metadigital

There wouldn't be such an issue if technology was used moderately instead of trying to use all its blitz and glitz in every game coming out. You can still do what was done during the Fallout - Torment - Baldur's Gate era; developers just won't. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I fail to see why there can't be a modular system created for dialogue. What I mean is: I had a talking calculator about twenty years ago. It would read out every character typed, and the answers in full. Obviously someone didn't sit there and speak every number to ten decimal places (despite what the mother of a friend of mine thought). Similarly, it is not difficult to programme any speech, given sufficient phononyms (all the discrete vowels and consonents for given target languages). I'm sure everyone here has heard an automated telephone answering service, and some of the better ones already do this. I would think the main impediment to this idea is the fact that so little time and money is spent on VO; it seems to be almost an afterthought, a post-production icing-on-the-cake concept. This cottage industry producing games still has a lot of ground to make up, before it becomes truly mature ...

Don't forget subversive themes, like the communal living of the Sims ... sounds like Communism!111eleven!!!1! Steve, did you put this post scriptum in? it might have had more impact then everything else you wrote! Another factor, he is obviously an ambulance chaser, not a constituional specialist, so

Good point well illustrated. This is a theme of Douglas Coupland's seminal work Microserfs. Very interesting for all of you people thinking of working in the IT (or IT-enabled) industry.

I echo your sentiments, obviously no-one can be happy about an innocent person dying, and that is why I say he is the 57th victim of the bombings from 7/7. That said, you have to ask why the man was in Britain. Surely it is not such a strange concept for anyone with the means to travel to a country, especially one with a recent terrorist incident and on the highest alert possible, should aquaint themselves with the nature and manner of the customs there, especially the fact that the police aren't corrupt and represent a fair authority. (I have a work colleague from Brazil: isn't it the fifth largest economy in the world?) It is a sad casualty to ignorance.

First Ashes Test MATCH SUMMARY (DAY 4): Australia 384 & 190 v England 155 & 180 Australia win by 239 runs Full scorecard Australia took five wickets in less than an hour to beat England by 239 runs on a rain-hit day four at Lord's. After a five-hour rain delay, Glenn McGrath took 4-29, including two in three balls, when Geraint Jones and Ashley Giles were caught fending. Kevin Pietersen became the third player to make a fifty in each innings on debut at Lord's, finishing 64 not out. But McGrath completed victory by having Simon Jones caught at slip to trigger the Australian celebrations. :'( http://3dflags.com

Ha. I don't usually polish my shoes at all. (It's all about conservation: of the shoes and of my time and effort. ) Generally, I manage to keep them in reasonably good condition between re-healings, and the nice cobbler always polishes them up very well. :D (And that's another reason for a pattered leather style, of which the brogue is an exception example.)

They'll make it jodo when this thread comes to KotoR: Ideas and Suggestions, part 327 " .....the only purpous of this thread is to contain a huge numbers of topics related to K3 being around, not for your or anyones idea being incorporated in the next possible Kotor. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ... And especially to keep lame ideas out of harms way.

So I guess that game ends there, then. :D

Extra-terrestrial travel is expensive enough, without the added punitive pecuniary burden of a nuclear payload ...

I'm sure most companies can deliver finished working games under favorable circumstances. Their ability to create those circumstances fluctuates. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> This is an interesting statement. Were I one with an over-enthusiastic fervour for inference, I would probably conclude that recent Obsidian development projects might have included one without "favorable circumstances" ...

Well, Steam is a bulletproof delivery method, and was a major innovation. Bioware were just ahead of the play, with slightly inadequate technology. There have been subsequent mutterings about alternatives to Steam (and at least one actual announcement), so I would be surprised if it doesn't become gradually, and more frequently, a standard vector of delivery for games from now on ...

You don't have a summer house in the countryside with butcher's hooks, utensils and a chainsaw, and a nickname of "leatherface" by any chance, do you? :ph34r:

I don't know how you might come to believe he was a stud (alright there are a few busts about, but they could quite easily be traditional Hermes likenesses, ascribed to him), but King Alexander III of Macedon was definitely one who liked snails as well as oysters. He also sacked the Persian city of Persepolis and the Royal Palace of Xerxes, which almost qualified as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Call me a cynic, but I think the fact that this pond-scum-dweller is targeting The Sims 2 would have more to do with the realtive success of the game title (i.e. the biggest in history) than any contrived notion of exploitation.

Well, that's also true. I should add that I never meant to imply that being daft should be a capital offence in the UK. It's very sad, but i think given the scenario the officer made the right call. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Kaftan, regardless of the individual's own feelings on the matter, the British police must: announce they demands of the individual, i.e.: Stop! give a clear warning about what the consequences are, i.e. If you do not stop, we will shoot you! The recent terror situation means that they no longer has direct instructions to shoot for the largest part of the offender (the chest), now those instructions have been countermanded and the police must shoot for the head, lest they allow a bomb to be detonated. If five well dressed men with concealed weapons point a gun at you and say "Police, Stop!" and you jump a barrier and try to escape on a train, then you either have missed a few days' doses, or you are guilty. Also, there is a need for the Police to make it clear to the general public what the reality of the current political situation is, meaning that plain clothes police may well demand that you stop (they ALL carry identification), and anyone acting suspiciously will be arrested and anyone resisting arrest in suspicious circumstances will be neutralised in the safest way possible for the greatest number of people. Just like someone who drives a car in an escape-pursuit scenario is regarded by the traffic police as in control of a deadly weapon, and their life is forfeit unless they stop. It's one of those crucial situations that test the entire social structure, I agree: a democracy has built into it the seeds of its own destruction. As long as the police can prove beyond doubt that they acted in good faith, then this is an unfortunate 57th casualty of the London 7/7 bombs.

If this is Islam then hell yes Islam does have direct links to terrorism when this is considered an Islamic law <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, that is a militant theocracy co-incidentally based on Islam. They are no more religious than the Right Wing Christian fundamentalist who willfully and purposefully murdered a doctor who operated an abortion clinic, and who was utterly convinced that he had just received a First Class ticket to the front row of heaven. Lumping these loonies in with innocent Muslims is just as bad as what those Iranian government terrorists are doing.

Well, I wear Nikes size 11, because that seems to be the US size (also allowing for expansion whilst running, which is a favoured exercise regime, as there are no readiliy available swimming pools of any quality in this country). Strange you live in a country whose arguably greatest gift to civilization (after Cricket and the Westminster parliamentary system) is good quality shoes, and yet you don't have a pair of English (sorry Reveilled) shoes. I bought English shoes when I lived overseas. I tried a pair of Jones shoes (Jermyn Street), that cost over

I just watched Stanley Kubrick's classic film conversion of the equally legendary Arthur C. Clarke novel 2001: A space Odyssey. What makes this a classic film? Well, lots of things; I can't think of a Kubrick film that isn't a classic, for a start. But let's concentrate on the narrative, as that is the topic of this thread. Point One: This is a classic film made from a classic novel. See? It can be done! Point Two: The narrative arc is quite simple, without being simplistic. It has a number of themes that are explored, like: the actual nature of the solar system and space on our senses; space travel, its hazards and benefits, and even the mundane; advanced technology in a future civilization; first contact with an alien intelligence; plausible extra-terresterial impulsion for human intelligence and evolutionary superiority; Artificial Intelligence; and future evolution for humankind. It deals with all of these themes in a psychological thriller format, to propel the plot to its conclusion, even though the structure of the film is a tonal play. Basically, the simple story of the trigger for First Contact. It is such a simple story, that Clarke first wrote it as a short story, called "Sentinel". Upon this narrative, all the depth and interesting intricacies can be written, so that the audience may take a little sip, or dive into the ocean of detail, whilst still within the standard filmic medium.

I've just posted an except from a recent New Scientist article in another thread, which I shall copy, below.

Meh, Alexader The Great was buggering boys in the Aristotlean times! It was not only cool, it was mandatory. What about Achilles? Don't believe that silly Hollywood version of the myth; Patroclus wasn't his "cousin", he was his lover.

Correct. Revan would become a madarin (probably under an assumed idetity): a Private Secretary to the Executive Chancellor, or some such. This would enable maximum leverage in the critical decision making, whilst allowing for the discretion afforded by a career in the public service as opposed to life as a politician, and there is also no need for the tiresome necessity of winning elections ...

And then: so too, the world!

That argument could run and run and run and ... well, you get the idea. Sure, a third game can be made. K2 ended with a lot of vague generalisations about "True Sith" and "beyond the Outer Rim" and so forth, just like it began with a hazily defined Revan: what was the impact on K2 of the players' choices of Revan's particulars? (That's a rhetorical question, the answer is: none.) Just like Paramount never wrote the succeding Star Trek films, they were all written as if they were the last, from the first experimental (Star Trek: The Motion Picture[!]) until the tenth one. (Actually, I seem to recall after the fourth there was a decision made to make ten films in total, but until then, it was one at a time.)

You are a good citizen.

Indeedy. That is where the colloquial term originates from ...