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I can't remember most of the games from the Atari system I had in the early 80's. But for the C64 there were The Last ninja series, the first game I think was the first to use Isometric design. It was a good adventure game too. Impossible Mission was cool too. I had that C64 joystick recently that had loads of games on it including Impossible Mission 1 and 2. Though I still enjoyed them, they weren't as cool as I remember from my youth. International Karate and IK+ were cool, and way of the Exploding FIst and Fist II. Bionic Commandos was cool, Summer Games, Winter games... The old Zelda games were cool. I used to like those text adventure games too on the VIC 20. The Eye of the Beholder games were excellent too. They were better FP games for me then Doom etc. Tenchu was good as was the original Metal Gear Solid game. Resident Evil 1 was cool. I still remember the shock of seeing the first Zombie. It was great finding the stuff to solve puzzles etc. However that back and forwards gameplay got tiring after the first 3 games. I had really played them to death anyway especially number 2. The Ocarina of Time is simply one of the best games ever made. Mario 64 was cool too as was Mario Golf.

What I also loved about farcry was the last "boos". The doctor guy that is. I really liked how they did'nt uberize him, he only had a good gun, not million health. I actually expected him to be uber so I threw 2 grenades in and wouldve kept throwing had it noit been for him dying after the first one lol. I actually had the German version (don't ask why) and played half of it in german. I then downloaded an english patch and had to replay it to see wtf had gone on lol.

Umm last I checked Counter-Strike was the most popular game running on Steam (and not only), how is that "shut down"? And yes, Arx Fatalis was awesome, that's why I'm looking forward to Dark Messiah. Even though not an RPG it should still be a great game up to its developers' standards. I think one of the Thief designers took part in it for the stealth aspects as well

Yeah, such great atmosphere ... really credible as a gargantuan, buried, unholy crypt. I'd have said I was sold on the game when I entered the main chamber ... but really, they had me at "Inside at last..." The most magical level remains for me Constantine's mansion. RTC got a bit spoiled since I didn't actually (fairly) finish it first time through. But geez that level had me absolutely petrified time after time, when I'd feel heroic for simply dashing into the next room!

JESUS MOTHERFUCK LOL!!!....... Just copied pasted into MS Word....2,985 words ....longer then the essay I had to hand in last Friday for uni lol!!!! I read some of it until I saw the scroll bar...lol I played everquest a while back to, haven't played it for a looong time now.

Not likely, they got to the semi-finals last time remember, but football has yet to 'break' the USA.

I noticed that some of the skins were broken during the last renaming of materials. I fixed a few but only the ones I happened to notice while playing around. There are probably others. The problem was that there was a hard return placed between the original skin and it's replacement: Original: (replaces skin/material 'tdm_book1' with tdm_book2') After renaming: (This will cause the skin not to work) If you open up the .skin file and put the two entries on the same line it should work. edit: Hmm, it's possible everything I just said was wrong. I was pretty sure that's what I did to fix some of the skins that weren't working, but when I look, they're virtually all on separate lines like that, and I was able to use them without problem.

Add Italy to the list of rubbish 'big' teams, then. Only Spain and Argentina left now. That's because you're not German! That's because we're the only countries left that are part of the old empire. We are the first, and the last, english colonies. With any luck Scotland will have escaped by this time next year and Wales soon after.

It wasnt just the scoreline, it was the way they played. All of the 'big' teams have only been playing 'small' teams so far, and none have played like that, so it's not just they were playing poor opposition. Also, Holland didn't take S&M apart like that. England have played like crap so far, they have zero chance of winning on this form, Germany ar elooking better though, it's always good for the home tem to get to at least the semi-final. I dont' think there's much England hate outside of Scotland and Wales. We kicked England's ass last year, so if they win we can claim to be better than the world cup holders)

Yes, Croatia deserved at least a draw there, and the Czechs look good as well, as do the Italians, Dutch. Argentines. There are a lot good teams that could win, and remember that Greece won the last Euro championship, so anything is possible. France were terrible, Brasil looks ordinary, Germany may have scored four goals but didn't look good either, against some tough opposition they will lose.

I would argue that the player does know the effect of their action in the most literal sense: They won't be able to use that item later on if they drop it. That means they have to think about whether they'll need an item later. Thinking is good. The fact that it's an inventory item and not a junk item is already a big hint that it might be useful. If the FM author puts in some ridiculous scenario like a pea lying on the ground that turns out to be the one and only key to defeating some huge evil robot at the end of the mission, with no hint that this is so, that's bad mission design. I would rather have the freedom to say, throw my sword as a last ditch distraction, or pass an objective item out a window to avoid some alarm than be locked into undroppable items because some FM author might design a bad puzzle. I'm not convinced it's irrecoverable. If you drop something, you can go and pick it up. If you drop your blackjack in the beginning and the FM author springs a surprise KO objective on you at the end, you'll be able to pick up any blunt object lying around (candlestick, 2x4, whatever) and use that as an improvised blackjack. Same with the sword and any weapon lying around.

What was the last time you really played Thief? I definitely know, that the inventory may have gotten a little bit annoying, but even in FMs there were never THAT much items in my inventory that I thought they should have redeisgned abit. And I was usually collecting everything just in case. Listening to some of you guys in this threads one could get the feeling as if we are handling hundreds of objects on average, while we are talking a 10-20. Why? There were already suggestions how this could be handled, which I think are much better than just locking it. Though I agree that for questio items it may be ok to flag them undroppable.

THey are hyping themselves up though, commentatorss are talking about them as second favourites after Brasil. That's a nonsense. THere are at least 6 teams that are equally as good as England and have as much chance of winning. Even when the Germans havent' got a very good team they still seem to make it though to the final, I think it's all down to belief and confidence, and that's something that England can't have, because they've won nothing for a long, long time. Then again, the same was true about the cricket team until they beat the Aussies last summer, so things do turn around eventually. I have nothing against Enlgland, I would like to see them win, just like I'd want to see any UK side win, but I never understand this expectation that they should win.

They did, however, recognize this as a potential problem -- which is exactly why Thief Gold introduced the Fire Shadow. Thank you. You have just summed up exactly why even the existence of the ability to discard core equipment is a bad idea. Is anybody honestly arguing that it doesn't cause more problems than it solves? In fact... what problems does it solve? Other than satisfying Oddity's fanatic fetish for "thieving naked", is there any actual reason for this feature? Look, when an FM author is designing a mission, they have to make certain basic assumptions about what the player can do. It is assumed that the player can run, walk, jump, duck, pick things up, set things down, mantle, frob, climb ropes, and knock out AIs and use a sword. If you make those last two abilities optional, it just makes life for FM authors harder. Sure, if a mission requires a sword or blackjack the author could place them somewhere in a mission, but that's just as bad as placing a stack of health potions before a tough battle. It says, "HEY LOOK! YOU'LL NEED THIS!". It's far better to make the core equipment something that's just "there", neither confirming nor denying whether any particular mission will need them.

If we have time to code the systems like we want to, this won't be a problem, because they'll be able to pick up any sword or knife lying around and slash a banner. It was "revealed" in another thread that, if time allows, we plan to allow the player to pick up and wield various weapons with a generic slash attack animation. It will be slow and clumsy because the character isn't trained with those weapons, but it will be enough to soundly defeat a banner. We also hope to do something similar for blunt objects and KO'ing. I don't think we need to baby the player so much that they get their core weapons superglued to their hands. It's common sense that you might need them, so if you do drop them, put them somewhere you can find them again. Even if they do somehow manage to throw them somewhere they can't get to, they can use other weapons to kill and KO with that improvised weapon system. [EDIT: To clarify, I'm talking about dropping them ingame. IMO, if you drop them in the mission equipment menu, they should be placed in a package at your feet or something when you start the mission, so that you can always reverse that decision.] In T1/2 when there was a puzzle requiring a certain arrow type, LGS designers always left an arrow of that type somewhere near the puzzle. Nothing was stopping the player from firing that and every other arrow of that type into a wall and wasting it, making the puzzle unsolvable. LGS didn't see fit to baby them and put in some pop-up screen like "This is your last fire arrow, and you need fire arrows to light the torches to get the talisman. Are you sure? <Yes/No>" Even TDS didn't stoop that low, since they had the pagan ritual puzzle that also required specific arrows (although those arrows may have respawned, I forget). I think the same logic applies to puzzles/objectives requiring the blackjack or sword. The mapper can leave an improvised weapon around nearby if they want, or the player can use some common sense and not throw their blackjack into a bottomless pit if there is an objective to kidnap someone.

I don't know, you'd have to ask drumple. Unfortunately he's been away for the last two weeks.

Dang we lost the first one 4-2. Now we have to win the last two if we're going to make it.

Is there going to be a separate "death menu" aside from the GUI movie? I guess the only benefit would be to include an option to "replay mission" option that takes you back to the pre-mission equipment screen. Otherwise you could only buy the mission equipment once after you completed the last mission and you'd be stuck with it. I can't remember exactly, but I think that's why T1/2 had that option. Also I think it listed mission stats up 'till death, but that's not too big a deal IMO.

I posted the following in ThiefGen at TTLG, but knowing how useless that forum's been in the last year I'm not expecting very much good discussion (maybe, hopefully I'll be surprised) ... but anyway it occured to me I'll probably get a better discussion going here. I'm interested in what people here think about Randy's views on T3, esp given how they tend towards the bitter end. So this is the post: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- link to the interview. I thought this was a pretty frank and insightful interview, also helps put the three Thief's in perspective as a whole. I don't think there was anything really new here, but a few interesting things to note. It was interesting to note that cross-platforming wasn't even in RS's top 10 design issues with T3 ... sort of fits in with Krypt's thoughts that one of the biggest problems was the rushed/shoddy job on the engine put them on crutches from early on. But Randy seems to take it the next step that really cross-platforming was way down the list. Makes you wonder what was closer to the top, in addition to the engine limitations... This quote: Quote: The team had many great design ideas (too many, in fact, one of the problems I brought to the troubled development environment at ION Storm), and it was sad that many of them were cut or compromised. is particularly revealing, but I'm wondering what to make of it. It sounds at first like he's talking about feature creep, or maybe room creep, but the way he phrases it makes it sound more philosophical ... like he had a particular design agenda that was just hitting one road block after another, and not just because of the limitations of the engine (or maybe parasitic on the limitations). And I wonder if there's some connection between this and the fact that T3 was so deficient in features as it was ... sort of a funny result, or maybe I'm not really connecting the dots. Maybe it was like a gas-on-fire sort of situation, where RS was pretty assertive with a design agenda at the same time the engine was giving them roadblocks left and right, time was pressing, and the two worlds just collided. Also, the way this is worded, I wonder if he's at all blaming himself here, a little, like he thinks in retrospect he should have held back for the better of the whole project, or if this situation was just a breakdown waiting to happen. I don't know, what do others think? It's really a shame that the series had such a bitter end for Randy, since for many of us here I think he contributed so much to the heart and soul of the series, and the disappointment he had with T3 mirrors a lot of people's here, as well. He almost sounded a little satisfied T3 was a market failure, didn't he? (which also tosses away any hopes for T4, I'd think). (Although one has to admit it was better than DX:IW on that engine; it could have been worse.) If you're out there Randy, I think you'll find a lot of people around here are on your side on this ... and the same magic you talked about with Thief: TDP and T2 you'll find a lot of sympathy here ... and I only wish, like you say, you could have experienced the magic of The Dark Project as a player like we were able to.

What really pisses me off is that XP is ALREADY installed on the HD! My last mobo must have had a different chipset that detected SATA drives. They've only been the industry standard for 2 years now, why the hell would ASUS be releasing new mobos with an outdated chipset--AND with no documentation? It boggles my mind to the point that I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing something wrong. I find it totally incomprehensible that they wouldn't address the issue either in the manual or their website.

Kuwait did well also. That's why I said 'tended to' not 'on every single occasion', anyway, invasions are more successful if you can wipe out the indigious population and just repopulate the county with your own kind, otherweise the natives tend to fester and suddenly stab you in the back when they get the chance. It's not like any of those countries you mention would have been worth shit anyway, Egypt's been invaded and occupied by just about every other army over the last 3000 years, Nubians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, French, Germans, British... in the end, they just installed a revolving door. I don't think they've actually owned their own country for about 3000 years. There are two types of invasion, one where you simply rape the country for all you can get or becasue it has some strategic importance, and one where you want to settle down and call it home, it's the second type that makes for successes. There's no point looking back on history from a modern perspective and saying 'it was wrong to do that'. In the past, if you saw a nation that was weaker then you, you invaded it and took what you wanted.

"So, to answer your question, I know lots of people that have great ideas that aren't clearly within the marketing domain we see repeatedly, and that's a huge barrier to getting an exploratory project started. And generally speaking the most competent teams, developers, and publishers are going after the sure thing, meaning tired power fantasies, and the innovative stuff is left to people with a less proven track record." This is the heart of the problem as I see it. "Going after the sure thing" is what a for-profit enterprise is going to tend to do and industry wide homogeneity is the result. The safest bet is what sold the last time. Maverick groups like LGS will come along at times but the trend is towards the mediocre middle. Especially with the really big, investor owned media houses where more than half the staff are dedicated to squeezing as much cash as possible out of a project in the shortest amount of time. Its what they trained to do when they got their MBAs.* Its not quite that black and white Im sure but I'd bet a buck its close. *masters of business administration

Forgive me for needing to appeal to everyone else to see if I was the only one causing the problem, but as I said, I have tried everything else, and this is a last resort. Now that I know I'm not the only problem, I don't have to do it anymore. Also I feel you're just focusing on this to avoid explaining your post. Are you going to or not? If not, then this line of discussion stops here. Well, you can reply if you like, but if it's not an explanation, I won't respond to it. The bones are required to animate them in the first place. Yes, to the best of my knowledge, bones can be moved with code, even while an animation is playing. That's how ragdolls are performed after all, and it's also how the D3 monsters look at you.

I agree that it could and hopefully will be just "one way of doing things" and won't become "the only way." There should be multiple methods. I just don't want it becoming the only one, or the dominating one. And I especially don't like it when it removes one of my anticipated titles from my must have list - like Dark Messiah. I'd buy Dark Messiah (especially since now it won't have Starforce), if I wasn't forced to use Steam. It's ironic that Steam is supposed to ensure legit sales, but it just lost at least one. It'd also be nice if they stopped the lies. I'm not an expert on Steam facts, but there are sites out there that list the things Valve claimed they'd deliver (just two of which are reduced costs and a list of related Source update freebies) which never came. Blatant lies or unfulfilled promises, makes little difference. A couple of other things mentioned, just for fun: TV TV used to be free. Paid for by commercials. Then came cable, where we could pay money to have commercial free viewing. Hooray. ...but fast forward to today, and for some reason, we're paying for commercials. When did that happen? Did we blink? That's consumers falling right down a slippery slope. And free TV broadcasting, as we all probably know by now, is going away within the next few years, at least in the US. Completely away. That's big. For the first time since TV broadcasting began, you won't be able to turn on a set with rabbit ears and get channels. The FCC is taking its frequencies back and auctioning them off. I wouldn't be surprised - especially with satellite - if radio follows soon, and then you'll all have to pay to listen to radio. It will be accepted, just like TV. We'll be telling our grandchildren - to their disbelief - that there was a time when TV and radio were broadcasted freely. And then there's the internet... The whole thing reminds me a little too much of a lot of publishers' recent push for in-game ads - which game consumers will largely bend over and accept, too - and increases in price to content ratios (ever increasing MMORPG subscription fees, 'episodic content', and full priced games which last 7 hours) - but hey, we keep payin' em, right?! So we must deserve it. and, EA EA has already followed Valve and Steam, with their own digital content delivery system, as you probably know. It's not as invasive as Steam as I understand it, but this is EA we're talking about - it's just a matter of time until they "perfect the method." It's one thing to offer me a different avenue to obtain content. That's great. It's quite another to force it on me, and it's only a matter of time before even more control over your system must be handed over to publishers in order to play with their toys.

Well so am I. You'll notice I never have a problem with him untill he attacks me out of the blue like that. Otherwise we'd be fine. Anyway, I can promise you, no more verbal attacks by me to him. For example, the previous post would be the same, minus the last paragraph. That's how I'll do it from now on.