Falkon Swiftblade

He's probably logged more hours than their guys have Maybe they'll give you a free mouse pad or keyboard, since you've probably worn your space bar out

I doubt it makes it in, but I requested they include the talking weapons like they had in BG2. I laughed like a giddy school girl the first time I encountered those years ago. I don't know why that impressed me so much, but it was fun.

the bug support forum is on fire with the bugs found, hi5 sensuki, all that character and item art bugs will really help this way more polished if they can fix that stuff. Hopefully it's all lil tweaks they can fix that will make this shine! I think there's one more patch next week right? I'd love to know how many bugs they've fixed so far.

Have there been any more new weapons or goodies included since Nov? At least it sounds like they're adding in some variety. Are there crafted weapons or armors in the game?

several months ago you guys posted a glyph wheel similar to the ones used in the old crpg pools of radiance; Will there be any puzzles in game similar to matching glyphs, or plans to include such a wheel for the expansion? I think it would be a fantastic game mechanic to include the wheel in a future release and as you progress you find different glyph puzzles you have to match the runes so that you can unlock hidden treasure or secret doors. Also, are there any sentient artifacts or weapons in the game like the ones in bg2 that were the chaotic laughing stabbing dagger I forgot it's name. Those were fantastic innovations, and I'd love to see intelligent items in this or future expansions. Also if it's not covered during the next pax, can you guys go more into crafting, enchanting and stronghold stuff?

just curious if it is trackable, how many bug's to date have been found and squashed since the BB started?

Hopefully the strat guide will have correct info regarding balancing and spell info, etc. Sometimes I see strat guides that have pretty old builds of the game that end up causing more harm than good and you're better off using an online wiki. I'm getting pretty excited though. Is there an estimate when you'll go gold? I think many company's I've followed in the past are typically about 2 weeks prior to ship date when that happens.

this bug made me lol

I think it would be cool if the higher quality armors were tinted different colors such as brass/copper or gold instead of everything being aluminum looking. Happy the dev's are aware of it, thx for reporting it. That would have bugged me too.

well that's a pleasant surprise! cool beans

pretty sure that's just mock ups of the final design. It looks eerily similar to the stuff I turn in when I freelance.

that's awesome, great link! thx!

sorry if it's already been stated, I wanted to read this thread but I'm unable to for times sake, but one of the thing's I noticed right away in character creation was there was no alignment selection, and since you can create a whole gang of new squad members anytime ya like, I get the impression there won't be a good or evil mechanic. however, that's not to say the npc's in your group won't have a personality or motivations of their own. One of the very first thing's they shared in the video at the first game play showing I think it was E3 last year was a girl in the party would leave your party if you decided to rest for the injured person in the group to heal because she wanted to get to her goal first. So there will be consequences to your choices.

Some of you guys are being silly scoffing at the material I've listed just because it was in a newspaper article, but it's often first hand accounts of those affected by the event's. Why isn't that relevant? From the material above,"Many studies have linked violence in TV shows and video games to violent behavior." You ignore the results of groups like the American Medical Association who have listed their findings, and several other people cited in the articles, Jerald Block, a researcher and psychiatrist in Portland, has concluded that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their shooting rampage at Columbine High School after their parents took away their video game privileges. They “relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis,” etc... You're not even reading the material I'm sharing. I'm not just making up something. (How many times do I need to say I'm not asking they remove the content, I'm just trying to create a safe environment for the kids in the house?) The consequences of constant exposure to the games aren't fully understood, the AMA said. Research shows the games improve hand-eye coordination, while other studies suggest the violence in some of them may cause harm. ``While more study is needed on the addictive potential of video games, the AMA remains concerned about the behavioral, health and societal effects of video-game and Internet overuse,'' said Ronald Davis, the group's president. ``We urge parents to closely monitor their children's use of video games and the Internet.'' Take-Two suspended release of its new game, ``Manhunt 2,'' this month after it was banned in the U.K. and given an adults-only rating in the U.S. If there were no results that would support their finding there would be no reason to request such a thing. Apparently though, there's enough of a correlation that several members of the American Medical Association think it's better to be mindful of what their kids are consuming for content. There are dozens of other such cases listed online, and I'm not trying to argue about anything. You guys are taking it personal and I'm not making it personal, but I'm not just making stuff up.

Perhaps they had been brainwashed with a very structured, limited view of the world all their lives and the introduction of media which displayed things challenging to their worldviews led them to change their behaviors. Maybe they became anxious and depressed because of the conflict between the way they had lived before and the things they were now being exposed to, maybe there was more to it than them seeing some wrestling. How exactly did the entire community establish a loss of morals? Is it possible that they were just, you know, happier and more free? North Koreans live very disciplined, religious (they worship dear leader) lives, and that system would likely be disrupted with access to enough outside information on a regular basis. Also, why are you so sure that it was the violence in the shows that led to their changes? It could just as easily have been anything else they saw or simply a conflict between their rigid, pacifism-based ideology and the introduction of outside sources of information, some of which contradicted their ideals. You're engaged in some serious confirmation bias to conclude that those stories of mass murderers and this one you just provided display a causation between playing violent video games/watching violent tv shows and becoming mass murderers or completely losing your morals. I'm not saying that they don't, by the way, just that you haven't (nor has anyone else as far as I know) provided any reason to believe that they do. I happen to believe that fictional violence and morality can exist together in the world, but that's just my opinion I suppose. Sorry, I had a typo! I meant Morale, not moral or morals. The wrestling affected the boys because they actually got in fights, even some American's don't know wrestling is fake, but for some of the children they were actually trying to perform the same moves on the other kids and people were getting hurt. The Documentary made it sound like they stayed with the community and documented their habits over several months. They clearly specified prior to the signal coming in it was a very quiet peaceful town and everyone was very helpful and well behaved. In only a short time did it start affecting the community with the children being the most affected the fastest. Also, the majority of the adults wanted the equipment and tower removed. The kid's of course liked it and wanted it to stay, although I would too if I were in their shoes.

Did ya read these articles? It wasn't like they randomly performed an act, they practiced what they saw. Some actually acted it out before they performed the massacre. BBC did a documentary back in the early 2000's for the last city on earth that hadn't received a TV signal. The people were all Buddhists and practiced peace and lived very religious and disciplined lives. After the TV signal had been established, and the equipment had been installed for the local population after only 2 weeks the young Buddhist boys had chosen to watch American Wrestling on TV. They were acting out what they saw on screen and the people quickly quit performing their religious acts and chores. Further, in less than 3 months the entire community had established a loss of moral and people were showing signs of anxiety and depression where there wasn't any before. It goes to show you how the impact of the media can have on a society.

yeah the newest one is the best, there's only a couple minor qips I see that could be tweaked, but overall even though I'm fairly neutral for solid and minimal ui, this is a pretty good alternative.

You're thinking like I was. I wanted to create a ranger solo party with several animal companions. I was also hoping that it was a talent or a reward you can tame other beasts as you progress. At least 2 beasts. If there's a tanky beast and something with a quick interrupt that would be fun.

ohh boy, lots of reply's! I am not sure I fully follow you. What are you suggesting when you say "to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class"? I think Night Stalker has covered most of what needs to be done. Throw in localization in there and the effort is significantly compounded because of all the extra translation passes. Translators are not cheap and from what I understand charge by the word. And let's not forget the voice overs. If an actor dropped the F bomb then that audio will need to be edited out. It's also not clear if the dialogue system is the only thing that will need to be reworked. There may or may not be inappropriate words in the popup speech bubbles from the locals on-screen or the in-game interactive cutscenes (or whatever those things are called). On that note, just deciding what word is "inappropriate" and should be filtered out is going to eat up a lot of time because everyone is going to have an opinion about this. Having the user input the words in manually in some text box is not foolproof because the voiced audio has to be considered. I was speaking from a Javascript or Actionscript point of view for creating a function to call out. I assumed it was similar in C and I know that Unity likes Javascript, so I assumed it would be quite easy to implement. You guys have all brought up something I had not considered as far as localization. Since the F word was the only word I had specifically seen used so far and in English it does have a negative connotation, I believe in German it probably still does, but it also means to strike if I remember correctly from my childhood. I didn't think they were going to do a literal translation from region to region, and the swearwords probably would be the same across the board. I think it's fairly universal with swearwords what's definitely something you don't teach your 3 yr old to say, there may be some gray in there, but a lot of stuff is said in PG and PG-13 that they hear, or even prime time TV too, so it's just a matter of finding the context of the scene. That's what I was talking about initially when I said the F word is used lazily as a nonsensical word, people say it out of habit and often not for the reason they state it initially. It might be simple enough to add an option which automatically replaces any occurrence of certain words in dialog or other writing, with different words (like "f**k" --> "frag"). However, re-recording voice-overs for any such content wouldn't be so trivial or cheap. In Audio there's a part after thing's are recorded that they have to edit in later called ADR, that's when this comes into play and they add in the bleeps or swap in a safe word. There's a few ways to do that and it depends on how many lines are in there using it or may need changed. It could be a nightmare to do, or it could be less than 5 minutes to do. Although I've seen youtube videos that bleep stuff out, and the users have nowhere near the budget Obsidian does, and probably not the expertise they do either. That's a load of crap politicians love the idea so it gets a ton of air time but if you actually read the literature in the field it's all over the place. The small studies are hideously under powered to detect real effects and thus find effects both ways some say video games increase violence others say it decreases violence, which is generally a sign that the experimental designs suck or are lacking power! If there is an effect your expect the direction of the effect to remain the same even if the size of the effect varied. While the big studies have tended to find no effect or possibly a small reduction but with out enough strength to be certain. Keeping in mind correlation does not equal causation the general tends at a society level have been for decreasing per capita violence over the last 20 or so years while the amount of game playing has drastically increased, many of which are violent. If you read the gentlemen's response I was replying to, I wasn't speaking about the language as much as his examples of gore, nudity and killing in games and media. I've already stated I have no issues with the adult themes and content being in the game, I specified that not all people who encounter these thing's will be affected by it. it's only a request to control how certain aspects will be displayed. They've already done it by making the gore an option to turn on or off, that took a lot more time to animate, texture, design, and test than what I'm requesting. As far as the citation goes, I can think of the Columbine killings in Colorado, where the kids emulated Doom and Duke Nukem the game when they went on a massacre. Some wisenheimer even made a Columbine video game where you go around shooting people, It may have even been one of the shooter's of the tragedy. http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0504f.htm In addition, there was a more recent study listed in the NYTimes about the effects of these troubled people, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/tieing-columbine-to-video-games/?_r=0 and here, http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2012/12/violent-video-games-promote-violence/ That's not even other cases like the Virginia Tech case, or the other one where the kid's emulated the Matrix and dressed up like Neo and Morpheus... there's lot's of these stories where people emulate what they see. It's quite silly, some game developers are reckless in their designs, like in GTA where you're rewarded for killing prostitutes, which reminds me of another GTA game where a teen was playing GTA with his 4 or 5 yr old brother in the room and driving around stealing cars and what not. One morning the young boy tried waking his mom up to take him to school and she wouldn't wake up. He took her keys and tried to drive himself to school. He managed to drive about a mile before crashing into a tree. Luckily he survived and told the police his story. I wrote about that back in ~2010 or so for a class assignment. Here's another one same thing except he missed the bus and didn't make as far. http://geekologie.com/2009/01/6year-old-misses-bus-steals-fa.php But these are only a few cases. It could go on for pages across all forms of media. And my goal isn't to have it completely removed, only an option to control my environment for innocent eyes and ears.

thx, great reply very informative!

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

oh wow, is it really 25 gig? It must be because the large bitmap images for the zones. I've worked on some photoshop images the size of a poster over 1 gig, otherwise I wonder what else it could be, I haven't heard much music or audio in game.

I was wondering how party's play out when you have multiple fighters or multiple castors of the same kind, and do they feel unique enough?

I don't recall ever reading the fine print for a rating before, probably because I purchase most games online these days, is that standard practice to put the summery in there? That's actually pretty handy as I assumed it was just T or M or whatever for a generic summary, i.e. "This game may use adult themes or may include the use of alcohol and contain cartoon violence." I wonder how far it would be on the tipping scale like SP stick of truth. That was clearly going to be offensive from day one & you knew people were going to be offended if there was any prior experience to the series in a crude humorous way. Since this is brand new, it's hard to know how much is in there that will be pushing the envelope. And it is really simple to remove it from a coding standpoint, at least in CSS, javascript or actionscript 3. I'm not familiar in C or C# but I assume it's pretty similar. if it were very difficult I would probably not even make a thread about it, but it's something that could be added in literally just a few lines of code. And indeed I'm not saying they have to take it out, just an option to toggle it off or on.

from what I've seen they do it with 2 thick circles, I saw a version of a thin blue circle that was fine in POE, but because of the occlusion of the fx and party members along with the noise of the grass and background the extra circle just a tad larger or smaller would help. Or, even if it were single circle that animated slightly larger or smaller by .3 or so would help. Although, I have similar feeling towards the way they are using the line fx now for the cones, lines, green and yellow circles, etc that look pretty hokey honestly. It's the worst visual fx in the game I've seen, and I hope it's only placeholder. Without having the game and playing it in context I can't say for certain, but every chance I've seen it I've winced.