Lack of situational ethics in Arcanum

Nothing of great importance here, just venting over followers who bitch at you for killing good characters who you have no choice but to kill because they're attacking you (like the "human bandits" in this "Kree" place... how am I supposed to approach them, does anyone know?)

 

Although this didn't happen for me, a workaround goes like this - go to turn-based combat, run up to them, when they attack, don't do anything for your first turn. Your party should attack, then you should be able to attack without them complaining...works for me :smile:.

 

As Jarinor goes: Don't worry It's a character bug that doesn't exist! Or keep up with the times man it's probably already fixed!

 

No, it's *not* a bug. A bug is something that makes the program work improperly.

This is not a bug.

What happens is this - you attack a creature - before it becomes hostile, or as it becomes hostile - to you. Your followers look at it's hostility state, and at it's alignment, and if it's good - or if it's evil, if it is less evil than you - they decide that maybe you are a little too bloddthirsty, and thier reaction to you goes down.

So, it's a feature - now, that said, it's not a smart feature as it applies to everything in the world, where it should only apply to townsfolk, IMO.

One thing to remember, when talking about bugs, is that just because you dislike something in a game, that does not make it a bug.

I do a ton of testing for another game, a strategy game, and you'd be amazed how many people say a 'bug' caused them to lose a game, when, in fact, it was poor play. Bugs are a lot rarer than a lot of people think. It's just fashionable to blame a 'bug', without bothering to see if

a. It actually is a bug orl
b. If the bug is caused by another source.

PC OSs share a lot of resources, and so, a new program can change a resource, and cause an older one to suddenly become 'buggy', even though it's not. Same with new hardware, etc.

Alex

 

no matter how you describe it if people attack you of no reaseon, and while you defend yourself you get an aligment drop, and follwer bitching, it's definetly a bug

 

Hmm... I guess I wouldn't call it a "bug"... more like just a "flaw"... it is a content or scenario problem, not a programming problem. Insofar as the content of the game is concerned it IS not right that your followers should get angry with you for defending yourself.

 

I'm with the non-buggers (oo-er). Bugs are errors that cause the game not to work as designed.

Design flaws are when the application works exactly as planned, which turns out to be unsatisfactory during operation.

Alexandra, I mainly agree with you but disagree on a couple of points:

1) Games are designed to be delpoyed on a target OS. Resource sharing should not be able to break them if the platform is within required system specs.

2) I'm sure a lot of poor players wrongly blame their performance on 'bugs', but if many of your users are making the same 'mistakes' during play, there is something wrong with your game design/implementation.

Also, are you sure the Followers compare the enemies alignment your yours before they give the moralistic spiel? Surely it would only make sense if they compared their own alignments?

 

Well... If you wanna call it a feature it's an unintended feature as they're called often...

What other betas you in???

 

I believe that they do - that's the impression I get from the manual, the FAQ, and the Uber FAQ. I could be wrong.

As for your point 1, you are right, in theory. And, if everyone use the exact same make and model of PC, and the exact same processor chip, and the exact same video/sound card, and the exact same programs on the hard disk, then you'd be right :smile:

But, in reality, we don't. When a company gives system requirments, that's the baseline what you need - and even then, there may be problems, due to the variety of possible sub systems on a system.

And, beyond that, you have the shared application problem on Windows. Windows runs, basically, off a bunch of *.dll files (and, yes, I know that this is a drastic oversimplification). Now, any program that works with windows will have it's own *.dll files. And, sometimes, they conflict. That's why when you have a tech prob with software, and call a support line, one of the first things you'll always be asked is "Have you installed any new software recently?"

And lets not forget memory overflow, file corruption, and all the other probs that PCs can get :smile:

Alex

 

I agree, Ioo. I think it was a good idea that didn't get implimented quite right, but it's not a bug.

As for other Beta's, I do a lot of testing for Matrix Games - Steel Panthers: World at War. I've done 3 different Beta's for them, just finished the 3rd.

Alex

 

That's one way to look at it, definitely. I tend to view problems arising from hardware as being the fault of the hardware/driver, rather than apps, since it's fairly rare that such a problem will only affect one app. Under Windows, Direct X support is a big issue, which is why MS have a driver certification process.

Your DLL point is without a doubt true. The application registering a broken DLL (one that does not fully support its parent interface) will almost certainly cause problems for several apps, not just one. The broken DLL can be seen as a bug.

File corruption and memory overflows can be caused by many things. One of those things is bugs in the application. As I understand it, there was one such bug to do with save file corruption in Arcanum at some point.

Woah - I'm feeling really dizzy; this is the third rational conversation I've had on this forum in the last week. It's making me edgy ... :grin:

 

Matrix Games????? SAY NO MORE!!!]

Edit: yeah I had to do that... as for the system requirements... I think it's what it takes to run the game at it's worst... and usually not run at all because even though your comp has exectly the minimum specs they all don't function properly.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ioo on 2001-11-19 20:01 ]</font>