metadigital

I must have missed it the first few times through. Or at least I wasn't aware of the Jade Empire reference when I found the sword ... still, I vaguely remember it being there ... good find for young Jags!

The first game I played on a computer was the text-as-graphics Star Trek game on my Apple ][. I played it for hours at a time. It provided the framework for my imagination to fill in the details. There was a rudimentary story (basically the original Five Year Mission of the original series), and colourful baddies in the form of frequent encounters with Klingons and rarer encounters with the Romulans. Now I can play games as varied as chance-based backgammon, and including brain gyms like Civ 4 and Rome: Total War, and onto the graphical gluttony of Half-Life 2. Fun games like Freedom Force versus the Third reich fit comfortably in this grouping. As does Tetris. Is fun "learning"? Possibly. Putting learnt observational intel to work sucessfully, for sure. But fun is one of those concepts, to paraphrase the late Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart who once memorably said of obscenity, "I know it when I see it." Or when I play it.

pwn!

Wow, you finished BG2 fast! I got stuck in some dungeon up north ...

That'll be the first expansion pack.

Bonobos.

Ninjas are totally sweet and awesome and flip out everywhere.

That wasn't what they were saying over at the Mutant forum, and I defer to their knowledge (not having written one). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't know what this "mutant forum" is, but having designed a RT, TB and and a system which functions in both, I can tell you a realtime system is more difficult. Easily. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I'm not a member and I don't frequent it, and I read it a while ago (over a year), but I think it's one where developers (from Bio?) go. Anyway, IIRC, the gist of the reasoning was that Real-Time was a matter of setting off all the little procedures (according to their own rules and timings); Turn Based required additional synchronisation administration on top (to make sure each process only did one turn's worth of action each turn). What are your experiences?

I will be trying to make something ultra-deadly. If eight-legs are better, then that. Or four. And opposable thumbs. And a BIG BRAIN.

That wasn't what they were saying over at the Mutant forum, and I defer to their knowledge (not having written one).

Thanks! You just want to see humans procedurally mating. " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Instructional video ...

Yes it was. I bet you ten bucks that a year after the game comes out it'll be filled with copyrighted material from various shows, games and comic books. I can't wait to make Batman! EDIT: I wonder if you can make humans? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Manbat! EDIT: Of course you can create humans.

Turn-Based game structures are a LOT more complex to design. RTS is actually simpler to build.

That spider-thing that came after his tripod was pretty kewl.

Nazi zombies.

Hasn't stopped you trying it so far ...

Might be an added attribute: camouflage.

Sullying? What are you, a high-preist of Fallout? And do you OWN the Fallout IP? No. Just keep your head up your exhaust a bit longer and you won't see what Bethesda do with the franchise, GOOD OR BAD. Problem solved.

Flight of the Pheonix. Lord Richard Attenborough and Jimmy Stewart FTW.

Is he? I thought Van Helsing was the protagonist in the Dracula films ... Dracula was the bad guy. But you're right (and so is Baley) anti-heroes are just as valid.

And I couldn't give a toss if it is a good game.

CeBIT PC technology.

... And that they are in just as good a position

I wonder how much of the "junk" DNA in the genome is potential problem solving stuff. Like re-growing gills if needs be, for example. So the human is not just a bunch of nifty adaptations, but *all* the adaptations that have taken place on the journey homo sapiens sapiens have taken from the slime. So removing the junk (estimated at approx. 85% of it) might actually be a bad idea. Still, we might be able to sort it a bit: make it a bit more organised ...

There's CeBIT in a week or two, too.