metadigital

They're argument was they were using a map that was a couple of years old, and thus didn't have the embassy on it.

Was that before or after Stalin had Trotsky pick-axed? "

Play it until the end credits, then come back and ask. You BLASPHEMER! *slaps Kaftan with his picklehaube*

Yeah, it does sound like a driver issue (certainly not a hardware one!) ... ATi are not spectacular, ime, at backwards-compatibility. It wasn't my intention to dismiss your technical abilities or in any way demean your aptitude for such things ... it is often quite difficult to appraise people's skills through the treacle brogue and verbiage of the www. Please accept my apologies for any offence, either real or imagined. PS Shouldn't this be in the Tech Self Help forum?

I just beat it again and it gets better each time. :cool: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I have been trying to coerce myself into the sequel for a couple of weeks, but I keep losing interest. I shall try one more time after I finish Grim Fantango, and then re-install the original. )

Rachel, NV is the closest township to Area 51. I think the local trailer park is the one where most of the sightings have been made ...

And that's why games like Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and the EA sports games you mention don't sell... [insert sarcasm here...] 8 But yes, excellent graphics and good plot might sell, but both costs. You cannot have good graphics without good programmers, and you cannot have good plots without good game designers/stortellers. Both cost money to hire, so which will you hire given that gamers tend to judge games based on the graphics (that's the judge-the-book-by-the-cover thing I mentioned above...) ? I may not like that, but that doesn't make it any less true. 9You, however, apparently refuse to accept this and instead lays the blame for it at my feet because I try to offer a realistic appraisal of the gaming industry today. If you don't like the state of things, then go and hide from reality if you like, but don't kill me just because you don't like hearing my estimate of the situation. Also, don't make grand statements that are clearly flawed, if you're unwilling to have someone tell you exactly that flaw lies. If I shut up that will just prompt someone else to pierce your flawed impression of things. Someone always does. And pointing fingers at someone just because you don't like the message is flaming because it becomes personal. And since you can expect only a response based on anger in return, it is also trolling. 9Lucasarts has been around since, what, the mid 80s, while companies like Black Isle or Interplay are no more... As for games, the X-Wing series was brilliant in both plot and execution, but sadly they are gone now... For Star Trek, the Bridge Commander game was brilliant, easily the best Trek game ever (and there were some awful stinkers in there) with excellent plot, yet it was killed shortly after being released, whereas real-time strategy games made ad nauseam still sell through the roof. Sorry, but that argument just doesn't hold water either way. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 1. I was just using Grim Fandango as an example as it was close to hand. The Monkey Island series is another example that illustrates the case for games with strong plots and high attention to detail and excellent crafting of the environment. Similar to my original modern example: Psychonauts. For exvery brainless example, I can give a well written one: Max Payne (and a gasp! sequel), Alan Wake is about to be released ... how about historical fiction? Rome: Total War. 2. You are guilty of judging a film by its special effects, then. The plot of the sequel was far inferior to the original film; there were numerous concepts that were alluded to in the original that were not even addressed in the sequel; the sequels were more Kung-Fu than philosophy -- the opposite of the original, which revealed a compelling dystopian future vision and a library of different technological fictions to flesh out the narrative. 3. That's very patronising: people don't understand that good writing makes for compelling games, they just want to mast ur bate with their gamepad. 4. Yep, there is definitely a market segment being served by such games. So what? The cRPG genre might be a (smaller) market niche, but that doesn't mean it doesn't bear servicing. There is a market for yatchs that cost over

I've been playing Grim Fandango. Here is Area 51: (Look it up yourself, go to http://maps.google.com/ and search for Rachel, Nevada. Then zoom in on the satellite images and you can see it.)

Scouring of The Shire, IMO it was crap in the book and didnt make sense in the film version of Return of The King seeing as they cut out Chris Lee altogether and it would have been even longer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I liked that bit a lot. It was in keeping with Tolkein's very cynical world-view (that inspired him to write the books in the first place); he was dead against "hollywood endings", and wanted to impart some of the gritty soiling of real life onto his characters. I was horrified to see Christopher Lee's Saruman killed off like the Friend's Provident Mutual Society pirates in the supporting feature interdiction of Monty Python's Meaning of Life film. Still, I would never have thought that book(s) could have been made a film, so I tip my tam-o'shanter to Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens for their hurculean script writing efforts to manefest this miracle. Having said that, I didn't like the end of the third film, because it seemed to skate between the original material and some sort of hollywood ending, without doing justice to either. Kong looks good, though.

I like what Rick Burton did in his Paladin modules for NwN, specifically the first module Twilight, where the initiate is inducted into the Paladin order after passing a few tests, which double as a tutorial to wield the various different weapons (there are three different weapons, two race-specific and a general one), which need to be swapped around as a normal part of the combat routine (to best attack the different "races"). After the pc is inducted, the main adventure begins. The induction ceremony grants the aura bonus of the Paladin (fear, divine damage and divine vampiric parasitic restoration). Also the pc is gifted a new weapon and a pretty shield. This is relevant because the Jedi are basically paladins, with the Sith being Blackguards. I thought it was one of the better beginnings I have had to endure, as well as being narrationally consistent.

Basic math doesn't work when applied to SW. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ... Or combat ability.

They weren't the British teens in the Bedforshire countryside, were they?

SubBassman has written a complex module Tortured Hearts for NwN (over eighty hours) which includes food and encumberence for gold; it also includes a bank for safe deposit of gold (because it becomes increasingly untenable to carry large sums -- greater than a few thousand GP -- around). He has also implemented day and night scripts for each NPC. One warning, though, the save games are >80MB !

You may be right, I have only just installed this particular gamepad on this pc, so I wasn't sure if I had hooked it up correctly; consequently it might be set up for a default gamepad instead of my super-duper rumblepad with two analogue cotntrollers and a digital eight-way switch, with the eight buttons ... (I always read the game settings, first.)

None known. After all, the dweebs that play 24/7 are the same ones that have their bills paid by direct debit ... I had to laugh at the article in this month's PC Gamer about the exploits of Richard Thurman in Ultima Online. After a friend of his sold his account for c. $1000, he decided to re-enter the world (he had just tossed his account away) and his goal was to make back the money he had spent (his preliminary "research revealed a 4.3 million dollar eBay market in Ultima Online gold." !). Most gold sellers ... use bugs and exploits to magic cash out of thin air. Richard created a broker app to flood the server with useless imaginary crafted objects (that players used to get their gold) in bulk. E.g. buy raw ingredients for ink then sell the bottled goods for pennies. He reverse engineered the client to automatically buy and sell the ingredients and finished products, while he was away from his computer. "The EULA states that no third party applications are allowed. Since I agreed to the EULA, I am the first party, being the paying member for UO, and EA is the second party, being the provider. So if I make/author a utility, it is a first party utility and, in my opinion, anything you make doesn't apply. ..." R. Thurman. Macroing is allowed under the EULA, as long as it is not unattended, so he rigged up UA to trigger an instant message to his MSN Messenger-aware smart phone, thus he was able to talk to GMs that questioned the bot. With his system tested, he went into mass production. New PCs installed with fresh copies of Ultima Online, CD keys and random accounts were all processed en masse via another bot. He offloaded the gold wholesale via a trusted cartel, which he built, as he didn't want to be stung by phantom eBay purchasers who skipped after presenting a rubber cheque. He fixed the prices with the other gold-farmers in the cartel, guaranteeing a minimum profit return. Until a trade war broke out with another gold-farmer. "It was like the wild west out there. Everyone wanted a cut of the action. It was pretty frustrating. To get round [the competition], I began to examine the shift patterns of the UO gamesmasters -- I could only work when they were just coming on or leaving their shifts." ... ... Between 2002 and 2004, Richard 'made' around nine billion gold pieces, which he sold for a profit of approximately $100,000. ... UK PC Gamer, issue 150, Jul 2005, pp 128-9.

The Nephilim, also known as the Grigori, were actually the crossbreed children of the Angel Shemyaza and his followers with humans in several apocryphal writings of both the Jewish and early Christian faiths. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How do Angels copulate ?

H

Try a MMO, you might like it. I didn't, but that was more down to the community of people playing than the game mechanics.

Yeah, it sounds like a particular graphics function is blowing a stack. It's not uncommon for the intro graphics to work, presumably so that the publisher gets their name in lights even if the game has to be returned ("no such thing as bad publicity" ? ) ... Win XP has compatibility properties for the runtime objects. Check the properties in the third tab (conveniently called "Compatibility") to see if they help.

Same engine as Pirates (2004), able to zoom in-to and out-of the terrain; shorter games (hours, like the original, rather than days, like the subsequent sequels): gamespy p1 page 2 ... Religious beliefs have had just as much of an impact on history as political systems, but until now the Civilization games didn't tackle this topic. Civ IV is adding religion as a new gameplay angle. The designers are trying to avoid controversy by implementing it so that all religions function identically within the game -- they're just names -- but they'll have a big impact on the strategy. Seven faiths are represented from around the world: Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Christian. Each faith is tied in with a certain technological advancement -- the first nation to discover that technology also discovers that religion, and has the option of making one of their cities the holy city for that faith. You can also choose a religion to be the official state religion of your nation. Much like culture, religion helps to spread your influence beyond your political borders on the map. For instance, you can send out missionaries to try to convert citizens in other cities to your home religion. These converted citizens will not only send money to your empire, they'll be more likely to have favorable diplomatic relationships with you. ... page 3 ... Of course, conquered people who have a different religion than your state religion will naturally be pretty unhappy. In later eras you can research technology to mitigate these effects, but religion now has to factor into your overall strategy. It adds another level of depth to the game, and hopefully won't ruffle too many feathers. ... ... Six victory conditions are available, so as with the earlier Civ games, there are plenty of avenues to explore. A "Domination" victory is achieved by simply controlling the majority of the planet, whereas a "Diplomatic" victory involves having the U.N. elect you as World Leader after you butter up the other leaders. A "Cultural" victory is available to whoever can get three cities that each have over 100,000 culture (build lots of theatres and monuments.) As before, you can also be the first to build a spaceship to colonize the Alpha Centauri system for the win. One way to take over the world without slogging your way through years of combat is to form new, permanent alliances with other nations. This in effect joins two civs together, even to the point where they share line of sight and wonder bonuses. Choose your allies carefully: there are 26 different leaders available for the 18 different civilizations. It's the leader's personality that determines how a civilization behaves, not the civilization itself -- so if the French are being led by Louis the XIVth, your relationship with them will be considerably different than if Napoleon is in charge. ... ... Certain conditions might trigger off the appearance of a great scientist, a great engineer, a great merchant, a great holy man, or a great artist (who looks like Elvis, natch). Each has his or her own special abilities. You can have them hang out in a city to bestow long-term benefits. Or, you can use them up: a great engineer can be used, for instance, to instantly finish a city building project, while a scientist can instantly give you a new technology. Or, two great people can be combined to kick off a golden age for your nation. ... [/i] page 4 (w00t)

No, Baley, don't bother with that manual ... you won't need it ... "

Well, I'm the star, naturally: My #1 result is Frodo Baggins My #2 result is Legolas.

You are for genocide and against test-match cricket? Pick up your gaunlet, sir, I challenge thee to a duel!

We have to submit moves? "

:angry: <_< Kaftan, what is the game asking for and what platform are you playing it on (i.e. Windows version) ?