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TheRealDrMcCoy

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Posts posted by TheRealDrMcCoy

  1. the track titles are cut short.

     

    There's a technical issue on why they're cut short: there's two way to tag MP3 files, called ID3v1 and ID3v2. Those can also be combined, so you can have a file that has both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags.

     

    In short, ID3v1 has a limitation on the number of characters you can put in the title (and artist, and album) field, 30 characters [1]. Which is exactly your cut-off point there.

     

    ID3v2 removes that limitation.

     

    What does that mean for your files there? There's two possibilities:

    1) Either, they're missing ID3v2 tags. In which case, that could/should be fixed on Obsidian's side.

    2) Or your player doesn't support ID3v2 tags, or doesn't show them by default.

     

    You might want to check your player or with an MP3 tagger that definitely supports ID3v2 (easytag, for example, should prefer ID3v2 over ID3v1 when reading files).

     

    [1] Actually 30 bytes, but let's not go there.

    • Like 1
  2. @TheRealDrMcCoy: Wwise seems like mess when you are trying to extract audio from the game. As you said, it's using banks (see an example here).

     

    Well, so does FMOD, .fsb files (fmod sound bank, I guess). There are FLOSS extractors for both FMOD and Wwise sound banks. Wwise's ones are a bit more complicated, I think, because they do something weird with the Ogg Stream inside their banks, while FMOD is a bit more straight-forward (except they use non-standard codec value in the RIFF headers for ADPCM'd files).

     

    Or at least that's what happened in FMOD/Wwise in Dragon Age: Origins (FMOD) and Dragon Age II (Wwise). Might be later versions of FMOD/Wwise change that, dunno.

  3. Just got a response:

     

    Thanks for asking! :)

     

    Feargus [developer]

     

    [unity 5.4] - We've moved up to Unity 5.4, plus we are using Wwise engine for Pillars II - not sure if that has to work in conjunction with FMOD.

    Ah, okay, Wwise. Hmmkay.

     

    (

    As for the second part of that sentence: no, it does not. Wwise does exactly the same conceptually as FMOD (they're direct competitors), they usually don't have to work in conjuction. Or rather, it usally even makes no sense whatsoever to use both of them.

     

    Going for the common car analogy: think of one as a diesel engine, one as a gasoline engine. They both do the same thing, burning fuel to provide motion (*). There's some subtle differences, but unless you build a car (and ignoring filling up the tank), you don't need to know about it. Both are valid options. And it usually makes no sense to have a car with both engines.

     

    (*) Or in this case, providing audio with some light scripting capabilities and filter chains. Multiple sounds are grouped in banks that can be loaded/unloaded as a group, there's "events" that play a number of sounds, with effects applied and states that can change what is done on which event. Both FMOD and Wwise do that, as far as I know.

    )

     

    Let's just hope that the Linux version of Wwise isn't as bad as FMOD. Middleware is commonly a sore point for porting, with uncommon official ports of middleware often rather bad and buggy.

  4. I'm 100% in favour of romances. I'm also fundamentally against what the against-BioWare-tribe, for the most part, stands for. And I reject the notion that it's some kind of dichotomy between "hardcore" and "romance".

     

    However, what I want is for something that goes way further than most games with romances offer. I don't just want early stage of getting to know one another, then boinking, then the romance is "won" and you don't hear anything about it anymore. That shouldn't be the end, that should just be the start. Having them end there skews reality too much and sends the wrong signal.

     

    The relationship should continue there. Give it room to breathe, to grow.

     

    Especially if the game is more introspective, focussing on the personal story of your group instead of just a bog-standard save-to-world plot, I think that would/could/should be a vital part of the story.

    • Like 6
  5. @TheRealDrMcCoy: Did you ask about FMOD in the Fig comments?

     

    No. I can't comment on the Fig campaign, because I haven't backed. I have no credit card; I need a PayPal option. And if that's not integrated with Fig, I won't be able to comment there then either (same as with Kickstarter).

     

    On the other hand, my money is rather tight at the moment, so maybe it's better I can't back... :p

  6. Hmm, so that one says we're probably going to get a ship as a replacement for Caed Nua.

     

    Which is nice and all, but... I liked Caed Nua not just because it was mine, but also because it gave me some status in the world, in the politics. While any old bugger can be captain of a ship, owning land comes with more social standing and more responsibility.

     

    Maybe it's just me, but I would have liked a sequel to tune down on the world hopping and increase the local politics of being the sovereign over that area. Something like what that A Call to Court quest-line of PoE 3.0 foreshadowed.

     

    Which, since we're hunting down Eothas now, won't happen at all. I guess Gathbin gets back his land after all? :(

  7. surprising that european banks don't issue debit cards.

    I can't speak for other European countries, but Germany has its own debit card system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard. It's accepted by physical stores, but not by bakeries, some small shops and the like. In general, Germans still like paying with cash.

     

    For online pay, we use SEPA direct debit through our usual bank account. And before SEPA, we had our own direct debit scheme, which worked very much like SEPA does now.

     

    Some of this, like SEPA direct debit, also theoretically works across all EU countries. But it seems to be less popular in other countries, because while I see it all the time in German online stores, I seldom see it in others. And, of course, it doesn't work between the EU and the US.

     

    I can use the German debit card on many ATMs in the US too (at least it worked in 2009), but it incurs about $10 worth of fees every time. And usual US online payment processors like Stripe don't accept them at all.

  8. The crowdfunding video says that the Eothas golem thingy will destroy the keep and leave you on the brink of death.

     

    My guess would be that they're using that as a reason to push you back to level 1. And the returning characters are maybe currently visiting you, so it happens to them as well.

     

    Personally, I don't have any issues with starting back small. But I am a bit sad about probably losing the keep. :(

    • Like 6
  9. The contents of the panel nonewithstanding, but am I the only one who thinks using a 360° "VR" camera to film a panel at a convention is the most counterproductive use of technology ever?

     

    It's a panel. I don't want to watch the people in the audience. Or the floor. Or the ceiling. Or the door where people come in. I want to see the panelists. That are now blurry and awkwardly projected, and so small you can't actually observe their facial expressions when they speak.

     

    And there are slides in the video! Great! Only that they're too small and blurry to read.

    • Like 1
  10. /home/.../.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Pillars of Eternity/PillarsOfEternity: 1: /home/.../.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Pillars of Eternity/PillarsOfEternity: ELF: not found
    /home/.../.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Pillars of Eternity/PillarsOfEternity: 2: /home/.../.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Pillars of Eternity/PillarsOfEternity: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

     

    The reason those two lines happen is because the shell, for some reason, tries to interpret this ELF binary as a shell script, after it couldn't load the 64-bit gameoverlayrenderer.so.

     

    The 1 and 2 are line numbers (after trying to interpret the file as plain text). The first 4 byte of an ELF binary are 0x7F ELF, and the shell throws away the 0x7F (because it's a non-printable control character), then tries to execute a command "ELF", which of course doesn't exist. It goes on to try to parse the second "line", and then trips over the '(' it finds mid-way through. Of course, everything else in that line is also not valid as a shell script, but the '(' is the first serious problem the shell can't cope with, and dies.

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