Humodour

That's kind of the point. Any title that sells millions is much more than just "financially viable".

mil

Wow, Fenghuang, that's totally awesome man if you just replace all those bands with RHCP, QOTSA, SOAD, NIN and maybe Muse or Radiohead.

I fail to see a problem here?

lol. But dude, you were just recently telling me Blizzard would never make Diablo 3 because WoW makes them more money in a month than it would in 10 years. Dragon Age would sell millions of copies because it's a Bioware game. They've earnt that reputation at least.

Hover your mouse cursor over your 'Defence'. It should say your block chance. I'd just try to keep it above 50% for now personally. The max is 75%. Pelta Lunata is awesome. :D Yeah, none in energy. Just use sapphires in socketed armour and helms if you really need some. I'm making a Firewall/Frozen Orb sorc. It's good because firewall does massive damage but requires only 40 skill points to max out. By level 60 or so I'd be finished, with the rest of my skill points 'gravy'. I'd have two massive damage spells, immunes would fall, and it'd be quite fun. I'll have to grab an act 2 Holy Freeze merc, because his slow is cumulative with cold spell slow, which helps anchor monsters inside the firewall.

*scratches head* I don't see how you arrive anywhere close to that thought for either game. Both games are still a work in progress and little info has been released about either. They have just as a good a chance to be terrible as they do to be great. It's nice you are an optimist, but it doesn't mean much as to how things will actually turn out. It's not hard if you bother to read the interviews, previews and dev posts here with a neutral mindset. Honestly, you know what I like, and it's often the same as you: complexity, depth, details. But I can see when a game has potential to be awesome. AP might not have unlimited ammo, it may have few weapons, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have details elsewhere. I think that between the skills, gadgets, weapon upgrades, superspy abilities, and purported emphasis on branching non-linearity (in the good Deus Ex way) there'll be a lot going for this game. Aliens on the other hand has Sega and Obsidian wetting their proverbial pants (and this isn't some new idealistic indie game studio), is based on a new and solid home-brew engine, seems to be the culmination of their experience (good and bad) on KOTOR 2 and NWN 2, and sounds pretty sneaky-awesome from what little Josh and co have let slip (explicitly and implicitly). I'll be the first to lament these games being garbage Bioware consoles clones if that's what they end up being. But at this point I can't see that happening.

I just dragged myself out of bed at 10am. Now, for me, this is pretty sweet at the best of times. But what makes it even better is that I went to bed at 3am! And then I accidentally stubbed my toe into my computer case in my zombie state, and now it's bleeding pretty profusely all over my god damn foot. I'm show somebody finds that awesome.

I agree with you whole-heartedly. I do not like the direction the industry has gone. I'd suggest the best way to buy their games is as soon as they come out, and the normal way (game stores). The reason being, a lot of a game's success is determined in the initial release period. There's the issue of bugs of course, but if you have faith that Obsidian will produce good games, and release good patches (which I do), then it's a moot point.

Hydrogen isn't an energy source, really. It's also a volatile energy storage medium, too (but as you said, people are working very well to nullify that con). The benefit is that the fuel is plentiful (water) and the input energy plentiful (sun), and the output non-polluting (water). It actually takes a large energy investment to make hydrogen from water, so only places where you already have excess energy are viable (e.g. lots of geothermal energy in Iceland, or wind power, or solar power, etc). It's a fuel in the sense that we can convert all the various solar sources into it for use in mobile units. On the other hand, homes and industry will remain on-grid. Hydrogen will not really be used here unless electricity storage is required in off-peak times or something. Why? Because all the various solar energy sources are already hooked up to the grid just fine, like with fossil fuels.

This sounds pretty sweet actually.

He then goes on to say that dialogue gets in the way of action and that any game that isn't fully 'streamlined' is obviously not fun and will fail in today's game market. Gee, that worked real well for Deus Ex 2. Oh golly, I'm tingling with anticipation!

Eh, well you can use that character editor Dark_raven linked to if you really don't want to restart. Basically just load it up, count up how many skill points you have, set all to zero, then give yourself that many skill points. Now save. And don't forget not to cheat.

lol. lol. lol. I reckon you should have gone Holy Freeze + zeal instead, personally. More fun.

Well, you know, on the plus side, assuming your only casual interest as a gamer is of detriment (which I highly doubt), you can just hop over to the burgeoning field of scientific visualisation and make bucketloads.

Well, I could only play Dungeon Siege 1 for short bursts at a time, but it had some truly beautiful scenery and atmosphere at times. Which was odd, because I felt that was one of the few things Dungeon Siege 2 did worse.

My bad - I swore I posted a link. Here: http://www.python.org/ If you're on Linux, you'll already have Python installed most likely. Reference library: http://docs.python.org/lib/lib.html And a half reference, half tutorial: http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html A tutorial more fit for beginners: http://www.sthurlow.com/python/ A tutorial for those with programming experience in other languages: http://www.diveintopython.org/ Pygame: http://www.pygame.org Tutorials: http://www.pygame.org/wiki/tutorials I'd suggest using the IDLE environment rather than DOS command line, as it is much more intuitive and smooth to do so. As for classes... I'd be trying to pick it up in my spare time if I were you. It's an easy language to master and you've got one or two years before university.

I'll be honest: I'm a fan of Dungeon Siege. I like number 1, number 2, and the xpacks. I really thought GPG was on the right track with the way they handled the sequel as more of an RPG and less of a Diablo clone. But I'm not impressed when I hear this guy, Mike Marr, speak: http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/spacesiege/n...e;picks;title;3 There's another preview here, if anybody is actually still interested in this game: http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/spacesiege/n...e;picks;title;5

I'm pretty sure that's already been definitely confirmed. Edit: And I'm starting to feel quite positive about the direction both Aliens and Alpha Protocol (especially) are heading. It might just be that both these games end up being the RPG motherlode we've been waiting for for the 4 and a half years we've followed Obsidian.

Haha, well whatever you choose, have fun! I'm trying to convince somebody to play HC with me but nobody will bite.

No, actually. Charged bolt is a very powerful skill. Now I haven't checked this out lately, but I know I used to play charged bolt sorcs for the novelty. People would go "CB? Hahahaha" and then I'd wipe out the room. But because the patch introduced synergies, CB became a main-line skill. Let's do some maths: At level 20, CB does 13 to 15 damage (avg 14). Pitiful. The thing is, you shoot 22 such bolts. 22 * 14 = 308 damage. Eh... that's OK, but not all bolts will hit one monster. It could be an OK crowd control skill, right? Maybe, BUT... 20 in the Lightning synergy gives +120% damage: 240*2.2 = 677 damage. This is actually getting good. Now for lightning mastery: 677 * 3.8 = about 2500 damage See what I'm getting at? Now, imagine yourself with a few fast cast rings and amulets, spamming charged bolt in a room full of monsters - there's no cast delay like on Orb, Meteor, etc. It's pwnage. And you can use it on bosses, too. Because the bolts are clumped depending on where you click (near sorc = wide dispersal, far away from sorc = tight dispersal up to that point), you can thus control how many hit any one target or group of targets. With bosses, you can just walk up to them, cast it just in front of them, and watch them take all 22 bolts. Act bosses are easier because they're so fat they absorb them all anyway. It's not exactly a safe build since you often have to get close. You've got a fairly synergised Lightning at your disposal as well, though, remember (it does 1,500 damage average in a line). And I know the prospect may not be appealing at first, but you can start a new char with the advice we've given, and be up to level 15 to 20 again within 2 to 4 hours. Just a thought... personally I enjoy starting new chars. Of course, if you're playing with friends, you can just stick to an entirely cold sorc, as you'll do lots of damage, and your friends can handle cold immunes. You'd probably want to grab an act 2 defiance merc once you hit at act 2 in normal (so he can tank, and so he can handle cold immunes a bit, and so your defence gets higher).

That sucks bad man... here's to hoping it's a mild form.

Don't worry, I did similar. Me and a friend will be playing a synergistic duo like this: He'll play poisonmancer/summoner hybrid, I'll play ranged enchantress sorc. I cast enchant on his skeles, he casts lower resist on our enemies, all hell breaks lose as we pwn.

As somebody who has studied a modicum of Icelandic, I always find it hilarious when people try to act pretentious by saying they listen to "sig-er ross" or "bee-ork".

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