You really think those were great? Wintermaul Wars maybe, because of the unique aspect of team vs team tower defense, but overall I think just about any stand-alone Tower Defense game is better than the Warcraft III ones. They were so unbalanced. Some versions of the maps may have been unbalanced back in early the days of WC3, but they are really good now. D865 Motherboard Drivers there. They are still updating EleTD and a lot of the other popular ones.

EleTD is great because it has 100+ different towers, most of them do really unique things. It has a ton of re-playability and various options to make it easier/harder depending on how good you are at it. Skibi TD is a really neat mix of a tower defense game and a Mario party game, also it can be played co-op. Having mini games between waves of mobs to earn extra money is a really fun mechanic. There are also just a lot of high quality TD maps like GemTD, LegionTD, GreenTD, AzureTD, Power Towers, etc. So you have a lot of choices if you don't like one. I used to test video games for a living, and now I find that when I play games, I intentionally play *very* nice with them, because I want to experience the game as it was intended to be played instead of exploiting whatever thing I noticed.

Do you guys notice that you play games with conscious effort to exploit / not exploit / break the game / not break the game? Is this a result of your design experience, or just your natural gamer progression? == got here on #67 == --------- I asked a similar question to this one in the KoL radio thread, but expanding to all video games and not just KoL: What's your favorite system that you've ever encountered in a video game?

For me, and I know a TON of people hated this, but I absolutely loved the way that magic worked in FF8. I also think that the general character control in the Assassin's Creed games is goddamned beautiful (which is like 50% credit given to the amazing camera - something I don't think most people truly appreciate the difficulty of programming). --------- Do you play scary games? What was the scariest? For me, I was playing Silent Hill 2, and when I got to the bottom of the staircase at the boathouse (that took literally 5 minutes to walk down), and I saw the door to hell from the cutscenes, I said, 'Fuck this game,' threw the controller across the room, turned off the game (without saving), and then didn't play for a solid week. Eventually I picked it back up and finished it, but that was a watershed moment for my video gaming experience - I realized just how powerful a brilliantly executed horror game could be.

--------- How do you feel about Mass Effect 3? On the one hand, it's really awesome that so many of the things you did in ME1 and ME2 effect the story arc of ME3, and on the other hand, it's totally bullshit that in order to have a best case scenario in ME3 you have to go back and play ME1 and ME2 in super-spoilery mode in order to set up all the story stuff that can show up in ME3 without fucking yourself over. I think I would feel differently if there was a way to load up an old ME1 game after I beat the game and go find all my side quests that I missed, but because the game locks you out of galaxy exploration from the moment you go to the final planet until the very end of the game, I can't do that (mostly because I wasn't psychic and able to say 'I should save the game now because this is where the final mission starts'). So I'm playing ME1 and ME2 over again, completely. These games just aren't nearly as fun when you have to follow a script in order to unlock a lot of stuff 80 hours of play farther down the line. --------- Totally not a video games question, but have you guys seen? I'm pretty sure you would love it.

Model: Perennial Plant, Nitrogen and. Decomposition Submodels. Recommended Citation. Lommen, PW, Wilkin, DC. Programming Phase of Water Response Ecosystem Model: Perennial Plant, Nitrogen and. Decomposition Submodels. International Biological Program, Desert Biome,. Aug 21, 2012. I also think that the general character control in the Assassin's Creed games is goddamned beautiful (which is like 50% credit given to the amazing camera - something I don't think most people truly appreciate the difficulty of programming). --------- Do you play scary games? What was the scariest?

I have a question about your preferences, as players and game-designers, regarding 'player skill' versus 'character skill.' Obviously for puzzle games or some old-school arcade games and such, the skill of you as a player is the main factor in how well you do in the game. In other cases, like an RPG/JRPG, or in certain kinds of action games, your character earns new abilities and as a result, you can overcome more 'difficult' challenges without necessarily becoming a 'better' player, but just by 'grinding' your character's skill to a higher level. Most games strike a good balance between these two approaches, but once in a while, something throws me for a loop. Skyrim's lockpicking is an example - I like that having enough lockpicks and patience means that you can open any lock if you try long enough, but sometimes I just want to skip the stupid mini-game once I have a skeleton key and 100 skill. Binding of Issac is another good example, in that it inverts the expectation of your typical zelda-esque dungeon crawl by making player skill far more important than any inherent abilities of your character, since the 'power ups' are so inconsistent. Or recently, I've been playing Assassin's Creed, which is sometimes frustrating because even though my character is some sort of uber-skilled assassin, I still routinely get my ass kicked just because I can't get the timing right on those 'click just as your enemy swings' and 'click a second time right when your weapon connects' combo moves.

So yeah - as designers and players, what are your thoughts on the balance of player skill versus character skill, and how that balanced affects how 'good' a game is? Hey VG Hot Doggers, What's your take on re releases of video games on newer systems? I am a big fan of Skies of Arcadia release on Gamecube, they added in a few extra things not affecting overall story line and reduced the frequency of the random encounters, but I was not a supporter of the FFIV release on the DS it seemed like the 3d graphics were too big of a change for me. Feel free to call me a huge idiot for saying that but it seemed to change it too much from the game I grew up playing. When guys pick girl characters, the reason I usually hear is: If I'm gonna stare at a butt the whole game (in third person games) I want it to be a girl's butt. You have to be a girl to be a mage/healer/elf in this game.

The female voice actor is better. It's more interesting to have a woman in this story. I want to get the game's lesbian scene (yea gurl). I tend to go with the 'it's more interesting to have a woman in this story' - I thought it was cool to have a female commander Shepard being a tough military badass. I tend to go male if the game is not story centric. Quote: “Onomatopoeic,” she’d discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the noise of the thing they were describing, like cuckoo.

But she thought there should be a word meaning a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn’t, but would if it did. Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it’d go glint! Just thought that was neat, though unfortunately he doesn't try to actually coin a word for it.

Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Assassin's Creed 3, or Resident Evil 6? God damn I wish I had more money (and more time, which amounts to the same thing, or so I've heard). ------ What's the best card game in a video game ever? I really like FF8's card game, and I also really like the deck-building element of Armageddon Empires. ------ Best real card game?

I know this isn't a video game question, but it is a game question! I super-totally-crazy loved the Star Wars Collectible Card Game. I'd play that right now if any of my friends didn't think I was nuts. Also, since the KoL game isn't out yet, you're not allowed to say that as your answer. ------ What would a game of the Mars Rover Curiosity be like? Would it start out in 640x480 black and white, and only get hi-res color graphics in level 2?

Or would the first level be a nearly impossible to execute landing sequence? Maybe you'd issue a command and then have to wait 6 minutes to see it happen? Would the whole goal be to 'touch a rock?' Can you get the guys who made 'Don't shit your pants' to make this game? I believe that every assignment has been playable on a PC and either a Mac or a console, even if only by emulation.

That rules out PS2 / gamecube games for the most part. Part of the point of an assignment is that most listeners can play along if they really want. (For the same reason, I think most games have either been quite cheap or so old they're readily obtainable.) Do any listeners actually play along though? I don't remember a listener question ever asking about something in the assignment. I'd love to ask a question about game Kickstarters and their 'stretch goal' strategies. Card Game as an example (so random!), there's a big difference between saying 'yay!

Now we can make nicer components!' And 'now we're going to double the complexity of the game! Is more always better? Is the answer the same for every potential backer? Compare that approach with, say, making the stretch goal be an expansion pack for the game that will be available on day 1, free/optional for backers but at an extra cost for everybody after that. Or saying that, if we get more than double our goal, we'll reduce the price of the game for everybody (and/or add a bonus to everybody's rewards). Honestly, most of these games cost so much more than comparable wide-release games that being able to mass-produce should result in a more beneficial price-point for the company; does the Kickstarter framework make that impossible?

Anyway, I know that's a lot of questions, but would love to hear your thoughts. (also, feel free to transfer this to the KoL thread if it's not. Video-gamey enough.).

Have you guys done a user mail since #68? That's the last one marked in this thread. Anyway, just in case: Why don't games have randomly (or semi-randomly) generated stats for characters like classic DnD stuff anymore? I feel like devs would say 'because that was a bullshit system and people would spend hours rolling characters over and over until they got the guy with all max stats' but that's the thing I miss!

I *liked* rolling for hours and hours until I got the guy with max stats! Long digression follows. What's more, I really remember enjoying the character creation in the old Mac game Citadel, where you picked your mom and dad (mom was a witch and dad was a laborer, for example), then picked if you worked in the fields or went to school, and then got final stats generated and modified by those choices.

Figuring out the best combinations was half of the fun. That game also had a lot of cool persistent things like the shop, if your party died you could level a new party and go find the corpses of the old guys and ressurrect them (or just loot their stuff), etc. Combat was a bit wonky though.

Anyway, fun stuff! I'm really off topic here: Why don't games exist anymore where you have a random element to stats and/or multiple random characters? Is it all because of character-centric plot (as opposed to situation-centric) and min/max dickstabbers?

What's wrong with dickstabbers? Not mentally, but rather from a game design standpoint, why does it matter that they exist? Can't it be okay that some people are dickstabbers and some people aren't? Or is it that we're all afraid the dickstabbers are right, and we're doing it wrong? What game mechanic have you seen in another game and thought, 'oh man, I wish I'd designed this game because they are totally under-utilizing something awesome here'?

What's the best sequel? What's the worst?

What's the best bug you've ever seen? When I worked on Ultimate Spider-Man, for example, in one build all of the cars could fly, and it made swinging from building to building really hard without accidentally getting run over mid-air. Bosch Wfb 3200 Manual.

I wish they'd left that in as a bonus mode, it was great. You guys are really good at banter in the podcast.

Is that just how you really are? Or do you make a checklist like 'Make all gay jokes about Kevin' and 'Tell Riff that things you don't like are things he'd really like'? I know Riff says 'yes, and.' A lot, which is a basic rule of improv.

Did you all take improv classes before starting the podcast? Tell us your secrets! If you kill Wrex in the first game, his brother Wreav will be the leader of the Krogans. Then if you choose not to save the genophage research in the second game, the Krogan female Eve will die in the third game. If you choose to sabotage the genophage cure at that point, Mordin will try and stop you, but you'll be able to convince him that Wreav is a terrible leader and without Eve's balancing voice, the Krogan will soon invade and murder everybody following a victory over the Reapers. Mordin will sadly concur and he'll back down and live. Otherwise, he'll always die.

Hello, Which desktop video player? Are you using Windows Media Player or did you install some sort of 3rd party video player? We need some more information to be able to assist you. Regards, Alex T. ~Windows Desktop Experience MVP 2007-2011~ Is this response helpful?

If so, please consider clicking the green Vote As Helpful button for the benefit of future visitors with the same question. If this post provided a solution please mark it as the answer to help others.

Regards, Me Irrelevant by choice. I don't know about the first query, but my problem window pops up when the VirtuaGirl HD program starts and the vghd.exe program loads. I tried 'help' on the site, but their advice was basically useless. I tried loading in Safe mode, doing a clean boot, completely uninstalling and re-installing the program, downloading and running Reimage (registry repair tool and more); I've been searching the web for answers, but so far, no joy. I've went so far as investigating the registry entries themselves, but I don't know what is right and what is wrong. I could probably follow directions if someone could supply them.

I'm not completely ignorant working on computers, but I'm not a programmer or hacker by any means. Does anybody have a fix for me, or what to look for specifically? I'd appreciate any help.

Included is the details portion of the problem pop-up, if that's any help. I don't know about the first query, but my problem window pops up when the VirtuaGirl HD program starts and the vghd.exe program loads. I tried 'help' on the site, but their advice was basically useless. I tried loading in Safe mode, doing a clean boot, completely uninstalling and re-installing the program, downloading and running Reimage (registry repair tool and more); I've been searching the web for answers, but so far, no joy. I've went so far as investigating the registry entries themselves, but I don't know what is right and what is wrong. I could probably follow directions if someone could supply them.

I'm not completely ignorant working on computers, but I'm not a programmer or hacker by any means. Does anybody have a fix for me, or what to look for specifically? I'd appreciate any help. Included is the details portion of the problem pop-up, if that's any help.