metadigital

Aye, there are many submerged rocks near the coastline of plenty; let us hope that the great lighthouse of wisdom keeps the good ships safe long enough to deposit their eagerly awaited cargoes ... Pray tell, Mr Sawyer, what is OE's position on specialisation? Do they intend to broaden their developments into other genres, or keep to excellence at cRPGs?

... Nvidia raking in the $$ from Sony and MS Some details have trickled out, though, courtesy of Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter. In a recent research note, Pachter confirms that Microsoft "has agreed to pay a small royalty to Nvidia to allow the Xbox 360's ATI chipset to emulate the performance of the Nvidia chipset in reading certain Xbox games." Nvidia, therefore, will not only be receiving royalties from its partnership with Sony for the PS3, but it will also still get small payments from Microsoft for every 360 despite the fact that Nvidia is no longer the GPU provider. ... He he. Slick bit of legal man

It's Ford that owns Porsche now, isn't it? Just like they own Jaguar and Rolls Royce? For those of you in the cheap seats, I am making a serious comparison between the consolidation of the car industry and the upcoming rationalisation of the gaming industry. Taking Mr Sawyer's point about specialisation being a dangerous strategy for a game producer, that does not preclude a developer from specialising. Or even having a few specialisations, but being excellent at one or two.

... And, software is not like most other products in that the fixes are non-trivial, and proportionate to the complexity of the code with the bugs ... many times there are regression bugs released with patch updates, and this becomes more frequent when there are multiple versions of the code stream in production at any one time (which is frequently the case with larger developers). Version control becomes paramount; prevention of error at the methodological stage, before the code has been complicated with new bugs, or older code (with older bugs) is used by those fixing newer bugs (in a different code development stream). Another reason why smaller companies have an advantage, as their development streams are inherently less complex and therefore less prone to regression bugs, also the code ownership is a lot broader in relation to the game development as a whole, making it more personable to the developers (IMO). I think this will be another driver towards smaller, more episodic games using a regular online digital delivery system, like Steam.

I was only being pedantic. :D I do not require gore to make a game "more realistic" for me; in fact, generally the added gore is comical (I'm thinking of NwN).

Exactly. In fact, I read somewhere that the red crystals were in fact just blue or green crystals that were dyed. ('course, I don't know exactly how canon my source was, and I can't even remember the site I saw that on, but it seemed legit enough at the time.) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> As I'm sure you all remember, the red crystals come from the Kinrath eggs, whereas the crystal formations are the other crystals. I am not against the idea, per se, but I think it needs: bonuses to be moderated elesewhere, for example the ludicrous level bonus completely dwarfed all other bonuses, and there are bonuses for items and attributes; NwN, for example, limited the total additional bonus to a maximum of twelve attribute points from all sources (that's +6 increase) I'd prefer it to be for something less obvious than an attribute; maybe add a feat (the "automatic" feats of the class, for example, like "Force Jump" for Guarduans) Let's have any other Lightsabre users actually benefiting from these bonuses, too, so that when the PC wins the battle, they earn the crystals Update the combat dynamic, so that a kill registers DarkSide points, regardless of the rationale of the victor; that way Light Siders will be more inclined to non-lethal combat (which should be much more difficult) and the cambatants should have an increased chance of escape (with their precious booty).

Well, maybe not completely bloodless ... The friend-of-the-walrus-headed-guy (with the nose all over his face) in the cantina as Mos Isley (ANH) certainly lost a bit of blood when Obi-Wan removed his blaster from his possession ...

Looks like another game piggybacking on the film hype-machine. I only hope it is finished before the film ... ('cause it stands a chance at being a good game, and

What about a game that is conducive to a forum. Isn't Cthullhu a good environment for a forum (no combat, and lots of description and directions)? I may not be 100% correct, as I have not played Cthullhu very much at all. (In fact not at all. But I did see a front cover. And I was going to, a long time ago.)

Oh, yeah: it helps to know the Vision of the company your applying for a job with (they normally take quite a bit of practise to remember, as they are all businesspeak occluded clauses with no relation to each other, like someone in marketing was trying to write haiku on acid ...

Or Aeon Flux. :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, he's working for them. And he did do the Paladin series. So I make the answer four equals two plus two.

Do they even have a dude in charge of "company vision" outside of hippy-wierdo-organic-tree-hugging firms?

I wouldn't be surprised if they made Rick Burton's Paladin series into an "official" mod, too. Ghostie, have you played all the Hall of Fame ones that you want to, yet? Because there is some quality stuff on there, and it is gratis. PS Didn't you just make that ninja > pirates comment? Still, I'd have to agree. White ruffle puffy shirts are a real difficult look to pull off: ninjas have the right idea, black is so much easier to wear to a killing.

Aaah! So that is wheat and corn etc, which are of course grasses. And I'll wager there was a scythe, too. Boy, he thought of everything, even lawnmowers!

I am weary, too. I was wary, but once I tried it (on previous titles) I found it to be quite annoying: you must be connected to load a save game!

That's the problem when munchkins are let loose in the virtual world; no realistic magic restrictions and poor targeting.

I don't remember any lawnmowers in Ultima. There were shepherds, I recall. Did they hire out their sheep for grass cutting jobs? That would be a cool revenue generating stream. Could even use the clippings as mulch, and sell that to grocers for their vegetables.

Certainly not the ones in that big brown land over the Atlantic, that's for sure. Even if we concede Calax's poorly made point (which I don't), the fact that the largest growth in any market involves the XX Chromosome-endowed ones. In any case, I cannot accept that a poor story tacked onto a good graphics engine makes for a great game. Thar's just rubbish. (Sorry, US citizens, TRASH.) Even Half-Life, which was an apocalypic shooter, had a compelling story, with just enough bumps and prods from cut-scenes and named characters to keep the excitement and immersion fresh.

My father always wanted me to mow our lawn. With a push mower, not one of those new-fangled petrol ones.

Sea of Tranquility. Our side. That big blank spot in the south of the equator, left of centre. The flag got knocked down when the Moon Lander took off to return Neil Armstrong and Buz Algrin back to Michael Colins in the Orbiter. (I think it might have been stood up by a subsequent mission ...)

The Carpenters Yesterday Once More

Is that any relation to Warren Beaty ?

Actually, Mr Gates is on record as saying that he doesn't want to give any of his progeny obscene amounts of wealth; he doesn't believe it is good for anyone to have large amounts of cash without working for it ... (Still, I'm sure a few million would be okay, too ...)

The second one seems a lot worse, to me.