obscurus

Unless of course you impose a penalty on shouldering that means the player has to weigh up the pros and cons of shouldering vs dragging. If you have say a fatigue system (a la Morrowind for example) where a player will have something to lose by going through the extra exertion required to lift someone over their shoulder. IRL a heavily armoured guard should be impossible to lift for a sprightly thief: add 40Kg of armour to a 90Kg guard and I doubt many people would be shouldering that weight, certainly not without a serious penalty of some sort. Maybe you would have to drop your loot to shoulder someone (as an example of another way of penalising shouldering).

Personally I think there are better ways of stimulating and encouraging innovation and creativity than patents and copyright. Copyright and patents are a form of economic protectionism that distort markets and only serve to increase inflation. They have no place in the 'Information' Age. While I am all for people being given due credit for something they have invented or created, I am not in favour of someone gaining an exclusive monopoly just because they were the first person to think of something. Maximius actually posted a nice read in the OT section which, having skimmed through, is largely in agreement with my own views, so I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking along those lines. Certainly in terms of copyright, almost every concievable form of music, art etc that could remotely be described as "original" has already been done. All artists and musicians are doing these days is building on, and occasionally improving on, ideas that have already been done, whether they are aware of it or not. And in terms of patents, it is a much more productive use of human resources to give people unfettered freedom to build on other people's ideas than to continously have to reinvent the wheel to avoid a patent infringement lawsuit.

It could however be tremendously amusing to watch a guard you have just nailed in both arms running around in some parody of an Irish dance. Even better if you can make use of the physics engine to have the arms flopping around like a pair limp trout.... In all seriousness though, I like the idea of guards hit in a semi-vital region slowly bleeding to death, leaving a trail of blood everywhere they go, and searching out for help from other guards.

When you take gravity into account, the point at which you need to flip the craft around is much further along into the trip, and the deceleration force required much less (if you need to do it at all), because you can use planet's gravity to make the trip much more efficient. This is of course how NASA does it - they use gravitational slingshots to get a free boost to acceleration, and carefully guided orbital insertion so the spacecraft uses the planet's gravity to capture it into orbit, requiring much less effort than slamming on the brakes halfway into the trip. If you make the right calculations, you don't need more than a few puffs of the steering rockets to fine tune your trajectory into orbital capture. IIRC Cassini for example, was flung around Venus, around Earth, around Venus again and past Jupiter to get it into orbit around Saturn, with almost no extra thrust once the main rocket had broken free from Earth and few adjstments to the trajectory needed - the guys at NASA got their initial calculations so spot on it went almost flawlessly, just hitching a ride from the gravity of various planets. Pretty amazing given the complexity of the mathematics involved.

It is only the Creative drivers - AFAIK the Linux drivers don't suffer from this limitation. You will only notice this problem with very large multilayered soundfonts - with 95% of soundfont it isn't much of an issue. It is most noticible if you try to play a piano part that makes extensive use of the sustain pedal - on a moderately large piano soundfont you will qyickly hit the 32MB ceiling, as well as the polyphony limmits of the Creative drivers... EDIT: Actually, it is part of the hardware limitations of the SB Live!/Audigy series - they have a 32 Mb aperture for sound data to pass through, but good drivers can fudge around this with clever data streaming. Aparently the Audigy drivers can fudge through quite a bit more data, even though it is mostly the same hardware as the Live! (just has better DAC/ADC chips). Not sure what the Linux drivers do with the 32 Mb aperture problem....

Try http://www.langmaker.com/db/Main_Page and ahve a look around. There are utilities that will do pretty much what you want, but you might have to hunt around the website.

Forsaken, even if you don't have a sound card, you can use software soundfont loader/players (eg SFZ, which is free by the way) to load a high quality soundfont, and then record it to .wav, which you can then compress to mp3 if you want. A lot of motherboards have on board audio which is adequate for ASIO4ALL ( http://www.asio4all.com/ ) to work with, so you aren't out of luck yet. There are a number of utilities out there that will convert MIDI to audio, but as always, RMV, and a lot of them are not free. Depending on what sort of gear you have, you will probably need to spend some cash, either on new audio hardware, or on software, to get good results, though there should be enough free stuff out there to get you started. http://www.kvraudio.com/ will have links to all sorts of software that will do the job, check it out.

That is because of the limitations of the Creative SBLive!/Audigy drivers on the EMU10K chipset - they will only play 32MB of sound data simultaneously, so if you have a large, high quality multi-layer soundfont loaded, you can quite easily hit the 32MB limit with a simple chord. I have a number of very large soundfonts wich are almost useless for serious music because of this design flaw (unless I use them in a softsynth like SFZ). I am not sure if the X-Fi suffers from the same problem. Creative make truly shit, awful, reprehensibly bad drivers, but since they are really the only soundcard manufacturer straddling the fence between professional audio and positional/game audio, there isn't much choice for gamers who like to do a bit of music as well. If you really want to have nice midi playback, you can invest in some serious music hardware and software - with an M-Audio Audiophile 192 + a nice software multisampler like gigastudio you can record those midi files down to high quality audio or mp3. This will cost you a lot of money, so if you are not a computer musician, forget it. You could also get the EMU1212m or 0404, which use the same chipset as the SBLive!, but have much better drivers and also load soundfonts. AFAIK, they don't suffer from the 32MB ceiling for soundfonts, so no dropped notes. A good software synth you can use to play soundfonts is SFZ http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfz.htm - coupled with a suitable VST host (well, it also works as a stand-alone app, and I belive it will record incoming midi signals as audio) you can use it to load very large, high quality soundfonts, and mix down the midi file to audio. It does soundfonts much better than the SB hardware, and does not suffer from the rather limiting memory restricitions of the SBLive!. Use with the ASIO 4 All drivers for best results with a SB or built in audio. If you have a bit of money, get the low end Creative X-fi. It is a flawed card, but it is the best gaming+music hybrid solution out there, and it will make your midi files sound pretty sweet with the right soundfonts. It has a postprocessor which they call a "crystalizer" - it is really a filter that does a bit of equalisation and throws in an exciter, and it deliberately colours the sound, but it can make low quality recordings sound better. hope that helps, I can't really add anything more to what Domarius and demagogue have already said...

Well, two things: I was flicking throught the the nVidia website where it (somewhere) claimed that the 7900 supports a realtime global illumination solution (photon mapping or radiosity, it didn't eleborate on what kind of model they used or anything - the implication was that it rendered radiosity lightmaps in realtime in hardware though). Two, the tech demo from Crytec showed an editor view where a light was being moved around in real time, with shadows and diffuse ambient light consistent with some kind of real time global illumination model, and there has been numerous reports of next gen engines supporting real time global illumination of some sort on the horizon. Whether or not all of this is true or not I can't say, but the Crysis demo videos didn't look like any lighting model I've seen in a game yet, it looked like much higher quality lighting than in Doom 3 or any other currently available game engine. OpenGL 2.0 supports realtime radiosity in hardware BTW. Here are some links for you to consider: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article918.asp http://www.cs.unc.edu/~coombe/research/radiosity/ http://dee.cz/rri/ http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/to...topic_id=381120

Those are all in-game shots, no pre-rendered stuff AFAIK. I downloaded a video of the ingame footage, and it was pretty gobsmacking how much detail is in that game, in real time. It is damn near photorealistic in places. I am under the impression that you won't see all of that detail unless you have one mofo of a computer (Quad SLI monster PCs get the real eye candy), as the engine scales quite a bit to perform well on whatever hardware it finds itself running on (up to a point). The video showed footage of the game editor, where you could drag a light around, and it updated the shadow maps in real time, ie, real time radiosity, in a complex indoor scene (the editor is the game engine essentially, so it does the same real time lighting in-game). It was very impressive to see dynamic, real-time global illumination like that, and the quality of the rendering was on par with what you used to take a high end renderer days to complete.... The Cryengine 2 has to be one of the most impressive engines on the horizon. Looks good, even if you might need to sell a kidney to buy a machine to run it on...

Yes, I'm glad to see you correctly assessed Australia for the Giant map size in that regard...

I had a look around the web, and I found on http://www.elderscrolls-oblivion.com/ a range of mods that aim to fix some of the problems aforementioned in this thread, such as "Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul". There are quite a large number of mods that aim to fix the gameplay balance and make the game a shade more realistic and rewarding to play.... I'd still prefer a mod that abolishes the level concept entirely, but these type of mods might make the game worth buying at some point (I'll be waiting for the price to drop, though).

Looks very pretty (though my 'puter barely scrapes by the minimum hardware specs), but I am not a big fan of stat based RPGs - I mean having hit points and stamina points etc. and the +12 Hammer of Incalculable Doom is all very well if you are playing D&D with pen, paper and dice, but in a computer game you can model all of these things behind the scenes in a much more immersive and elegant way. Skill points are the most ridiculous one - the skill is provided by the player, you don't need to drag out the D6 or what have you to simulate it. The leveling system you have described has almost completely turned me off buying this game, and were it not for the fact that is is very moddable and has an editor for making your own maps etc, I would not even consider it. Are there any open ended adventure/action/fantasy/RPG type games that don't pretend to be D&D? The whole concept of player levels etc. shits me. Bloody fuck, it looked like a really nice game.

That is a very good quality PSU, so unless it has been damaged in an electrical surge or is worn out, it is more likely you have a defect in your graphics card or mobo somewhere... hmmm. Still worth checking the voltages, but I suspect that won't be the problem.

I'm tellin' ya, it'll be the PSU... if it is a cheapo one or it is failing, it won't keep its voltages on spec, and your PC will behave erratically. If you have a multimeter handy, check the voltages coming off the 12V and 5V rails when everything is running at full tilt. If they are off by more than half a volt you have a problem, and probably need a new PSU. If you don't have a multimeter, you can use some software diagnostic utilities that use the MB circuitry to detect the voltages, but this is ususally less accurate than using a multimeter. If your 12 volt is actually putting out closer 13V for example, your computer will be more prone to crashes. If your voltages are fine it might be a driver issue, but I'm guessing you've probably already tried that... What PSU do you have Woah?

Northbridge cooler fans and GPU fans are usually the worst culprits when it comes to noise (small fans with shittty bearings), but cheap PSUs are badly designed with poor airflow leading to turbulence and noise. Good PSUs use bigger fans (big fan + slower RPM = same amount of air pushed with less noise), and lots of ventilation at the back, and help to draw air over your CPU. Around AUD $100 (GBP 40 - 50 pounds, $75 USD) + will get you a decent one, more will get you better. It is also a good idea to invest in a good quality power board with high current surge protection. In most countries, the power coming through the lines into your house varies wildly - for example, here in Australia, the standard is meant to be 240V AC, but it is usually 230V in reality, but it can fluctuate between 220V and 260V during the day. Good PSUs can handle this range of fluctuation, cheaper ones can't, and will fry when their tolerance is exceeded. A lot of electrical appliance manufacturers will not apply their product warranties to devices that fail because the juice coming out of the power lines was not the voltage the appliance was designed for, and you can sue your electrical utility company if they fail to keep their voltages on spec, but most people don't know this. Personally, I would settle for a lesser graphics card than a lesser PSU...

Yes, you really do need to spend the cash on a good power supply. It is probably the least glamorous component, but is arguably the most important part to spend big on. Antec make good power supplies, as do SuperFlower. Look for one with a single large fan and a large grille area on the back - they are quieter and more efficient at cooling your PC. Good PSUs feel quite heavy when you hold them in your hand - cheap ones use dodgy capacitors etc. which are very light-weight. A cheap PSU is a bad idea - if you buy an expensive graphics card and the cheap PSU craps out and fries your graphics card, you will be spending a whole lot more in the end. Don't risk it. Don't worry about the CAS timings on the RAM, it makes a negligible difference in real world applications if you have CAS 2, 2.5 or 3 RAM - it might equate to 1 - 2 FPS difference in Quake IV at most. Otherwise your plan looks pretty good. Stay away from Maxtor hard drives, they are shit.

It is a bit of a leap to assume that realisticly modeled sensory algorithms for AI will so badly unbalance the game as to make it unplayable. It won't at all. What it will do is make the player play in a way that is a bit more real-worldly. Instead of just relying on shadows, the player will have to make use of cover, such as hiding behind pillars and barrels and so on. Of course you will be able to defeat the AI, just as a real-life thief can defeat real life guards through stealth, it will just not be what you are used to from playing Thief. You make the assertions about balancing gameplay, without realising that what you find balanced, others might find horribly unbalanced, so my point that gameplay balance is in the perception of the player stands. Sure, you need to make some concessions to un-reality due to the technical limitations of the computer game medium, but having realistic sensory acuity for AI is not in need of any concessions at all. I am speaking for myself here obviously, but I am not interested in dumbed down AI, I want it to be as close to the real deal as is possible win the limited capabilities of a modern computer. A game that models the laws of physics and nature as closely as possible will automatically be as balanced as reality is. Where you can't model the laws of nature well, you need to make concessions in order to restore the balance, but sensory acuity of AI in no way requires this.

If you want to be realistic about it, it is actually easier to sneak up on someone in their direct line of sight than if they can see you out of the corner of their eye (obviously it is better if you sneak up from behind, so they can't see you at all). This is due to the way the eye is structured - there are lots of movement senitive rods around the periphery of the eye, but the fovea has mostly cones, which are relatively crap at detecting movement. They are very good at picking out patterns though, so if you are standing still, the guard will be more likely to spot you front on than if you are moving. I don't see how having a realistic vision model for AI would be at all undesirable from a gameplay perspective (provided it doesn't impose an unacceptable performance hit), on the contrary, it is better if the AI responds as closely as possible to the way real people do. I haven't played T2X yet, so I am not in a position to comment on their implementation and its subsequent effect on gameplay, but gameplay is very much in the eye of the beholder so I take '[realistic feature XYZ] is bad for gameplay' type comments with a very big lump of salt.

Giving the attackers seige engines that would alow the attackers to breach the castle walls relatively quickly would be the only realistic way to balance the gameplay. That or allowing the attacking force to have greater numbers, or weapons/technology that enabled them to breach the castle walls easily (within reason of course). Otherwise the game could go on indefinately if the defenders can't be starved out, or slowly poisoned (which is how real seiges worked). The other thing is to give the defenders a finite supply of weapons like arrows and boiling oil - in RL they would eventually run out and have no way of replenishing them, while the attackers would have a potentially limitless supply. In real-life seiges, the only way the defenders could hold out is if the attacking force had limited time, resources and/or manpower to wait until the defenders ran out of food/water/materials/weapons. When the Romans beseiged fortified cities etc, they would often simply surround the fort, and then wait for everyone inside to die or give up. In the meantime, they would completely despoil the surrounding countryside and farmlands, so that even if the attackers did pull out, the defenders would have little to go back to when the seige was over.

Well, theres the rub, really. A realistic, pure mediaeval castle siege would take months to complete in real time. IIRC, some sieges in the Middle Ages took ages before the defenders ran out of food. I think you should kive the attackers an edge by letting them catapault rotting, anthrax infested animal carcasses into the defender's castle. Hey I just thought of a mod idea: Lob The Cow, where you get to hurl unsuspecting livestock at your enemy...

That sounds like a fairly simple mod of the basic assault mode in UT. Actually, if you did it with an engine that can handle a huge number of entities on screen at once, like the Serious Sam 2 engine, you could have collosal battles, where team members command units in an army. Hang on a minute, though - what you have described is being done here: http://projectoffset.com/game.html

People all too rarely think about sample space when considering probability. The chances of an individual winning lotto might be miniscule, but so many tickets are sold that very often there will be more than one person with the winning number for any given lottery, sometimes so many winners that the individual prize recieved is a small fraction of what they hoped to win, even though they hit the jackpot. It is like rolling a die: roll it once, the chance of getting a six is 1/6. Roll it a thousand times, the chances of you getting a six are essentially almost 100% (in fact you would expect to get 166.7 sixes from an unbiased die thrown a thousand times). But the probability and sample space for wandering stars kidnapping planets on the outer rim of the galaxy is such that it might never happen before the sun uses up all of its fuel, if at all. It is extremely unlikely, and I would take the statistics in that were presented in that pdf cum grano salis. A planet would be more likely to wander in though, as they are ejected form the orbit of their parent stars so frequently that the odds of it happening are much higher. Still rare though. If you make the sample space big enough, you can say all kinds of unlikely things will happen with near 100% certainty, and similarly, improbable things happen far more often than people think because the sample space is small.

Indeed. In fact, many eyes in the animal world do little more than tell the difference between night and day. Eyes in the animal world range from a simple collection of photosensitive cells to the sophisticated trinocular hyperspectral eyes of mantis shrimps, or the extrreme zoom eyes of eagles. "half" an eye is tremendously useful for most creatures, and yet some posess very well developed eyes that are entirely useless. For example, ther are cave dwelling fish that have no use for eyes, yet they have them. Strangely, they couldn't use them even if there was light to see - their eyes are covered over with scales, making them functionally blind. Not a very intelligent way of doing it, but very typical of what you can expect from an evolutionary process.

The irony is, that in spite of the huge amount of information governments collect on their citizens, this information is shuffled through so many layers of beuracracy that it is all but useless for governments to possess. I don't know about other people, but my experiences with dealing with government agencies have been exasperating, to say the least. You'd think with all the information they have about me that each government agency would be able to pull up any relevant infromation to make life easier for me to comply with government regulations, process taxes etc, but the reality is there is so much duplication of work, filling out of forms multiple times for multiple agencies that they might as well have a monkey sitting in a big room full of random files instead of a database. Corporations are no better. In situations where the knowledge they have concerning you would be actually useful to you, they suddenly have dificulty knowing what is going on. All their data collection seems to achieve is sending me junk mail and spam occasionally, but when it comes to actually making my life easier, forget it...