Company News Troika PA engine

[Volourn]

"Making glib comments about Troika's perceived weaknesses is in poor taste, especially if you haven't taken the time to watch the video."

Bullshit. What's poor taste is having the gall to protect a company that doesn't need protection. Troika is owned by grown ups. They don't need to be babied. One can like the video, and still blame Troika foir their problems and point out their weaknesses. Continue crying all you want; it won't change the facts.

 

[EEVIAC]

You forgot my personal favourite, Rex. From the KOTOR 2 readme :

• ------------
  Known Issues
  ------------
  
  --------------------
  Intermittent Crashes
  --------------------
  The game may freeze or crash to a blank screen if you play
  in one level for extended periods of time. This was typically
  seen when playing the game between thirty and forty minutes
  without transitioning to a new level or movie. We recommend
  that you save the game often to avoid losing progress if you
  encounter this issue.

 

[Sol Invictus]

That's a memory leak, yeah. I don't think anyone will have that problem because most people tend to save the game or transition enough for it not to happen. I'm surprised QA found it.

 

[dojoteef]

Someone probably took a lunch break and left the game running, then they came back and it had crashed.

 

[bryce777]

Empirical evidence denotes facts which can be substantiated.

You mean the fact that Black Isle fanbois have always been quite inventive when it comes to blaming other people, especially evil publishers, for the year long repeated failures of their idols? Shocking.

Or the fact that LionHeart had one good chapter and stucked ass afterwards and that people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Fallout2 was a bugridden rushed mess and people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Icewind Dale II was a rushjob cashcow and that people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Arcanum was a nice game but bugridden and unbalanced and that people blame Sierra for these shortcomings?

Or the fact that ToEE was released early, bug ridden as hell, sucky VO, bad writing and a decent engine and that people blame Atari for it?

Or the fact that Bloodlines had excellent writing hidden behind a face of technical problems and rushed last chapter and that people start blaming Activision for it?

Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong on these, because the sad part is, that even without sarcasm, all these are facts.

Or is it all lies spawned by the evil conspiracy against the great gods of fallout that I have been fed over the years?

In either event emperical evidence would not support the bulk of your paper thin sarcastic remarks.

Really, you should read my remarks again. And again .... Ah, you know what, maybe not, I don't think it will help. Maybe touching yourself with rats and fallout disks helps?

but I fail to see what being an owner of a copy of Lionheart has to do with anything.

Apparently not the only thing you fail to see.

MYSTARY -- Dun-dun-dun.

Ahh, obligatory "insider" joke. Nice. 100 l33t points.

What kind of stupid statement is that?

Do I have to spell it out for you? Probably...

(I did borrow a friend's copy)

Friend. You. Sure.

Well, you might want to realize that different companies developed all these games, at least.

 

[dojoteef]

Okay there is one thing about the publishers fucking over the developers that I think most people are missing/ignoring. I have yet to hear the publisher's side of the story in most cases. It tends to be a one-dimensional story in a two dimensional space. Most of the time, that would mean the story is incomplete. That is all folks.

 

[Seven]

Empirical evidence denotes facts which can be substantiated.

You mean the fact that Black Isle fanbois have always been quite inventive when it comes to blaming other people, especially evil publishers, for the year long repeated failures of their idols? Shocking.

Or the fact that LionHeart had one good chapter and stucked ass afterwards and that people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Fallout2 was a bugridden rushed mess and people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Icewind Dale II was a rushjob cashcow and that people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Arcanum was a nice game but bugridden and unbalanced and that people blame Sierra for these shortcomings?

Or the fact that ToEE was released early, bug ridden as hell, sucky VO, bad writing and a decent engine and that people blame Atari for it?

Or the fact that Bloodlines had excellent writing hidden behind a face of technical problems and rushed last chapter and that people start blaming Activision for it?

Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong on these, because the sad part is, that even without sarcasm, all these are facts.

Or is it all lies spawned by the evil conspiracy against the great gods of fallout that I have been fed over the years?

In either event emperical evidence would not support the bulk of your paper thin sarcastic remarks.

Really, you should read my remarks again. And again .... Ah, you know what, maybe not, I don't think it will help. Maybe touching yourself with rats and fallout disks helps?

but I fail to see what being an owner of a copy of Lionheart has to do with anything.

Apparently not the only thing you fail to see.

MYSTARY -- Dun-dun-dun.

Ahh, obligatory "insider" joke. Nice. 100 l33t points.

What kind of stupid statement is that?

Do I have to spell it out for you? Probably...

(I did borrow a friend's copy)

Friend. You. Sure.

I won't bother responding to your stupidity on a point by point basis. First off Interplay owned BIS, so BIS couldn't just go to another publisher and they didn't have the luxury of choosing projects (especially since they were the back bone of the company). They got milked and they got milked big time. SO get a clue. Another thing Interplay is famous for not paying out of house devs. You don't pay your devs and quality suffers, so lay the blame where it lies. As for the rest of your facts you can go collect your own "empirical evidence" because I don't have the time not the inclination to hold your hand and lead you through your errors.

You still haven't explained why you would assume that I own a copy of Lionheart nor how that affects anything. And as for your accusations that I'm a warzer. Well all I have to say to that is fuck off you whiny ill-informed pussy.

 

[bryce777]

Okay there is one thing about the publishers fucking over the developers that I think most people are missing/ignoring. I have yet to hear the publisher's side of the story in most cases. It tends to be a one-dimensional story in a two dimensional space. Most of the time, that would mean the story is incomplete. That is all folks.

Well, it is always speculative - you have a good point. Sometimes if you throw money at a project that wont help even a little. I think pool of radiance 2 and lionheart are definitely in that category, and so was moo 3. They just went haywire and designed stupid games. The only solution would be to start over with a different team. Also, IWD was what it was designed to be; its problems had nothing to do with bugs.

On the other hand fallout 2 was patched and besides the car trunk bug I noticed no bugs anyhow, and it was a fantastic game. People who go on about fallout 2 and arcanum being buggy are just morons. Ok so realtime does not work like you might expect...give me a break. that hardly killed the game.

For toee, 99% of the problems would have been simple fixes and so yes I think a lot of blame should go to atari for not funding a patch.

For bloodlines, they are using a high end engine so there should be no shock to anyone it does not run well on low end machines or with cards that dont have good drivers.

When things tighten in an industry, though, stuff gets released halfassed, or canceled entirely and companies close. I dont think it was some massive incompetence on troika's part for instance...it's just the way the cookie crumbles, and likely the next hit will come from some of the same people who have worked on troika games, eventually.

 

[Volourn]

"For toee, 99% of the problems would have been simple fixes and so yes I think a lot of blame should go to atari for not funding a patch."

Huh? As I recall, TOEE had patches. Patches cannot fix TOEE's problems.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Sometimes if you throw money at a project that wont help even a little. I think pool of radiance 2 and lionheart are definitely in that category, and so was moo 3.

I don't know about POR2, and you're correct about MOO3, but you're absolutely wrong about Lionheart. Interplay screwed Reflexive over because they stopped paying for the mile stones mid-development and simply expected Reflexive to finish up their work and shove it out the door. They didn't even put much money into the game to begin with.

 

[MarFish]

Try getting your facts straight, MarFish

Or the fact that LionHeart had one good chapter and stucked ass afterwards and that people blame Interplay?

Fact: Interplay cut funding to Lionheart mid-development (presumeably to fund FOBOS) and refused to pay Reflexive for their work. They released the game unfinished. Who would you blame, if not Interplay?

Where did I say something else?

 

[MarFish]

I won't bother responding to your stupidity on a point by point basis.

I never would have expected that. You refused to deal with the truth from the beginning. And you refused to read proplery - I never said that i.e. Interplay wasn't to blame, your Fallout addicted mind made that up. Sorry, if anyone is stupid here, it's you.

And as for your accusations that I'm a warzer.

I didn't say that either - you made it up. If anything I questioned that you had any friends. Just another evidence that people like you go into defensive mode without even understanding or reading the posts they are responding to. I'd call it the Fallout Fallen Hero Syndrome.

 

[MarFish]

Well, you might want to realize that different companies developed all these games, at least.

I never said differently - my point was somewhere else...

 

[Sol Invictus]

Try getting your facts straight, MarFish

Or the fact that LionHeart had one good chapter and stucked ass afterwards and that people blame Interplay?

Fact: Interplay cut funding to Lionheart mid-development (presumeably to fund FOBOS) and refused to pay Reflexive for their work. They released the game unfinished. Who would you blame, if not Interplay?

Where did I say something else?

I was under the assumption that you were being sarcastic when you said people blamed Interplay for Lionheart. They did, well, at least some of them did. Interplay deserved the blame, because Interplay was the reason Lionheart was unfinished, not Reflexive.

After all, you did cite several other examples of people blaming the publisher for things the publisher doesn't deserve the blame for.

 

[MarFish]

Try getting your facts straight, MarFish

Or the fact that LionHeart had one good chapter and stucked ass afterwards and that people blame Interplay?

Fact: Interplay cut funding to Lionheart mid-development (presumeably to fund FOBOS) and refused to pay Reflexive for their work. They released the game unfinished. Who would you blame, if not Interplay?

Where did I say something else?

I was under the assumption that you were being sarcastic when you said people blamed Interplay for Lionheart. They did, well, at least some of them did. Interplay deserved the blame, because Interplay was the reason Lionheart was unfinished, not Reflexive.

After all, you did cite several other examples of people blaming the publisher for things the publisher doesn't deserve the blame for.

I can see where you would get that impression, certainly, and it's part of the point that had to be made. The other part however was to demonstrate that people here jump still on the defensive bandwagon when someone seems to scratch on the image of their heroes, after all these years.

 

[Seven]

I never would have expected that. You refused to deal with the truth from the beginning. And you refused to read proplery - I never said that i.e. Interplay wasn't to blame, your Fallout addicted mind made that up. Sorry, if anyone is stupid here, it's you.

No you stupid cunt, you never said it, but you certainly implied it:

I would say evidence points more into the "given the majority of Lionheart, the game could have turned out really crappy" direction.

See a pattern?

Lion Heart -One good chapter, Abysmal story, technical crap - "Interplay forced them!"
Fallout 2 - Buggridden like hell - "Interplay forced them "
Icewind Dale II - Squeezed and rushed cashcow - "Interplay forced them"
Arcanum - decent world, neat story, bugridden, broken rules system - "Sierra cut funding"
ToEE - Bugridden, horrible execution, decent engine - "Atari forced them"
Bloodlines - Excellent writing, bugridden, rushed - "Activision killed them!"
KotOR II - Ambitious story, great characters, rushed and full of plot holes and technical problems - "Lucasarts rushed it".

How about stop assuming that creating a good game 10 years ago is a lifetime blessing that will result in excellent games unless some evil force prevents it?

In your initial post you tried use sarcasm to remove the blame from the publishers and place it on the devs, which is just unfair especially in the case of BIS which was controlled by Interplay. And as for me not reading properly, well I think it's more a case of you trying to pass bullshit off as "empirical evidence."

You also implied that Interplay wasn't to blame in this post:

You mean the fact that Black Isle fanbois have always been quite inventive when it comes to blaming other people, especially evil publishers, for the year long repeated failures of their idols? Shocking.

Or the fact that LionHeart had one good chapter and stucked ass afterwards and that people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Fallout2 was a bugridden rushed mess and people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Icewind Dale II was a rushjob cashcow and that people blame Interplay?

Or the fact that Arcanum was a nice game but bugridden and unbalanced and that people blame Sierra for these shortcomings?

Or the fact that ToEE was released early, bug ridden as hell, sucky VO, bad writing and a decent engine and that people blame Atari for it?

Or the fact that Bloodlines had excellent writing hidden behind a face of technical problems and rushed last chapter and that people start blaming Activision for it?

Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong on these, because the sad part is, that even without sarcasm, all these are facts.

Or is it all lies spawned by the evil conspiracy against the great gods of fallout that I have been fed over the years?

Oh yeah stupid me, how could I have assumed that you weren't trying to divest Interplay of blame.

Nowhere do you make a credable post. Everything that you've posted thus far has been mostly sarcastic remarks condemning devs while ignoring the context or their relationships with publishers. So please don't start crying the hooker with the heart of gold now that you've dug yourself a hole.

I didn't say that either - you made it up. If anything I questioned that you had any friends. Just another evidence that people like you go into defensive mode without even understanding or reading the posts they are responding to. I'd call it the Fallout Fallen Hero Syndrome.

Oh wow, another whiny cunt who shows up on the codex who thinks he can make generalizations about posters. So you didn't imply that I was a warezer just that I had no friends; I bet you have some sort of empirical evidence to back this up too, right?

Well, you might want to realize that different companies developed all these games, at least.

I never said differently - my point was somewhere else...

Yeah, your point was that you make generalizations without backing it up.

I can see where you would get that impression, certainly, and it's part of the point that had to be made. The other part however was to demonstrate that people here jump still on the defensive bandwagon when someone seems to scratch on the image of their heroes, after all these years.

What the hell is this, another no more free rides post? Well in case you haven't noticed people have been plenty critical of BIS, Trioka, Obsidian, Reflexsive and other devs. What we don't due is blame people indiscriminantly through straw man arguments. Heros hugh? Why don't you browse some old threads and look at some of the flak that the so called heros have taken over the past months. Once again you're making bullshit assumptions, but I'm sure you have "empirical evidence " to back it up.

 

[bryce777]

"For toee, 99% of the problems would have been simple fixes and so yes I think a lot of blame should go to atari for not funding a patch."

Huh? As I recall, TOEE had patches. Patches cannot fix TOEE's problems.

Oh come on, give me a break. You have seen that bug thread.

You also must know that they officially only pated about 10 minor problems. The only way the game is playable is with the multitude of fan patches, and it still has some very annoying problems.

 

[Volourn]

Fixing bugs would not make combat challenging, would not give the npcs personality, would not make the story even half interetsing. So, no, all the bug patching in the world would not make it a good game.

 

[MarFish]

I never would have expected that. You refused to deal with the truth from the beginning. And you refused to read proplery - I never said that i.e. Interplay wasn't to blame, your Fallout addicted mind made that up. Sorry, if anyone is stupid here, it's you.

No you stupid cunt, you never said it, but you certainly implied it:

Ahh, the fanboi resorts to childish insults. pwnd.

What the hell is this, another no more free rides post?

Congratulations, it took you quite long to figure that out. But then again you could just have stopped reading imaginary posts instead. I can see why you have no friends.

 

[Mech]

Him calling you a stupid cunt was pretty refreshing when I read it, can't blame him for it.

 

[MarFish]

Him calling you a stupid cunt was pretty refreshing when I read it, can't blame him for it.

Well, since reading it is probably as close as you will ever get to that subject, I can't blame you for being refreshed.

 

[M0rphz0rz]

Fixing bugs would not make combat challenging, would not give the npcs personality, would not make the story even half interetsing. So, no, all the bug patching in the world would not make it a good game.

The shallow NPCs & the non-existant story can't be fixed with a patch, that's right. However, the combat could be MUCH more challenging if the buggy enemy AI was fixed. And one of the Co8 guys is actually working on that right now, he's already vastly improved the spellcaster AI.

 

[Jinxed]

That doesn't come without a price. Did you atcually finish ToEE with their changes? While it improves some things, it makes other utterly ridiculous. The entire spellcaster roster of ToEE would have to be redone depending on which ones they are. This is a guess but I think what they did was apply a general spellcaster AI to everyone who can cast spells, while this works in some situations, it ruins other ones like I mentioned.

 

[Trash]

Damn, that engine was pretty. All the more sadness comes when one sees that Troika was indeed making a pa game before they presumably died...sigh. Still, I'd like to hear something from Troika itself, though it indeed seems that they are gone/going. Lets hope this rpg famine will soon cease.

 

[M0rphz0rz]

That doesn't come without a price. Did you atcually finish ToEE with their changes? While it improves some things, it makes other utterly ridiculous. The entire spellcaster roster of ToEE would have to be redone depending on which ones they are. This is a guess but I think what they did was apply a general spellcaster AI to everyone who can cast spells, while this works in some situations, it ruins other ones like I mentioned.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? Let me rephrase this, do you even know what you're talking about? Maybe you should look up the relevant thread on the Co8 board before jumping to conclusions. It's possible to assign different AI patterns to each spellcaster depending on the situation, and that's exactly what the modder in question is planning on doing. While the whole thing is still a work in progress, the changes do sound very promising. The modder's aim is to make the combats more challenging, but not downright impossible. I don't see what's so "ridiculous" about this, but maybe you can enlighten me?

Currently, enemy spellcasters often cast useless spells on their allies (like, enlarge person on a ranged fighter) and even sometimes cast beneficial spells on YOUR PARTY. That is about to be fixed as well. Wanna complain about this too?