Just want to publically thank IAmSinistar for gifting me Wizardry 7+8, and ToxicTom for giving the gift code to IAmSinistar for this giveaway. You both rock!

Thank you for a wonderful list of gems, Sinistar! Sorry I missed it, but I hope that one day the powers that be will realize the loss of community members (and loss of revenue) and reverse this asinine policy along with the recently other BS. I too also hope you will stay the course. :-)

You're very welcome, I hope you enjoy these classics :-)

No takers for Anachronox. That's just wrong! Sure, it's not perfect, but man what a great story and characters.

Signed! It's really a nice game. Great humour, too ("You left a sock over there...").

True... "Baby fresh or musk?"
Some seriously dark themes in there too. I got really upset when I saw the cutscenes showing what happened the night Fatima died. The fact that you get to watch it through the eyes of all three characters really takes it to a different level. And the whole thing is so well written and believable. Tragic really. It's one my favourite dramatic moments in videogames.
Why they chose the Quake 2 engine to make an RPG baffles me though. Sure, it works, and they made it do things it was never intended to. But WHY? It's like writing a poem of a piece of toilet paper.

Been there, done that. ;-)

Not in, just saying thanks for your generosity! :)

(I'm going to resist the sharp, rising urge to call you names and rant here. I will resist. No guarantees I succeed.)

WHY did Tom Hall decide to use the Quake 2 engine for Anachronox? Because the Quake 2 engine was state-of-the-art at the time (1997), and because Anachronox was originally developed using the greatest engine ever made up to that point: the original Quake engine. And when Tom Hall began the process of upgrading to the Quake 2 engine IMMEDIATELY UPON THE RELEASE OF QUAKE 2, Carmack himself helped add the RPG-adapting elements in 1997.

In other words: Tom Hall - not "they", Tom fracking Hall - chose the Quake 2 engine because it was the most intelligent, most ambitious choice that anyone at the time could have made, and because it was so obviously the correct choice that if Ion Storm had been a public company at that time, shareholders could and should have sued them for neglecting to use the engine if available. Any other choice could only have been a deliberate attempt to kill the project. That's how boneheaded choosing any other engine would have been.

Does that answer your question?

Just wanted to thank you! especially for that regional priced gogmix you did - aka no buy for me. consulted it regulary!

Just because something is the most advanced on the market and can be used to do something, it doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job. The Quake 2 engine was primarily used for FPS and had to be heavily modified to do the job, and I suspect it was one of the main reasons for it to only be released in 2001 - when it was already considered outdated. Many complained about the graphics even at the time, and bugs and glitches where abundant.

I'm not questioning your reasoning, everybody probably thought it was the right choice at the time. I personally don't believe it was the best choice, but then again hindsight is always 20/20.

Out of curiosity, what would you have chosen Tannath?

I personally love the game and never gave any thought to what engine was used, its not a question that ever occured to me. :)

An obvious, general statement that doesn't apply to this issue even remotely. In this particular case, that line is exactly as applicable as saying "Just because frogs are slimy doesn't mean you should lick them." It might make sense if you're telling someone who likes licking slimy things not to lick frogs, but it's a non-sequitur in this case. Hall felt strongly about creating a state-of-the-art 1st or 3rd-person 3D RPG. That was his goal. There WAS no other intelligent choice. Being the best 3D engine had little to do with why he was looking for that kind of engine to begin with.

It did not. There was very little modification necessary. It's just an engine, after all.

It was not. It wasn't even ONE of the reasons. The development time was extended simply because the game was extremely expansive and ambitious, and it was time-consuming to create all the content and create a cohesive RPG within a fully-realized, true 3D world. It's not like there were a bunch of other games that had succeeded in doing this before the parallel-developed Deus Ex, so there was no road map, and the tools and concepts for doing it were not even invented yet.

Yet the bugs had virtually nothing to do with the engine itself.

Again, there was no other good option. Not at the time that they began development. Hindsight is 20/20, and in hindsight, for what Tom Hall wanted to achieve, the Quake 2 engine was nothing less than a gift from the God of Programming himself (Carmack, obviously).

Frankly, developing an RPG on John Carmack's utterly brilliant, elegantly simple Quake 2 engine was like writing a program in C on Unix in 1978: at the time, it was truly a dream scenario. I get that it's been a long time and that these things are forgotten, but you have to understand, there's zero reason to bad-mouth the Quake 2 engine, and every reason to praise it. It's not what gave Anachronox any of its problems. Quite the contrary: it allowed it to be as great - and as unique - as it is.

Wow, I didn't realize they'd made such a change. I didn't notice because the last gift I gave was to a person in my own region ...

Well, thanks Sinistar, for all your generosity over the years. Glad to hear you'll still be around the forums. The gifting was nice, but it sure wasn't the best part of seeing you around here. (for me anyway)

Sinistar, that was a generous blast! Par for the course, for you. I'm only just seeing it now, since I am rarely on the forums these days - I'm no longer a GOG customer, for the most part.

Let me take the opportunity to say thanks - you've always been kind to me, and you're one of the forum folk I was happy to see posting.

Thanks, as they say, for all the fish!