Diogo Ribeiro

But from a spellcaster point of view, implementing that range of spells - even if somewhat simple - is it really worth it? The role-player in me would say yes, but you're basically giving players a tool that they will likely not use very much because the groundwork for cRPGs is still heavilly rooted in combat. In a game like Torment, where exploration of environments and characters is a priority, it would make sense. In most other examples of the genre, these are likely to constitute one off situations. You can devise more of them but going with a wishful definition, a role-playing exercise is meant to give players a multitude of choices to deal with obstacles, and learning languages would be only one tool amidst several. Would it be worth it? To pick on Torment again, there's this cute situation in the beginning stages of the Mortuary where once TNO acquires a book, he can read it and learn to "deconstruct" a rune pattern on a giant skeleton to disable the wards in it, making the skeleton crumble. This seems a more eloquent solution to the problem than requiring point dumps in a language. Of course, more situations like these would be excelent; and any involving languages would be great. But then again, most of the main base races in cRPGs speak Common - it's only in very specific cases that other languages come into play. A much higher focus on them would require implementing them in many more situations, and sometimes they may not be entirely worth it. A Giant could be taken aback by the imposing warrior who is threatening him in his natural language, but it's not necessary that knowing a language is critical. If you can attack the Giant, convince him to back down, bribe him, do a menial task for him (like slaying his nemesis so he can rise in status in his tribe), hide in the shadows to avoid him, go around the path, summon a monster to kill it, cause a cave in to trap him under the rubble or destroy scenery to make him fall across the floor, cast a Hold Monster spell (or a variant of it, since I'm not sure it works on Giants), and so on... Would another option - like knowing Giant - be really necessary?

I know you said "if", but is GTA4 really that good to merit such a comparison? Have yet to play that one too, so...

I'm not sure how much of the media that's been released so far will be featured in the final game. I look at it and think of them as a general direction, mostly. I think the whole "WoW gayness" is totally overblown, and even more ridiculous than what would expect from, say, the 'average' Fallout fanatic. It boggles the mind that on certain gaming communities you have people pinning for the medium to become art, but in others, when an artist or studio decides to create something akin to a personal art style that connects all of their works (World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Diablo 3) it becomes objectionable. That's why I enjoy id's take on artistic direction even if I don't appreciate most of their games. It may often be excessively brooding and gothic but it's consistent. Unlike other contemporary games where you go "oh, it uses Unreal tech as an engine", you look at an id game and usually recognize it by looking at the artwork alone. It's Wind Waker syndrome all over again. Quite likely the best Zelda in the series - charming, inventive, and quite likely the only Zelda title to capture Myamoto's idea of childlike wonder and wanderlust that influenced the games - but for the average gamer it comes across as "kiddy". Which is why we returned to the series with Twilight Princess which was pure vanilla in terms of artistic direction. It's also why some people look at Introversion's games and can't help getting past the "it's retro looking so it's crap" mentality. Videogames are only considered art insofar as the audience's tastes are pandered to. I kinda dug Revenant at the time, although that probably had more to do with the engine itself than anything else. The art direction may have been poor but I liked the colorful artwork. Same goes for that Delphine dungeon crawl, Darkstone, with its randomized dungeons and stuff. And Fate is a kind of DC I keep wanting to go back to because it's just too damn fun even when the gameplay starts to get repetitive. Feeding fish to your pet to shapeshift it into powerful animals and sending it to the surface to sell loot is awesome.

I still haven't finished IWD2, so I admit I may be missing some of the complaints. But having *finally* managed to beat IWD1 recently, I jumped into IWD2 and have been enjoying it a lot. I think the IWD games and Torment are pretty much my favorite IE games now (although I still have some of the spellbased combat in BG2 and ToB in high regard). CrashGirl, you have a point in how battles are structured but to be honest they aren't bothering me a whole lot. I mean, I loved Wizardry 8 to bits and that one is based on the same premise with an even more unforgiving party structure since party members move as a single unit (which produces problems such as being unable to send a Rogue alone to scout ahead, for instance, or moving weak spellcasters away from harm). Grom, from what I read SoZ allows players to switch characters during dialogue and let them bring different dialogue paths into the mix. I know IWD2 doesn't do exactly the same (so I guess I wasn't being ironic, but my usual stupid self), but it lets players switch characters before and after some dialogue to bring alternatives (like a Drow being able to read certain languages or a Bard calming a spirit by writing a song about it). In a way, that seems a similar technique to SoZ. I also liked IWD1 a lot. You're right about the narration; from the voice to the ending twist, it's great. And the whole game, from music to artwork, gave off this vibe of a melancholic beauty.

Do it. IWD2 in particular seems to share some structural similarities with SoZ in terms of combat and party dialogue, so you might enjoy it (and probably find some inspiration for that mod of yours ).

I got 50

That's good to know, Tig. Can't wait to see what you'll come up with The lore bit is actually tricky. The first project I tried to document in the forums was actually a new setting (anecdotal aside - it all came from a nightmare I once had; in fact, most of my game ideas come from that same source), but the amount of time required to develop the necessary art assets would be terrible for one single person. Specially for me, since I'm an ignorant dolt on nearly all the fields required to do something of the magnitude I had hoped for (from skyships used as floating prisons, to flintlocks fueled by magical ammunition, to have player characters transform into dragons, and so on). Besides, as I developed more of the setting I came to realize that using the Forgotten Realms as a basis wouldn't be far fetched; it's pretty much out there in terms of planes, creatures and events. And there's a whole lot of lore you can track down (particularly online), from world atlas and timelines to important events and stuff. You can then fill in the blanks with your ideas. That is pretty much the vantage point of D&D carried over to NWN and NWN2 - the rules are there for whatever we want to do with them. Of course, I realize you're going with a homebrew setting; I'm not trying to change your mind about it, just providing some friendly chatter

Yesh... Gimme the preciouss.... Today I still haven't done much, but will spend the rest of the day cooking. Everyone in the house is tasked with preparing desserts, and I will be no exception. Something I won't be doing today is opening presents, or many presents at least. There's not a whole lot of that this year.

Features: *Particle Shinies. *3D Pretties. *Next-gen Jawesomeness.

I don't know. I think a smaller arsenal gives each weapon a chance to shine, as opposed to a multitude of weapons that simply have different damage modifiers and rarely stand out in the end. Of course, you can give each weapon a unique use but at some point the lines tend to blur because generally there are always two kinds of scenarios - practical (say, silenced pistols) and raw damage (like shotguns, SMGs, sub-machine guns, heavy machine guns). As the need for higher damage outputs increases, the need for "middle of the road" weapons decreases since you'll be focusing on the heavy hitters anyway. And if Obsidian would include rocket launchers, would they really act as anything other than a gigantor hand cannon? I think heavy ordinance like that should provide some alternate benefits like taking down armored vehicules or the ability to, say, destroy a wall in order to go around an obstacle. But I don't think these will be heavilly featured (at least in terms of straight up combat). And if that is the case, including this kind of weapons may just place them in the same level of ridicule as Soldier of Fortune 3 (a guy explodes in a million detailed giblets after being bazooka'd to death but the wall behind him is still intact, for instance).

Are you saying Chuck Norris is silly?

Turn-based taxes, hun.

You could also eat babies for money.

That seems like a good suggestion, Tig. Start with something simple to get a feel of the editor and work my way from there is probably best, especiall since some functions are still going over my head. It's too bad you never got around to making a module; I also enjoyed many the ideas you talked about in the past. I'll bide my time for now, sticking with the overall design and dialogue of that area, since I want to do this on my gaming PC; the laptop is functional but the onboard graphics card causes several toolset problems which I'm sure a "regular" PC won't have. Besides, I need a PC with more HD capacity for would-be Haks. IF everything goes well, I should have it back at the beginning of the year... And of course, horribly outdated as well. Ah, the woes of being poor. Speaking of which, since I'm tackling undead here, there's always been something I found disturbing about them - or rather, how they are seen by divine-based characters and groups. Supposedly, Turn Undead has certain effects against them because the gods that bestow these powers on PCs consider undead to be an abomination to life, correct? Is this because the deities are resentful, in the sense that undead can no longer be acolytes of theirs? Because they can no longer be followers (to the same extent, at least)? Because undead are seen as evil? From memory, some undead can be neutral and not all acts of necromancy may be evil - a necromancer hired by a localy family to raise a dead person in order to make peace with it isn't exactly the same animating dead to torment a village. Of course, I may be looking for explanations where creative liberties may be taken to devise certain plot hooks. After all, most of undead in Torment's Drowned Nations didn't exactly seem evil (exceptions being cases like Acaste). I'm wondering if TNO could have been a Paladin, if he could just kill them all with TU even if they posed no particular threat to him or the people above the catacombs. But I'm trying to make it so Clerics and Paladins are a viable character option, and creating several areas with dialogue and role-playing options may go to waste if players just reap the rewards by spamming TU. Although Sawyer did bring up the notion of dead magic areas, I *think* TU is a supernatural ability and is thus exempt from its effects.

Oh yes. I've been meaning to replay that. Still one of the best in the series.

Managed to sit down and watch Iron Man yesterday. Pros and cons: +Armor looked very cool. -Although it felt too high-tech at times (just how many layers does it really need in order to be assembled?). +I read somewhere a good portion of the dialogues were left to the cast to develop. If this is true, they did a good job. Downey Jr. seems to be back in shape again, which is always a plus. Jeff Bridges was cool, too. -Aside from the main characters, all others were pretty passable. +Fight scenes between Stark and Stane really had that comic book feel, even moreso than some recent Marvel flicks (although I've yet to see the Hulk sequel). -Fight scenes between Stark and Stane was pretty much the only highlight of the movie in terms of clobbering time. +The Iron Man origin is pretty faithful (to the one I know of at least which occured during Vietnam), and stands to show you don't need to change things a whole lot in order to make an impact on the audience. The story arc with Stane was one of the pivotal aspects of character development during Iron Man's character evolution, and it's nice seeing it here (even if it's not exactly the same, it does the job well). -Story was competent but kinda moved way too fast. It's not meant to be a comic book with lots of issues setting up the story and characters, but it's a bit disappointing seeing Stane go from power hungry company man to giant exoskeleton expert. Also, Rhodes seemed to embrace Stark's antics too quickly for my tastes. I liked how it had an "Armor War" vibe to it, which was a recurring theme of certain Iron Man stories - basically, Stark found out how the technology of his armor was stolen and duplicated by certain groups and agencies, from goverment to super-powered villains. In the movie, this translates into him facing the danger of his own creations right at the start ( ). I always thought Stane would start selling the armor tech to terrorists and Stark would confront him on that, but then again, that might have been pushing it for a first movie and besides, selling Stark Industries tech to terrorists is already featured, so it's no big deal. Can't wait to see what they do with the sequel. There's lots of ground to cover, from his years of alcohol abuse to War Machine (which the movie seems to hint at as well with Rhodes). Also, SHIELD.

Jeebus. They're all crawling out of the woodwork!

Point taken, Llyr

Circuit breakers who fight against Christmas = teh awesome.

Dual-wielding gazongas?

I'm not well versed in the Xbox 360 gamepad, but I remember one Codex thread back in the day where Saint pointed out it was impossible to develop Fallout for consoles because of the gamepad, but once you sit down and look at it, it's actually not that hard. Then again, he was trying to make a point with the PlayStation 'pad in mind but honestly, it didn't felt too hard. Main difference I could envision was swapping point'n'click movement across the hex grid with continuous movement while using the analog buttons. And the shoulder buttons could easilly switch between different interface elements. But I admit, haven't looked into NWN2 on a gamepad. Would it be that much of a nightmare, though?

I have a tendency for ballons, I guess. You're right, each one of them could easilly be a module (although the Fighter one seems overly simplistic by comparison, but still something to experiment with). Maybe I should aim lower and start there?

My parents smoke, and have smoked for years and years. They were always concerned with the chance I would begin smoking as well, and were surprised when I told them so (specially since, when I was younger, I pro-actively obejcted their smoking, even by throwing their packs into the trash and stuff like that). They were concerned with my health but didn't particularly took any measures to prevent me from smoking, since they're of the mind that they shouldn't forbid me of trying things as most young people will always find a way; all they did was give some words of wisdom and wore a face of disappointment.

Wilderness Lore is fun, but I also enjoy figuring things on my own (which sometimes takes too long since I'm not the brightest pickle for a jar ). As for ToEE, I suppose I should be glad I can't play it since it would likely explode the laptop, but I miss playing those low level encounters again a whole damn lot. And I only finished like twice, so I could never try out many party combos.

I don't know, I was quite enthralled by the whole Zoolander vibe.