203 replies to this topic

[Sein_Schatten]

Care to explain how "good chance" means "100% chance"?

EDIT: Incidentally, I don't recall ever experiencing such a problem in Bloodlines...

do you mean me? what has your answer anything to do with my question? my quote was not based on  bloodlines anyway.

a bug (well, not all. only a certain type. for example some programs wont work with a laptop, those are excluded. ) is independend of hardware. how it is possible that the cpu type has any influence with a bug like "key x wont work with door x"?
i should have quoted only the last sentence.

Edited by Sein_Schatten, 02 April 2005 - 06:58 AM.

[NiGHTMARE]

Quoting only the last sentence would have meant you'd have made even less sense, since the wide variety of hardware combinations is the biggest problem in eliminating bugs from games.

I still don't understand how you could conclude that my post in anyway implied "all bugs are caused by hardware incompatabilities". What I actually said was that there's a "good chance" any given bug will be caused by hardware incompatabilities, which is far from the same thing.

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 02 April 2005 - 07:11 AM.

[Sein_Schatten]

game stopping bugs like
1. vampire bloodline crashes when playing a soundfile. (do a search in gamebanshee forum for zhao crash. [i didnt alter any of the sound files!])
2. reloading several times to reset the area to open the shit door in the kill xao quest.
3. countless bugs in arcanum.
4. diablo2.

all the bugs are plain software bugs and some of them are showstopper. so with good testing they are ought to show up. and that has nothing to do with vast variation in hardware.


but maybe i missunderstood your post.     

[NiGHTMARE]

As I said, "good chance it'll be caused by hardware" does not mean "100% chance it'll be caused by hardware".

[Sein_Schatten]

What I actually said was that there's a "good chance" any given bug will be caused by hardware incompatabilities, which is far from the same thing.

ack, the third edit.

and i said i dont understand how that is possible. its not that the program is altered by the hardware. there are hardware issues, thats undiscussable.

[Sein_Schatten]

As I said, "good chance it'll be caused by hardware" does not mean "100% chance it'll be caused by hardware".

hu, running in circles.
it is my understanding only certain bugs like graphic glitches or so are caused by hardware. bugs like "person x is invincible after you do sidequest y in a certain way" are independed of hardware. that only a certain amount of people may encounter that error has different reasons. mainly their playing style and outcome and order of all the situation the game throws at you.

[CamDawg]

What was the thread topic again?

[NiGHTMARE]

and i said i dont understand how that is possible. its not that the program is altered by the hardware. there are hardware issues, thats undiscussable.

Games obviously have to communicate with the hardware, be it the CD drive, hard drive, CPU, memory, sound card, graphics card, or whatever. Plus, the hardware then usually has to communicate with other pieces of hardware, e.g. hard drive -> memory -> CPU. Of course I strongly suspect you know all that .

Anyway, since all pieces of hardware are not identical (graphics cards, for instance, can vary wildly), and even the same piece of hardware usually has several driver versions, this can cause big problem... though fortunately DirectX makes compatability issues much easier for programmes to handle.

Still, while a certain line of code may be fine on the machines it was written and tested on, there are all sorts of things that could theoretically (and often do) go wrong. For example, the game may try to utilize a function your hardware does not support, either in part or in full, e.g. your graphics card is not 100% OpenGL 14.0 or DirectX 9.0 compatible.

An example of a serious bug which only shows up on certain hardware:

"When playing Star Wards Knight of the Old Republic II on an All-in-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro, you may experience the following issues:

- The game may crash to desktop after displaying the introduction movies when using the manufacturer CD driver."

it is my understanding only certain bugs like graphic glitches or so are caused by hardware. bugs like "person x is invincible after you do sidequest y in a certain way" are independed of hardware. that only a certain amount of people may encounter that error has different reasons. mainly their playing style and outcome and order of all the situation the game throws at you.

Hardware related bugs may only be a certain type of bug, but they are a major and frequently encountered type of a bug. What you also seem to be forgetting is that "person x is invincible after you do sidequest y in a certain way" is a specific type of bug, i.e. a gameplay-related bug, as well.

I would say that hardware-related bugs are both more common and tend to be more serious (i.e. crashes, blue screens, freezes and lock-ups) than gameplay-related bugs. Of course just because they're common, doesn't neccessarily mean you personally will encounter them very often .

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 02 April 2005 - 08:12 AM.

[CamDawg]

What was the thread topic again?

[SimDing0]

my "member" is 1725cm long

[Grunker]

What was the thread topic again?

my "member" is 1725cm long

Unopposed by the careless fact that for some reason the spoiled eggs doesn't seem to hurt the inquisitor... I don't know... Maybe I'm just going to drink it anyways, maybe black.

Anybody want some kender-stew?

[SConrad]

What was the thread topic again?

[Archmage Silver]

Badly off-topic... ahh, the variety of topics is great. Sim's comments have their usual... elegance.

[Ebon]

What was the thread topic again?

Errgh, I don't think spamming would do anything more than just spam... I say yell. I say yell. Yell. Remind! Scream!!! DESTROY!!!!! .
End.

It was about "Baldur's Gate III, part 2: Rambling about a new horizon..". Perhaps the best game ever.....

Edited by Ebon, 02 April 2005 - 01:50 PM.

[BallOfFire]

Lol... Staying on topic is for order freaks =P. Anyway, it is conceivable that a good player would haul around Edwin and an evil player would have Minsc and Jaheria. If this were real life, you wouldn't be able to look at Edwin's character sheet and shout AH HE'S CHAOTIC EVIL KILL HIM KILL HIM! If you needed his talent, you could use him for the greater good. And he would stick around for the loot (I think either he or Korgan even says that's the only reason he's helping you).

[Kish]

Lol...  Staying on topic is for order freaks =P.  Anyway, it is conceivable that a good player would haul around Edwin and an evil player would have Minsc and Jaheria.  If this were real life, you wouldn't be able to look at Edwin's character sheet and shout AH HE'S CHAOTIC EVIL KILL HIM KILL HIM!

Except, in BG1, Edwin introduces himself by offering to hire you to murder an innocent. And--more importantly--the only way he actually promises you a year of service is if you do kill Dynaheir for him.

[Tom]

Except, in BG1, Edwin introduces himself by offering to hire you to murder an innocent.  And--more importantly--the only way he actually promises you a year of service is if you do kill Dynaheir for him.

Bah, hes a good guy

[BallOfFire]

Lol...  Staying on topic is for order freaks =P.  Anyway, it is conceivable that a good player would haul around Edwin and an evil player would have Minsc and Jaheria.  If this were real life, you wouldn't be able to look at Edwin's character sheet and shout AH HE'S CHAOTIC EVIL KILL HIM KILL HIM!

Except, in BG1, Edwin introduces himself by offering to hire you to murder an innocent. And--more importantly--the only way he actually promises you a year of service is if you do kill Dynaheir for him.

Ok bad example. But sometimes I'd be adventuring with an NPC and go to his character sheet to level him and find out he was evil when I thought he was good or good when I thought he was evil. Or more commonly, neutral when I expected good or evil. But even if it was apparent to a good person that someone is evil, they still might drag them along to help them out if they need it, if they both have something to gain from it. Wow that was a lot of ambiguous pronouns.

[Merlinfmct87]

Gah.

I can't say I've played Bloodlines; I can say I've seen a lot of the dialogue from it, and it's godawful--much worse than NWN could ever be.

The voice acting, imo is fantastic and more than makes up for any bad dialogue (eg the conversation with gary looks terrible on paper but the voice actor makes it truly memorable) . In NWN I cringed every time I heard a voice as the voice acting imo was sub-par but in VTMB I couldn't wait for the next conversation with some of the npcs. Some of the dialogue choices were horrible ("if im not back in 10 minutes call the president") but on a whole the conversations with the npcs were quite well done.

The biggest issue with bloodlines imo was it was riddled with bugs and it needed a powerful computer to run it well

For me, Planescape: Torment defined voice acting. Yes, it was sparse, but when it showed up, IT SHOWED UP!

Plus Morte was hilarious, the actor for him mastered delivery.

Back on topic, what about Jaheria?

She said she was royalty, remember? We could uncover more about her past... or how she joined the Harpers.

Merlin

Edited by Merlinfmct87, 03 April 2005 - 11:34 PM.