Steam game lending?

[kalniel]

Ah yes. I see your point. It is a very good one! Not something I've overlooked in my own thoughts about games. Which is probably why open Betas are becoming so common.

Open betas are great for several reasons - they help test servers, help bug squash, and (you'll like this one) act as a great marketing tool (but not this bit) without the additional workload/cost that a demo would entail - you're doing the beta anyway so it's not a lost cost, and people also expect betas to be buggy, unlike demos.

I don't know if I'm the exception, but I've never found TES games to be as much of a mess as some people claim. I've definitely had some problems with them though. But nothing game breaking surprisingly enough.

That is unusual. Never fell through the void in Daggerfall? How long did you play it for?

Until it comes to modding with Skyrim. The way scripts attach themself permanently to your save has broken my game.

Save games are actually one of those really complicated bits of game design that people just take for granted. You always have to balance getting back to the exact world state that you left vs the size of data required, it's one of the reasons checkpoints are a much simpler system. I expect attaching scripts/script states actually helps fix various problems that could occur if you didn't do it.

[ZaO]

Open betas are great for several reasons - they help test servers, help bug squash, and (you'll like this one) act as a great marketing tool (but not this bit) without the additional workload/cost that a demo would entail - you're doing the beta anyway so it's not a lost cost, and people also expect betas to be buggy, unlike demos.

That is unusual. Never fell through the void in Daggerfall? How long did you play it for?

Save games are actually one of those really complicated bits of game design that people just take for granted. You always have to balance getting back to the exact world state that you left vs the size of data required, it's one of the reasons checkpoints are a much simpler system. I expect attaching scripts/script states actually helps fix various problems that could occur if you didn't do it.

Yeh as I said before - I like the Beta replacing the demo. It's good for all. But it's a shame we don't see more of it at the moment :/

I'm not sure I ever played daggerfall. The only tes games I've put lots of time into are Oblivion and Skyrim. Never actually completed Oblivions main story line, but played it for over 300 hours lol! Skyrim I have completed the main story line. Started modding about half way through. Nothing game breaking, not even close. But now I can't get into a cave or something in Dawnguard. Just gets stuck on loading screen. I know it's my fault from being careless with mods. But in the early days of Skyrim I, and many others didn't realise you couldn't just remove mods, wait indoors for a while, save the game and then continue like previous tes games. Bethesda wrote a blog about the new save game system they had setup. It made sense (though I forget all the details). But it turns out the old way seemed to work better for modding. So many problems with mods and Skyrim.. I know someone will figure out a way to fix it all though. The modding community with Skyrim is crazy. So impressive..

[kalniel]

I'm not sure I ever played daggerfall.

And I thought you'd been gaming since the 90s..

Ultima VII?

[ZaO]

And I thought you'd been gaming since the 90s..

Ultima VII?

I've been gaming since the 80s. But mostly on consoles (& c64, amiga etc) until about 2004 or something. In the 90s we had a family pc which I played games like Age of empires, rainbow six, r6 rogue spear, xfiles, c&c red alert, diablo and kingpin life of crime (which I am actually playing through right now because I never completed it back then!). Plus some other games I forget... I probably played some of the older tes games but my memory isn't to great. Also stuff like doom and wolfenstein round a friends house whose dad worked for ibm and always had a nice pc for gaming. I wasn't as clued up about the pc games until I swapped my first 360 console for a pc my brother built. I then started upgrading that computer and got oblivion on it, which I was playing on the 360 just prior to that. Started modding oblivion and it sort of just took off from there really. Pretty much stayed with pc gaming ever since.

[kalniel]

Ah.. See when I said I take it you're new to the PC gaming scene and you answer that you've been doing it since the 90s, I kind of took you literally

[ZaO]

Ah.. See when I said I take it you're new to the PC gaming scene and you answer that you've been doing it since the 90s, I kind of took you literally

Well I have! Just not in the same way I have been for the past say, 10 years. Still, I'm not exactly new