I'm downloading TDD still not completed. Yesterday, I was chatting with a friend I asked him about TDD. He told me that he's disapointed the game is just hack and slash if you install it you face zillions of trolls in nalias keep.. what's your opinions about TDD is it TOO unofficial or it's enjoying playable?

well, i don't know - i downloaded it the other day, and am kinda digging it.. there are a lot more things to deal with, so there is a heavy element of hack and slash, (i often look at it like its just more xp - the creatures aren't that tough, just numerous, and with the cap super high, it helps level advancement)

Pros: but i think that the diversity of kits and new weapons kinda makes up for it... its kinda fun to explore these new kits, and it kinda nice to not know what to expect around every corner - the new quests seem (so i've gathered through reading the forums) to be cool too, though i haven't dealt with any of them yet..

cons: i haven't been playing long enough to experience any serious bugs - actually, haven't encountered any at all, but if you check out their forum, its quite active and they seem to be working hard to fix things if you have a prob - the only thing that really bothers me is the poor use of the english language (mostly in item descriptions) - there's plenty of spelling mistakes, and the grammar is sometimes unintelligeble

anyway, just my two cents

take care
oaxaca_dan

how do you download it? It takes 25 hours on the internet ( look at that bill) to download it.

I've downloaded TDD and have just started a new party. I have to completely uninstall ToB/SoA and re-install SoA, since TDD is not yet ToB compatible.

I haven't gotten very far as yet. I've completed Nalia's castle. I didn't find any more trolls than usual. There were some other rather interesting "guests" outside the castle when I showed up.

Here's my take thus far:

Pros:
More items
10 more NPC's (3 good, 5 evil, 2 nuetral)
More kits

(I know that there are supposed to be more quests, but I haven reached them as yet.)

Cons:
(1) The spelling is really weak. (This is a really annoying gripe for me. It won't limit my enjoying the new playing experience. However, as a professional programmer, I find such constant spelling errors to be really annoying, in the extreme. As I said on the TDD board, nothing screams unprofessional like bad spelling.)

(2) Far too many kit-specific items. I like new items. Bring'em on!!! But these kit specific items are just too much. Hammers that only certain kit of clerics can use? A sling that only the "slinger" kit (which BTW only can be selected by halflings) can use? Just too darned restrictive.


On the whole, I will still give a thumbs up. What the heck, it's new material. As long as its functional, I won't complain too much.

Magness -
lol, i think i read that other message on the TDD forum... hehe - so my eyes were looking for those things you pointed out, and i agree with you, especially about the spelling stuff

the items too - though i must admit that i picked classes (lord, protector of the faith) that ended up having cool class-specific items, so i wasn't so upset - i know exactly what you're referring to

Willard -
in terms of downloading it, i have cable connection (finally), so it took about an hour - they have cd's you can get, but they charge you a little for the production and shipping. I think they tell you to use a download manager, which i suppose helps you split the download process (pause/continue) to little time increments


later
oaxaca_dan

So....where can one download it from?
THANKS.

Download darkest day? here's the link, though its a large download - 266mb

http://teambg.db-forge.com/net/tdd/?...&sel=0#install


oaxaca_dan

That,s why I like this forum...Ask and ye shall receive.
muchly appreciated :D

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Magness:
(1) The spelling is really weak. <hr></blockquote>

*groan*

really? can you like give me an instance on where spelling was a drag...

Bahamut, I'm looking up examples as I write this.

Here's one example. Once or both of the creators constantly misspelled "weapon" as "weopan".

victems
variuos


Here's an item description (direct cut-and-paste, minus that statistics):

"These bracers are the ultimate saught after posession of someone in the thief trade.they tansform an formidable theif in to a master of his trade"


As I said, I'll still enjoy playing it, but as I said before, I am a professional C/UNIX/XMOTIF/Informix ESQLC/DCE/KSH/TCLTK programmer. Such a level of constant misspelling, particularly in a part of the "product" that the customer will be seeing, is not the mark of a "professional". But I once again repeat, I understand that this is a free product, possibly being produced by people (possibly non-professional programmers) in their spare time. However, if said people are intending on being professional programmers in the future, I'd suggest that they pay a little more attention to the details. I realize that it's more fun dealing with the more technical aspects (heaven forbid, I'm not fond of writing specifications or user documentation myself), but some of these non-technical tasks are every bit as important to the success of the product as the technical ones.

Just the requested opinion of a BG2-loving programmer, who is not really giving anyone all that much grief.

There are also numerous irksome mispellings in Dark Side of the Sword Coast (by the same developers), and it is both unnecessary and unprofessional. Maybe English isn't the first language of whoever wrote the item descriptions and dialogue, or they are dyslexic, or just a rotten speller. But why not let someone with some English skills look it over and correct that shit? Sorry, but it is just halfassed to put stuff out in that form. (I should say also that except for some annoying regular crashes I otherwise thoroughly enjoy Dark Side, though. Apologize for butting in as I haven't even played ToB yet!)

Lemernis, no need to apologize. TDD (The Darkest Day) has nothing to do with ToB (Throne of Bhaal). (If I'm sayign something that you already know, I apologize in advance.) TDD is an unofficial MOD. As I said above, I realize the circumstances under which is was produced, but if I were doing TDD under the same circumstances, my personal, professional pride would not allow me to release what otherwise appears to be a decent product with such silly little and simple errors.

Do we see many spelling errors in SoA or ToB? None that I noticed. That level of quality and attention to detail is one of the things that makes BG & IWD products commercially successful and well-loved.

Like you suggested, the producers should have had someone proof reading their text. Alternatively, they could have written their text in MS Word (to use its auto-spellchecking functionality) and then cut-and-paste the verified text into the proper location.

Another thing that should have been or, at least, should be now is that the TDD producers have been working hard to get TDD included on various game magazine demo disks. This is a great idea for distributing TDD to a wider audience. However, if you're going for a wider release, you should place even more emphasis on Quality Assurance. I'd be incredibly embarrassed to have such shoddy spelling show up on demo disks for the whole wide world of BG2 players to see.