Darkest Day..enjoying or just a hack and slash?

[Magness]

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.

[Lemernis]

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!)

[Magness]

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.