Diogo Ribeiro
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Posts posted by Diogo Ribeiro
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I suspect it's also to do with just how much you craft or explore the setting. War games are generally abstract representations of war - from strategy to action war games, the main concern is never to let players on the atrocities (unless you're playing the likes of KZ Manager). It's easier to break down and simplify concepts such as artillery, resources and objectives; and by association, make them appealing. There's close to no appeal in having players trudge through concentration camps, gulags, racial discrimination and genocide. The tank goes "vroom" and "boom". The Sturmgewehr 44 goes "BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA". You want to see those in action. By contrast the emaciated victims in some walled-in Jewish quarters go "uhgn". No one wants to see those.
The guts to do a real life spy game like Alpha Protocol is somewhat different than the guts required to rub in players' faces in the kind of atrocities commited back then.
EDIT: Yes, I know. Just messing with you
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Unfortunately, it's a female, which means that every fall it drops a crapton of foul-smelling fruit all over our yard.
I think that about describes women in general, if you replace "every fall" with "every end of the month".
Nice pics, by the way. I miss the days when I used to take pictures, going off somewhere without a plan and just making visually documenting the journey. That eventually stopped once my girlfriend decided she wanted to take pictures of my grim visage at every turn
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The Smiths - There Is Light That Never Goes Out
best british band of 80's or best british band of 80's? You decide
I think the 80's were a pretty good decade for pop music. The Smiths were one of the best, but it would be a disservice to ignore others at the time, even from the UK.
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Guess I'm average. 56.8%.
In my defense, many of them are on my "to see" list, several of which I have lying around the house. And others are just fairly recent movies I haven't had a chance to see, or didn't care much for; with a couple of exceptions, I tend to stay away from the Pixar plague.
I was surprised with the amount of old movies I remembered seeing, though
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Eurythmics:
Thorn In My Side
When Tomorrow Comes
Prefab Sprout:
Appetite
Cars and Girls
Del Shannon:
Runaway
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Like you would know anything about penetrating on a daily basis.
But I find intriguing how WW2 is largely neglected as a setting for a proper role-playing game. Arguably, most settings for cPRGs are in one way or another based on Tolkien's stuff, which were inspired by the world wars. Orc forces mobilizing for war, large exodus, "a war to end all wars"... These are virtually the backbone of fantasy literature and gaming, and are analogous to most of the war's events.
I'm wondering if the lack of attempts at such a cRPG has either to do with developers not realizing this, the abhorrent notions of political correctness (that, for instance, made it so no nazis should appear on LEGO Indiana Jones), or a combination of both.
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Never played any of the newer '3d' versions, but the original Sega Genesis Trilogy was amazing and made that fat plumber Mario look like... well... a fat plumber.
The Genesis Sonic games were good but seriously, I always found Mario to be a more inventive platformer.
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Roleplaying in an MMO is like roleplaying on the tennis court. Nothing is stopping you, but it doesn't affect the game at all and so most people don't bother. The tennis ball doesn't care if you say you're Prince Pl'fili'mum'szx'wubbo and neither do the mobs.
And besides, the kind of role-playing that actually goes on in games like WoW is not even tied into the game itself since it's more freeform role-playing (ie, acting) rather than, say, a good ole session with a DM and a group (ie, role-playing with rules). Which makes even less sense.
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I don't think intimidating a Giant would only involve being fluent in his language; some charisma would probably be required (this might be the "chance of" you mentioned).
I'm not entirely sure of how languages should be applied to an overal experience. For the most part, electronic D&D is aimed at non-D&D players... You give them archetypes, the chance to embark on something that allows them to embody a role. Most players want to be Legolas or Drizzt without the extra baggage of rules, from extensive calculations to languages. I'm masturbating over Icewind Dale 2 now but for the most part, the party dynamics don't entirely convey the sense of language - there's always something there explaining what a word means because players don't know it. This is good since it alleviates players from the burden of reading up several pages worth of rules to learn how to speak Elven or somesuch (the Drow managed to translate Goblin writings on a scroll, which is ace), but it hardly constitutes something a PC would do out of nowhere (which is why most D&D cRPGs introduce some scenario where even non-human PCs are treated as being from someplace else to explain racial lore such as legends or words).
For instance, in my Project That Will Never Be, there's a large door inscribed with magical runes; anyone that reads them loses all will to go forward. Elves should be able to understand what is there, but this comes as a race check, not knowledge of actual Elven language. If the PC is human and has an Elven sidekick, the elf can warn the player. But if this is not the case how can the PC, in a god forsaken place with no means of exit, suddenly find the means to learn Elven?
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Josh vs. Gromnir can only be solved Thunderdome style.
Two men enter, one man leaves!
(probably because one of them uses VATS, lulz)
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Yeah, you had to be careful of how you moved around and confronted aliens. I still remember the first levels of the first AvP game (I'm thinking PC here, not the Jaguar 64 version); firing in all directions against Aliens in cramped corridors. One Alien literally lunged at me and (un)fortunately, I pull off a headshot. Its head snaps mid-air from its torso, everything modelled pretty well with convincing physics and sound, but the body keeps going forward and smashes against me, then collapsing to the ground. The blood coming out of the torso starts spilling out and my Marine starts screaming.
Jawesome stuff, that. AvP1 is still one of my favorite FPSs ever.
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Hobos and rifles are a deadly combination.
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Battle of the Ass Prods?
There can be only one!
Who wants to prod forever?
Who dares to prod forever?
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Alvin became an ass prod when he defeated his predecessor in a ritualistic duel involving whips.
Battle of the Ass Prods?
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Aliens aren't all the gross anyway. Not like Carpenter's The Thing or other such films.
It still gets to me how much more detailed and credible Carpenter's creatures in "The Thing" look compared to today's 3D pointless extravaganzas. I couldn't stand watching I Robot because of that. All my senses fired up the fake alert in an uncomfortable way.
Acid blood, huh? That's something I didn't know (or forgot). That would indeed have interesting gameplay consequences... hell, what about using an alien corpse to melt your way down to the lower levels?That happened several times in the movies, with their blood corroding floors (in Alien, a minor blood spill from the alien facehugger is tracked by Nostromo's crew down across several levels) or hurting marines (in Aliens, Hicks is scarred after an alien is shot with a pulse rifle and blood splatters hit him in the face).
In the AvP games, Alien blood also damages whatever character players are in control of.
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someone once said nick is the saner of the two. if they are indeed the same person, such a statement doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
taks
Or maybe Lyr is an imaginary person who thinks he's real, and adopted Nick as an imaginary friend even though Nick is real.
Hum.
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God of War III
And the first in-game screenshot:
OMG, Kratos is in it? SPOILER!
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Many happy b's, Nicko.
I know I'm just congratulating Lyr's alt, but still. Who knows what a demented alt can do if it isn't ego stroked?
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Many of the folks here at Obsidian are very much into simulation combat games of some form or another, and many of us have enough experience with real fire arms.
Obsidian Entertainment: the NRA of CRPG design?
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Realism is not goal number one.
Dual-wield sniper rifles plz ^_^
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It's always a pity to me when modders say this - I can understand, but if modders can't incorporate the little snippets of ideas people have (esp. people who won't be modding themselves), then who will? I'm sure they won't mind. Anyway...
It's not that I'm the most creative guy in the world or that this project is the most original one ever. But it becomes a bit of a hassle to defend some sort of authorship behind whatever content one includes in the project when it may share many similarities to suggestions given. Again, I'm not against people pitching ideas - a handful of the areas would actually need some creative input, actually - but I don't want to be crucified because someone gave an idea similar to one I already have and then failed to acknowledge that in some readme file, when if fact I may not have even noticed (lulz, the basic theme of NWN2's OC was a bit similar to my first idea for the project, which I present on the forums before the game was announced - I didn't complain... Much, but in all honesty, they probably didn't even noticed my posts on the matter).
Seriously, if people have ideas they can share them. I'll do my best to see which ones I will be able to implement, if any. And I'll thank them for those snippets. But if I point out "oh thanks, but I already had that in mind" several times, people are going to get suspicious - even if I am being honest.
I haven't checked on the hak scene in a couple of years or so, so there might be something out there by now. Before that, though, uneven geometry in interiors was virtually impossible.I had a look over the Vault; there are many good haks including one which, if I'm correct, can generate more natural mountainscapes - ideal for the island. I've also found some interior tilesets with curved or circular rooms, which is nice. But still haven't found one with uneven indoors geometry. To counter that somewhat, I was thinking of indoor tilesets that had particular features to aid me in that - such as holes on the ground and a ramp to simulate destruction, along with climbing the latter to switch floors (Shadows of Undrentide had one such feature that led down to a Formian lair).
I agree - let me elaborate.Good rant and besides, there's never enough hot golem action. We need more of that
One thing I'm considering is to have certain parts of the scenario be destructible. Yes, that seems like another "oh hell, who is this guy kidding he's never gonna do anything if he keeps piling up features like a supermarket list", but the idea is to have some triggers generate explosions or cave ins depending on your actions. Too many Fireballs and you might take down some columns and collapse part of a floor - which may block one path but open another.
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Since I can't edit the above, quick remark - I didn't mention Bards because the area is still a big black hole. I have a somewhat convoluted quest structure for Bards, but considering what I have come up with for some other classes (like Rogue), it pales in comparison.
Also, Flintlocks. Would it be worthwhile to include them in the project? Tthis would probably require that one base weapon be replaced; I'm thinking Slings, mostly. If so, on what kind of Feats are usually associated with them?
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To expand ever so slightly on the above, the area would take into account the following classes:
Fighter/Barbarian
Wizard/Sorcerer
Paladin/Cleric
Ranger/Druid
Rogue
I'm still unsure if I should place Monk inside the fighter or divine classes, or make an exclusive area for it. And at this moment, the area for Druids/Rangers is a lot more tailored to Druids, so I'll either have to make some changes or come up with something different for Rangers altogether.
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Tigranes: I'm not against people giving their own ideas and input, but I'd run into problems if my ideas turned out to be similar to those people presented, since I'd have no way of proving I didn't took their ideas as mine.
The flat geometry is a snag; I'd have to scour for some prefabs/haks or get my hands on Gmax. Problem with the latter seems to be that it's no longer officially supported, and I also can't seem to find it to use the NWMax plugins. Some areas I had previously designed are already suffering from this; the main floor entrance of the tower was meant to be a circular room with several passageways and now I'm trying to rethink them as more linear and flat. Ditto for the collapsed floors, although I remember uneven terrain geometry when playing the Honor Among Thieves modules - maybe it can be applied to interior tilesets? Have to check that out.
Hadn't thought of golem vs. golem action but am trying to tone down the whole "find key to keep going" approach. Don't feel like recreating a corridor shooter with D&D flavor.
Mus: Good point, since it allows me to focus rather than spread out. Only wall I've chanced upon at this point is this concept I have for a particular area, which will be different for every character class that enters it (ie., Clerics and Paladins would find an area with Undead, Fighter-types would find a place to bash some heads, although they're not that linear - this area would have a twist of its own, which I can't really talk about at this moment; suffice to say, not every undead is evil, not every battle is fought with blades, not everything that can be stolen should be stolen, and so on).
The problem is not that it would take too long to develop - possible exception being the area for Rogues, since it's unique to them and a bit on the complex side - but I'm afraid this might endanger certain builds. If you're a Rogue/Fighter 1/10, you probably can't play the area well. Unless you take henchmen with you, but I feel that robs the achievement from the player's hands. This, of course, comes down to something I said earlier - need to find a way for the game to take into account PC levels in a given class, rather than their first class.
Fallout 3
in Computer and Console
Posted
In PnP, a guy playing a Rogue doesn't fare better than another guy playing a Rogue because he's physically nimbler than the other player.