Ineth

lol I doubt they turned Pillars of Eternity into a tower defense game.

Well whatever your (the mod team's) deeper motivations were for closing those threads, the rationalization given by Fionavar (especially here) was BS. I mean really, we can't discuss the effects of modern feminism (as in the actual movement, rather than the cozy ideal or dictionary definition) on Western society, and the reasons for its bad reputation, unless there are enough feminists participating in the discussion and guiding it in a favorable (for feminism) direction? Does this mean we also can't discuss the harmful effects of the Catholic church's anti-condom dogma in Africa, unless there are enough devout Catholics participating in the discussion? Or the effects of religious extremism in the Middle East, unless there are enough Taliban members participating in the discussion? So yeah, with a rationalization as flimsy and condescending as the one Fionavar gave us, you can't blame people for suspecting that the decision to shut down those discussions was made in bad faith.

1) Because they promised to do so in the Kickstarter campaign that got the game funded. 2) Because pre-rendered background are much more beautiful than live 3D rendered ones made with the same budget. 3) Because pre-rendered background are in some ways more beautiful than what is even technically possible with live 3D rendering at this point. 4) Because pre-rendered backgrounds look the same on all graphics cards; people who have normal PCs (rather than high-end gaming rigs) don't have to miss out on seeing the landscapes in their full glory. 5) Because the games to which this is supposed to be a spiritual successor, used isometric pre-rendered backgrounds too.

Such in-hindsight hypotheticals are not very meaningful imo. Enabling & encouraging decision-makers (be it state governments or forum moderators) to censor and oppress based on "expected harm", will at best make them target people and ideas they guess might cause harm, and at worse (and unfortunately more realistically) abuse that power for their own self-interest. The Weimar republic did not lack reasons to crack down on the Nazi party and its militia (who were violating the constitutional rules for political parties and committing violent crimes and were in fact officially banned at one point), it lacked the internal conviction and the physical ability to enforce such a crack-down, since at that time the Weimar republic was already sort of a "failed state" that could not prevent the various violent socialist factions (of which the National Socialists where just one) from carrying out armed street fights among each other as well as attacks on the democratic authorities and on the members/rallies of democratic parties.

Well I, for one, failed quite miserably to complete BG2 when I first tried it as a teenager with no prior cRPG experience. I vaguely remember spending a perceived eternity in Irenicus' Dungeon before finding my way out. And progressing through a Beholder cave (probably the Unseeing Eye one) by continuously sending summons into the fog of war, because i had no idea how to beat them without such cheese tactics. And repeatedly being murdered by vampires in the streets of Athkatla. I also vaguely remember struggling with the inventory/loot/store system and somehow loosing an important artifact (probably dropped it somewhere by accident), which was frustrating and at some point I just stopped playing the game. I don't think I even made it out of chapter 2... Later I player IWD2 with the help of online guides and then tried BG2 again, and this time it was fine (and fun) and I completed it multiple times since then, including with mods (most components from SCS and some from Tactics) to increase the challenge. Thus I'm not as eager as some of the others here, to ridicule st00pid n00bs... Once you get the hang of these kinds of games they become easy, but before then they can be daunting.

Yeah no, Critical race theory did not come about as a result of scientific research, it was invented by left-wing ideologues in those circle-jerk-&-free-association sessions that have replaced research and debate in those parts of academia where the course names end in "studies". Just like the, ahem, insight that E=mc² is a "sexed equation" because it unfairly privileges the speed of light , and many similar "discoveries".

People generally have goals [...] "Objectively harmful" in this case, obviously, means "counterproductive to the stated goal" [...] [...] if someone finds them to be such, they have a moral obligation to do something about it. No they don't, their only "obligation" to do so is an egoistical one to themselves (and "their goal" as you put it), not a moral one. The only moral obligation (if any) for an ethical person in such a situation, would be to respond to the stated opinion peacefully and fairly and put forth a reasonable counter-argument to try and convince the author of the opinion, or at least any bystanders and spectators, of its folly. Shutting down opposing opinions by force (whether of the violent or bureaucratic/institutional variety) never gives you the moral high ground, no matter how much feminists and other "progressive" liberals love to rationalize their intolerant and bigoted tactics by pretending it does.

For anyone who feels like they haven't gotten their daily fill yet of cringe-worthy Political Correctness Authoritarianism under the banner of 'liberalism': "Eric Posner: Universities Are Right—and Within Their Rights—to Crack Down on Speech and Behavior" [trigger warning: may cause loss of faith in humanity when you realize it's not meant as satire] The professionally offense-taking culture warriors in the gaming industry are not an isolated phenomenon - it's just spill-over from the illiberal, intolerant, anti-free-speech, anti-due-process, antidemocratic, anti-science culture nurtured by left-authoritarians in US academia. Small shimmer of hope: The Slate comment section features several self-identified liberals objecting to the author's claim that "Most liberals celebrate these developments". Maybe one day the remaining liberals who actually still care about, you know, liberty and civil rights and such, will reclaim the word for themselves and reject the mainstream "progressive" left as the authoritarian and regressive movement that it is.

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.

And -10 DEX because it's nearly impossible to move without tumbling.

Your UI looks very beautiful @Grotesque, and the bottom bar in particular looks like it would be more player-friendly and efficient than any other I've encountered in existing cRPGs. Regarding the vertical portrait bar, I've previously argued against such a layout, but if the portraits are allowed to be as big as this (rather than as tiny as in BG2) it apparently works quite well. The only thing I don't like in your mockups, is the left bar. It doesn't really seem to pull its weight in terms of usefulness, considering the amount of viewport space it obscures: Map screen, character record screen, settings screen, etc. are things that I always access via keyboard anyway, and from what I hear I'm not the only one. If those buttons are just there to help newbies learn the keybord shortcuts, having a full sidebar blocking a significant amount of viewport area seems like a waste. Having 8 different formation buttons visible at all times, is just excessive - I doubt anyone has a use for that. I, for one, only tend to use 2 different formations in the entire game when playing BG2 or IWD - a tight one for dungeons, and a more sparse one for open maps (like wilderness areas). And even players who use more than that, likely won't mind if they were accessed through a single button (i.e. two clicks instead of one to change formation)... Unlike selecting spells and quick items, this is not something players will typically want to do on every single "round" of combat, so having a single-click access scheme with always visible buttons provides much less benefit than it does for the bottom bar items. With that in mind, I wonder how your UI would look with these changes: remove the current left bar completely move the portraits bar to the left (i.e. make the UI "L shaped") squeeze both the clock (current bottom left corner) and the bare minimum number of necessary buttons from the current left bar, into the bottom right corner. A round clock with (tiny versions of) the other buttons arranged around it in a semi-circle, might work.

And if you have a druid in your party, his shapeshifted animal form could enter the picture --> LOVE TRIANGLE

...and explore blood-filled dungeons where horribly dismembered corpses testify to the human sacrifices that haven been performed there by evil cultists?? I wonder at what age your kids are if you're not worried about them experiencing such content, but worried that they might hear some swear words. Dunno maybe I'm just ignorant, but sounds to me like headphones+screenlocker is the solution you're looking for.

It refers to the process of taking a computer-rendered image, and manually (using digital painting tools) painting additional details and light effects etc. on top of it, that would have been difficult to create using 3D modelling and textures alone. Update #25 (from October 16, 2012 - last day of the Kickstarter) included this panel showing the difference between a raw rendered background (2nd-to-last pic) and one with an additional paint-over pass (last pic): (Although it seems they have refined their rendering methods in the years and months since then, so even the ones without a paint over should now look a little more vibrant than the 2nd-to-last pic there.)

Oh, don't remind me of that torment (pun intended)... 1. Open the radial menu and select a spell or ability. 2. D'OH, realize the radial menu now also covers the intended target of the spell/ability. 3. Hastily move mouse to the screen edge to scroll the viewport, to make the target visible again. 4. D'OH, scrolled too far, target is now completely outside the viewport. Carefully move mouse to the opposite screen edge to correct. 5. Move the mouse back to the action and finally issue the spell. Not that again please.

Probably because they need some 3D geometry information anyway (for casting shadows and such), so why not generate it from the same source as the image itself is generated, so it all lines up neatly. Also, if your artist drew a beautiful 2D scene but then the game designers decide they want that tree (or imagine any other object) moved a few feet to the left for story/encounter design purposes, that part of the image might have to be re-drawn from scratch. If it's a rendered 3D scene, they can just move the tree's 3D object with a few mouse clicks, and have the computer render the scene again while the artists can work one something else. Of course once the manual paint-over pass is done the backgrounds are pretty much locked down too, but afaik they only started doing those paintovers pretty late in the pipeline, so they they had quite a bit of wiggle room before then to change things.

Have we been playing the same Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale? I found the Mage Armor spell very useful.

Paradox, though, is a different matter... Let's just say, it's a good thing the kickstarter campaign compelled Obsidian to promise not to do it.

Or wait for the inevitable romance/friendship mods by fanfiction writers...

If you're not skimping on triangles, how come the terrain is so flat and regular in many outdoors places? Take Dyrford for example... On a dirt road / dirt town square like that where people, horses, wagons, etc. move through all day, one would expect the ground to be extremely uneven, with both gently sloping hillocks and hollows on a larger scale, and localized surface irregularities like bumps/ridges on a smaller scale all over the place. Yet you've made it look like an artificially flat surface with a dirt texture. Same with the grass-covered wilderness areas... it's like the grass grows on a perfect artificial plate, rather than on soil. Isn't this something where you could have easily achieved more realism, seeing as you're not constrained by the poly count and rendering technique limitations that real-time 3D games suffer from?

Oh yes, water in the IE games looked horrible.

Well if used a throwaway twitter account and then deleted it, what were they expecting to find?

It used to mean exclusively that, and still does in many online geek communities/subcultures. But the mainstream media have carelessly expanded the usage of the term to include pretty much any annoying or critical or unwanted or abusive online comments, no matter what the motivation and context, and no matter whether they're benign or criminal or anywhere in between. And of course the feminist culture warriors have quickly capitalized on this semantic confusion by using the term to label anyone who dares to respond to or disagree with any of their their public statements online, no matter how polite and well-reasoned and context-appropriate the response is. But of course when one of them*cough*McIntosh*cough* publishes purposefully bigoted and inflammatory tweets just to rile people up and then publicly brags about doing do, they don't see that as trolling - in a (typical for them) Orwellian reversal, they call it "troll baiting" and consider it a heroic deed.

"Accounting of Eternity: The Quest for a Balanced Budget"

I usually decided based on the best portrait I find...