think that these next-gen games look as good as, say the 3D stuff in LOTR? The stuff in the LOTR movies are rendered with Pixar's RenderMan. My point is that any company can license/buy Pixar's RenderMan and use that to render their FMV sequences. Meh, just look at the best looking music video or movie or whatever... That technology can be used in an FMV. You seen crappy FMVs? Well, blame it on time, money or the artist. Don't blame it on the technology, because it's the same tech except for FMVs that tech ain't trying to squeeze out enough frames per second to please us. And I ain't saying this because I like this console over that. Heck, I don't even own a console, nor will I buy one. Not because I think I'm h4xx0r, it's just that I also work on my computer and I think it's better to concentrate my money on one piece of equipment. If I was a pure gamer, I'd certainly look at consoles.

I'm still wondering how it will run without a HD <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Longer loading times, I'd presume :/ ... perhaps lags when reading from the DVD. Besides, you'd get no extra content via Live if you don't have a HD. But I don't think it'll change FPS or stuff like that... then again, they do recommend the HD Xbox. EDIT: Erm, probably more lag than longer loading times now that I think about it. The game would have to shove stuff back and forth to RAM/Cache from DVD more often, and the DVD is slower than a HD.

Yepp, Oblivion is fully voiced. In fact, most of the DVD space is filled with dialogue audio (which is pretty damn much, considering how much you can compress audio these days). I was refering to Morrowind and its Wiki text-based dialogue EDIT: And yeah, characters become strong by screentime and "acting"... I mean, that's the problem with Morrowind... even if you spent five weeks realtime with Vivec, he'd still just be sitting on air doing nuthing, repeating the same dialogue over and over again. There's no growth or development in the characters, and THAT'S what makes characters. At least a large part of it.

Seriously, next gen graphics, simply put, can NOT surpass the quality of a pre-rendered sequence. In those cases they DO, the pre-rendered sequence is lacking in quality. You see, there is no limit whatsoever in what you can do with a pre-rendered sequence. In next gen games there are limits. No matter how sky-high those limits are, they simply cannot compete with No Limits Whatsoever. And don't you come up with an example for me. Look at any Hollywood movie, why, any movie at all(!) and realize that this is what can be done in a pre-rendered sequence. The only limitation you have in pre-rendered stuff is time, money and resources. Now, for cut-scenes using in-game assets AND game engine... you CAN use a director for those. You can also use the same animators for the in-game cutscence as you do for the pre-rendered one. We've all seen crappy FMVs and great in-game cut-scenes, vice versa. I'd also like to point out that characters don't take up huge amounts of disc-space. You don't need a five hour FMV sequence to make a strong character. Morrowinds characters' aren't bland and dull because of any lack of FMV sequences, they're dull and bland because of reasons that take up very little disc-space... scripting and dialogue (since dialogue in Morrowind is text, not audio).

(If you speak of Oblivion) There may be quests in which you battle together with NPC(s), as there were in Morrowind, but the only thing close to a party member you get (I presume) is your mount. Hmm, In one of the Morrowind expansions you could hire a mercenary to follow you around and carry stuff, help you in fights. I'm not sure if this is a feature in Oblivion. I believe the question has been asked and answered by the devs, although I cannot remember the answer. I'll do a little fishing around. EDIT: Not 100% sure but it seems even hired mercenaries are out. You're alone, safe for certain quests.