Komag

So did you always have pretty much all of your gear left over after every Thief mission? You gotta just spend it man, let it go!

The US poverty line for a single person is around $9,000/yr, for a family of four about $20,000. The AVERAGE North Korea GNP per capita is $1000-$2000/yr. If they had a "poverty line" it would probably be around $500/yr or less. The poor here are not poor by NK standards, just by US standards.

I'm never taking another shower, ever

I don't think anyone is saying "That's illegal!!!". It's more like "That's horribly evil and wrong!!!" which any good person will agree with.

Here is my experience with Dark Messiah: I open the box, look at manual - first inside page - my eyes catch the word "Steam". I'm about to just pack it back up, but I read further and it says installing Steam is just required for auto-updates and multiplayer. So I think "screw the updates, screw the multiplayer, fine". I put in the disc and start to install, immediately setting my firewall alert that just popped up to "Block", and then unchecking the multiplayer install option to proceed. First things first, I go to change the retarded default install directory (all games/software do it, some long path with three company names deep within Program Files) to just H:\Games\DarkMessiah. But as soon as I try to click "Next" it changes it to "H:\Games\DarkMessiah\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic". I'm like "What the freak?". So I just highlight it and take off the long part on the end, but it puts it back again, so now I'm pissed off, but I figure "Fine, be that way, I'll set it to 'H:\Games\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic' just to make you happy". But then it changes it to "H:\Games\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic". Now I'm about to run over to Ubisoft and rip someone's nuts off! But I lower myself into the depths of humility and finally submit my will to the higher wisdom of the game, setting the directory to "H:\Games", then click next so that it will condescendingly change it to "H:\Games\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic", and I'm on my way. The install then proceeds quite slowly, finially finishing about 5 or 10 minutes later. It never asked me if I wanted to install Steam, so maybe that only comes up when you install the Multiplayer. Then I click to play the single player game, and after the intro movies I get another firewall alert that I set to "Block", then the main menu starts. I set all my favourite keybindings and start the game. The first level is the same as the demo, the training tombs. After just a minute of running and stepping around, I see that the movement is still just as slidey and muddy as the demo, very disappointing. I still can't tell what the aiming reticle is doing, but I think that it lights up in segments the more HIDDEN you are, the opposite of the way it should be. Being on the Half-Life 2 engine, of course the lighting sucks. Body awareness is cool to me, but looking down and seeing myself all lit up because half of me is in the light (while the mostly half of me in the shadow is practically glowing by the contrast), then inching over slightly to the shadow and seeing all of me fade to black (while the mostly half of me still in the lighted area is now a black silhouette) is quite jarring. I guess TDS and Doom 3 spoiled me! After playing a couple levels, I'm getting a better feel for what this game is all about. It's basicaly an action game on rails (mostly), no RPG at all really. I'm more used to the muddy jerky movement, and sometimes it works really well to make the action feel more wild and visceral. I'm not sure if I like or don't like the game yet, but it sort of strikes me as a medieval Far Cry, which is a good thing so long as you know what you're getting into. I'll play it some more over the next few days to see if my impressions change...

I read an article and I forgot where (sorry), but the point was that the numbers of vampires would very quickly overrun the whole human population on the planet. Let's say the first vampire came into existence in 1600AD. The world population at that time was about 500,000,000. If he bites one neck each month, after one month there are two vampires, then 4, then 8, etc. Here's the progression: Jan 1 Feb 2 Mar 4 Apr 8 May 16 Jun 32 Jul 64 Aug 128 Sep 256 Oct 512 Nov 1,024 (round down to 1000) Dec 2,000 Jan 4,000 Feb 8,000 Mar 16,000 Apr 32,000 May 64,000 Jun 128,000 Jul 256,000 Aug 512,000 Sep 1,024,000 (round down to 1,000,000) Oct 2,000,000 Nov 4,000,000 Dec 8,000,000 Jan 16,000,000 Feb 32,000,000 Mar 64,000,000 Apr 128,000,000 May 256,000,000 Jun 512,000,000 (at this point all the world's half billion people are vampires) If we took it from today's 6.5 billion people it just takes four more months Jul 1,024,000,000 (round down to 1 billion) Aug 2 billion Sep 4 billion Oct 8 billion (all of the world is vampires now) If you think one bite per month is too much, you can set it at one per year, and it's still less than 30 years for the whole world population to turn vampire. Of course, this doesn't take into account how much vampires much fight and kill each other off, or the activities of devoted vampire hunters like Simon Belmont and family. Plus, depending on what vampire legends you subscribe to, some or most of the biting/blood drinking just kills the victim instead of turning them into vampires. But those are just silly details!

On the contrary, for some reason this contest has had the best voting turnout of all of them!

iech nein stein bien auf leiden straub, heilt!!! I have no idea if I just typed any real words, that's about the extent of my German

The game came out today, and now that I got a little part time job at Gamestop for some extra holiday cash, I have "check-out" privileges, so I checked it out for 4 days. Unfortunately I'm at my other job right now so I have to wait until late tonight to install and play on my home PC. We'll see if they improved any of my complaints from the demo two months ago.

Oct 29 before midnight

Are you sure? I thought the standard was 22min show, 8 min commercials (or 44min/16min for hour blocks).

I wonder if anyone has beaten the main quest at level one, just never sleeping to level up?!

One of the most important things to me about Gothic vs Elder Scrolls is the monster leveling. In Gothic I really get a sense of what areas are too dangerous to go into yet, so I look forward to becoming strong enough to eventually make it in there. With Oblivion, for example, I was fighting guys 5x tougher than the boss of the whole game, because I had finished the main quest already and was still playing in the world later on with leveled up AI.

Well, it just calls for a little benefit of the doubt. Do you really think he didn't know that people paint walls nowadays? Along with the link about paint history, I thought it was clear in the end, although at first I have to admit I had the same initial thought "of course they do!"

People - throughout history up till this past 50 years or so - don't paint walls

Having recently installed the BG games I know about being forced to watch the movie. The thing is, I had already watched it on my own, voluntarily, being curious to watch an old retro game trailer, and then I was forced to watch it again!!! That did indeed suck

Hey, why do you Europeans get the game already and I still have to wait a month??? Anyone got it yet?

I just got my mail and opened up the import box sets I ordered from UK - the Icewind Dale "3 In 1 Boxset" and Baldur's Gate "4 In 1 Boxset", so now I have them all! should I play the BG series, or IWD series first? I'm leaning toward BG Should I use the BG1Tutu deal? Are there any problems with that program? Is BG2 engine/graphics really that much better, or what would I be missing/getting? From reading their forums and stuff it seems that it works pretty good but is not perfect.

Just one week left for the voting, so if you haven't already go and download the missions, play them all, and VOTE!

Crispy, I think you lack vision. If you look at computing abilities 60 years ago that should be a clue, and the development is exponentially advancing. I'm positive I won't be able to convince you, but read some computing magazines sometime, especially artices on AI advancement, and you might start to see the real possibilities.

Maybe someday (like in 60 years or so) you could just tell the computer (a la Star Trek Holodeck style) to "recreate that old Thief game level from WAY way back in 2001, only spiff it up and make it cool by today's standards", and the computer could intelligently interpolate/extrapolate enough to do it automagically.

what? Will you type that again, please, thanks

I like rhubarb raw, freshly picked!

It's fine if they are large if they are relatively small (oxymoron, hehe), such as 640x480 or maybe a bit bigger.

Well it's interesting and a good creation, but ugly as heck!