Video Games

[Iduno]

So, Beamdog is releasing a Neverwinter Nights expanded edition, and I'm a bit baffled as to why.

They'll either change too much, and the mods you can still manage to find will no longer work, or they won't change enough. Either way, you'll get something as bad as nwn. It was fine when they released it, but it doesn't hold up well.

[Koumei]

NWN1 is amazing, to be honest. I would actually be fine with them just making the following changes:
-character faces don't all look like they have a weird moustache when they aren't being highlit (ie "adjust the lighting/shadow engine")
-make it so I don't have to go through two layers of emulation to make it work on my Linux machine (and even then I can't properly integrate things like the PRC/CEP mod into the official campaigns)

The second is a given, the first might be something that's fixed (they are talking about that part of the engine but who knows how they tweak it). I don't even care that the models look very basic and that you can't animate them to have sex properly (and believe me, mod creators have tried).

If they open up the extent of what can be modded, that will just be a bonus, but I get that doing so might be impossible while keeping the backwards compatibility.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I couldn't get very far through Neverwinter Nights. Just didn't grab my attention well enough to finish it.

[Voss]

NWN1 is amazing, to be honest. I would actually be fine with them just making the following changes:
-character faces don't all look like they have a weird moustache when they aren't being highlit (ie "adjust the lighting/shadow engine")

Apparently they're making zero changes to the graphics, art assets or the campaigns, beyond some options for color saturation and blurring distant pixels. And giving people the option to screw up the shaders their own goddamn selves.

Here is the sum total of their changes: https://www.beamdog.com/files/nwnee_release_notes.pdf

a bit of UI, some scripting, some bugs, far too little network code reworking:

The networking code (written in an era before
network address translation was prevalent) still
requires that the server’s public IP and port be
reachable directly

But hey, they fixed weapon focus: trident, so it ("should") actually work!

Some of the other server changes and other net stuff is worrying-IDs function off everyone's CDkey, which sounds amazingly secure, and this:

Exposed new .ini option to let servers use less CPU when not enough players are connected, but run at fullthrottle once enough players are connected.

Just sounds like an amazing way to dox and crash people's systems, especially since your IP and port has to be public to function as a server at all.


---

They mention the Linux install is 'rebuilt,' but seriously I have no idea if that would actually help you.


Anyway, personally I wouldn't touch it. The old fans are squeeing about getting their 'communities' back and shit, but I don't have much faith that beamdog actually tested a lot of this crap, or that they give a shit about security and all the other internet issues that will come back with these private playgrounds.

Also, it still really just looks like ass.

I couldn't get very far through Neverwinter Nights. Just didn't grab my attention well enough to finish it.

The main campaign was shit. The selling point was and is, theoretically, the player made custom campaigns. They're also throwing the expansions and you can also buy the 'premium' campaigns, as well as a couple of the more well known fan made crap. (at least one of which I tried back in the long ago... it was pretty crap).

[Koumei]

It didn't use to have a Linux install at all. What you had to do was install and run the GoG version (which is basically the original packaged into a WinXP emulator for more modern Windows machines, IIRC) within PlayonLinux, at which point you could run the game just fine, and sort of use the editor (through WINE specifically, not PoL). I can't remember if I ever got the Java-based CEP character creator to work, but I think I managed.

That said, the PRC/CEP auto-patcher is basically needed to use that content with the official campaigns (I actually enjoyed the base game and HotU. I liked one or two little bits of SoU and nothing more.) and that's out of their hands completely, so that bit isn't going to be any easier.

[Voss]

It didn't use to have a Linux install at all. What you had to do was install and run the GoG version

Somehow I doubt they're referring to the GoG version. NWN predates GoG by a good seven years or so.

[Koumei]

I'm aware of that, but I'm specifically referring to a modern Linux user (or anyone playing NWN1 in the modern era). Back then you just ran NWN after installing it to your PC and that was that, just like with many other games, but these days unless you actually have a special "old games" PC set up with Windows 98 or XP or whatever, you run the GOG version.

Looking through the list of changes you linked, I do find it hilarious that "WF (Trident) should now work" is listed there with more specific things regarding "X no longer crashes the game" and "Y no longer causes Z weird interaction", like it was a key issue.

Though it's really nice that they apparently fixed the thing where any kind of rapid un-equipping and re-equipping (loading into a new module, polymorphing) would briefly remove Enhancement Bonuses to casting stats and fuck up your memorised spells. And you no longer need a Java-based character creator to use non-core classes and stuff - for modules that already have such things on them.

[RelentlessImp]

PSO2 is so awesome it is coming to the Switch next year!

Only for Japan though. Because Sega hates money or something and thus refuses to release the game in the west. They did translate the game to english but only for South Asia then closed it after just a few years, wonder what went wrong there.

Short version: the company in charge of the South Asia version was authorized to make massive, sweeping changes to it (they're also the ones who translated it, not Sega). "Photon Arts" were changed to "Magic". Costumes had MASSIVE bonuses for a limited period of time after purchase, to the point where it could double or triple your damage output. Enemy HPs were raised in massive numbers so as to make costume bonuses required, and thus make you pay even more out the nose into their microtransactions. The player market was worse than Ship 2 for price hikes.

The SEA version was also inferior in every way, and up to 6 months behind on content updates.

[maglag]

I knew only about the delays (term changing too but I consider that normal) and I supposed it was just because they were taking their sweet time translating stuff (like the manga/anime industry), thanks for the info.

Twisting the game into a pay-to-win parody sounds like a recipe for failure, yes. Shame devs don't seem to understand lots of people will gladly pay for purely cosmetic changes.

Doubly so for PSO2 since they're constantly making collaborations with other franchises so your character can cosplay as somebody from Fate/Stay Night or magical girl series or whatever.

[RelentlessImp]

Doubly so for PSO2 since they're constantly making collaborations with other franchises so your character can cosplay as somebody from Fate/Stay Night or magical girl series or whatever.

I love these collaborations. My girl has the P5BestGirl outfit (Futaba Sakura) and it's glorious.

[hyzmarca]

So, Beamdog is releasing a Neverwinter Nights expanded edition, and I'm a bit baffled as to why.

For money, Voss. For money.

[RelentlessImp]

So, this game, In Verbis Virtus, apparently came out in 2014 but I didn't see it until just now. It's... a very interesting idea for a game. It's a first-person puzzle platformer in which you activate spells by holding down the left mouse button and speaking the words to it. The story is barebones as can be and told through flashbacks, and the setting is a desert temple that you crawl through while learning the Maha'kai language to speak spells.

For one thing, it puts me in mind of Arx Fatalis, which had a similar idea as to casting spells, but instead of speaking them you had to draw the sigils. I dunno, I'm kind of a sucker for unique magic systems in games, and what I've played of this so far is going to keep me coming back to see all the spells. So far I've unlocked a basic light spell, a beam of light, a Command that activates specific sigils, a telekinesis spell and a heal spell that requires you to be standing in water. Also, the game is pretty goddamned gorgeous for something based on Unreal in 2014. Here's an image someone else took.

Unfortunately I am terrible at puzzle plaformers, especially first-person, so I doubt I'll ever finish it, but a solid experience so far for $5.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Can anyone recommend good fallout 4 mods? I don't care about graphics and the standard big titteh mods look out of place in the game, but other than that I'm open to suggestions. Especially if sonething improves the dialogue system, I don't mind there being 4 choices but I'd like to know beforehand if I'm going to call someone a dumbass.

[Kaelik]

There's a mod that shows you the dialogue exactly what you will say, instead of the prompts.

It's better in that you will never be surprised when you pick something, and your character says something fucking stupid.

It's bad in that you will realize you never had a choice to begin with and that all four options were always the same.

[Stahlseele]

Also, there is a better building mod, for the base building mini game.

[Hadanelith]

Absolute basic mods to improve FO4:

Full Dialogue Interface:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1235/
This is the thing Kaelik is talking about

Sim Settlements:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21872
This mod lets you give your settlers vague orders and have THEM build the settlement. The idea is based on Sim City's 'zoning' mechanics. Lay down a residential plot, settler builds a house. Lay down a commercial, settler builds a shop. It's pretty dope, and there's a big expansion due out literally any day now.

Homemaker:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1478
A big pile of stuff for you to use if you want to do the settlement thing yourself.

Salvage Beacons:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18757
Make your settlers do something useful. Drop the beacon in a container, settlers come empty it out and bring it back to a settlement. Stop having to deal with carry weight and hauling around junk that's only good for crafting.

Unofficial FO4 Patch:
https://rd.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4598
Exactly what it says on the tin. Unfortunately less all-encompassing than previous unofficial patches, due to the way Bethesda updated the engine.

There are, of course, a billion mods on the Nexus. If you're looking for anything else specific, I can probably help you out.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'll have to try salvage beacons. I have the others except homemaker, makes things a lot easier. Now I need to get more settlers...

[Stahlseele]

If you build it, they will come!

[Judging__Eagle]

Salvage Beacons looks like a good quality of life mod.

A few "tricks" to getting more settlers in settlements

-First, you want lots of settlers to get the most benefits from settlements you've actually spent time and resources investing in by building Scrap Collection shelves & Businesses (mostly b/c both generate resources based on settlement population, either idle settlers, or total)

-The Cap on settlers in Settlements is Charisma based; however if your charisma lowers, settlers won't emigrate your settlements. You simply won't gain more settlers.
-You can send settlers from "collection points" where settlers regularly show up, to more established settlements you control.

-Minimum elements for a viable collection point settlement: All this really takes is a Radio Beacon (if you're really keen, a radio beacon in each corner of the build area for maximum coverage), sleeping bags, food plots (Plant: an even mix of Corn, Tatos, & Mutfruit, as they're the ingredients for the always consumed in crafting ingredient: Adhesive), water pumps, and as many Tier 2 gun turrets as you need to keep Defense > (Water + Food). Only put down as much as you need to attract settlers but no more than what you'd need for your "in the field" Charisma (~10, plus the Charisma score you have while adventuring)

-Red Rocket Gas Station, The Drive-In, Hangmans Alley, the Freeway Overpass Farm, and the Farm by the Army Reserve Base are a great "collection points" that tend to collect lots of settlers, (but geven enough time, all settlements will eventually attract enough settlers to reach cap)
-Settlements closer to the edges of the map don't often get a lot of population growth; this includes Sanctuary Hills

-If you equip a lot of +Cha gear, take +Cha drugs, drink a mix of Alcohols, you can empty out a settlement that has reached your baseline population capacity, and add them to a settlement that you want more settlers at with your boosted population capacity

-Ideally you'll have a large amount of "collecting" settlements in the middle of the map; and a small amount of "populated" settlements that you feel are good long term investments

Other notes:

-In FO4, settlements are actually a good way to get caps; which in turn you'll use to buy equipment & ammo. Food is mostly a waste of time to sell, and you'll need junk to build settlements (heck, junk becomes something you might even buy from NPCs, and haul out of the wasteland for the first time), but with +Cha gear/buffs Clean Water can make a decent profit with vendors. This barely matters once you're deep into the game, but early on it can spell the difference between having enough ammo to fight some enemies, resorting to melee, or running away. Additionally, settlement supplied water is a pretty good healing item if you're playing Survival mode

-Supply Lines: If you do it right, you're able to daisy-chain your settlements such that each settlement only has one settler assigned to being a Provisioner, and each settlement is linked with each other settlement

-You want supply lines if you want to develop settlements w/out having to haul scrap/junk/materials from settlement to settlement. Also, if you want to craft items in a settlement that's not your primary junk dump settlement.


Side notes:

Making your own storage systems:

Do other people end up creating their own storage of items outside of the workbenches themselves? I did so at first, but after a while I found that I don't store any weapons/armour inside my workbenches themselves.

Instead I set up a few cabinets in the garage by the Sanctuary workbench; and then stacked as many rows of footlockers as I could on top. A wide metal cabinet by the "outer" side, with 10-12 footlockers set atop for my weapons (i.e. each footlocker being used for different firearm types; the large cabinet for heavy weapons). And a stack of footlockers on a narrow cabinet on the "inner" side of the workbenches garage area (again, each locker holding different grades of armour; while the cabinet holds the legendary gear I'm not carrying).

I did this because looking through the workbench storage wasn't effective when I wanted to look for certain types of weapon/armour to equip my settlers to better defend my settlements. While the unmodded inventory system is purely alphabetical (I eventually got a mod for labelling all items better).

Fast Travel = Garbage:

Does anyone else feel that "Fast Travel" is sort of a waste of time, in-game, and in real-life? I've found that simply hiking/running between places was faster than waiting for the game to load the area I could fast travel to; while also not making the in-game clock race ahead.

In Skyrim, I found myself using fast travel about as often as regular movement, but in FO4 I ended up not using it at all.


FO4 encourages melee even more than Skyrim did:

The scarcity of ammo through most of the early gameplay made me resort of melee weapons &or using bayoneted weapon a lot more than I had expected in a Fallout game. In previous games, melee was something you'd use: at the very start b/c you had no (or almost no) ammo, if you had some melee-centric character build in mind (hahahaha! No. I even gave Sulik the 14mm heavy pistol in FO2 to keep them in ranged combat instead of melee, and the .223 pistol once I'd hit the lucrative gang encounters around New Reno; to sidestep their limitation of 'only' using SMGs).

Even later on, and with all kinds of heavily modded/legendary firearms, I found that I'd use melee quite a lot. Granted, the melee weapons I use now are legendaries with +50% damage vs certain enemy types; but it's not like I've ditched melee the way I would have even in my Skyrim game.

[Hadanelith]

If you want to have your settlements be serious money generators, you NEED Uncapped Settlement Surplus:
https://rd.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12430

Fast Travel is...contentious. I like having it for utility - considering the way the game will spawn new enemies behind you, just going back to town is a long, irritating process, especially when your inventory is full. Now, Salvage Beacons do help, but it's still kinda irritating. Lots of other people find it very immersion breaking. There are a variety of immersive fast travel options, from caravan travel between settlements, to craftable teleporters, to motorcycles, etc. But I'm not super sold on them. I also don't have your load time issue; I always found fast travel faster than running home.

I absolutely build managed storage in my settlements, especially my personal home base (the Red Rocket). Dumping everything into one container makes that one container very laggy; opening it and navigating it become very slow. It also makes you vulnerable to the mistake of hitting the 'take all' button, which can lead to five very irritating minutes of additional inventory management.

I basically never use melee. But then, I'm a long range, stealth sniper, energy weapon user. Physically hitting things? For the less scientifically and technologically advanced.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'll have to get that surplus uncapper.

I had my first settlement attack last night. My turrets killed all the Raiders before I found them so I'm assuming my defenses are good so far.

I do plan on getting all companions but so far I can't be arsed with most of them. The robot Butler stopped being funny after 15 minutes, Preston annoys me with constant quest requests, Piper needs to die in an aids fire, I don't know what Deacons deal is but he creeps me out and Strong gets in my damn way. I know there are more and I will give them a fair chance but at this point the dog is the best one. He even has glasses and a bandanna he can wear and if you can't enjoy that then fuck you.

[Hadanelith]

A word of warning: even if your settlement is completely covered in turrets, walled in with three layers of concrete, trenches, moats and barbed wire...if you don't show up to a settlement attack, it's up to RNG whether your settlers win or lose, and you CAN'T INFLUENCE THAT RNG. It's not uncommon for you to fast travel to a settlement under attack, and have all the enemies die basically instantly on load in - but RNGeesus save you if you don't bother to come.
Oh, and to mostly keep your settlement safe, you need Defense > Food + Water. It's not super hard to achieve, but it will keep the chances of attacks fairly low.
Additional note: some settlements can spawn attackers INSIDE the settlement borders, and therefore inside your laboriously constructed walls. Fear not! There's a mod to fix this:
https://rd.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27465

[Count Arioch the 28th]

From what I read you can get to 100% chance to repel attacks but it seems incredibly excessive (If settlers + defense score - (food + water)>100, you will have a 100% chance to be able to ignore attacks). I am not going to do that.

[hyzmarca]

-If you equip a lot of +Cha gear, take +Cha drugs, drink a mix of Alcohols, you can empty out a settlement that has reached your baseline population capacity, and add them to a settlement that you want more settlers at with your boosted population capacity

So, what you're saying is that the key to being a successful politician is to be well-dressed, high, and drunk.

That's good social comentary.

[Voss]

Eh. I don't really see the point. Settlements are a 'screw around if you feel like wasting time' 'feature' of the game.

The gameplay doesn't do a good job of being convincing that settlements are in any way worthwhile or even useful. Just a good place to pile shit, while you wait to level and unlock the ability to just make good weapons. I can't remember money or ammo ever being an issue past the first hour or so out in the world, and even then it's just a matter of switching weapons.

Does anyone else feel that "Fast Travel" is sort of a waste of time, in-game, and in real-life? I've found that simply hiking/running between places was faster than waiting for the game to load the area I could fast travel to; while also not making the in-game clock race ahead.

Not particularly- the load screens generally aren't that bad. The empty/pointless sections of the world map (which is most of it) are best skipped- the randumb encounters aren't exactly engaging. I've no idea why the in-game clock would ever matter.

As for storage, nope. Pointless. Just chuck everything in the general pool so it's easily accessed. The crappy inventory system is the same whether it's in there or in something else.

--

@Count- if that formula is actually true, it's trivial to achieve. Just spam low tier (non-powered) turrets- there isn't any reason to have really high food or water numbers.

The companions are largely terrible, until the robot dlc, at which point the 'bots are easily converted to upper-tier combatants, mostly through simple laser arms..