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Although the style of game differs greatly, certainly the spy setting and overall feel are in many ways similar. One way in which they are similar is that when you are seen, if you do not kill that person immediately, or if you do and are seen or his body is discovered, then you will almost inevitably trip an alarm that causes everyone in the area to react differently.

Where the difference comes in between the two in the system is the way in which the enemies react. The mechanic works well in Splinter Cell–when you’re seen, the enemies in the direct vicinity will begin to search for you. If you stay hidden for some time, they will eventually start to patrol again and not really pursue you. This is realistic–they won’t know where you are as long as you’ve moved since the last time they’ve seen you. This is aided by the fact that you always see a ghost of where the enemies last saw you. This system lends itself well to this style of gameplay, and it works great.

Alpha Protocol handles alarms differently. If you are seen, then the enemies in the direct vicinity of whoever spotted you will immediately rush you and attempt to sound an alarm if he is near one. If you kill him first, then like Splinter Cell you may have gotten away clean unless someone else saw him die or finds his body. Once the alarm sounds, however, the system gets clunky. Every enemy on your map seems to rush your exact location and directly hunt you down as if they have psychic powers of some kind. This lasts until you turn off the alarm or, almost always, until you clear all of the enemies out, since there’s a somewhat slim chance of finishing a hack without getting shot by one of the many enemies who knows where you are.

Once you turn off the alarm, you can suddenly hide again. It’s this mechanic I feel is broken in Alpha Protocol. You should be able to hide out an alarm… if you’re hidden, you’re hidden, whether or not something–or someone–has triggered an alarm. Yes, everyone should be much more alert, and expect you to be around every corner, but they should not know where you are at all times whenever the alarm is triggered.

Anyway, that has really been bothering me lately, and when I was playing Splinter Cell: Conviction this evening again, I realized I was quite impressed with the way they handled it.

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• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (go.theregister.com)
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• Games Reviews: Splinter Cell: Conviction (independent.co.uk)
• Splinter Cell launch trailer: Sam’s gonna cut you down (joystiq.com)

As I seem to be one of the few not giving up on Alpha Protocol in the early stages of the game, I’ve noticed one thing: I really enjoy the soundtrack, and it really lends itself to feeling like a badass spy engaged in some badass espionage action. It is a sort of drum ‘n bass/techno mix and it’s very fitting to the game overall.

Unfortunately the AI structure of, if you trip an alarm, everyone knows exactly where you are until you turn it off, is a flawed system, but it does make for a lot of cool action music whenever you’re spotted.

The sound in general is quite good. The voice acting is very passable, the weapons sound powerful and weighty. The footsteps are a little bit much, but it allows you to really hear them without having to strain yourself.

Anyway, as I was playing through a mission listening to the cool battle music, I decided I needed to let that little tidbit be known.

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• Alpha Protocol: Great RPG gameflow saves the day (thestar.com)
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• Multiple Middles: Alpha Protocol Details (rockpapershotgun.com)

For years we have been enjoying a well-sorted list of Oblivion mods thanks to the wonderful BOSS (formerly fcomhelper). But Fallout 3 users have been left in the cold, with sparse, scattered, and/or conflicting information about where their mods should go in their load order.

Early on this year, the developers at our partner SingularityShift (eg. mostly myself) released the first pre-beta of FOMS, whose final version (0.6.6.1) was released in April. FOMS used XML templates to facilitate sorting and management of conflicts, dependencies, and related information for Fallout 3 mods. It was very basic with a very limited UI that provided just enough functionality to sort and manage mods, but it had some inherent issues in the fact that it was developed with hand-written tools in a scripting language that has some serious limitations.

Recently, SingularityShift released the first alpha (Alpha 1) of FOMS 2, which is a complete rewrite taking advantage of the robust features of the .NET Framework and WPF to provide a greatly-enhanced sorting experience, including a Template Manager to create and manage XML templates, live conflict/dependency/message tracking, robust backup/restore options, and more all driven by a flexible Preferences system that will ultimately allow users to customize many aspects of the application.

Given that it was a first release, users have uncovered many bugs and submitted many wishlist items and feature requests. Now, FOMS 2 Alpha 2 is nearing its release, and some of its new features that have been recently unveiled are:

• Refactored windows and unified resources for a smaller size, tighter code, and better performance and stability
• The Template Manager is being dumped and replaced by Template Studio, allowing much-enhanced functionality such as template downloads, backups, merging, cleaning, upgrading, and much more.
• Conflict/Dependency recommendations and resolving are now included, so you don’t need to hunt through your list to find and fix the conflicts/dependencies yourself.
• Many smaller fixes and improvements for a better overall experience.

Keep your eyes peeled for the new release!

As always, you can follow along with the software’s development at its project site.
You can discuss it with other Fallout 3 users at Fallout3Nexus and don’t forget to watch the official site at falloutmodsorter.com for release information and more details!

(If I have some shame, can it really be considered a shameless plug?)