Humodour

No, it's not sarcasm, it's the French-Egyptian cease-fire proposal which you obviously missed and is backed by Turkey, America, and the EU.

Obsidian isn't Bethesda, and even Deus Ex 1 and Torment had off-putting moods before I played them, so have a little faith.

Wouldn't it be then an Action game instead? Well done quoting me out of context.

Actually, at the time of buying NWN+SoU+HotU, SoU was the only reason I didn't consider the whole NWN franchise ****. SoU was too short, but still managed to pack in more light-hearted fun and life (akin to BG1) than NWN1 OC ever did. HotU was just OK.

Being sold a lot over time qualifies as good, though, since hype cannot sustain sales over time. Credibility destroyed.

I find it hilarious that Sawyer, basically co-leader of an internationally famous gaming company, with 100 something employees, can not find somebody to draw a sheep skin, for a pre-existing wireframe, in their spare time.

I'm banking on this Egyptian-French plan to send in a Turkish peacekeeping force to subdue Hamas and thus force an Israeli ceasefire.

Will they give me funky black mojo?

Exactly. I honestly believe you could make an awesome RPG by relying simply on variety in actions/events/quest resolution instead of stats or even dialogue. You want to role play? Actions speak louder than words. I'd love to see a game like that, in fact. It'd be an FPS, of course. Think Deus Ex with twice as many quests, and twice as many possible meaningful outcomes per quest.

I love that post, Josh! I hadn't really known your thoughts on game design issues of this sort before, but now that I do I am certainly pleased (for whatever that's worth). Might I suggest, though, that you focus less on the sole overarching theme of a game? Isn't it entirely possible to explore multiple issues at once? On the one hand you have a main theme which is accessible to the general audience (and I'm not saying it needs to be generic or shallow, but it could be if you wanted), and on top of that you layer a strong secondary theme about some deep/serious issue which is rarely touched upon, and which the player can largely ignore if they really chose, but is nonetheless pervasive and obvious enough to make the game unique and distinct. E.g. a game about a dystopia (as the main theme, done to death I know) with strong undercurrents of racial or class identity is entirely plausible - you actually see this pair fairly commonly in written literature. In fact, I feel that it is the games which do not have such deep secondary undercurrents that give off the greatest impression of being shallow or 'trite', as you put it. Still, I would like to see games whose main theme was more adventurous. Maybe an inversion of the above: a game which primarily focused on racial identity in a setting with minor dystopian undercurrents. It removes the focus from surviving in a dystopia, or reforming a dystopia, to instead however you wanted to play out the racial identity theme. Now that would be interesting, IMHO. I do believe it would be successful because you still have the core background elements there (in this case the dystopian setting) to strengthen your appeal. Not to mention that a game about racial identity is nothing to shirk away from. I'm not saying it'd appeal to everybody as your average game does, but it's entirely possible that for every customer who was put off by the idea, you'd gain one was intrigued by its freshness. Something that the media coverage as a sort of 'first of its kind' in this fledgling media would only magnify. Note: when I say racial identity, I don't necessarily mean a preachy game. Simply a game which genuinely explores the issue. In fact, probably one of the most compelling reasons for covering such issues in a computer game is the unique degree of interactivity and freedom you can afford the responder in their exploration of the issue if you so choose, compared to print and film media. This became somewhat of a verbose rant.

I think it would be entirely reasonable to settle for below 60 fps as many games already do. I believe the GTA series and Halo run at 30 fps, off the top of my head, but you could easily opt for 45 or something, depending on the framerate sacrifice (if any) required for better transparency techniques. I'd say this is especially true for games which don't operate in first person view (e.g. Aliens RPG). It's all well and good to aim for as high a framerate as possible (within the monitor refresh rate) as far as it actually improves graphical quality perceptibly, but high framerates shouldn't be an end in and of themselves. /2 cents and all

You honestly think skill checks in conversation is what constitutes an RPG?

Nah, that's an excessively simplistic view of things.

I don't get it.

He was talking about NOLF, not Deus Ex, but I minorly agree. I personally consider NOLF enough RPG to classify as an RPG-FPS hybrid. On the other end of the scale is System Shock 2, which I also classify as an FPS-RPG hybrid, but for different reasons (more stat and combat choice than role-playing choice). You can definitely say that Deus Ex is more of an RPG in both senses, though - combat/stat choice AND role-playing choice, and thus relative to Deus Ex, NOLF's role-playing was more minor. But then, take the Diablos. By the above logic, they are no more RPGs than System Shock 2 was. I personally think that makes a lot of sense, and I'd classify them both as RPGs, but others will disagree.

"As of 2005, women [in Israel] are allowed to serve in 83% of all positions in the military, including Shipboard Navy Service (except submarines), and Artillery. Combat roles are voluntary for women." Also of note is that openly gay people are treated exactly like straight people in the IDF. This is not true in America, where openly gay people are not allowed in the military (it was on Obama's agenda of things to change, but given the current world situation I'd say it has a low priority). Edit: I'm ambivalent about women in combat roles. I can see merit in both the for and against cases (e.g. an all-male front line removes distractions, and there's no soldier shortage currently, so no need to add women).

Reason: "if it ain't broke don't fix it" + misguided chivalry.

As somebody said earlier, it actually does - it helps you immerse yourself in the character (and thus play the role more comfortably and realistically, at least for me). But that's with choice in mind. As in "more choice means more roles available to the player to follow" but sometimes devs don't want choice, they want to enforce a certain role or roles (e.g. Planescape: Torment, or Deus Ex). In this sense, FPS games are still roleplaying games, they just lack the ability for you to dictate the role you play. I would say that generally disqualifies them as RPGs though - that term basically necessitates some level of choice in the role you play, which Torment and Deus Ex still offered.

It almost makes me want to go to Israel... If I wasn't afraid of being blown up that is. This. Pretty sure Israeli women are part of the reserves, BTW. They don't fight head-to-head normally, but are still trained in front-line combat in case of emergency. I'll have to check later.

I don't know about the rest of Israeli girls, but if they're as beautiful as their counterparts in the military... man, EVERY SINGLE female Israeli soldier I've seen has been smoking hot. I'm not sure if these are actual soldiers, or only models put into uniforms for a nice photoshooting. And if they're actual soldiers, then I'd like to know if they're in the infantry on the front, or desk writers for commando HQ. Either way, some look okay-ish, some are actually ugly. But hey, different tastes and all... I didn't click the link. I was just referring to Israeli soldiers I've seen in general.

Suppose, and this is purely hypothetical, that one was creating a 2D pre-rendered game engine. What would be the best way to create/acquire assets to populate that engine with to create a game world? This includes things like the mouse pointer, the interface, the monsters, the NPCs, the items, the items on the ground, the floors, the trees, etc. Ideally the source would be non-proprietary and allow said assets to be packaged with the game and sold for no or minimal royalties. I'm a 20 year old uni student who can barely draw stick figures, so I have no hope of both coding a game engine, thinking up dialogue and plot, and also creating reasonably playable game art by myself. Here's what I've made so far (still adding more). It's just placeholder, and whilst not stick-figure level shocking, required a few hours to create from drawing, cropping photos, etc (I got bored). Click to enlarge. Also, and this is less important, but still a goal, what would be my best bet for audio creation? Weapon sounds, character voices, ambient music, etc. Again, ideally non-proprietary stuff because I'm a uni bum who's just starting out. I have a feeling the answer to all this is "make friends with artists", but I figured I'd pop the question anyway to see if anybody has some insights I missed. Interesting note: the gun in the main hand is actually an air gun version of the Desert Eagle, made from engineering plastics.

I don't know about the rest of Israeli girls, but if they're as beautiful as their counterparts in the military... man, EVERY SINGLE female Israeli soldier I've seen has been smoking hot.

Mmm. Australia sent thousands of troops, as did America and Britain. Our commitment obviously isn't as large as America and Britain's, but it's still formidable. I'm pretty sure Poland did similar. I fully support the Afghanistan peacekeeping effort. I'm still unsure about Iraq; I obviously support our forces, but the intentions for the invasion were misplaced, and there are worse brutal dictatorships in the world. Though that's not really an excuse for inaction, either, in my mind - I guess history will be the arbiter here.

It's a common terrorist tactic in the Middle East to fire from or near hospitals, schools and churches so that the enemy either a) won't fight back, or b) you can cry bloody murder when it does, to help your propaganda war. On another note, Turkey's ministers just unofficially said they would be sending a peacekeeping force to Gaza to stop Hamas. That's probably the first bright idea I've heard about the Israel-Palestine situation in a long while (Turkey is a non-Western 98% Muslim country, but lives next to, or in, Europe, and is a stable democracy - a perfect third party). I'd like to see the look on Arab and Iranian faces when Hamas starts trying to murder Turkish soldiers, too.