marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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I'm only talking about making it a shortcut, glittering chests and big arrows pointing you where you gotta go really ruin immersion and I'll take searching hours for pentagrams and missing out on loot because I can't @#$#@$%#@ find it over that anytime (I think...). Then again spending hours looking for something I'm standing on top of isn't exactly fun either.Though i'm no fan of pixel hunting (they ruined many enjoyable point and clickers,) do we need the loot glitter for such obvious devices as doors, chests, boxes, bags and such. Seems a little Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where they expect us to not know that you can use a ladder to ascend or descend in a level, touch too much handholding there. Also if we're going to have a loot glitter or something implemented could we have some in-game reasoning for it, the spectacles of a miserly Scrooge-like banker for instance, which haunted by his soul still look for every coin they can steal. The Madoff Monocle?
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I never played any Startcrafts (please don't hit me!BG2's and IWD2's UIs are far from perfect, most what I can say about them that UIs were ok in time when they were released, but there is many ways to make them better. Especially in how UI used to show player textual infromation, like character records and item descriptions. How keyboard short cuts worked was far from optimal.
Visually they were good looking, but they had quite lot things that did cause usability problems.
Usability problems, like? And what would you consider a game with a good UI then, and why?
Starcraft and Starcraft 2 both have quite good UIs, but I can found some nit picking even them. But they are good because their UI don't usually cause you make wrong command or hide information from you. And it has very good keyboard shortcuts. Morrowind also has good UI, as you can arrange hud element as you want and decide what hud elements you want to see on the screen. And it also has quite good shortcuts. Angry Birds has excelent gameplay UI as it gives you all information what you need and ability to zoom to see whole level and back to slingshot, although its menus are annoying. There is probly games even better ui, but I don't remember them as they weren't as good games and they don't even have UI problems that would irritate me so much that they would make me remember the game.
) nor Morrowind so yeah, damn 
You bring up several good points though.
Arguably resolutions above 1024x768 were unsupported in BG2 so the UI didn't handle them well, the general idea of the UI I liked though and I'm sure it can be adjusted to work with bigger resultions. Moving the bars to a corner and having them only take up as much space as needed and having the character screen etc scale instead of being a fixed size would already go a long way to solving that problem.One biggest problem is how UI uses lot of space in higher resolutions, without using space in something that could be conidered useful, but same time item descriptions, character infromation has little space and player need often scroll these texts back and for to find all infromation what s/he needs.
Tbh, this never bothered me (wizard dude hereSpell memorization is quite painful when you have lots of spells and slots, player often realize that his or her character have spells that are there because s/he forgot change them.
), unless you are talking about the mechanic of spell memorization but that's more a limitation of the game system than the UI imo.
The inventory is a difficult problem imo and I really don't have any immediate suggestions in that respect, I could give quite a few examples with an inventory much worse than the IE games thoughInventory managment for whole team is very fustraiting some times.
I guess skyUI (UI mod for Skyrim) isn't too bad, but it of course focused on having only one character.
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Cool, I hadn't seen that, thanks! Never considered it an "important feature of the IE games" as it was only added in Throne of Bhaal as far as I'm aware.
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Now on to something that might be sort of controversial: what's your opinion on a shortcut (or some other way) to highlight interactible objects in the world (the way it was introduced for BG2 with Throne of Bhaal is imo a good example). I'm going to assume at least some people would be against it as they argue it would make things too obvious, an argument I can't say is without merit.
So aside from the obvious convenience factor allow me to illustrate where I'm coming from:
What do you see in the room I'm in? I'll tell you what I see: a pedestal with a book, three candles, a (friendly) zombie and floating blue orbs. After reading that book I went all over that dungeon floor multiple times looking for the pentagrams mentioned in the book (note that this screenshot was taken after I solved the puzzle, there's no blue orbs there beforehand).
I spent *hours* on that "riddle" until I gave up and went to my good friend Google for help. My good friend Google told me them blasted pentagrams were right in the room with the book. Well, fml. Yes, I'm one of them in case you're wondering wtf is wrong with my eyes. There's quite a few of us too (~10% of male population does count as "quite a few", right?).
Now the example is sort of badly chosen as it's not something you could make stand out in the way I proposed earlier without ruining the puzzle, it would require a different design entirely. But it serves to illustrate the general issue, I hope.
But I have the same problem in The Witcher 2 with finding loot in grass for example a problem I commonly have in a load of other games as well (Skyrim is one that comes to mind) to varying degrees depending on the environment. And often companies are nice enough to make life difficult for us seemingly on purpose (a boss in SWTOR requires matching of blue/purple and red/orange two nicely problematic combinations, Sartharion in World of Warcraft used to spawn red void zones on a reddish/brown background etc etc, well at least Blizzard was nice enough to eventually fix the boss).
I'm sure there's other, maybe better, ways to deal with this, personally I like this feature as it just makes life easier and gets rid of something that can be a really big pain in the neck in one fell swoop. It also doesn't discriminate, it will work for someone with perfect colour vision, no colour vision as well as limited colour vision (in varying degrees) equally well.
Anyway, discuss I guess. I just wanted to bring it up now
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BG2's and IWD2's UIs are far from perfect, most what I can say about them that UIs were ok in time when they were released, but there is many ways to make them better. Especially in how UI used to show player textual infromation, like character records and item descriptions. How keyboard short cuts worked was far from optimal.
Visually they were good looking, but they had quite lot things that did cause usability problems.
Usability problems, like? And what would you consider a game with a good UI then, and why?
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Hmm. BG2 does look pretty good...
Can anyone who's played both BG2 and ID2 tell me which has better combat? Also, will I need/want to play BG in order to get the full experience from BG2? I don't have the money for four games, and, while I might be able to squeeze in three games, I'd much prefer to only get two, at least right now.
They're pretty cheap on GOG. It's perfectly possible to play BG2 before BG1 (I did so), you'll miss some stuff (references to the first game) obviously, but most everything you really need to know you'll find out in BG2 (this will obviously spoil some of the BG1 story) and most returning companions will tell you enough about BG1 to get you up to speed about their background as well.
Personally I massively prefer BG2 over BG1, better storytelling, better combat (due to higher level and early combat being mostly "get hit by fire arrow" -> die -> reload -> "fire arrow misses" -> "yay" -> repeat in BG1) and much better party interaction.
I also never really got into IWD, due to various reasons I guess, lack of party interaction and focus on powergaming mostly. Combat is definitely harder though as it seems to be tuned towards people powergaming their party rather than taking a random bunch of rabble on a tour. I should however note that I never finished IWD (neither 1 or 2) though I started on them multiple times.
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Oh dear, why did I click this thread I was not gonna spend anymore on KS campaigns for at least a while. DAMN YOU!
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Planet Explorers made funding today, with 5 more days to add a little gravy on top. I am pleased. Now just have to wait for the next alpha version.
Looks like a fun game, thanks for making me aware of it! (and I'm sure *they* will thank you for making me aware of it as well, hehe
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Marelooke: You are right. Wonder why the link was bad?
Well, here is the correct link: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20130411_00536968&word=divinity
Just vote "aanraden" if you'd like...
Bedankt, done
Hope the pace of pledges picks up near the end, needs to reach 800k! Alas, not looking like it's gonna happen right now, I'd be glad to be proven wrong though
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They should just let you select the key + mouse bindings.
Well, yes, they should, but I'd prefer not to have to redo everything because the default setup is ugly.
Besides, bindings != layout and UI.
I was just addressing op regarding the mouse buttons, but i hear ya about the layout and UI.
If you ask me a good UI should be intuitive and the old IE games UI were anything but, so I hope we see some improvements.
I thought the BG UI was very intuitive and extremely easy to use, everything was accessible with rather easy to remember shortcuts too and there were no fancy UI tricks like that horrible radial menu in NWN. Shortcuts generally did what you expected of them and you were able to jump between different screens without having to first close the previous one (which gets really annoying fast if you have to do it often, which you usually do in RPGs). Once you'd played for a little bit you could do just about anything except moving around and selecting targets without using your mouse (anything in the actual game world, that is, guess a shortcut for "loot all" would've been nice).
The fact that screens were full screen also made finding information easy as everything is in exactly the same spot each time (granted, this is most likely harder to pull off given that today's screen resolutions are a *lot* more diverse than they were back then, but hey, one can dream). Being fullscreen also allows to pretty much display everything you want on that screen in one go as tabs and scrollbars are, imho, to be avoided as much as possible (it's pretty much impossible to do without them, but less is definitely more here)
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I think we can all agree that, aside from properly fitting the armor to the person in question, there would be few, if any, differences between male and female plate armor. Keep in mind, plate exists not to absorb blows, but to deflect them. Sufficiently high-quality plate armor is shaped such that it can deflect practically any blow from practically any angle, with the only real weakness being the eye-slits and possibly the breathing holes, which really aren't much of a weakness at all. Modifying the armor's shape (such as adding boobs to it) would only compromise this goal.
So in short, a female breastplate should look basically identical to a male one, albeit fitted to a female character, from a realism perspective. And from the perspective of telling party members apart, the tabard/armor paint/other decoration idea brought up by Diagoras fills this role perfectly well, and makes sense in-universe.
I think that basically covers everything this topic was originally made to determine. If I'm wrong on any points, or if anyone has any legitimate objections to these proposals, please tell me.
I'm sort of amazed nobody brought this game up (or pretty much any "real" game armors):
Would you guys consider this a good middle ground between realism and a fantasy feel? Personally I've always liked the plate armours in DA:O I felt that to the layman's eye (like...mine) they had a pretty realistic feel.
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Seems the expansion is live, how is it? More of the same or is there some actual improvement?
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Do us a favor and click on "hartverwarmend" (heartwarming) on this article:
Also at the bottom of this article there is a "aanraden" (recommend) button.
http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx…
It will help D:OS get more news coverage in Belgium, and thus hopefully more backers.
Link to De Standaard just goes to the homepage for me fwiw.
Apparently there's people that find this news depressing, heh...
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So, I started messing around in Skyrim again yesterday. In games like this, my tendency is to settle into particular method of play that feels "right," after which I can't really enjoy playing some other type of build. I experimented with the game a bit when I first played it a year ago, but I just started a new character in pretty much the same vein as my favorite previous character.
So I'm back with an Argonian who came to Skyrim because he enjoys mountain climbing, and who thinks that all these Nords are nuts with all this "Dovalkin" nonsense. (Not to mention being mostly racist jerks or outright bandits.) They've just never seen an Argonian and a Dragon together before: clearly, I can learn Dragon-talk because we're cousins. Archery-Stealth-OneHanded type build. Alchemy is often my favorite part of an ES game (something is just thrilling about discovering all the properties of reagents by blindly mixing them together), but I'm going more into the smithing this time than I have in the past. And I do like how it makes me engage more with the gameworld-- I go hunting for Deer just to get the hides, and discovering a new Mine is an exciting experience.
This install is pretty bare-- all I've got is SkyUI and a mod that makes the roads show up on the world map. What must-have mods am I missing? I have none of the DLC, but if this holds my interest for more than a few days, I may look into buying some of it.
I apologize in advance for being lazy but I'll refer to a post I made on the Steam forums when this very question came up.
Of all those *definitely* get the unofficial Skyrim patch (and the hi-res textures one too if you use those).
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I have 4 DAO playthroughs under my belt and at this point, I greatly prefer DA2, even with its obvious issues. I think DAO gets stale really quick.
Would that be due to the way the story is told then? Because that I can imagine, I've started a lot of playthroughs in DAO, but only finished one and this one was near completion when I abandoned it (few companion quests to go and then Landsmeet). The extreme railroading gets really annoying after one playthrough (oh, the Fade, again, yay).
But I find DA2's combat so terribly boring (and immersion breaking tbh, constantly spawning enemies etc) that I never managed to get anywhere in my second playthrough even though the storyline at least was better told than in DAO (and I won't be picking up DA3 unless it gets raving reviews of people who's opinion I actually trust). I'd have greatly preferred they had taken DA:O and improved on its weak points instead of taking Mass Effect and cramming Dragon Age in it.
Anyway, probably going play some Divine Divinity followed by some DA:O.
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For some reason I decided to pick up my unfinished second DA:O playthrough that I abandoned somewhere in 2011 (according to savegame date). Damn, I wish BioWare had gone further down this path instead of the action rpg crap that was DA2.
My two major gripes were/are the number of party members (4 is too few imo) and the lack of real sidequests. Ok, make that 3 if you count the bugs (I had 8 CTDs during a 2 hour session...)
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google translate says Numen = god, Era = goddess :D
My (paper) Latin-Dutch dictionary disagrees and this online one seems to agree with my paper one
- Numen: divine will, divinity
- Era: Lady, lady of the house, mistress, woman in relation to her servants
- Aera: era/epoch
- Aer, aeris: air (as in the element of air), also used for the atmosphere
"Will of the divine lady" or something along those lines would be my guess.
NOTE: I've studied a few years of Latin but most of that knowledge has rather faded so I am by no means an "expert"
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There is another option: make essential characters so much more powerful than the player that messing with them equals death.
I know attacking the first bartender you came across in BG was a very bad idea (iirc he used Time Stop, among other spells that weren't even obtainable by the player in the game). And I'm pretty sure that messing with Elminster (if it was possible, it never occurred to me to try) wasn't a very good idea either.
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If that is their revenge I say: BRING IT ON!In Closing
You should listen
. And. And.Can't wait for the dancing weresheep!
Agreed, that was a bit too cliché to my liking, I like to pretend it happened differently...Divinity 2 story would have worked if Damian knew about Ygerna's grand design, yet he turns out to be completely clueless - rendering the several parts where he shows up throughout the game to deliver an evil speech but failing to kill the main character, absurd.
Also the ending was pretty railroaded even if you got cold feet there was only one option, while understandable from a continuity point of view it was still a bit of a bummer (forum doesn't seem to support spoiler tags so I'll leave it at that)
It was also pretty funny how he stuck around in your head even if you didn't set him freeBehrlihn was a terrible plot device, regardless whether the main character freed him or not.
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I'm not playing anything, because all I want to play is Project Eternity, and I can't.
Yeah, I'm getting the itch to play an old-school-ish RPG, but I'm not feeling particularly inspired by any of the options in front of me. (Or, at least, I am sufficiently deterred by the prospect of getting them running, patched, and sufficiently modded.)
When is Wasteland 2 supposed to be hitting the streets? (I didn't back it, so I'm not getting the updates, but the cash I threw at Eternity was apparently enough to merit a free copy.)
I think the estimate from InXile was October this year.
Oh dear, the estimate for Divinity: Original Sin is also October... I better save up my holidays, buy a bigger fridge, set up a food delivery line etc
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Free shipping in EU and US
We finally got our act together regarding shipping in the EU. We'll spare you the details, but if you live in the EU, you don't need to pay extra for shipping physical goods anymore. If you have already pledged extra for shipping and you live in the European Union, you can click on "Manage your pledge" and adjust your pledge downwards with the amount you added for shipping. So if you pledged 65$+18$ and you live in France, you can now adjust your pledge to 65$ again.
Lol no, I'll just be expecting an $18 more awesome game
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Noticed the guy was wearing a Queen cap <3
Also! (I really hope they manage to keep the name
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Any characters I am stuck with tbh. That was my main gripe with NWN2, you're stuck with your party, I *really* don't want to take people that I don't like and that don't like me to go and fight the final baddy. It makes not sense at all. I mean, I really don't want a haughty insane pyromaniac around, don't bloody force her on me.
There's a lot of characters I'm not too fond of,but very often it's either just my personal opinion (I can't stand zealots) or they were badly or inconsistently written. Or just too bland.
There is however one character who's guts I really really hate: Anders, overdoing the overdone tormented mage by massively overdoing it, and then some (did I mention they overdid it, a lot?). If anyone can think of a character I find more annoying than him I'll buy you a virtual beer (before anyone brings it up: no, I don't think Anomen is more annoying [well, he's annoying in a different way], Anomen is actually very very well written).
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Private servers. Quite a few of the major MMOs have been/are pirated.The only real two ways to effectively combat piracy are:
1) Game can only be played online, and the server side is being heavily utilized. Basically, be an MMO.
Because sooner or later it's going to break and detect a legitimate buyer as a pirate. DRM doesn't bother pirates in the slightest, it only bothers actual customers. You should ask CD Project Red about that, they have some experience in that area... (which is what caused their change in stance towards DRM and gave rise to GOG).2) DRM is linked to actual game code. Think the game making fun of pirates, with changed dialogue, self-erasing saves, all the fun stuff.
Now why exactly don't all companies go nuts with the second method is a great question.
I used to be in that position, alas BioWare is well past two missteps by now.Ever since I played Baldur's Gate 2, which was my first infinity engine game, the names Bioware and Black Isle studios are firmly stuck in my mind and when talking about games and developers I always mentioned those names in favorable ways. Even one or two missteps cannot alter that.
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) nor Morrowind so yeah, damn 
), unless you are talking about the mechanic of spell memorization but that's more a limitation of the game system than the UI imo.
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"Highlighting" objects in the world
in Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted