Humodour

The faster this is accepted, the faster it can be fixed. Says the Romney supporter?

Why is that lousy ? They might worry about the US deciding to go and kill these "extremists", even if it's not that likely, they might expect it. And no one wants to be bombed or have cruise missiles zipping around (that'd be a bit funny though, given their whining about NATO not bombing enough against Gaddafi) You're wrong on this one. Libyans hate the militias because they go around performing vigilante law such as killings, Sharia law, and they fight in the streets at night with heavy weapons. People don't like the militias. The militias are extremists (of the same form as the Taliban and Al Qaeda). The Libyans drove the militias out because they're scared of THE MILITIAS, not because they're scared of US drones.

Why couldn't you just mirror them? Probably a naive question, but... Even if the backgrounds are isometric, I can all but guarentee that the characters will be 3D (on the 2D isometric background). This is just based on the huge amount of complaining the artists (Brian?) did on IWD2, because ANY time you want a change to a character (e.g. a new type of weapon) you have to physically change the art, whereas 3D char art is all vector based and easy to change (along the same lines as Flash, SVG, or PDF). For an example of a 2D isometric game with 3D chars take a look at Beyond Divinity. Bad game (crappy Divine Divinity spin-off), but good example (modern 3D chars would have a lot more polygons of course). So I can't see any immediate reason why it would be overly difficult. But it's also not the most important thing in the world. Still, Valve are studying sign language for Half-Life 2 Episode 3/HL3 because there is a deaf character and they want to get it perfect. If that much attention to detail is good enough for Valve, then it should be good enough for Obsidian.

Accents ARE a really easy way to add lots of backstory depth to the game, because of what accents imply about the world in reality. I hope Obsidian employs them.

So the Libyan people have started attacking militia outposts as revenge for the militia killing of the American ambassador. http://in.reuters.co...E8KLNF920120922 Which makes Gromnir and Drowsy Emperor look just plain childish and bigoted now. Here is a more detailed analysis of the story: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1260851--libyans-storm-militia-building-after-protest-in-wake-of-ambassador-s-death

Because of the Linux support and the DRM-free option, I will increase my pledge from $20 to $100, or whatever nearby tier looks good. Linux pays.

Not much. Obviously less than the cost of porting Onyx to Linux and OS X. Unity is designed to be an engine for indie games. It's designed to be highly modular, highly cross-platform, and easy to access (i.e. cheap). There is even a free version you can use if you're willing to put up with a Unity splash screen on game load. While Unity isn't open source like Torque3D or Ogre Engine, it's still a reasonably 'open'-ish choice as far as game engines go. Unity devs claim to be about "democratisation" of game engines, which doesn't make any sense to me because they're not FOSS, but still, clearly they have the little guys in mind rather than the big end of town.

It's great to read about all the support for Linux in this thread from Obsid fans! Linux for the win. OP is just being selfish. Linux fans pay more, are more vocal, and more likely to develop mods for the game that prolong its lifespan. Catering to us a bit pays off.

Sorry, but this doesn't make much sense. Why is joining both games that tell one progressive story + allowing the player to chose from all classes and magic spells that were introduced later right from the beginning + adding some banter that explains the changes of your companions characters between BG1 and BG2 + restoring the content that was cut from the game making BG1 like BG2 with extra content? Again, i do NOT recommend installing the standard, full, or tactical version of the megamod. I do recommend installing the recommended version which was selected by the huge BG community to provide the most immersive, polished, and least obtrusive game experience. But you can even handpick all mods you want or not in the Big World Installer which then downloads and installs all mods you selected in the correct order. If you do not install the mod then you have to play the whole BG saga with one of the very few BG 1 classes or have to make a completely new character for BG 2! Moreover some companions will have "changed" without providing any explanation. I still think that people should play the games without mods the first time. But I'm just being nostalgic perhaps.

I absolutely adored the combat in PS:T, so it stings me each time I hear Swayer or Avellone dissing PS:T's combat. Indeed, the spell graphics were fantastic. Then again, maybe combat was boring if you played as a thief or fighter. I always got to level 9 as a fighter (for certain things like proficiencies and attacks per round and THAC0) and then switched to a mage. And then destroyed everything with fists and knives and spells. So good.

Nice combo. Probably confounds everybody. What do you do these days, or you still at uni?

Many pollsters measure LIKELY voters. Gallup is a poor choice, not because it is bad (it's quite good), but because it is only one source. It has been pretty exhaustively shown that better, more accurate predictions are produced by combining polls, as Electoral Vote, PollyVote, and Nate Silver's 538 do. But perhaps more importantly than any of this - it does NOT matter who wins the popular vote! The president is elected based on who gets 270 electoral votes or more. And electoral votes are assigned in discrete, unevenly weighted amounts to each state. What I am saying is: only the swing states matter in determining if Romney is doing okay or not. Since Obama is well ahead in an embarassingly large number of swing states, it's downright unlikely that Romney has any chance left of winning. Nate Silver puts the odds at around 75% for an Obama victory, found by adding up all the chances of a scenario occuring where Obama wins over 269 electoral votes.

Thanks for the Linux support!

Yeah. See update #6. We have a Linux version! Woo! Between this and a DRM free version, thank you for listening, Obsidian. Unity is an interesting little engine to use, too. It will have Linux support thanks to Brian Fargo, and now I guess you guys too.

True that. Also, it turns out Runic implemented their own servers just like was done with Diablo 2. So you can load a list of public games and join them, or host your own public game for people to join. (EDIT: Although you can use your singleplayer characters in MP games it seems, so not sure if Runic has any cheat detection or not). BTW, I really love what I've seen of the game so far. I just wish they didn't show weapon DPS. It takes the fun out of calculating it for yourself.

Nate's highly accurate probabalistic algorithms for predicting the outcomes of baseball are not why I pay attention to him. I pay attention to him because he successfully transferred these algorithms over to predicting the last (2008) presidential election to a very fine degree of accuracy. Although both he and Andrew S. Tanenbaum (guy who runs Electoral Vote and computer science professor of Linus Trovalds flamewar fame) give sports-like commentation of politics, as if it's just "a game", way too much. Check out Tanenbaum's track record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum#Electoral-vote.com

It's interesting that IWD took a fair bit of flak at the time for being a plot-light dungeon crawler, but now is considered one of the masterpieces up there with BG and PS:T. I guess that's what happens when you've been exposed to ****ty modern AAA games for a decade. To qualify: IWD is an awesome masterpiece of a game with a beautiful atmosphere, decent plot, and copious well-written dialogue. It's just far less non-linear than other IE games (although it is perhaps more non-linear in combat!)

Buy everything on GoG and win at life!

IE-game thievery was lame. Fallout did thievery a lot better.

My memory is fuzzy, samm. You're a computer science major, right?

Republicans have the majority in the House. They already had two years of filibuster-proof majorities from 2008-2010 and majorities for the last two years of Bush's tenure. Please enlighten us how they performed any better than the GOP other than using the the litigation momentum that the Log Cabins started against DA-DT to repeal it. I'm not sure what's worse, wrongfully mischaracterizing GOP members as a homogenous block or the argument that they pay more than lip service to Rand, regardless of whether or not her philosophies were good. Crony capitalism != capitalism. This is systemic among the establishment of both parties. Right then. OK. You do realize Solyndra et. al. are symptomatic of the same crony capitalism that you profess to hate? Or does it suddenly become acceptable when it doesn't conflict with your goals? In short? Stop drinking the partisan kool-aid. Neither the GOP nor the Democrats care for voters at all. Quick edit: just in case I come off the wrong way, this is not meant to be a personal attack against Krez; he's entitled to his views. It's meant to be a deconstruction of the argument that the Dems are considerably better than the GOP. I don't disagree with you enough to argue with you (aside from that ill-informed Solyndra comment). Both parties are extremely broken and corrupt, yes. But anybody willing to claim that the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans (which is EXACTLY what you're doing when you say "it doesn't matter who you vote for") is woefully short-sighted in my books, and this line of thinking benefits only the corporate lobbyists and shadow figures you profess to despise. Sure, be deeply cynical about the American electoral system - agitate for reform of that! Agitate for whatever other ways you think the US citizens can make a difference. But vote, too, god dammit. And vote for the lesser of two evils. Or you can hardly blame anybody if idiot candidates get in and then cherish and reward stupidity in government, as the Bush administration did. I forgot that the Republicans control the House. It's up for re-election, no? And given Obama's wide lead, it's feasible to see a Democrat majority via Obama's coattails, no? I haven't tracked the House at all.

My Steam ID is: euclideanalgorithm Post yours.

It's deceptively enthralling.

America's system is rotten. Heck, every country's system is a bit rotten (though America's more deeply so than many Western countries). But collectively, they all move forwards given enough time. That's one of the good things about globalisation. I do believe that the Democrats are a right-wing, capitalism-centred party (fairly closely akin to the Conservative party in the UK). However, I disagree that they're outright owned and run by corporations, as the Republican party is. The Democrats also don't harbour the crazy religious wing of the Republicans, and thus can fairly freely propel forward social change, if not economic change. And this election, it will matter especially for the reason I stated above: the Democrats (the party with a fair bit of social freedom) will have control of ALL houses for at least 2 years (likely only 2 years, since voters are historically fickle). This is fairly rare in most political systems I know of. It happens, but because it means one party gets unchecked power until the next election, people don't tend to give it to a single party for very long. So I strongly disagree. It does matter. I guess I am assuming that with control of both houses and the executive, the Dems can pull off some decent policy. Well, if they can do anything about greenhouse gas emissions in the US combined with a continued push for wind+solar adoption (even if it's just a ****ing measly 5% to start with, like Australia's), then that's change I can believe in. For the record: Obama pushed hard on building loads and loads of new solar power stations towards the end of his 1st term. So there is history to back up my hope.

The more intricate detail is that the Democrats also win the Senate. And while I have no information on the House (I presume it is up for re-election?), one would surmise the Democrats will keep their majority there. That's 2 years of absolute power for the Democrats, guys. Awesome, in my books. They can actually get their job done without extremist Ayn Randian Republicans blocking their every move. And Obama won't be up for re-election, so he'll probably go hard for the history books.