Humodour

Yep!

That's an awesome Windmill! P.S.: less (bright/light?) colours on the iron shed - it's not a Christmas shed. The art is coming along nicely from those few shots, though.

I agree - I much prefer the old avatars. Seems like the only way is to not install HoW. You could maybe replace the bifs in your override directory but I'm not sure if that'd make the game crash or not (probably not, since there's no dual-wielding?) Do you know which files those would be? I could try by installing vanilla IWD to a different directory and copying them over. Worth a shot, since it would make the game much more enjoyable. Hell, if i worked for IWD, it could probably work for BG2, but then you have the dual-wielding problem. Hmm. I don't have IWD1 installed, sorry. But I think they'd be easy to find because I recall they had intuitive filenames. What's the TeamBG programme that unpacks the chitin.key file and lets you extract the spell/avatar/weapon/etc bif/bam files (animation files)? Let me check... OK, it's called WinBIFF, download it here: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IEmodding/index.php Edit: download Bamworkshop on the same page to view the animations to confirm they are what you want. Edit 2: I just checked and I do have IWD1 installed. I can see the bams for Arundel and bats and stuff but character avatars aren't immediately obvious... Edit 3: OK, found them. They're under data\CHRAnim.bif in the chitin.key file. I guess you'd just extract that entire part of the chitin.key file to your override directory once you've installed HoW? No guarentees. There could be hard-coded animation frame count differences between IWD1 and HoW. Edit 3: Supposing you get bored and want to make your own spells or items, the IEEP tool on that page is a gem for that. DaleKeeper can detect any items/spell you make and add to the Override directory, too, if you can't be bothered using the console in game (I couldn't!). Thanks Krez! I'll give it a try after uninstalling IWD+HOW+TotL and report back. Edit 1: Ok, I extracted ALL the files from CHRAnim.bif into the override directory. I didn't really want to fuss with searching for each individual one because there are so damn many. Here goes nothing. Edit 2: Well, that didn't work. I didn't get any error messages or anything, just that nothing was changed WTF. That's exactly what's NOT meant to happen. Try this: delete that entire directory from the chitin.key file using WinBiff (also delete those override files you extracted( and see if anything changes (hopefully it should crash because there's no animation files - if not, we've got the wrong suspect). Report back here with what your findings, soldier!

Oh, well, Morgoth the economic seer has spoken! You hear that Valve? It's all free sailing from here - you can just cruise along like Interplay did. With every single game sold in Steam, Valve makes a turnover on a daily basis. And the Steam library is growing every day, hence Valve gets richer every day. It's even more probable that MS goes down before Valve does. While I agree with you in theory, especially since I just played Portal, I still loathe the idea of not fully owning my game, as is the case with Steam (as I said, I've already lost HL2 once because I forgot my Steam password). And I certainly shouldn't have to rely on Valve's good grace and inability to fail!

I agree with Poland.

http://boingboing.net/2008/07/15/chinese-restaurant-c.html

Oh, well, Morgoth the economic seer has spoken! You hear that Valve? It's all free sailing from here - you can just cruise along like Interplay did. Um, I don't. Read the thread for once.

Yes. The gameplay is unique, and I personally find it fun. Story is decent enough so far. Nice graphics. What exactly was so unique about the gameplay. It was just a stripped down FPS. It was all about getting chased by helicopters and mercenaries, that's it. Run run run jump reload. meh. Portal was also just a stripped down FPS.

I agree - I much prefer the old avatars. Seems like the only way is to not install HoW. You could maybe replace the bifs in your override directory but I'm not sure if that'd make the game crash or not (probably not, since there's no dual-wielding?) Do you know which files those would be? I could try by installing vanilla IWD to a different directory and copying them over. Worth a shot, since it would make the game much more enjoyable. Hell, if i worked for IWD, it could probably work for BG2, but then you have the dual-wielding problem. Hmm. I don't have IWD1 installed, sorry. But I think they'd be easy to find because I recall they had intuitive filenames. What's the TeamBG programme that unpacks the chitin.key file and lets you extract the spell/avatar/weapon/etc bif/bam files (animation files)? Let me check... OK, it's called WinBIFF, download it here: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IEmodding/index.php Edit: download Bamworkshop on the same page to view the animations to confirm they are what you want. Edit 2: I just checked and I do have IWD1 installed. I can see the bams for Arundel and bats and stuff but character avatars aren't immediately obvious... Edit 3: OK, found them. They're under data\CHRAnim.bif in the chitin.key file. I guess you'd just extract that entire part of the chitin.key file to your override directory once you've installed HoW? No guarentees. There could be hard-coded animation frame count differences between IWD1 and HoW. Edit 3: Supposing you get bored and want to make your own spells or items, the IEEP tool on that page is a gem for that. DaleKeeper can detect any items/spell you make and add to the Override directory, too, if you can't be bothered using the console in game (I couldn't!).

Yes. The gameplay is unique, and I personally find it fun. Story is decent enough so far. Nice graphics.

1 million units is not at all solid when you're expecting to sell 3 million. EA would've done their books expecting 3 million, which essentially means the game was a loss. Feargus could explain it better. In fact, I believe he did here. Yes it did. You had to activate it online, you had to type in a serial key, you had to have a Securom check periodically or the game would crash, and if you installed it on more than 5 machines it'd call you a pirate. You think it had no DRM and you think it was boring - are we even talking about the same game?

The thing about Steam is, how can we trust them when they say they'll remove DRM if Valve goes under? Blizzard has their history to back them up - look how they released no-cd patches for Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3. I like to own tangible copies of my games, but I don't think I do with Steam. I lost my Steam account password for HL2 once and hence lost the game. Cracks are illegal in Australia, just FYI. I do not care - they shouldn't put such restrictive DRM on games I've bought.

I'm just playing Mirror's Edge now. It's pretty fun, but I think they could've added some more advanced stealth elements. Or maybe that'd break the 'flow' too much. I like the intuitiveness of most of the acrobatic moves and places to jump to. I'm up to the SWAT team and the elevator, and it's pretty bright and sunny for a dystopian world. The guy campaigning for reform was shot and that chick framed, but that seems more like corruption than anything, and that happens in a lot of places, but those aren't dystopias... I mean, there's no Soma, I haven't seen all that many CCTV cameras, there's plenty of news services... OK so the cops ARE shooting you for no reason, and you DO have SWAT teams after you for no reasons... maybe I should keep playing Apparently this game didn't do well but they're still making a sequel and possibly trilogy? EQ expected it to sell 3 million copies - how many did it sell? Maybe that'll teach them not to put in such ****ing restrictive DRM. Seriously, do they think gamers are all latent criminals?

They don't. Many people use their search bar though - 95% of Mozilla's funding comes from search bar royalties. Mozilla funding is used to make the product better for the user according to the FOSS (free and open source) philosophy, which is why it's a not-for-profit, and not publically listed (and hence not legally bound to generate profit for shareholders). It's hardly an explanation because I didn't think anybody would want to know. Alright, well, as you hopefully know, Google offers a lot of web-app based products like Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc, many of which are direct competitors to non-cloud based (offline) products from Microsoft and others. Because of this, it's in Google's best interests to push the envelope of web browser capabilities so that what's possible in a web browser is identical to what's possible in pre-compiled binaries like Microsoft Office (ideally). As such, this involves things like speeding up Javascript speed, rendering, and adding new standards such as Open 3d. The more powerful your web browser is (pretty much the more like an operating system, which is at least part of the reason for Chrome's sandbox model - the other being good security), the better Google can make its products - products that compete with Microsoft. Which ties back into Microsoft's own reasons for trying to maintain IE market share, even though most people think they give it away for free as good Samaritans (I can assure you, they don't waste those millions on giving away IE free for your benefit). That reason being: the more people using the deliberately slow IE, the lower the quality of Google's online offerings for most people (IE users), and hence the less likelihood Google's offerings steal market-share (and hence money) from Microsoft. Even if Chrome fails to gain traction, the worst case scenario for Google is that it continues to fund Firefox (searchbar royalties is essentially Google's way of funding Firefox without getting into taxation problems) which is itself many times faster than IE, and beholden only to users and developers, and if Chrome can push Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE to compete more in the process, that's gravy (it already has, sparking a browser speed war which IE is losing badly). But another obvious advantage of Chrome, for Google, is that it uses Google search by default, so that's search market share in the bag for every Chrome user they gain (and that means more financial security, and more people to target ads to, and hence more revenue). They aren't complying with the EU. The EU asked them to wait for their verdict to be passed, and Microsoft said "No, we'll pass our own verdict ahead of you instead", hoping to pressure the EU by sparking exactly this kind of debate here in this thread by looking like a victim. The EU obviously wasn't moved, so that part of the plan backfired, but I imagine they're still happy they made the EU look like the bad guy, even though EU actually considers all the things I've mentioned above when making their decisions on browser anti-trust matters.

Pleeeeeeeeeease just be something unobtrusive like a disc-check and/or a serial key. I hate having to download cracks. And if you're really nice guys, you could remove the disc check in a patch after a couple of years once it's served its purpose, like Blizzard does with their games.

I agree - I much prefer the old avatars. Seems like the only way is to not install HoW. You could maybe replace the bifs in your override directory but I'm not sure if that'd make the game crash or not (probably not, since there's no dual-wielding?)

Form your point of view as a consumer, you won't even notice it. Most OEMs will ship a browser, and those that don't, you'll just be given a prompt when you first start your computer to chose and download one, taking all of, oh, 1 minute? Such as? Read the thread; I mentioned them in my first post. Volourn, little known fact, but anti-trust laws are actually designed to control monopolies, not punish the successful.

I think the reason DS9 was loved was because it wasn't mainly finding new life and making peace. the Federation got into a war with another group during several of the seasons and showed a more military side to the feds. I don't think Trek would make a very good RPG because you don't exactly have true free agents running around in the TNG era. Well you do but non in the sense of "heavily armed" agents. The standards of RPGs (western and japanese) just don't conform very well to Trek because there is no morality or rag tag group of well meaning adventerurs who save the day... everything is done for the states benefit, so it wouldn't make sense to limit a player about what equipment he could requisition, and you couldn't very well have morality play any form of role because there's only "Us" and "them" really... Agreed, that's another reason I think B5 would be better suited to an RPG. You have lots of "free agents" and mercenaries roaming around. Some sell information or drugs (dust) or weapons. Rangers could fit in the "free agent" category, especially on cover. Even Psi Cops operating similarly. Lita was a "free agent" even on B5 for most of seasons 4 and 5 as a telepath. There's lots of room in that environment to choose factions and play them to suit your character. Plus the tactics and physics are just more realistic. Tech matters, but not so much that it can't be overwhelmed by numbers. Fighters and mixed assault craft actually work and work together. The battles in B5 were always stunning displays, especially in seasons 3 and 4. Yeah, Babylon 5 would be perfect for an RPG.

Well, every enemy is easier to take down from behind than with an assault. Assuming you can get close to them without having them see you, you can perform a takedown and they die. An enemy, especially those with a lot of armor, are going to take a few bullets to the body to take out, but a knife to the throat is an instant kill on any non-boss enemy. I think, in general, a good stealthy player that manages to use his skills well is generally going to have a better chance of surviving overall than a run-n-gunner. Not being seen means not being shot, for the most part. The commando route will lead to taking a lot of damage and getting grenades thrown at you and such, which the commando will be better equipped to deal with, but which can still be deadly. If you focus on stealth, you will die more quickly in a firefight (as you're probably wearing quieter but less protective armor), but you should be able to avoid firefights more often than not. The drawback here is that a stealth playthrough is probably a bit slower than a guns-blazing playthrough, because you're going to be watching enemy patrol routes to sneak past them and moving more slowly in stealth mode overall. But if you want to be a ninja, you have to expect a tradeoff or two. We have a few systems that prevent all the enemies in a level from reacting when a single enemy is alerted to your presence, and our passive/activated abilities and gadgets are going to let you correct some of the mistakes that might be made while you're sneaking around. In general, a stealth playthrough is going to require a bit more care than a guns-blazing approach, but we're trying not to make it punishing to the point of not being fun. We also want to allow the player to make a few mistakes along the way without having to do that "oh well, might as well reload at this point" thing. So you get things like Evasion, which makes Mike temporarily undetectable to enemies when he wanders into one of their view ranges (allowing him to quickly get behind cover before they react to him), or the Radio Mimic gadget, which lets you modulate Mike's voice and call in a false alarm signal, thus canceling an alarm that you trip. (Both of these are on cooldowns, so they are not going to let you constantly correct for sloppy play.) So we're trying to ensure that playing stealthy is an appropriate challenge, but not something that is overly punishing. The end goal is, after all, a fun game. Sounds cool.

I'd prefer a Bladerunner RPG. Or a Battlestar: Galactica RPG. Or a Stargate RPG. Or a Babylon 5 RPG. All by Obsidian of course, not some random ****ty studio burdened with making a cash cow off the brand recognition.

Nobody said anything about primary weapon, though. But NOLF1 and Deus Ex 1 both managed to incorporate decent sniping options. It's a fun aspect of the game, especially if you're playing as a stealth character.

Do we really know these things? We know that Obsidian is working on a new game and that it is a fantasy game. I am not so sure, however, that it is their own IP. In fact, I suspect that the game will be BG3 (a new D&D game could be nice if it weren't 4E), since Atari has recently stated it is reviving the Baldur's Gate franchise. I'm pretty certain we do: "What we'd love to do instead is tackle something like Baldur's Gate 3 or create our own new fantasy world - or have we already been doing that? " There's no way it's BG3, because Fergus isn't about to just leak the fact that they are working on BG3 in casual conversation - even if he wanted to, he'd be under contract with Atari and hence very careful about his wording. It's far more likely he's referring to "our own new fantasy world", especially given the wording of the sentence.

It might be obvious to you, but as someone who doesn't really follow all the talk about browsers it's not something that really comes to mind and I'd argue that it's not an obvious conclusion to the vast majority of users. Software is not my area of interest. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't assume everyone knows the ins and outs of browsers and web development. My bad. No clue. I hear about them every now and then, though admittedly I haven't for about a year now. It may be there aren't any anymore. Under what circumstances would you pay for a word processor rather than use one of the free alternatives? There are reasons, even if the biggest one is simply "my company forces me to" or something. I imagine if there are still any non-free adopters, it's companies. That's fine, but as I said, the business models of most browsers revolve around something other than upfront fees (yet is are very solid and conspicuous business models nonetheless), which is a point I notice you've avoided.

How do you know there's going to be a HL3 (assuming Ep 3 isn't it)? I actually doubt there will be, at least not for a long while (10+ years knowing Valve). The fact of the matter is, Deus Ex and Half-Life both worked because they were close to our future. Get too futuristic and into the future and you stand to lose a lot of the cultural elements that gave the games their compelling atmosphere. Deus Ex 2 failed in this regard, and Half-Life 2 was not the best it could have been but was saved by introducing fresh new dystopic elements. Half-Life 3, that would take place in the far future. There's not much for people to relate to in my mind. But hell, they could pull it off I guess. I've read some pretty decent books set in the far future, and seen some pretty decent movies.

What we know: - Black Isle is working on a new game. - It uses their own game universe (IP) - Because of this, it probably uses their own rule set - It uses their home-made Onyx game engine (which is 3D, probably best suited for 3rd person, probably squad/team-based gameplay) - The game universe is fantasy-based, though whether that's steampunk, gothic fantasy, dungeons and dragons style, etc is unknown. Given their comments in the past, dungeons and dragons style can probably be ruled out and something unique and intriguing ruled in. - They essentially started working on this new game around the time Aliens was rumoured to be cancelled, so I think it's safe to just let that game go.