angshuman

That about sums it up. I also believe the converse is *somewhat* true: Good gameplay is no excuse for terrible graphics. I'm not talking Doom3 quality here, but there's a basic presentation quality that is to be expected of a good game. Gameplay comes first, but you've got to optimize all the other factors so that they enhance the overall experience as much as possible. But that again, is my opinion. I prefer Diablo to ADOM, but I know several people who would call me an idiot. @ NPC's and & monsters roaming around in a world full of # trees just don't cut it for me -- Angshuman

Surprise, surprise... IBM replied to the Inquirer guy's concerns, as did a couple of other Cell fanboys. Although handwavy, non-quantitative and far from convincing, the IBM representative's answer was at least somewhat respectable. The other two letters were hilarious! :D http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23312 -- Angshuman

<rant> As far as those performance numbers are concerned, there is a lot of BS being thrown about by the marketing departments of both Microsoft as well as Sony. Of course, we all know them well enough to take the numbers with handfuls of salt, but in this case you would require several truckloads to even approach the sheer levels of exaggeration these idiots are using. 2.18 teraflops my a**. Let me do some simple math for you. Let's take the X360 as an example. 1 teraflop = 1000 billion floating point (FP) operations per second. The console sports 3 PowerPC cores running at 3.2 GHz, which implies 3.2 billion cycles per second. To achieve 1 teraflop, the system as a whole would thus have to perform 1000/3.2 = 312.5 FP operations per CPU clock cycle (anyone with a modest idea about microarchitecture would be rolling on the floor by now). High-end Power5 cores used on $500K servers can probably churn out 4 FP ops per cycle (and I'm being *ridiculously* optimistic). Let's assume IBM was generous and put 3 of these uber-cores into the X360 CPU, and Microsoft ships the console with your own personal hydroelectric power station. This gives the entire X360 CPU 4*3 = 12 FP ops per cycle. Oops! ATi now has to somehow come up with 300.5 more FP ops per CPU cycle (I'm assuming, of course, that marketing is stupid enough to *add* CPU and GPU flops to come up with the overall system throughput). Honestly, I don't know much about GPU architectures, but here's an attempt to figure out how un-achieveable that 300.5 number is. Now, the ATi baby runs at 500Mhz. In order to measure up to 300 FP ops per *CPU* cycle, it will have to perform 300 * (3.2/0.5) = 1920 FP ops per GPU cycle. With 48 pipelines, *each pipeline* will have to churn out 1920/48 = 40 FP ops per GPU cycle. That, my friends, seems to me to be complete nonsense. Unless, of course, the thing is a 40-stage pipeline, and the idiots are counting each pipeline stage as an "FP op". Supercomputer in a console, my a**. Not that I'm saying the systems aren't powerful. The configurations are indeed impressive, and the demos looked fabulous. The PS3 demos were simply jaw-dropping. The amount of compute power in those consoles is immense -- significantly more than previous-generation consoles, and noticeably more than current-generation desktop PC's too. And the fact that they will be sold in < $500 price ranges is simply amazing. But what's disgusting is these cheap attempts to quantify performance with imaginary numbers. Nobody *wants* a supercomputer in their living room, people want a console that plays their games beautifully. And, by golly, these machines do an amazing job at that. So why give us all this BS? </rant> -- Angshuman One more chap apparently shares the same concerns: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23285

I too received a request... Strange, I do not recall registering myself at any website. Oh well, it matters not, I am happy I could give them my input, in case Lucas Arts really cares. Angshuman

I enjoyed RTCW and NOLF2 a lot. The only problem with these two games was the discontinuity between missions. The "return-home"s gave the player too much of a psychological "breather", which sort of ruins the immersiveness. Angshuman

Noceur, I've always wondered this -- As far as maps/environments are concerned, why does bumpmapping have to be dynamic? Most lights are stationary, and therefore, static lighting passes should be able to take care of the Diffuse components. I don't know if Radiosity algorithms could be made to understand normal maps, but then, you could run a separate bumpmapping pass *after* radiosity has done its job, could't you? The problem, of course, would be view-dependent specular highlights, but from what I've seen, not many games use them that often. I also thought Quake III had some pseudo-static way of rendering specular highlights. I've always wondered if it was possible to build a rendering engine for relatively low-spec hardware that would allow budget-minded people to run games beautifully at high resolutions, but at the cost of some dynamism. Angshuman

Hmm... true, the cutting up of the body in half has nothing to do with physics, but the circular blade flying through the air from your gravity gun sure does Come to think of it (and please correct me if I'm wrong), even Blood Rayne's multi-dimensional slices wouldn't have anything to do with physics, they seem more to have to do with how you design your models, don't they? I mean, Physics define what happens when forces act on a certain rigid or deformable body, where typical forces are Gravity, the gravity gun's Antigravity, explosive airflow from a grenade, etc., and bodies are a dead Combine, half a split zombie, a saw blade, or each individual piece of a recently-deceased living entity you just butchered. Physics will tell you how those individual pieces of flesh are going to fly off, but the manner in which those pieces come together to form the complete model of the ex-living entity seems to me to be totally a geometric modeling issue. Angshuman

HL2 Demo? The intro sequence up until you enter the first apartment building, and Ravenholm (I didn't get to see how far it went into Ravenholm, I bought the game ) Angshuman

I feel Doom 3 went a little overboard with the dynamic lighting thing. Without a doubt, the engine looks MAGNIFICENT, but it also looks a little artificial. Maybe it's the hard stencil shadows, maybe its the intense specular effects, maybe its the overuse of bumpmapping, I don't know; but somehow, the game mildly hurts my eyes and sometimes gives me a slight headache. And yes, I've heard the "It's a space station, it's supposed to look shiny and artificial" line, but it doesn't hold. Something about the visuals is *unnatural*. It's gorgeous, but unnatural. HL2 (notice that I don't say Source), on the other hand, is totally different. Its immersive. You get lost the surroundings. The feeling of realism is intense. The textures are nowhere near as detailed as Doom 3, and the interplay of light and shadows is not even close. But it doesn't matter -- City 17 feels un-freaking-believeably real. It shows what it means for a game to be a "First Person" shooter. Maybe that has to do with the wide, expansive level design. Maybe it has to do with the choice of textures. Or maybe it's the Source engine. While I know very little about game engine design, I do not think I would be very wrong in concluding that Source is the pinnacle of "traditional" 3D engine design and is hence an extremely refined product that artists know how to exploit and are able to express themselves completely in, while the Doom 3 engine is the first prototype of the next generation of 3D technology that, although breathtaking, has several hard edges (pun intended) that stick out and kind of take away from the overall experience. For some reason, I wasn't too impressed with Far Cry. Angshuman

Sorry if this is a repost. VALVe have settled their lawsuit against VU Games, and it seems VU will have nothing to do with HL2 after August. There have been several news articles on this today, here's the link to one of them: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22918 Although I'm glad, I'm not quite sure about who the "David" was here and who the "Goliath" Now, had Obsidian kicked LA's behind in this fashion, I would have thrown a party (w00t) Angshuman

I would be happy to donate. Do you think you guys could set up a "Support Us" webpage of sorts on your site? I'm an Xboxer, and probably won't get to enjoy your work, but I don't care. I thought the game was amazing but was heartbroken when I saw how it had been brutalized, and therefore would like to contribute to your effort. Someday I might buy the PC version too Angshuman

I prefer to use the Telgron (sp?) Jolt Cell Mark III instead of the Ultimate Diatum Energy Cell. Although its average damage is 4.5 (as opposed to the Ultimate's 5), it's electrical damage, and so gives the saber a little variety of elemental damage, in case some bloke happens to be resistant to energy. Practically, of course, there's no difference in a game as easy as this. The other stuff -- Pontite Lens, Fencing Emitter (I forget the qualifier, maybe Ultimate), Personal Crystal, Solari. Angshu

Perfect

Hmm... although I disagree with the above statement in principle, that comment got me thinking. Perhaps the way we have been doing the math for this puzzle is not entirely appropriate. Let me explain. Let's get back to our old example of the (18 STR, 18 DEX) character (P1) vs. the (26 STR, 10 DEX) character (P2). What I felt earlier (and I'm guessing JediBob did, as well), according to the following analysis P1: +4 dmg, +4 def, +8 atck = +16 P2: +8 dmg, +0 def, +8 atck = +16 was that both characters should be equally powerful. But 213374U's comment of "math != balance" led me to ask myself the following question: Is ADDING UP the total stat bonuses representative of how effective a character is going to be in combat? Probably not. In other words, that +16 does not necessarily give a clear indication of which of the two characters would be a more efficient killing machine. Obviously, it would depend a lot on the enemy's stats, and one character would be more powerful than the other in certain scenarios. An accurate estimation of the average effectiveness of each would probably require detailed combat simulations across the entire range of enemy stats the player is likely to some up against during the course of the entire game. Now, I do not know much about the d20 ruleset, but I would assume that the fellows carry out extensive simulations and probabilistic analysis in order to make the system balanced. If they have defined Weapon Finesse as it stands today based on these simulations, I have no qualms. HOWEVER, as I mentioned above, the results are also dependent on the range of enemy stats the player is likely to encounter. Therefore, any game developer, say Obsidian, would have to re-evaluate a lot of things based on how they've structured their game. In summary, this is what I feel: 1. We do not know which one is more munchkin, P1 or P2, and how things would change had there been a different definition of Weapon Finesse. The game developers are the only ones capable of giving that answer. 2. At the same time, the d20 is not holy writ. You cannot just say that Weapon Finesse in its new form will create munchkin characters. Developers may have to introduce their own re-balancing factors into the combat equations, and this *may* imply changing the definitions of different feats. 3. Math = Game Balance True, the simplistic additive math we were using earlier is quite inappropriate, but stochastic analysis and/or simulation runs are REQUIRED in order to come up with a basic balanced framework, after which the ruleset may be fine-tuned according to actual gameplay experiences and feedback. Tschuss!

JediBob has a perfectly fair point. The math in his second post verified this. Hades, if you had a character with 26 str and 10 dex, this would give: +8 damage, +8 to-hit, +0 defense = +16 total so that's as munchkin as as the 18 str, 18 dex character. Plus, as JediBob pointed out, munchkin-ness can perhaps be resolved by appropriate enemy-leveling, and need not be enforced by artificially weakening the player.

KOTOR had an Easter Egg at the end?

ROFL!

Double saber + Flurry + Master of Speed + Juyo stance = 6 attacks per round. With 37-77 damage (on-hand) per attack, the damage is just obscene :D

A lightsaber? On Telos?

The Basilisk landing on Iziz.

I started off my first game with a single, but towards the end I switched over to the double-bladed. Inspite of the additional bonuses that the single has this time around, and despite the fact that my PC only had level 2 of two-weapon fighting (I had used up all my feats on dueling), I found the double bladed to be more effective overall for an aggressive fighter. I had a sentinel/weapons master.

I found it Dunno if it's available elsewhere.

Tough choice. Overall, KOTOR was a slightly more pleasing experience, simply because it seemed complete and more refined. The story had closure, the plots and sub-plots were simple but well fleshed out, and so were the characters. The game achieved what it had set out to do. TSL was very different. It had set lofty ambitions for itself. Which is not a bad thing, but if you fail to achieve these ambitions completely, the game loses its appeal somewhat. This game had the potential to be an absolute legend. The story was dark and captivating. The characters were complex and had deep backgrounds. Compared to TSL's story, KOTOR's story seems like a goody-goody fairy tale. It's so easy to follow the light side in KOTOR, since when you're playing LS, you can cast yourself in the role of the knight in shining armor. The world around you and the people around you are built such that you are aptly rewarded and recognized for being such a knight. You don't bring your real-life beliefs and experiences into play at all. In contrast, TSL often ridicules you if you're trying to play goody-goody, through several instruments such as NPC responses, your PC's history, the lack of credits in your wallet, people taking undue advantage of your PC all over the place, etc. etc. The setting is much more real-world. However, the game just loses steam. The story, the characters, the plot, everything just plummets to nothingness. All that intrigue that was built up turned into nothing but disappointment. And I'm not simply talking about an anti-climax over here. Things *just* *don't* *make* *sense*. Events happen out of nowhere, characters suddenly behave strange, and you're left wondering "What the hell just happened?" There are a *lot* of unanswered questions, but these are not the type of questions that imply a sequel, they are unanswered questions inherent to the game you've just played. Inspite if these flaws, it cannot be denied that TSL is a captivating experience for most part. It's just that it simply doesn't achieve what it could have, which is why I'd say KOTOR is the overall better game. But if you liked KOTOR, there's no excuse for you not to buy this game. Apart from the story, the gameplay enhancements, although not major, are welcome and appropriate for a sequel. The graphics are beautiful, the framerate horrible. There are bugs all over the place, but you can live with them and thankfully I did not encounter any game-killing bug. That's all, folks. -- Angshu

------------------------------------------------------- ******** SPOILERS (hidden) AHEAD ******** ------------------------------------------------------- 15 Sentinel/12 Weapons Master ------------------------------------ Reasons: Basically wanted a hack-n-slash char but with decent force powers & skills. Since the Wpn Master feats were SO DAMN awesome, the prestige class *had* to be a Wpn Master. In the beginning of the game, I felt a Consular would be too weak, so I chose Sentinel, but put stats in the Sentinel more or less as I would do for a Guardian. Hence, the low Int. I automatically get immunity from Critical Hits and Mind-Affecting powers, so that's one less worry. I put most of my skill points in Repair (for item breakdown), Comp Use and Awareness, a little less in Persuade and Treat Inj. Here's the resulting stats: **** Without Buffs **** ---------------------------- Damage: Onhand 37-77/+47 Offhand 24-64/+45 (the to-hit would have been much higher had I not made a stupid mistake, I'll discuss that in a while) Str: 36 Dex: 22 Con: 15 Int: 12 Wis: 21 Cha: 10 Vitality: 319 Force : 359 Defense: 36 Fort/Ref/Will: 20/22/22 Saber ------- Double bladed, Blue (didn't like the Silver or Viridian), PC's crystal, Solari, Te<something>ron Jolt Cell III, Adaegan Lens, Some cool Emitter I don't remember. I had Bao-Dur construct most of my stuff. Effectiveness --------------- Pretty darned effective. Yeah, I know the game's supposed to be really easy anyway, which means the goons are probably weak, but you can't deny the damage/attack I'm handing out is a little on the obscene side. I was peacefully able to slash my way through the final level without any buffs. Everything from cheapo soldiers to would go down 99% of the time in 1 round (Flurry, Determination Stance). would typically take 2 rounds. All this is without any buffs, although I'd have to heal after every room. With Force Enlightenment and Juyo Stance, I would sometimes Force Wave my way through a room. It's moderately effective, even on high-lvl targets. Stasis Field worked most of the time. The only disappointing power was Destroy Droid, which seems to be a little underpowered in this game compared to its devastating power in KOTOR1. Overall I think I had sufficient Wisdom/FPs to enjoy Powers whenever I wanted to while maintaining the basic principle of the Weapon Master -- kill, kill, kill! Flaws in Build ---------------- Several, I'm sure it's pretty unbalanced, but I made some really blatant mistakes: 1. Focused on single-saber in the begnining of the game (and hence, Dueling), before I realized that as saber power increases, that extra round really helps. In the end I only had Improved 2-weapon fighting (that's lvl 2 out of a possible 6 levels for Wpn Master) 2. Low constitution, I couldn't wear a single implant. This was really a huge mistake. Constructive Criticism and Flaming are welcome!! -- Angshu

Master Speed + Master Flurry + Juyo Stance = 6 attacks per round with double-bladed/dual saber :D