Stab the bars on the door with your knife, cut a hole to go through.

Having plenty of experience with pirated software, I know for a fact that most pirated software is just as stable, if not more so, than retail software. The benefit of cracked games is that they don't have SecuRom, Starforce, SafeDisc, TAGES or any other protection scheme that has potential conflicts with your hardware and software.

Again, refute my points on a logical (not legal or moral) basis and you can convince me to stop pirating.

Demos are often misleading or nonexistent. In an ideal world, every game would have a demo that accurately gives the player a taste of the full game. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. Many games, like GTA, Oblivion, GoW, Assassin's Creed, STALKER, etc, do not have demos. Other games, like Hitman: Blood Money, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Half-Life, The Witcher, etc, have demos that mislead the player. They are either a poor representation of the game or they take the best parts of the game and mash them together into something that isn't even in the full game. Or they might just show the only good level in the game. When you play a demo, how do you know that it is truly representative of the complete product?

Ecthelion:
My ghost comment was addressed to the guy who was using ghost.
However, if you are wondering about Partition Magic's lack of updates, the explaination is quite easy. Norton/symantec bought them out. So of course they aren't going to update it, they just wanted to kill a competitor. Kinda like creative buying out Aureal/A3D.

So, sorry, but you'll probably never see a partition magic version supporting vista.

User data files that have file associations registered with File Explorer must be placed in a subfolder of the folder that is specified by CSIDL_PERSONAL (also called Documents or My Documents). All other user data files must be stored in a subfolder of the folders that are specified by CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA or CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA. (These directories are hidden by default for individual users and for all users.)

Is there any word on if the load time improvements and fixed inventory system will be available as a free patch for the original game? For that matter they should give away the English corrections as well. These are all things that should have been fixed before the game ever shipped.

I wish I could be more judgmental like many of you when it comes to the Fallout universe. But because I'm such a huge Fallout fan & pretty much desperate for ANY new content I can't bring myself to bash Fallout 3. What's really sad is there are MILLIONS of gamer's out there just like me but they wont come to the table and admit there a huge fan just eager for NEW Fallout content.

Looking for an alternative that supports vista? Try acronis true image you will have to pay.

theyarecomingforyou:
I agree, but unfortunately, the savegame location in those weird locations like local application data, is mandanted by MS if you want to get the games for windows logo.

Here's an example for XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Save-SinglePlayer

Which BTW, answers Creston issue with SoaSE.
They had to do it to get the games for windows logo. Someone asked them about that.
So no, they didn't just ignore it, I saw them respond specifically to this question.

Have you checked save game sizes recently? I've seen savegame folders grow to gigs because of massive save game sizes. Your naive statement that these things "don't add up to much" simply isn't correct.

No need to have a FAT32 boot for ghost. Are you using the only ghost that is worth anything, ghost 8/2003 the good ole DOS based one before the windows bluescreenifiying 9 and future versions?

Well, see, that's the problem. This situation wasn't inevitable. It's never been a problem until the last year and a half or so, when suddenly developers seemed to develop Retard Syndrome. My old Win2K install had a 2Gig C partition and I NEVER ran out of space or had any issues on it. I always had ~ 800 meg free or so on it. Granted, I needed to be a bit careful with what I was installing. MS Office, for example, will put 60 megs of crap into your application data folder, no matter WHERE you tell the damn thing to install.

One huge culprit I found is iTunes. That doesn't even ASK you where you want to install it, it just goes straight into program files,and that worthless PoS Quicktime that for some reason you HAVE to have with it, will trash all 70 megs or so of its miserable code straight into Application Data.

I use two drives, but I just like having my stuff segregated. You also need a FAT32 partition to make Ghost backups, because you need to be able to boot to it. I have one boot partition, one backup partition, one data partition (that I don't really care if it gets fragmented, this is also where I stash my swapfile) and typically one or two game partitions.

As for no virus scan, that's a bit too risky for me. I've often thought about designing a very limited user account setup that I'd use to browse with, and then just switch to a more powerful account to game, but every time I'm designing it I think to myself "Do I really want THAT level of hassle?"

Saving 5 seconds of boot time on XP is a worthy goal if you can achieve it with a smaller partition.

I've already moved my "My Documents" folder. 99.99% of all games stash their crap there. (Usually in My Games, which is what the entire folder is there for to begin with.)

Then there are some games that feel the need to stash oodles of data in Documents and Settings\user\application data(hidden)\etc.

That's just fucking retarded. It's even MORE retarded to save games there.

Oh right. Then they're just stupid. Because most every other dev realizes that by saving games in Documents\My Games, it still adheres to user profiles. Rather than stashing crap in a hidden system folder.

Yeah....no. Good luck trying to install something in Application Data (or Local Settings\Application Data) if you're not an admin. That's not going to work on a standard install.

Because it's faster. A 5 gig WinXp partition will boot faster, will defrag faster, will virus scan faster and - probably most importantly - whill Ghost a lot faster than a 200 Gig partition will.

Yeah, they'd have to actually optimize their console ports to run well on PCs and that would take time and resources. Much easier to just push ports out the door and then blame piracy when they don't sell so well.

Seems possible that it might be released for PC later. What I'm wondering is how moddable this game is. If it seems likely that there will be some good mods for it, even just those that add a little more variance to the game, it may be worth getting.

Regarding My Documents folder, I think one of the main problems is that Microsoft doesn't give people an easy way to relocate it during the installation. The other main problem is that people just aren't used to having to allocate much space for it. Up until recently, nothing much has really used that space except us. Now we have to remember to plan for it to be holding hundreds of megs or even gigs of savegame files and such. That just requires people to rethink their partitioning schemes and where they want to store that stuff.

Hmmm, not quite. "Supporting multiple user profiles" does not mean "put all your maps and graphical data in my profile". Saved games, I can understand, but not data that's not going to be different per user.

If gigabytes of data are actually going in Documents and Settings, the devs are doing something wrong. It should only be configuration files, savegames (once you start playing the game), and so forth, which don't add up to much.

I *)&%## HATE developers that do this. If I tell you to install shit to the G partition, then install shit to the G partition, and don't fucking jam Gigs of data on my C drive!!!!

My last install simply ran out of room on C because lazy fucking devs kept throwing shit into the "application data" folder in my C:\Documents and Settings.

Still not sure whether to rebuy or not. If it contains the DLC, I'll get it. If not, I probably will skip.

http://www.systemwars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69169

Surf, yea PC gaming is dying...

Well, no and yes. The storyline of BG 1 and 2 is concluded, but that doesn't mean there can't be more screwing around with Bhaal. Heck, they could just set it in Baldur's Gate and have nothing to do with the original storyline, except for a few NPC cameos or something. It'd sell on name alone.

Just in general I haven't played the Freedom Force games but I heard they had good stories as well, which sort of says KLevine hasn't really made a bad story (most think very good) in the game industry.

As an ealrier poster mentioned, NOLF (well at least NOLF 2) should work fine on Windows XP. However, it does not play well with systems with more than one core. If your system is dual/triple/quad, you will need to set the affinity for the application to a single processor. Just a hint, this gets alot of other older games (like System Shock) to play right on both XP and Vista. Again, it's not the OS, it's that these games do not work right on multiple cores.

I'm not so sure about that. For some reason, NOLF1 really dragged for me whereas I was thoroughly entertained throughout NOLF2. Some people argue that NOLF1 had better writing but I care more about gameplay than that. I'm pretty sure NOLF2 had better AI and more depth due to the RPG aspects.

Morrowind had a much more expansive dialogue system.

In addition, the different guilds had different skill level requirements as you advanced. I never did become the master of the Fighter's Guild or Mage's Guild because my rogue character didn't have the necessary skills. Sure, I could have gone out of my way to level them up but unlike Oblivion, this was much harder to do and wasn't practical in most situations.

Speaking of Cate Archer, does anyone know how to get NOLF (I and II) working under XP?

dont worry. uwe boll already said in a recent interview that he is now unable to take advantage of the tax loophole in germany to make movies.