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Pantaloons, not pantalones. And the brass ones were pantalettes. What do titanium pantaloons do?

I already know that. Sigh. You'd have a Big Metal Unit wearing titanium pantaloons.

Controller? Nope, still the basic PS1 controller with features from the N64 and the new Wii controller.

That's because the PS1 controller is perfect the way it is. Thank god they're not going to mess with it. The PS1 controller is the only controller since the SNES where you can press any two buttons simultaneously. The only thing annoying about it is pressing the diagonal buttons simultaneously. But at least that's still possible!

Have you ever tried playing Soul Calibur 2 on a GameCube pad? You throw by pressing X and B at the same time. There is another button between these two so you'd have to be a fucking contortionist to pull that off. http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/bgda/help/control lers/gccontf.jpg

This is why, when given the choice, all the respectable players in a fighting game tournament (Tekken, Soul Calibur, Third Strike, etc) prefer the PS version of the game.

Indeed, and where were the extra charges to fans when Carmack released GLQuake or when Black Isle released an entire supplementary expansion to Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter for free with Trials of the Luremaster.

I'm convinced it was a strikingly different mentality on the basis of which these games continued to be developed subsequent to release.

Surely by playing free content released on the basis of mere good will towards the fans, we were stealing in some way. Where do I turn myself in?

You laugh, but if you ask me, it sounds like they're already using miniature giant space hamsters (pic).

In which case, I do hope they're careful.
It's best not to underestimate Giant Space Hamsters in general.

Granted, star control 2 had some of the best mod's to ever grace my ears. more recently, however, the baldur's gate series, planescape torment, system shock 2, the fallouts, and the "newer" lucasarts adventures like grim fandango or curse of monkey island all have tunes permanently lodged in my brain. if you think all video game music has to be dull, lifeless, or uninspired, please do yourself a favour and buy these games or leech their soundtracks.

inertplay had, up until a short while ago, an online mp3 collection of the soundtracks to a good chunk of the games they put out. not sure why the page was taken down.. used to be here .. anyone know what happened to it?

Have you actually fixed an astrolabe?

I can even point you in the right direction... Icewind Dale, fourth level of Labelas Tower in the Severed Hand... See?

Take that, Mr. humanities/social sciences editor guy!

I decided a couple weeks ago that I'd actually do some prep for Neverwinter Nights by leading a character through BG1 and BG2 and importing it into NWN when I pick it up. So now I'm playing through BG1 with TeamBG's terrific Dark Side of the Sword Coast , and I already have BG2 prepped with The Darkest Day replacing Throne of Bhaal (sorry ending, which David Gaider and some of the other guys at Bioware have redone out of dissatisfaction as the Ascension mod). That should get me through to NWN quite nicely (and get me a damn powerful character from the get-go). My only regret is that I'm going to lose the ability to mutate the pantaloons.

I have no idea why this series is being knocked. As a role-player of over twenty years' standing, I think that the BG series is an admirable effort to bring a tabletop feel to a CRPG, which is where the Ultima series falls slightly short. And to the guy who said that he finished BG in forty hours, how about doing some of the side quests? Right now, I've put in over forty hours and am still in Chapter Three, with only about half the maps done.

Bring on Neverwinter Nights.

First, I do not keep a television in my apartment. I simply do not watch TV. Instead I spend my time keeping up on the news or playing games requiring a little intelligence.

At work I listen to 700 WLW most of the day, which further keeps me informed. Additionally, Mike McConnel and Bill Cunningham give excellent, right-leaning commentary.

I think part of the problem deals with the visual fixation of our culture. Everyone I've discussed this tragedy with talks about seeing the towers collapse again and again and again on TV. I was at work when we first heard a plane had hit the World Trade Center. (I initially thought a Cessna had gone off course or something. I wish that would have been the case.) Until I got home at six, I hand't seen a single visual image, even though most of the day's story had already developed.

I watched the video of the impact and collapse once from each angle, and watched video of the President's speeches. Other than that, I avoid looking for video (or even audio) links from the news sites. I would much prefer a long text story (or a three hour radio program), which requires actual reporting and/or intelligent thought or opinion.

I guess my point is that I try to be informed of as much as I can (be it politics, foreign affairs or tech news), but avoid the "oh look, shiny things" mentality of much of our TV news.

One last thing: I applaud most of the major news sites for pulling their ads in response to this tragedy. Of course, I don't think too many companies want their brand associated with terrorist attacks.

This was posted on PlanetBaldursGate on Monday, April 17 of last year.

Dave's background: There are many more fields in building a computer game than programming alone, Bandit. I would suspect that over three-quarters of the people who work here wouldn't know what to do with a line of code if they were handed one.

Aside from the programmers, we've got artists (besides the computer artists, I know that some of them have backgrounds as comic book artists and graphic design... although it helps to know how to use the graphic editors, it's not always necessary to get hired if the talent is there), animators (most of the animators here have specific animation education backgrounds, I believe) and designers (which includes game designers, writers and scripters... with most of us being a blend of the three).

I, myself, am on the design team as a designer/writer (although I now do some scripting, as well... a bit different from programming as the programmers build the game editors that scripters use to put the game pieces together). I got involved in the business in a strange way, I guess. I used to manage a hotel before I came here... I just had a hobby where I ran a PBM (play-by-mail) RPG that I had designed. Bioware was looking for designers who had designed their own game (and finished it... an important distinction), and a friend of mine who was playing my game happened to work here. He offered my game to Greg and Ray to look at and they asked me to give some writing samples for a job. I had no intention of applying (it was nice, but I had a career in the hotel industry at the time) until the next day (this is where it gets weird) a company came in and bought my hotel and I was given three months severance (they always let the GMs go on a takeover). So I thought, "Well, why not?" and gave Ray and Greg some samples of writing I had done as well as the first few chapters of a book I was writing on the side. They liked it and voila, here I am.

It's true that some companies only promote people to game designers from within, but Bioware works on games that require a lot of design and writing (hey, a million words doesn't come from nowhere) so they have hired people just for these jobs alone. They tend to require people to have scripting skills as well as creative writing skills (instead of learning the scripting as I have), but having talent doesn't hurt. There are a lot of other designers here who write great and learned their scripting skills along the way beside myself.

So there are a lot of different ways to get into the business, I suppose.


The "one million words" may refer to Planescape: Torment, which supposedly had over a million words of dialogue in it.

The produce for Icewind Dale, J.E. Sawyer, used to be a webmaster for Interplay or Black Isle.

Oh, and the two people who founded Bioware (the company that made BG2) are both doctors in Canada who just decided to start a game company.

I'm seen this question asked many times, and more often than not someone at a game company (like Bioware) simply says, "Send us a resume, we do hire people in the normal way."

~Moller